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Judah Halevi (also Yehuda Halevi; Hebrew: יהודה הלוי; Arabic: يهوذا هاليفي; c. 1075–1141) was a Spanish Jewish physician, poet and philosopher. He was born in Spain, either in Toledo or Tudela,^[1] in 1075^[2] or 1086, and died shortly after arriving in Palestine in 1141. Halevi is considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets, celebrated both for his religious and secular poems, many of which appear in present-day liturgy. His greatest philosophical work was The Kuzari.

Biography[link]

Convention suggests that Judah ben Shmuel HaLevi was born in Toledo, Spain in 1075.^[3] He often referred to himself as coming from Christian territory, which would point to Toledo, which was conquered by Alfonso VI from the Muslims in Halevi's childhood (1086). As a youth, he seems to have gone to Granada, the main center of Jewish literary and intellectual life at the time, where he found a mentor in Moses Ibn Ezra. Although it is often said that he studied in the academy at Lucena, there is no evidence to this effect. He did compose a short elegy on the death of Isaac Alfasi, the head of the academy.^[4] His aptitude as a poet was recognized early. He was educated in traditional Jewish scholarship, in Arabic literature, and in the Greek sciences and philosophy that were available in Arabic. As an adult he was a physician, apparently of renown, and an active participant in Jewish communal affairs. For at least part of his life he lived in Toledo and may have been connected with the court there as a physician. In Toledo he complains of being too busy with medicine to devote himself to scholarship.^[5] At other times he lived in various Muslim cities in the south.

Like most Jewish intellectuals of Muslim Spain, Halevi wrote prose in Arabic and poetry in Hebrew. During the "Hebrew Golden Age" of the 10th to 12th century,^[6] he was the most prolific of the Hebrew poets and was regarded by some of his contemporaries, as well as by modern critics, as the greatest of all the medieval Hebrew poets. Like all the Hebrew poets of the Hebrew Golden Age, he employed the formal patterns of Arabic poetry, both the classical monorhymed patterns and the recently-invented strophic patterns. His themes embrace all those that were current among Hebrew poets: panegyric odes, funeral odes, poems on the pleasures of life, gnomic epigrams, and riddles. He was also a prolific author of religious verse. As with all the Hebrew poets of his age, he strives for a strictly biblical diction, though he unavoidably falls into occasional calques from Arabic. His verse is distinguished by special attention to acoustic effect and wit.

Nothing is known of Halevi's personal life except the report in his poems that he had a daughter and that she had a son, also named Judah. He could well have had other children. The tradition that this daughter was married to Abraham Ibn Ezra does not rest on any evidence, though Halevi and Abraham Ibn Ezra were well acquainted, as we know from the writings of the latter.^[7]

Journey to Palestine[link]

We cannot reconstruct the Halevi's various residences in Spain; he seems to have lived at times in Christian Toledo, at others in Islamic Spain. He occupied an honored position as a physician, intellectual, and communal leader. Nevertheless, as a consequence of the development of his religious thought, he decided to abandon his home in order to end his days in the Land of Israel. His motivations were complex. His personal piety intensified as he aged, leading him to desire to devote himself entirely to religious life. The uncertainties of Jewish communal status in the period of the Reconquista led him to doubt the future security of the Jewish position in the diaspora. The failure of messianic movements weighed on him. His earlier commitment to philosophy as a guide to truth gave way to a renewed commitment to faith in revelation. He came to the conviction, elaborated in his treatise known as the Kuzari, that true religious fulfillment is possible only in the presence of the God of Israel, which, he believed, was most palpable in the Land of Israel. Contrary to a prevalent theory, his poetry shows beyond doubt that his pilgrimage was a completely individual act and that he had no intention of setting off a mass pilgrimage.

Halevi sailed for Alexandria. Arriving on September 8, 1140, he was enthusiastically greeted by friends and admirers. He then went to Cairo, where he visited several dignitaries, including the Nagid of Egypt, Samuel ben Hanania, and his friend Halfon ben Nethaniel Halevi. He did not permit himself to be persuaded to remain in Egypt, but returned to Alexandria and sailed for Palestine on May 14, 1141. Little is known of his travels after. He died during the summer, presumably after having reached Palestine. Legend, however has it that Halevi was killed after being run over by an Arab horseman as he arrived in Jerusalem.^[7]

Halevi dealt with his pilgrimage extensively in the poetry written during his last year, which includes panegyric to his various hosts in Egypt, explorations of his religious motivations, description of storms at sea, and expressions of his anxieties and doubts. We are well informed about the details of his pilgrimage thanks to letters that were preserved in the Cairo geniza. Poems and letters bearing on Halevi's pilgrimage are translated and explicated in Raymond P. Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove (Oxford University Press, 2007).

His work[link]

The life-work of Judah ha-Levi was devoted to poetry and philosophy.

Secular poetry[link]

Judah's secular or non-liturgical poetry is occupied by poems of friendship and eulogy. Judah must have possessed an attractive personality; for there gathered about him as friends, even in his earliest youth, a large number of illustrious men, like Levi al-Tabban of Zaragoza, the aged poet Judah ben Abun, Judah ibn Ghayyat of Granada, Moses ibn Ezra and his brothers Judah, Joseph, and Isaac, the vizier Abu al-Hasan, Meïr ibn Kamnial, the physician and poet Solomon ben Mu'allam of Seville, besides his schoolmates Joseph ibn Migas and Baruch Albalia.

Also with the grammarian Abraham ibn Ezra. In Córdoba, Judah addressed a touching farewell poem to Joseph ibn Ẓaddiḳ, the philosopher and poet. In Egypt, where the most celebrated men vied with one another in entertaining him, his reception was a veritable triumph. Here his particular friends were Aaron ben Jeshua Alamani in Alexandria, the nagid Samuel ben Hananiah in Cairo,^[8] Halfon ha-Levi in Damietta, and an unknown man in Tyre, probably his last friend. In their sorrow and joy, in the creative spirit and all that moved the souls of these men, Judah sympathetically shared; as he says in the beginning of a short poem: "My heart belongs to you, ye noble souls, who draw me to you with bonds of love".^[9]

Especially tender and plaintive is Judah's tone in his elegies^[10] Many of them are dedicated to friends such as the brothers Judah (Nos. 19, 20), Isaac (No. 21), and Moses ibn Ezra (No. 16), R. Baruch (Nos. 23, 28), Meïr ibn Migas (No. 27), his teacher Isaac Alfasi (No. 14), and others. In the case of Solomon ibn Farissol, who was murdered on May 3, 1108, Judah suddenly changed his poem of eulogy (Nos. 11, 22) into one of lamentation (Nos. 12, 13, 93 et seq.). Child mortality due to plague was high in Judah's time and the historical record contains five elegies written for the occasion of the death of a child. Biographer Hillel Halkin hypothesizes that at least one of these poems may have been written in honor of one of Judah's own children that did not reach adulthood and who is lost to history.^[11]

Love songs[link]

Joyous, careless youth, and merry, happy delight in life find their expression in his love-songs. Many of these are epithalamia and are characterized by a brilliant near-eastern coloring, as well as by a chaste reserve. In Egypt, where the muse of his youth found a glorious "Indian summer" in the circle of his friends, he wrote his "swan-song:"^[12] "Wondrous is this land to see, With perfume its meadows laden, But more fair than all to me Is yon slender, gentle maiden. Ah, Time's swift flight I fain would stay, Forgetting that my locks are gray."

Drinking songs by Judah have also been preserved.^[13]

Religious poetry[link]

After living a life devoted to worldly pleasures, ha-Levi was to experience a kind of "awakening"; a shock, that changed his outlook on the world. Like a type of "conversion" experience, he turned from the frivolous life of pleasure, and his poetry turned to religious themes.

It seems that his profound experience was the consequence of his sensitivity to the events of history that were unfolding around him. He lived during the First Crusade and other wars. There was a new kind of religio-political fanaticism emerging in the Christian and Muslim worlds. Holy wars were brewing, and ha-Levi may have recognized that such trends had never been good for the Jews. At the time, life was relatively "good" in Spain for the Jewish community. He may have suspected things were about to change for the worse, however.

If one may speak of religious geniuses, then Judah ha-Levi must certainly be regarded among the greatest produced by medieval Judaism. No other writer, it would seem, drew so near to God as Judah; none else knew how to cling to Him so closely, or felt so safe in His shadow. At times the body is too narrow for him: the soul yearns for its Father in Heaven, and would break through the earthly shell.^[14] Without God, his soul would wither away; nor is it well with him except he prays.^[15] The thought of God allows him no rest; early and late He is his best beloved, and is his dearest concern.^[16] He occupies the mind of the poet waking and sleeping; and the thought of Him, the impulse to praise Him, rouse Judah from his couch by night.^[17]

Next to God, the Jewish people stands nearest to his heart: their sufferings and hopes are his. Like the authors of the Psalms, he gladly sinks his own identity in the wider one of the people of Israel; so that it is not always easy to distinguish the personality of the speaker.

Often Judah's poetic fancy finds joy in the thought of the "return" of his people to the Promised Land. He believed that perfect Jewish life was possible only in the Land of Israel. The period of political agitation about 1130, when Islam, so intensely hated by the poet, was gradually losing ground before the victorious arms of the Christians, gave Judah reason to hope for such a return in the near future. The vision of the night, in which this was revealed to him,^[18] remained indeed but a dream; yet Judah never lost faith in the eventual deliverance of Israel, and in "the eternity" of his people. On this subject, he has expressed himself in poetry:

Lo! Sun and moon, these minister for aye; The laws of day and night cease nevermore: Given for signs to Jacob's seed that they Shall ever be a nation — till these be o'er. If with His left hand He should thrust away, Lo! with His right hand He shall draw them nigh.^[19]

Liturgical poetry[link]

The poems of Judah ha-Levi, which have been adopted into the liturgy, number (in all) more than 300. The longest, and most comprehensive poem is a "Kedushah," which summons all the universe to praise God with rejoicing, and which terminates, curiously enough, in Ps. ciii. These poems were carried to all lands, even as far as India (Zunz, "Ritus," p. 57); and they influenced the rituals of the most distant countries. Even the Karaites incorporated some of them into their prayer-book; so that there is scarcely a synagogue in which Judah's songs are not sung in the course of the service.^[20] The following observation on Judah's synagogal poems is made by Zunz:

As the perfume and beauty of a rose are within it, and do not come from without, so with Judah word and Bible passage, meter and rime, are one with the soul of the poem; as in true works of art, and always in nature, one is never disturbed by anything external, arbitrary, or extraneous.^[20]

Judah by his verses has also beautified the religious life of the home. His Sabbath hymns should be mentioned here; one of the most beautiful of which ends with the words:

On Friday doth my cup o'erflow, What blissful rest the night shall know, When, in thine arms, my toil and woe Are all forgot, Sabbath my love!

'Tis dusk, with sudden light, distilled From one sweet face, the world is filled; The tumult of my heart is stilled — For thou art come, Sabbath my love!

Bring fruits and wine and sing a gladsome lay, Cry, 'Come in peace, O restful Seventh day!'

Judah used complicated Arabic meters in his poems, with much good taste.^[21] A later critic, applying a Talmudic witticism to Judah, has said: "It is hard for the dough when the baker himself calls it bad." Although these forms came to him naturally and without effort, unlike the mechanical versifiers of his time,^[22] he would not except himself from the number of those he had blamed. His pupil Solomon Parḥon, who wrote at Salerno in 1160, relates that Judah repented having used the new metrical methods, and had declared he would not again employ them. That Judah felt them to be out of place, and that he opposed their use at the very time when they were in vogue, plainly shows his desire for a national Jewish art; independent in form, as well as in matter.

Judah was recognized by his contemporaries as "the great Jewish national poet",^{[citation needed]} and in succeeding generations, by all the great scholars and writers in Israel.

Analysis of his poetry[link]

The remarkable, and apparently indissoluble, union of religion, nationalism, and patriotism, which were so characteristic of post-exilic Judaism, reached its acme in Judah ha-Levi and his poetry. Yet this very union, in one so consistent as Judah, demanded the fulfillment of the supreme politico-religious ideal of medieval Judaism—the "return to Jerusalem". Though his impassioned call to his contemporaries to return to "Zion" might be received with indifference, or even with mockery;^[23] his own decision to go to Jerusalem never wavered. "Can we hope for any other refuge either in the East or in the West where we may dwell in safety?" he exclaims to one of his opponents (ib.). The songs that accompany his pilgrimage^[24] sound like one great symphony, wherein the "Zionides" — the single motive ever varied — voice the deepest "soul-life" alike; of the Jewish people and of each individual Jew.

The most celebrated of these "Zionides" is found in every Jewish prayerbook, and is usually repeated in the synagogue on the Ninth of Ab.^[25]

Zion, wilt thou not ask if peace's wing Shadows the captives that ensue thy peace, Left lonely from thine ancient shepherding?

Lo! west and east and north and south — world-wide — All those from far and near, without surcease, Salute thee: Peace and Peace from every side."

As a philosopher[link]

The position of Judah ha-Levi in the domain of Jewish philosophy is parallel to that occupied in Islam by Ghazali, by whom he was influenced. Like Ghazali, Judah endeavored to liberate religion from the bondage of the various philosophical systems in which it had been held by his predecessors, Saadia, David ben Marwan al-Mekamez, Gabirol, and Bahya. In a work written in Arabic, and entitled Kitab al-Ḥujjah wal-Dalil fi Nuṣr al-Din al-Dhalil, كتاب الحجة و الدليل في نصرة الدين الذليل, (known in the Hebrew translation of Judah ibn Tibbon by the title Sefer ha-Kuzari), Judah ha-Levi expounded his views upon the teachings of Judaism, which he defended against the attacks of non-Jewish philosophers, against the Karaites, and against those he viewed as "heretics".

References[link]

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Judah Halevi

• The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, full English translation at sacred-texts.com
• The Kitab al-Khazari of Judah Hallevi, Judeo-Arabic original
• Poems by Judah Ha-Levi English translations

Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat (920-990) (Hebrew: דוֹנָש הלוי בֵּן לָבְרָט‎; Arabic: دناش بن لبراط‎) was a medieval Jewish commentator, poet, and grammarian of the Golden age of Jewish culture in Spain. He was, according to Moses ibn Ezra, born in Fes.^[1] (The name Dunash is of Berber origin.) In his youth he travelled to Bagdad to study with Saadia Gaon.^[2]

Dunash is called the founder of Spanish Hebrew poetry.^[3] He first introduced Arabic meter into Hebrew poetry. Traditional Arabic poetry was built on interspersing long and short vowels. In contrast, Hebrew distinguishes between the quality of the vowels, rather than their length. Dunash's innovation came in drawing a parallel between the šəwâ (ə) and ḥāṭēp̄ (ĕ/ă/ŏ) and the Arabic short vowels (i/a/u), so as to create a new Hebrew meter. This meter formed the basis for all subsequent medieval Hebrew poetry. At the time, however, it opened him up to severe criticism, particularly among the students of Menahem ben Saruq, that he was corrupting the Hebrew language by introducing Arabic forms, and changing traditional Biblical styles to conform to Arabic meter and rhyming schemes. For instance, in his classic poem "Dror Yikra," he begins the second line: Ne'im shim'chem ("pleasant [is] your name"), with a modifying form of the adjective "pleasant," where properly it should be na'im.

In the field of grammar, Dunash's major work was a book attacking Menahem ben Saruq and his Mahberet ("Notebook") for violating religious standards and opposing the teachings of the sages. He dedicated his work to the leader of the Jews of Spain at the time, Hasdai ibn Shaprut. In his book, he was the first Hebrew grammarian to distinguish between transitive and intransitive verbs, the first to list verbs by their three-letter roots in the Paal construction, and the first to distinguish between "light" and "heavy" roots. He also condemned Menahem ben Saruq for failing to see the relationship between Hebrew and Arabic. Dunash also wrote a book containing two hundred reservations about the teachings of his old mentor, Saadia Gaon.

The students of Menahem ben Saruq responded with a scathing attack on Dunash, condemning him for using Arabic meter and grammar in studying the Hebrew language, as well as on issues of Jewish philosophy about which they were at odds. Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra also wrote a response to Dunash, in defense of Saadia Gaon. These challenges were met by Yehudi ben Sheshet, one of Dunash's students, who wrote a work in defense of his master that strongly opposed all of his detractors.

The debates between Dunash and others were finally decided in the centuries after his death by Rabbeinu Tam, a grandson of Rashi, who attempted to judge between the two schools of thought, and by Rabbi Joseph Kimhi, father of the noted grammarian Rabbi David Kimhi (RaDaK), who supported Dunash's positions. Nevertheless, many of the issues raised by Dunash have yet to be resolved today. Dunash is remembered as a poet and a grammarian who uncovered many of the major problems of Hebrew grammar.

References[link]

1. ^ David Goldstein, Hebrew Poems from Spain, Routledge & Kegan Paul 1965, p. 13
2. ^ David Cole, The dream of the poem: Hebrew poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 23
3. ^ D.G. Blaunder, "The Early Literary Riddle", in: Folklore, Vol. 78, No. 1 (Spring, 1967), pp. 49-58

Further reading[link]

• Cole, David. The dream of the poem: Hebrew poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, Princeton University Press, 2007, p. 23-27 ("Dunash Ben Labrat" and "The wife of Dunash").
• Eisenberg, Ronald (2006). Lash Balint, Judy; Barak, Daniella. ed. The Streets of Jerusalem. Devora Publishing Company. p. 56. ISBN 1-932687-54-8. http://books.google.co.il/books?id=yqXXD_74yAEC. 
• Kolatch, Yonatan (2006). "Chapter 6: The Spanish Linguists". Masters of the Word: Traditional Jewish Bible Commentary from the First through Tenth Centuries. Jersey City: KTAV Publishing House. pp. 331–337. ISBN 0-88125-936-5. http://books.google.co.il/books?id=P9G4qAHWtVgC. 
• Maman, Aaron. Comparative Semitic philology in the Middle Ages, Brill, 2004, p. 289-295 (Chapter 11, "Dunash ben Labrat").

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Hillel Halkin (born 1939) is an English-language essayist, translator, biographer, literary critic, and novelist. He was born in New York, "two months before the outbreak of World War II," the son of Abraham S. Halkin, a professor of Jewish literature, history and culture at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.^[1] In 1970 he made aliyah to Israel, an experience that formed the basis of his first book, the New York Times-bestselling Letters to an American Jewish Friend. A prominent translator of Hebrew and Yiddish literature into English, he produced what has come to be considered the definitive translation of Sholem Aleichem's masterpiece Tevye the Dairyman, and has also translated the major Hebrew and Israeli novelists — Yosef Haim Brenner, S. Y. Agnon, Shulamith Hareven, A. B. Yehoshua, Amos Oz, and Meir Shalev.

Halkin’s second book, published 25 years after his first, was Across the Sabbath River, a work of travel literature in which he goes in search of the truth behind the mystery of the Ten Lost Tribes.^[2] Since then he has written A Strange Death, the local history of Zikhron Ya'akov, where he resides, and an intellectual biography of Yehuda Halevi, which won a 2010 National Jewish Book Award.^[3] In 2012, he published his first novel, Melisande! What Are Dreams? The critic D. G. Myers described it as a “unique and moving study of marriage, a love letter to conjugal love.”^[4]

Halkin writes frequently on Israel and Jewish culture and politics. His articles have been published in Commentary, The New Republic, The Jerusalem Post and other prominent publications. Under the pseudonym "Philologos," he maintains a weekly column on Jewish languages in The Forward. He is a member of the Editorial Board of the Jewish Review of Books.

Bibliography[link]

Books[link]

• Halkin, Hillel (1977). Letters to an American Jewish Friend: A Zionist's Polemic. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society. ISBN 978-0-8276-0207-6. 
• Halkin, Hillel (2002). Across the Sabbath River: In Search of a Lost Tribe of Israel. New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. ISBN 978-0-618-02998-3. 
• Halkin, Hillel (2010). A Strange Death. New Milford, Conn.: The Toby Press. ISBN 978-1-59264-280-9. 
• Halkin, Hillel (2010). Yehuda Halevi. New York: Nextbook/Schocken. ISBN 978-0-8052-4206-5. 
• Halkin, Hillel (2012). Melisande! What Are Dreams?. London: Granta. ISBN 978-1-84708-499-6. 

Translations[link]

• Geulah Cohen (1966). Woman of Violence: Memoirs of a Young Terrorist, 1943–194. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.
• Yosef Haim Brenner (1971). Breakdown and Bereavement. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press.
• Mordecai Ze'ev Feuerberg (1973). Whither? and Other Stories. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
• Leah Goldberg (1973). Russian Literature in the Nineteenth Century. Jerusalem: Magnes Press, Hebrew University.
• Shulamith Hareven (1977). City of Many Days. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.
• Hanokh Bartov (1978). Whose Little Boy Are You? Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society.
• Amos Oz (1985). A Perfect Peace. San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
• Sholem Aleichem (1987). Tevye the Dairyman and The Railroad Stories. New York: Schocken.
• Tamar Bergman (1988). The Boy from Over There. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Shulamith Hareven (1988). The Miracle Hater. San Francisco: North Point Press.
• Meir Shalev (1991). The Blue Mountain. New York: Harper Collins.
• A. B. Yehoshua (1992). Mr. Mani. New York: Doubleday.
• Uri Orlev (1993). Lydia, Queen of Palestine. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Uri Orlev (1995). The Lady with the Hat. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• Uri Orlev (1995). The Man from the Other Side. New York: Puffin.
• Nava Semel (1995). Flying Lessons. New York: Simon & Schuster Books for Young Readers.
• Shulamith Hareven (1996). Thirst: The Desert Trilogy. San Francisco: Mercury House.
• Roman Frister (1999). The Cap: The Price of a Life. New York: Grove Press.
• S. Y. Agnon (2000). A Simple Story. Syracuse, N.Y.: Syracuse University Press.
• Samuel HaNagid (2000). Grand Things to Write a Poem On: A Verse Autobiography. Jerusalem: Gefen.
• Haim Sabato (2003). Adjusting Sights. New Milford, Conn.: Toby Press.
• Uri Orlev (2003). Run, Boy, Run. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
• A. B. Yehoshua (2003). The Liberated Bride. Orlando: Harcourt.
• Haim Be'er (2004). Feathers. Waltham, Mass: Brandeis University Press.
• A. B. Yehoshua (2004). Five Seasons. Orlando: Harcourt.
• A. B. Yehoshua (2006). A Woman in Jerusalem. Orlando: Harcourt.
• S. Y. Agnon (2009). To This Day. New Milford, Conn.: Toby Press.
• Uri Orlev (2010). The Song of the Whales. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books for Children.

References[link]

1. ^ Hillel Halkin, "Either/Or: A Memoir," Commentary 122 (September 2006): 48–55.
2. ^ Caryl Phillips, "The Disappeared," New Republic (September 26, 2002).
3. ^ Marc Tracy, "Halkin Wins National Jewish Book Award," Tablet, January 11, 2011.
4. ^ D. G. Myers, "Let My People Go," Commentary 113 (April 2012): 69.

External links[link]

• Halkin’s “Philologos” columns for The Forward
• Halkin’s articles in The New York Sun
• Halkin’s essays at Jewish Ideas Daily
• Hillel Halkin, “Endless Devotion” (a review of the Koren Sacks Siddur, Hebrew/English Prayerbook), Jewish Review of Books 1 (Spring 2010).

Tomb of Judah bar Ilai, Ein Zeitim, Israel.

Judah bar Ilai, also known as Judah ben Ilai, Rabbi Judah or Judah the Palestinian (Hebrew: ‎ יהודה בר מערבא, translit: Yehuda bar Ma'arava, lit. "Judah of the West"), was a tanna of the 2nd Century and son of Rabbi Ilai I. Of the many Judahs in the Talmud, he is the one referred to simply as "Rabbi Judah" and is the most frequently mentioned sage in the Mishnah.^[1]

Judah bar Ilai was born at Usha in the Galilee. His teachers were his father, who had studied with Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Akiba. He was ordained by Rabbi Judah ben Baba at a time when the Roman government forbade ordination. Judah bar Ilai was forced to flee Hadrian's persecution.

Obadiah of Bartenura visiting his tomb wrote in 1495:

"About as far from Safed as one may walk on a Sabbath is the grave of the talmudic master Rabbi Judah bar Ilai; and there is a little village there called Ein Zetim. On the grave is a handsome tomb at which candles are lit..." ^[2]

Italian pilgrim Moses Basola (1523) wrote:

"They say that once a Muslim woman climbed the tree on the grave in order to gather almonds, upon which the other women told her to first ask the saint's permission. But she showered them with curses. She fell off the tree, breaking all her limbs. She then pledged the gold bracelets on her hands to the saint, purchasing olive trees with them. Subsequently others made pledges as well, and at present he [the saint] has four hundred olive trees. This episode of the woman took place about sixty years ago."^[3]

Sources of his teaching[link]

Judah taught the Mishnah of Eliezer, which he had received from his father (Men. 18a),

In his interpretation of the Scriptures and in the deduction of legal requirements from it Judah adhered strictly to the method of his teacher Rabbi Akiba.

Many of Judah's maxims and proverbs have likewise been preserved; they include:

• "Great is beneficence: it quickeneth salvation" (B. B. 10a).
• "Great is toil: it honoreth the toiler" (Ned. 49b).
• "Who teacheth his son no trade, guideth him to robbery" (Ḳid. 29a).
• "The best path lies midway" (Ab. R. N. xxviii.).

Judah lived to a ripe old age, surviving his teachers and all of his colleagues. Among his disciples who paid him the last honors was Judah ha-Nasi.

References[link]

•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain:  Jewish Encyclopedia. 1901–1906. 

1. ^ Drew Kaplan, "Rabbinic Popularity in the Mishnah VII: Top Ten Overall [Final Tally] Drew Kaplan's Blog (5 July 2011).
2. ^ Kurt Wilhelm (1948). Roads to Zion: four centuries of travelers' reports. Schocken Books. p. 20. http://books.google.com/books?id=hjIKiIyxMgIC. Retrieved 25 October 2011. 
3. ^ Moses ben Mordecai Basola; Avraham Daṿid (31 December 1999). In Zion and Jerusalem: the itinerary of Rabbi Moses Basola (1521-1523). Department of Land of Israel Studies of Bar-Ilan University. p. 65. ISBN 978-965-222-926-7. http://books.google.com/books?id=6XRtAAAAMAAJ. Retrieved 25 October 2011. 

Beth Carvalho
Background information
Birth name	Elizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho
Born	(1946-05-05) May 5, 1946 (age 66)
Origin	Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Genres	Samba
Occupations	Singer
Years active	mid 1960s-present
Labels	BMG
Website	http://www.bethcarvalho.com.br
Notable instruments
Nelson Cavaquinho's cavaquinho

Elizabeth Santos Leal de Carvalho known professionally as Beth Carvalho (born May 5, 1946 in Rio de Janeiro) is a Brazilian samba singer, guitarist, cavaquinist and composer.

Biography[link]

Carvalho was raised in a middle class family in Rio de Janeiro's South Zone. Her father, João Francisco Leal de Carvalho, was a lawyer. She grew up influenced by different types of music. Her father used to take her to samba school rehearsals, and her mother was a lover of classical music who encouraged her to become a ballerina. She started playing the guitar as a teenager, and got involved with the emerging Bossa Nova movement, winning a nationwide song contest on TV at the age of 19. Her first record was 1968's "Andança", carrying the song of the same name to victory in a larger festival, which brought her to prominence. Although she started her career with Bossa Nova, that was an ephemeral phase which lasted less than one year. Beth started dedicating herself entirely to samba just as her fame began, working with legendary composers such as Nelson Sargento.

Carvalho is a very important artist in the history of samba, as she has celebrated and brought the spotlight to the work of legendary composers such as Cartola, Nelson Cavaquinho & Guilherme de Brito when they weren't receiving the attention they deserved. Almost all of her records have songs by these composers, among other legendary sambistas such as Nelson Sargento and the Old Guard of Portela. Her samba school is Mangueira, but that didn't stop her from recording dozens of songs from composers of Portela, the other great traditional samba school in Rio.

Beth Carvalho performing in Paris during the year of Brazil in France. 2005

Later, in the late 1970s and early 80's, Beth helped bring to the public the work of other rising pagode artists from Cacique de Ramos, such as Almir Guineto, Jorge Aragão and the Fundo de Quintal group. Then, in 1983, she introduced Zeca Pagodinho who would become the major samba name of the 90's. Carvalho always tried to bring underrated composers the recognition they deserve, and she is regarded as madrinha do samba (the godmother of samba). She was a driving force in the modernization of samba in the 80s, and at the same time rejected commercial pop trends in samba arrangements, preserving tradition.

In the 1990s, Beth's popularity wasn't the strongest, but she was always popular. She recorded an album dedicated to the samba from São Paulo, rejecting the famous axiom that São Paulo is the grave of samba. In 1998 she recorded an album dedicated entirely to the pagode classics, Pérolas do Pagode (Pagode Pearls).

In the new millennium, Beth is working more than ever, releasing CDs and DVDs. With a career that spans 40 years, she is already a historical figure in Brazilian culture, and recognized as the female sambista with the most substantial opus in Brazil, without diminishing other, younger stars such as Clara Nunes and Daniela Mercury.

Trivia[link]

• Beth is a known supporter of both the Botafogo and Clube Atlético Mineiro football teams
• Beth is one of the main personalities of the samba school Mangueira
• Beth had a variety of hits in the 1970s, with her 1979 song Coisinha Do Pai being one of her biggest hits. The song was inserted into the Mars Pathfinder.^[1]
• Her social music often concerns the poor and the Indigenous peoples in Brazil^[2]

Discography[link]

• Beth Carvalho - 40 anos de Carreira - Ao Vivo no Theatro Municipal - Vol.1 (CD) - Andança/Sony - BMG - 2006
• Beth Carvalho - 40 anos de Carreira - Ao Vivo no Theatro Municipal - Vol.2 (CD) - Andança/Sony - BMG - 2006
• Beth Carvalho - 40 anos de Carreira - Ao Vivo no Theatro Municipal (DVD) - Andança/Sony - BMG - 2006
• Beth Carvalho - A Madrinha do Samba - Ao Vivo (DVD) - Indie - 2004
• Beth Carvalho - A Madrinha do Samba - Ao Vivo (CD) - Indie - 2004
• Beth Carvalho Canta Cartola - BMG - 2003
• Nome Sagrado - Beth Carvalho Canta Nelson Cavaquinho - Jam Music - 2001
• Pagode de Mesa Ao Vivo 2 - Universal Music - 2000
• Pagode de Mesa Ao Vivo - Universal Music - 1999
• Pérolas do Pagode - Globo / Polydor - 1998
• Brasileira da Gema - Polygram - 1996
• Beth Carvalho Canta o Samba de São Paulo - Velas - 1993
• Pérolas - 25 Anos de Samba - Som Livre - 1992
• Ao Vivo no Olympia - Som Livre - 1991
• Intérprete - Polygram - 1991
• Saudades da Guanabara - Polygram - 1989
• Alma do Brasil - Polygram - 1988
• Beth Carvalho Ao Vivo (Montreux) - RCA - 1987
• Beth - RCA - 1986
• Das Bençãos Que Virão Com os Novos Amanhãs - RCA - 1985
• Coração Feliz - RCA - 1984
• Suor no Rosto - RCA - 1983
• Traço de União - RCA - 1982
• Na fonte - RCA - 1981
• Sentimento Brasileiro - RCA - 1980
• Beth Carvalho no Pagode - RCA - 1979
• De Pé No Chão - RCA - 1978
• Nos Botequins da Vida - RCA - 1977
• Mundo Melhor - RCA - 1976
• Pandeiro e Viola - Tapecar - 1975
• Pra Seu Governo - Tapecar - 1974
• Canto Por Um Novo Dia - Tapecar - 1973
• Andança - Odeon - 1969

References[link]

External links[link]

• Entrevista 1988 (In Portuguese)