Judah Halevi · יהודה הלוי

c. 1075–1141. The great Hebrew poet of Muslim Spain — several hundred surviving liturgical and secular poems, including the Songs of Zion — and the author of the Kuzari, a defence of Judaism written as a conversation rather than a treatise.

He is not a Kabbalist and is not claimed as one here. He belongs in this room because he is the earliest witness to the sway, and because his explanation of it is so unmystical: not the soul burning, but not enough books to go round. A useful figure to keep in the house for exactly that reason. The tradition contains its own deflationists, and they are usually the ones worth reading twice. He set out for the Land of Israel late in life; the circumstances of his death are legend more than record.