רבי שלמה אבן גבירול

Rabbi Shlomo ibn Gabirol is the philosopher-poet of the Golden Age in Spain, who wrote poetry so deep it entered the prayer book. Orphaned in his youth, ill and lonely, he lived a short and hard life, and out of it raised words that Jews say every day, among them 'Adon Olam' and 'Shachar Avakeshcha.'

In his great hymn 'Keter Malchut' he laid out the whole secret of the universe, from the stars to the soul, as a song of praise to the Creator. He knew how to combine the philosophy of his time with a burning faith, and his book 'Mekor Chayim' was studied even in the Christian world, where he was long thought to be an Arab or Christian sage, until it emerged that he was a Jew.

And here is a bitter-sweet humility: ibn Gabirol wrote of himself, 'I am sixteen and my heart is as one of eighty,' an aged soul in a young body, which suffered poverty and illness but never lost the song. The pain did not close his mouth; it became words of prayer.

What do we learn from him? That one can turn loneliness and pain into poetry that comforts generations. Ibn Gabirol teaches that beauty is no contradiction to depth, and that one who carries a broken soul can raise precisely from it words that an entire people will say to its Creator, 'Master of the world, who reigned before any form was created.'