to early maturity, As a boy he won more than local fame as a versifier. At all festive occasions his verses were in demand. He wrote wedding odes, elegies on great men, eulogies of the living. His love poems, serenades, epigrams of this period, all display taste, elegance, and passion.
The second period of Jehuda Halevi’s literary career was devoted to serious pursuits, to thoughts about life, and to practical work. He wrote his far-famed philosophical dialogue, the Cuzari, and earned his living as a physician, He was not an enthusiastic devotee to medicine, however. “Toledo is large,” he wrote to a friend, “and my patients are hard masters. I, their slave, spend my days in serving their will, and consume my years in healing their infirmities.” Before making up a prescription, he, like Sir Thomas Browne, used to say a prayer in which he confessed that he had no great faith in the healing powers
