Whilst I tarry in the West.
How may I be joyous,
Or where find my pleasure?
How fulfil my vow,
O Zion! when I am in the power of Edom,
And bend beneath Arabia’s yoke?
Truly Spain’s welfare concerns me not;
Let me but behold thy precious dust,
And gaze upon the spot where once the Temple stood.”
Nor was the longing a mere matter of sentiment. Jehuda was earnestly convinced that Israel could not have a national existence outside the Holy Land. He urged his people to quit the fields of Edom and to seek its native home in Zion. But the cry aroused no echo. The Jews of Spain, allowed to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of existence, felt no desire to exchange the real for a wild chase after the ideal. The poet, however, proved his own sincerity by undertaking a weary pilgrimage to Jerusalem. Leaving his peaceful home, his only daughter, his friends, his pupils, and his studies, he set out on his adventurous journey, accompanied by the good wishes and praises of numerous admirers through Spain. The long and stormy voyage and the hardships thereof did not quench the poet’s enthusiasm for the Holy Land: