A crown for the king

by Ibn Gabirol

Solomon ibn Gabirol (ca. 1021 - ca. 1058) was the greatest of the Spanish Jewish poets and an important neoplatonist philosopher. Translated into Latin in the mid-twelfth century, his philosophical work became influential among scholars who were unaware that "Avicebron" (as his last name was Latinized) was a Jew and a celebrated writer of religious hymns. The Royal Crown (or, "A Crown for the King" in Slavitt's translation) is the greatest of Gabirol's poems. Its theme is the problem of the human predicament: the frailty of man and his proclivity to sin, in tension with a benign providence that must leave room for the operation of man's free will and also make available to him the means of penitence. The Royal Crown is still printed in prayerbooks of the Sephardic rite for the Day of Atonement, and among North African Jewish communities (and their offshoots in Israel and elsewhere) it is read communally before the morning service of the Day. In northern Europe and the West this custom