Download or read book A Crown for the King written by Ibn Gabirol and published by Oxford University Press, USA. This book was released on 1998 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 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 has lapsed, however the Royal Crown is still used for private penitential reading.