Bachya ibn Pakuda בחיי אבן פקודה

Little is known of Bachya himself: he lived at Zaragoza in the second half of the eleventh century and served as a judge. There are no exact dates, and none should be given — the usual formula is simply "eleventh century."

He wrote the book in Arabic about 1080; Judah ibn Tibbon translated it into Hebrew, and it is in that translation that it is still read.

The thought it opens with is simple and uncomfortable. There are commandments performed by the limbs: to put on tefillin, to give charity, not to eat what is forbidden. And there are commandments of the heart: to believe, to rely, to love, not to envy, to judge another favourably. Whole codes were written about the first. About the second, almost nothing — though they are the more constant: the body performs a commandment at its hour, the heart is obliged always.

The book is built as ten "gates," each resting on the last: unity, reflection on creation, service, trust, sincerity, humility, repentance, self-reckoning, abstinence, and last the gate of love.

Chovot HaLevavot became one of the most widely read Jewish books of all, inside the yeshivas and outside them, and later musar and Chasidut quote it constantly.