Collections of homonym poems in medieval hebrew literature

Reviewed by: A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry by Uriah Kfir Jonathan Decter Uriah Kfir. A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2018. 164 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000187 "The Hidden Praises of Time Have I Seen" is a panegyric by a poet named Pinḥas, a rival of the more famous Todros Halevi Abulafia (1247–d. after 1298), in honor of Don Çag Yiẓḥak ben Ẓadok, a courtier in the service of Alfonso X of Castile. The poem opens with a fictional poetic speaker recounting a "prophetic" vision, a gathering in which poets come from all directions to boast over their specific locales. After the representatives of the East, North, and South speak, they call for the prince of the West, but no one answers until Pinḥas himself steps forth and boasts of its qualities. The participants "whisper to one another about [End Page 214] the one for whom kingship is fitting" until Time (i.e., Fate) interjects, "What have I to do with North, East, and South? The West have I acquired! / Behold, my seal and its cord [Genesis 38:18] are yours; the mark of dominion have I set upon your beloved's forehead." The "beloved," of course, refers to the addressee of the poem, Don Çag Yiẓḥak ben Ẓadok. Pinḥas's masterful poem participates in a discourse of post-Andalusian Hebrew poetry that centered on geography, a subject of cultural import after the period of the great Hebrew poets of al-Andalus (Samuel ha-Nagid, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, etc.) had come to a close. Clearly for Pinḥas, the West (which meant Spain from a Mediterranean perspective) could claim superiority over other regions, and here the claims of poetic accomplishment and political legitimacy dovetail poignantly. The recent book by Uriah Kfir, based on a Hebrew doctoral dissertation (Tel Aviv University), provides an in-depth view of the fascinating dynamics of geographic debate in Andalusian and post-Andalusian Hebrew literature. (The dissertation also offers critical editions of many of the texts discussed.) The approach departs from existing scholarship in that previous scholars (with a few exceptions) have thought more in terms of literary development across geography rather than the way in which geography itself functions as a topic within medieval Hebrew literature. Rather than focusing on the degree to which post-Andalusian poets depended on, selectively absorbed, or departed from Andalusian literary conventions, Kfir investigates the cultural tensions of place, wherein al-Andalus and later Christian Iberia functioned as a "center" with a venerated literary tradition, while other locales—including Italy, Provence, Egypt, and Iraq—functioned as its "periphery." In approaching the corpus in this way, Kfir reads through prisms that have been employed fruitfully in postcolonial theory in Europe and the United States, including within the field of modern Hebrew literature. The book is divided into two main sections, the first of which deals with the Iberian "center" from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. Here Kfir discerns a four-part process ("distinction, amplification, promotion, and preservation") by which the hegemonic claims of the earliest generations of Andalusian poets are reproduced by authors of Christian Iberia for the retention of hegemony in the face of rising Hebrew centers in Provence and the Islamic East. Kfir first shows how the great poets of what has been termed the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus promoted the primacy of the Jewish culture of the Islamic West. Thus Samuel ha-Nagid asserted not only his literary prowess but also his independence from Hai Gaon of Baghdad in legal matters. Andalusian Jews represented themselves as the descendants of Jerusalem exiles, hence claimants of pure Hebrew speech, and also as the inheritors of Eastern geonic authority. Hebrew authors of Christian Iberia, though they departed from their predecessors in significant ways, could make the case for continuing the Andalusian tradition most easily and represent their superiority not as a matter of mere emulation but rather as one of innate ability. The second part of the book presents a series of case studies of authors from Iraq, Egypt, Italy, and Provence during the thirteenth...

Reviewed by: A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry by Uriah Kfir Jonathan Decter Uriah Kfir. A Matter of Geography: A New Perspective on Medieval Hebrew Poetry. Leiden: Brill, 2018. 164 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419000187 "The Hidden Praises of Time Have I Seen" is a panegyric by a poet named Pinḥas, a rival of the more famous Todros Halevi Abulafia (1247–d. after 1298), in honor of Don Çag Yiẓḥak ben Ẓadok, a courtier in the service of Alfonso X of Castile. The poem opens with a fictional poetic speaker recounting a "prophetic" vision, a gathering in which poets come from all directions to boast over their specific locales. After the representatives of the East, North, and South speak, they call for the prince of the West, but no one answers until Pinḥas himself steps forth and boasts of its qualities. The participants "whisper to one another about [End Page 214] the one for whom kingship is fitting" until Time (i.e., Fate) interjects, "What have I to do with North, East, and South? The West have I acquired! / Behold, my seal and its cord [Genesis 38:18] are yours; the mark of dominion have I set upon your beloved's forehead." The "beloved," of course, refers to the addressee of the poem, Don Çag Yiẓḥak ben Ẓadok. Pinḥas's masterful poem participates in a discourse of post-Andalusian Hebrew poetry that centered on geography, a subject of cultural import after the period of the great Hebrew poets of al-Andalus (Samuel ha-Nagid, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah Halevi, etc.) had come to a close. Clearly for Pinḥas, the West (which meant Spain from a Mediterranean perspective) could claim superiority over other regions, and here the claims of poetic accomplishment and political legitimacy dovetail poignantly. The recent book by Uriah Kfir, based on a Hebrew doctoral dissertation (Tel Aviv University), provides an in-depth view of the fascinating dynamics of geographic debate in Andalusian and post-Andalusian Hebrew literature. (The dissertation also offers critical editions of many of the texts discussed.) The approach departs from existing scholarship in that previous scholars (with a few exceptions) have thought more in terms of literary development across geography rather than the way in which geography itself functions as a topic within medieval Hebrew literature. Rather than focusing on the degree to which post-Andalusian poets depended on, selectively absorbed, or departed from Andalusian literary conventions, Kfir investigates the cultural tensions of place, wherein al-Andalus and later Christian Iberia functioned as a "center" with a venerated literary tradition, while other locales—including Italy, Provence, Egypt, and Iraq—functioned as its "periphery." In approaching the corpus in this way, Kfir reads through prisms that have been employed fruitfully in postcolonial theory in Europe and the United States, including within the field of modern Hebrew literature. The book is divided into two main sections, the first of which deals with the Iberian "center" from the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries. Here Kfir discerns a four-part process ("distinction, amplification, promotion, and preservation") by which the hegemonic claims of the earliest generations of Andalusian poets are reproduced by authors of Christian Iberia for the retention of hegemony in the face of rising Hebrew centers in Provence and the Islamic East. Kfir first shows how the great poets of what has been termed the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in al-Andalus promoted the primacy of the Jewish culture of the Islamic West. Thus Samuel ha-Nagid asserted not only his literary prowess but also his independence from Hai Gaon of Baghdad in legal matters. Andalusian Jews represented themselves as the descendants of Jerusalem exiles, hence claimants of pure Hebrew speech, and also as the inheritors of Eastern geonic authority. Hebrew authors of Christian Iberia, though they departed from their predecessors in significant ways, could make the case for continuing the Andalusian tradition most easily and represent their superiority not as a matter of mere emulation but rather as one of innate ability. The second part of the book presents a series of case studies of authors from Iraq, Egypt, Italy, and Provence during the thirteenth...

Gender Studies and Medieval Hebrew Poetry Matti Huss Tova Rosen . Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2003, xvi + 264 pp. 1 Tova Rosen's Unveiling Eve: Reading Gender in Medieval Hebrew Literature is a significant contribution to the field and one that has far-reaching implications for the way we read both the secular and liturgical works of the Hebrew Middle Ages. It is also the first work of its kind: an extensive study of medieval Hebrew literature done from the perspective of gender studies. Rosen's detailed readings take us from the secular and liturgical poetry of the Andalusian period (Muslim Spain, 950-1150) through the rhymed narratives and the secular poetry of various literary schools of the Christian-Spanish era (c. 1200-1497). To this rich mix, Rosen adds an important element from the Hebrew-Italian school of the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries: the Mahbarot (rhymed narratives) of Immanuel of Rome. In her first chapter, "No-Woman's-Land: Medieval Hebrew Literature and Feminist Criticism," Rosen presents the historical and literary background of the period as well as the theoretical and methodological assumptions on which she bases her readings. She follows these with a gender-oriented outline that enables the reader to comprehend the principal contours of the diverse body of texts that she investigates. In the seven subsequent chapters, she offers close readings that focus on different aspects of this outline. Some chapters deal with a single work (chapter 5), and others investigate a group of texts (chapters 3, 6, 7, and 8) or analyze the features of an entire genre from a feminist perspective (chapters 2 and 4). In the course of her detailed discussion of these aspects, Rosen meticulously unearths the [End Page 369] complicated textual network that surrounds them. She directs our attention to correlate texts and echoes of texts from Hebrew, Arabic, and European contemporary literary systems. 2 The main criterion guiding Rosen in the process of constructing the outline with which she opens her book is a detailed analysis of the ways in which the binary opposition between women's speech and women's silence is molded in poems and rhymed narratives of various genres. Rosen's decision to focus on this specific opposition is, of course, not accidental. The contrary values given to feminine speech and silence occupy a central position in patriarchal thought throughout the ages. The projection of this contrast on secular and liturgical Andalusian poetry—and on the rhymed narratives written mainly in Christian Spain—proves efficacious and reveals major generic features that traditional genre analysis overlooked entirely or whose significance it failed to appreciate. For example, Rosen shows how three out of four of the central features of the beloved in the Andalusian love lyric—her beauty, her cruelty, the existential threat to which she exposes her lovers, and her powerful silence—are transformed radically in the erotic epithalamia by poets of the period. The silence of the beautiful beloved, which is the ultimate metonymy of her continuous rejection of the lovers' advances, is in these epithalamia replaced by the erotic speech of the bride directed to the bridegroom—a speech act that signals the commencement of their sexual relations. Correspondingly, misogynic elements typical of the silent beloved in love lyrics are deprived in the wedding poems of their devastating demonic power. But this happens only after they are explicitly displayed in the text. For example, the bride in Judah Halevi's "Halo ala" tries to calm the frightened bridegroom. She informs him that he should not be afraid of the metaphoric snakes curling in her hair because they are not meant to harm but only to arouse him: "And if you see my snake in the garden bed of my cheeks / approach, do not be frightened, I have placed him there to entice you."1 These same metaphoric snakes appear in the conventional love lyric as guardians whose function is to deter the lover from even daring to [End Page 370] approach the beloved. One should, of course, suspect the integrity of these disavowals in the erotic epithalamia even if they are spoken by the bride and...

The article focuses on a double reading of one short poem, Shmuel Hanagid's “God Blesses Old Age,” which belongs to the genre of Hebrew philosophical poetry written in medieval Spain. Dan Pagis made a revolutionary distinction between two types of poetry in this genre, “poems of admonishment and faith” that provide an affirmative and constructive perspective on the human condition, and “dark poems of fate” that express a pessimistic and nihilistic approach. A prominent theme in this poetry is youth and old age, which is developed in two opposing directions: some poems praise old age and condemn youth (these may be considered poems of admonishment and faith) while others, to the contrary, condemn old age and praise youth (and may be counted among the dark poems of fate). In the present article we analyze Hanagid's afore mentioned poem which gives simultaneous expression, using the very same linguistic units, to both mutually contradictory perspectives (praise and condemnation of old age as well as praise and condemnation of youth; this poem can thus be read as both a poem of admonishment and faith and a dark poem of fate at one and the same time). The main claim in this article is that the double reading is made possible by the poem's metaphors, each of which can be interpreted in contradictory ways. This is not a hypothesis that can be made lightheartedly with respect to Hebrew poetry in Spain, one of whose poetic principles being, according to Dan Pagis, that “each trope has an unambiguous referent.” I argue that because this is indeed the case we must be more sensitive to cases in which a Hebrew poem from Spain does allow for an ambiguous perception of its components, and that the general principle should not be taken as absolutely denying the possibility of ambiguity in the interpretation of a metaphor, even if such ambiguity is not typical of the poetry of the times. At the end of the article I link this claim to Ross Brann's words on “cultural ambiguity in Muslim Spain” and its effects on the thoughts and lives of that period's poets.

Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 343 Reviews the English reader nothing except that the work's title has been translated into English (there is no translation of poetry, no analysis in English and often no English abstract). Thus the reader unfamiliar with Hebrew learns little except that an unapproachable work has been written. If the aim of the bibliography is to include works for readers of Hebrew, then why exclude the vast corpus of Hebrew scholarship lacking translated titles? More useful would be a complete bibliography of Ibn Gabirol's poetry with search indices in Hebrew and English. Goldberg's bibliography is intended as a "test-case" for forthcoming bibliographies on translations of poetry by other major medieval Hebrew poets such as Samuel ha-Nagid, Judah ha-Levi, and Moses Ibn Ezra. The scope of such an endeavor is truly daunting. Because the unit of study-tbe poem, or a section thereof.-is so small, compiling all references to all poems would seem a nearly intractable project. While beginning witll a single poet to be followed by other individual poets seems a logical method of progression, we must consider the ramifications for the field of medieval Hebrew literature. The approach of scholars of literature has long been to document chronologically the contributions of "great men" to Jewish intellectual history. The approach disregards the contributions of "lesser poets" and more importantly, privileges the field of Jewish history over literary studies, perpetuating the marginal status of medieval Hebrew literature (and particularly its literary study) within the scholarly canon. Still, Goldberg's bibliography is extremely thorough and is an invaluable contribution to the field, both on the levels of research and pedagogy. As we look forward to forthcoming volumes on other poets, we wonder if there are plans for updating the bibliography or digitizing the project. Jonathan P. Deeter The Jewish Theological Seminary New York. NY 10027 jodecter@jtsa.edu JEWISH POET IN MUSLIM EGYPT: MOSES DARci's HEBREW COLLECTION. By Leon J. Weinberger. pp. 43 (English) + 526 (Hebrew). Tuscaloosa, AL: The University of Alabama, 1998. Cloth, $176.00. Hebrew poetry employing Arabic prosody and dealing with themes adopted from Arabic poetry was written in all the Arabic-speaking lands Hebrew Studies 41 (2000) 344 Reviews during the great age of Judeo-Arabic civilization; it was, indeed, a key feature of that civilization. Unfortunately, the magnificent achievements of the Hebrew poets of al-Andalus in the Golden Age (tenth to twelfth centuries), as well as the enthusiasm for Spain evinced by nineteenth- and twentieth-century Jewish scholarship of western European provenance have tended to obscure the production of Hebrew poetry in Arabic-speaking Sicily, Egypt, Syria, and Iraq in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. One eastern diwan-that of Eleazar ben Jacob of Baghdad-bas long been available in a critical edition by H. Brody (1934/5), but not a single study of it ever seems to have been published. Portions of the diwiin of Joseph ben Tanhum Yerushalmi have been published, but this major collection of poetry and rhymed prose epistles is still far from from being available to sc~olar1y research. The works of another major Eastern Hebrew poet, Moses DarI, an Egyptian Hebrew poet of Moroccan origin who is thought to have lived in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, have only been available in selections published by S~a Pinsker in his Liqute qadmoniyot (1860) and by Davidson in articles published in 1927 and 1936. A few of his poems in English translation were included in Leon Nemoy~s Karaite Anthology, and one in Ted Canni's Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse. It is gratifying, therefore, that the bulk of DarI's dfwiin has now been edited and published with an introduction, notes, and variant readings by Leon J. Weinberger. Like the other Hebrew poets of the Judeo-Arabic sphere, Dari follows closely the traditions of the Golden Age poets, an aspect of his work highlighted by Weinberger in his English introduction. But Dari is also capable of going his own way in treating traditional themes and of inventing some new ones. Thus, in the love poetry, he refers more explicitly to sexual intercourse than we are used to from Golden...

Reviewed by: Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean by Jonathan Decter Michael Rand Jonathan Decter. Dominion Built of Praise: Panegyric and Legitimacy among Jews in the Medieval Mediterranean. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2018. 387 pp. doi:10.1017/S0364009419001016 Jonathan Decter's book on panegyric focuses on that part of the medieval Hebrew literary tradition that represents a special Jewish subtype within the larger framework of medieval Arabo-Islamic poetry and adab. It joins a number of other works that deal with Jewish poetry and literature more generally against the background of the Arabic context—chief among these, perhaps, Ross Brann's Compunctious Poet (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991). Together, these books provide nuanced insights into the workings of Hebrew poetics from the Spanish Golden Age and into later developments in Iberia, Provence, the eastern Mediterranean (especially Egypt), and Iraq. Decter and Brann are both students of Raymond Scheindlin, himself a Hebraist and Arabist, and I do not think that it would be an exaggeration to say that their work is evidence of a robust American tradition of philologically rooted literary research in Golden Age Hebrew poetry that is profoundly informed by a full command of the Arabic matrix from which it sprang. Decter provides a systematic and methodologically well-grounded overview of his topic: performance contexts of Jewish panegyric (chapter 1); panegyric as gift (chapter 2); panegyric tropes (humility, generosity, eloquence, etc.; chapter 3); regionalism as reflected in panegyric (i.e., Spain versus the eastern Mediterranean; chapter 4—for this topic see also the recently published U. Kfir, A Matter of Geography [Leiden: Brill, 2018]); ethical considerations in the composition and consumption of panegyric (chapter 5); hyperbole and sacral imagery in panegyric (chapters 6–7); the evolution of the panegyric tradition in the Christian Mediterranean (chapter 8); and panegyric by Jewish poets for non-Jewish recipients, including some Arabic examples and one in Castilian, as well as a Hebrew poem showing troubadour influence (chapter 9). Throughout, Decter's discussions are based on copious examples—in English translation—drawn both from the relevant poetic corpora as well as from medieval discussions of [End Page 200] literary criticism (reaching back, as relevant, to Aristotle). The result is an integrated treatment of a topic that constitutes a major (though not a particularly exciting—at least not to modern tastes, as Decter stresses in several places) component of the Golden Age Hebrew poetic tradition. As Decter passes freely and seamlessly between Hebrew panegyric and the world of Arabic poetics whence it sprang, he succeeds in establishing that the former is in large part a confessionally and linguistically specialized extension of the latter. Another, equally fundamental, notion that runs like a red thread through the book is the idea that Jewish panegyric is a Mediterranean phenomenon, that is, it is not a literary mode restricted to the formal Hebrew qas.ida poetry of Spain, but also takes in the eastern offshoots of the Golden Age poetic tradition, and in fact pervades medieval Jewish social exchanges in the Mediterranean littoral as mediated through other literary genres, in particular the epistolary. Thus, he succeeds in drawing a clear connection via the panegyric mode between material that is traditionally treated as poetic-literary on the one hand, and as documentary on the other. The notion of an interface between these two categories is, of course, not radically new, but what is new here is its incorporation as the principle guiding a holistic treatment of an important aspect of medieval Hebrew literary and social culture. Against the background of the embeddedness of Jewish panegyric in a dominant Arabo-Islamic matrix, Decter's concluding chapter on instances of boundary-crossing—Jewish panegyric for gentile recipients—is particularly intriguing. By highlighting the incorporation of Jewish-Hebrew references to referents existing within the prevailing Islamic (or Christian) milieu, it simultaneously underscores the degree to which the Hebrew tradition had in fact become an organic semiotic unity—that is, praise for non-Jews could be the occasion for introducing new elements referring to the external culture. This may be compared with Arabo-Muslim panegyric addressed to a Jewish recipient. The two examples...

The paper shows how selected late medieval Hebrew authors used their artistic work to explore their individuality. Although Medieval Arabic and Hebrew poetry used fixed patterns with many conventional elements that left little space for the poet’s individual stamp, classic Arabic poets like Abū Nuwās were able to put to use their own creativity for the expression of an individual voice. Medieval Hebrew poets took this cue. Examining the cases of Ibn Gabirol and Bonafed among others, the paper illustrates tendencies towards individual expression and reflection with some striking examples, showing that within the limits of conventions small but significant steps were taken in this corpus towards the formation of the self.

The benefits reaped by the Jews under Arab Islam at its zenith through the enrichment of medieval Hebrew and poetic creativity—infused by Arab poetry—compares well with the progress they made in science and the professions. This is lucidly corroborated by this chapter where the text refers to Andalusia (Spain) as the place this decisive encounter took place. This discussion is focused on the transmission of Arabic culture in Hebrew guise into the Jewish communities of twelfth-century Christendom. Of particular importance is the love poetry of Jacob ben Elazar (c. 1170–1235), author of a ten-chapter collection of love stories composed in about 1233. The chapter singles out Chaptes 7 and 9 and points out that Jacob ben Elazar's poetry testifies to his “virtuosity and adroitness in the Hebrew language” and the contribution of Arabic poetry in this context.

Foreword Raymond P. Scheindlin Most of this issue of Prooftexts is devoted to a single Hebrew poem, a work that is probably the most ambitious literary endeavor undertaken by a Hebrew poet in the Middle Ages, Miqdash meʿat by Moses da Rieti (1388-c. 1460). Begun in 1416 and stretching over more than 130 pages in the only printed edition (edited by Jacob Goldenthal, Vienna, 1851), the work is loosely modeled on Dante's Divine Comedy, being written in terza rima, divided into three parts made up of cantos (the third part is missing and may never have been composed), and including glimpses of unseen worlds as well as digests of philosophical, scientific, and religious lore. It may be described as an attempt to provide a broad view of the nature of the Jewish religion in a philosophical and kabbalistic vein, through visions, prayers, surveys of Jewish literary history, and epitomes of philosophical systems. Although it is often referred to in scholarly writing on medieval Hebrew literature, intellectual history, and philosophy, Miqdash meʿat is virtually unknown and practically inaccessible. Yet its importance and literary quality have been recognized in the past, as is attested by the numerous manuscripts in which it has been transmitted and by the fact that one of its cantos was used as a prayer in Italian synagogues and was early translated into Italian. Its importance has occasionally been recognized by moderns as well: two selections were included in T. Carmi's Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, and Dan Pagis, in private conversation, is said to have called Rieti a "poetic genius." Yet until the appearance of the article "Mosheh de Rieti (xive-xve siècle): Philosophe, scientifique et poète," by Alessandro Guetta in the Revue des études juives 158 (1999), not a single study had been devoted to it since the nineteenth century. This neglect may be due to the somewhat forbidding character of the work, arising from: the unfamiliarity of Rieti's Hebrew idiom (a combination of Tibbonide Hebrew and Italian-Hebrew diction); his innovative use of a difficult rhyme scheme that was completely new in Hebrew and that necessitated a certain amount of syntactic distortion; the complicated subject [End Page 1] matter; and the fact that the text published in the nineteenth century is unvocalized and provides no commentary to guide the reader. During the past several years, Alessandro Guetta (Institut National des Langues et Civilisations Orientales), Devora Bregman (Ben-Gurion University), and the undersigned, despite living and working on three different continents, have been finding opportunities to study Miqdash meʿat together. Professor Bregman is a specialist in medieval Hebrew literature, especially of Italy; Professor Guetta is a specialist in Jewish intellectual history in the late Middle Ages and Renaissance, with a particular interest in Rieti and with a specialist's familiarity with Rieti's Italian writings; and the undersigned is a specialist in Hebrew literature of the Judeo-Arabic world with a strong interest in literary translation. Our collaboration began at the Institute for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania, where the three of us participated in a yearlong seminar (1998-99) devoted to medieval Hebrew poetry. During the summer of 2000, we put in a month of intensive work on the project together in Jerusalem. Since then, we have worked by correspondence, both electronic and conventional. Our hope was to produce an edition that would include a new and fully vocalized Hebrew text based on a complete survey of the many manuscripts, together with a commentary and a translation into English. In this issue of Prooftexts, we are presenting the first two cantos of Miqdash meʿat as a sample of our work. The division of labor was as follows: Professor Bregman took responsibility for the Hebrew text. I took notes during our deliberations in Philadelphia and Jerusalem and drafted a commentary in Hebrew, based on our discussions. This draft, as critiqued and revised by my colleagues, became the basis of the English commentary presented here. As part of the work on the commentary, I also prepared a line-by-line prose translation, which I later converted into the metrical, unrhymed translation published here...

Reviewed by: The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959 Michael Brenner Anthony David . The Patron: A Life of Salman Schocken, 1877–1959. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. Pp. 451. Salman Schocken was the German version of the American dream: a poor Jew from the Prussian eastern provinces moves to a small town in Saxony, builds up one of Weimar Germany's leading chains of department stores, and emerges as an architectural pioneer who has Erich Mendelsohn build the most exciting Bauhaus-style department stores. He becomes a Zionist visionary and a leading spirit behind the rise of the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, builds up a publishing house that serves as intellectual comfort during German Jewry's darkest hours, emerges as the publisher of Franz Kafka and a keen promoter of Shmuel Yosef Agnon for the Nobel Prize. As if this were not enough, he founds an institute for medieval Hebrew literature which searches for the Hebrew Nibelungenlied, possesses one of the most precious private collections of rare books in Judaica as well as German culture, and is responsible for the emergence of Israel's leading newspaper Ha'aretz. In other words, a biographer's dream. The self-made man from Posen, whom Hannah Arendt called the "Jewish Bismarck" (p. 204), was one of the most versatile figures in an era with no lack of versatile personalities. He was not just the chairman of the Organization of German Department Stores but a person deeply instilled with the ambition to turn his clients into educated people, into Bildungsbürger like himself, and to make his stores aesthetic masterworks of the new Bauhaus style. Next to the underwear counter he would give out poems by Goethe, and with the profit he made, he would support poor writers, such as the young Agnon, who had moved to Germany from Palestine before World War I. His Schocken Library, a predecessor of modern paperback series, produced one piece of essential Jewish culture after the other in Nazi Germany and became a remarkable monument to spiritual endurance in times of horror. The Patron himself had to leave Nazi Germany, and as he was an active Zionist, it was clear where his path would lead. The department stores remained in the hands of "Aryan" trustees until the end of the Thousand-Year Reich, so Schocken concentrated on his favorite endeavors: a research institute on medieval Hebrew poetry, the preservation of his unique library, and his involvement with the Hebrew University. He founded a publishing house in Israel, bought the newspaper Ha'aretz for his son Gershon (who would turn it into Israel's leading paper), and had [End Page 457] Erich Mendelsohn build his private home and his library, which became the unofficial intellectual center of Jerusalem. In the words of his biographer, "it was the only place in town where guests could expect such a high quality of cakes, wines, and light snacks. Being across the street from Golda Meir's residence gave it an added aura of mystery. It was a piece of prewar central Europe lodged in the heart of a Spartan state" (p. 384). As early as the 1930s Schocken suggested S. Y. Agnon, whom he had supported in the difficult years back in Germany, for the Nobel Prize and used all his connections in Sweden and in the literary world to promote this goal. He published Martin Buber and Franz Kafka, and he financed Gershom Scholem's research on Kabbalah. Still Salman Schocken was not a happy man in interwar Palestine. He was keenly aware of how little difference he was able to make there, in contrast to his time in Weimar Germany, and how little recognition he received. "In Germany I was always a part of things" he told the philosopher Hugo Bergmann. In Palestine, he felt like a nobody, writes David (p. 304). In 1939 Schocken left Jerusalem for New York and would thereafter return to Israel only for visits. In the United States, he had high hopes of achieving with American Jews what he failed to do in Palestine: to turn them into Bildungsbürger, who would read and produce a Jewish culture comparable to that found in...

This article aims at a critical examination of modern research on medieval Hebrew literature. Here, the definition of ‘medieval Hebrew literature’ excludes writing in Jewish languages other than Hebrew, and singles out literature from other types of non-literary Hebrew writing. The variety of literary types included in this survey ranges from liturgical and secular poetry to artistic storytelling and folk literature. Both early liturgical poetry (piyyut) and the medieval Hebrew story are rooted in the soil of the Talmudic period. The beginnings of medieval Hebrew storytelling were even more deeply connected to the narrative traditions of the Talmud. However, the constitutive moment of the birth of piyyut and narrative as distinct medieval genres had to do with their separation from the encyclopedic, all-embracing nature of the Talmud.

This essay examines the non-linear development of the topos of the dissembling poet in medieval Hebrew literature, from Andalusian Spain down to Renaissance Italy. Drawing on classical and Arabic poetics, medieval Jewish philosophers and religious thinkers established two different theoretical models separating poetry from truth. In response, poets unabashedly devoted themselves to exploring literary variations on a theme rife with ironic possibilities: they employed their artistic medium to question the value of the medium itself. In its literary incarnation, suspicion about the lack of truth in verse amounted mostly to tricks of style and defensive manuevers, so the literary history of this topos underscores the confidence and selfconsciousness of poets well aware of their notoriety.

Israel Oriental Studies, XI: Studies in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Poetics

Studies in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Poetics

Studies in Medieval Arabic and Hebrew Poetics