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...

Moses da Rieti and His Miqdash meʿat Alessandro Guetta Born in Rieti, northeast of Rome, Moses ben Isaac da Rieti (in Italian, Moisè di Gaio; 1388-after 1460) occupies a unique place in the history of medieval Hebrew literature, as the author of one of the most ambitious literary undertakings of the age, the Hebrew poem Miqdash meʿat (The Little Temple). Composed beginning in 1415/16 and comprising about 4,800 lines, the poem is a sort of Hebrew response to Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, borrowing the meter and the general format of the Italian poem, but it is nonetheless original in important respects.1 Rieti later became dissatisfied with the work ("I built stanzas on nothingness," he wrote), finding it not sufficiently "Jewish" in either its meter (which is imported from Italian, i.e., Christian, poetry) or in content (the amount of space given to "profane" science).2 He therefore forged a new, highly personal, and sometimes enigmatic rhymed-prose style in which he composed shorter texts, such as the philosophical and mystical dialogue Iggeret yaʿar halevanon and the elegy on the death of his wife.3 It should be noted, however, that this order of composition is only hypothetical, as, with the exception of Miqdash meʿat, his works are not dated. Rieti's poetry, like his prose, concentrates primarily on philosophical concerns. It could be said that for him the writing served the idea, or that the idea found its best expression in artistic endeavor. Rieti's originality as a philosopher is hard to assess, but as a writer he certainly displays an originality of tone that foreshadows changes in Jewish Italian culture on the cusp between the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, changes that parallel those of the Renaissance in general European literature. His writing emphasizes an intense desire for learning, accompanied by a degree of intellectual frustration. [End Page 4] The biographical information available for Moses ben Isaac da Rieti consists of personal references in Miqdash meʿat, in other Hebrew and Italian texts with Jewish content, and in Latin documents from his places of residence and the papal chancellery. A few sparse, cursory references by his students complete the current, incomplete picture we have of him.4 A teacher in the yeshivas of central Italy (Latium and Umbria), Rieti was held in high esteem by his contemporaries as well as by the generations that immediately followed. One student called him haʾeshel hagadol—"great oak"—meaning a strong, reliable intellectual point of reference. Copyists transcribed several copies of his works. A concern for pedagogy impelled him to publish Filosofia naturale e fatti di Dio, a popularizing treatise on physics and metaphysics written in Italian, with the Italian transliterated into Hebrew characters.5 Rieti was also highly respected by Christians, who appreciated his professional qualities and his dedication as a physician. In 1458, Pope Pius II conferred on him full authorization to treat Christian patients, who had reservations about being under the care of Jewish physicians. The document referred to him as a reliable man who had healed "almost innumerable quantities" of patients. Rieti left a medical work in Hebrew, Liqqutim merefuʾot (Collectae therapeuticae).6 The archives of Rieti's hometown also reveal another activity—that of banker, in which capacity he seems to have had exclusive rights among the Jewish population. Though it drew on the traditions of rabbinic literature about the fate of the righteous after death, Miqdash meʿat took Dante's Paradiso as its model. Yet Rieti's poem has less of the character of an initiatory journey than does Dante's. It is more like an encyclopedia in verse, in keeping with both Jewish and Christian medieval tradition, in which secular knowledge mingles with sacred knowledge in a narrative setting lacking any real continuity. The poem's structure reproduces that of the Temple in Jerusalem, with its three parts—the entrance hall (ulam), the hall (hekhal), and the Holy of Holies (devir)—and it carries the reader from the Temple's public space to the innermost sanctum, increasing in sacredness from the exterior toward the interior. The phrase miqdash meʿat originates in Ezek. 11:16...

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...

On designe par livre ouvert un ouvrage dont l'original inconnu est impossible a recomposer tant il a ete retravaille et recopie au fil des siecles. L'A. centre son etude sur cette categorie singuliere de manuscrits hebraiques medievaux en se referant au livre ouvert de Rashi (commentaire du Pentateuque). Il montre que deux modes de revision des textes predominent dans la litterature hebraique medievale : les revisions dues a l'initiative meme des auteurs d'une part, celles accomplies sous le poids d'une quelconque contrainte exterieure, d'autre part

Se presenta en este artículo la figura de la intermediaria (šadkanīt) en la literatura hebrea medieval escrita en la Península Ibérica. Se describe el aspecto y la conducta de tres intermediarias hebreas: 1) Kozbî, en el libro de Yehudah Ibn Šabbatay, Minḥaṯ Yĕhûdâ, ‛sône’ ha-našîm, 2) Śiṭnâ en la sexta maqama de Al-Ḥarizi, 3) La lavandera, en el libro de Yosef Ibn Zabarra, Sefer Ša‛ašu‛îm. Se las considera precedentes literarios de las intermediarias castellanas Trotaconventos y Celestina.

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.

Alexander the Great in Medieval Hebrew Literature

The vast body of premodern Hebrew literature is usually termed “medieval“—a somewhat misleading term, partly based on the assumption that in most countries the Jewish Middle Ages lasted until the Emancipation in the eighteenth century. However, as is well known, this literature was by no means monolithic. It comprised such disparate schools and styles as portions of the liturgy dating back to late Roman times, the Palestinian and Eastern piyyut (liturgical poetry) of the Byzantine and Moslem periods, the famed Hebrew-Spanish school and its ramifications or parallel schools in Provence, North Africa, Turkey, and the Yemen, other important centers like Germany and France, and an entire millennium of Hebrew poetry in Italy whose later stages coincided with, and were influenced by, the Renaissance and the Baroque. Israel Davidson's monumental bibliography, entitled in English Thesaurus of Hebrew Mediaeval Poetry, actually spans more than a millennium and a half, or, as its Hebrew title states, “from the canonization of the Bible to the beginning of the period of Enlightenment” (in the late eighteenth century). Alternative terms to “medieval” seem scarcely clearer; “postbiblical” tacitly and misleadingly excludes the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, while “premodern” includes the Bible.

Current Israeli Scholarship on Medieval Hebrew Literature