medieval Hebrew poetry

Religious Hebrew hymns are generically known as piyyutim (sing. piyyut, from the Greek poesis). In its widest sense piyyut encompasses the totality of Hebrew religious poetry composed in various genres from the post-Biblical period until the present. The piyyut was initially intended to develop or substitute the set versions of obligatory prayers in order to ensure variety, especially on Sabbaths and Festivals. Later piyyutim expanded to non-liturgical events (such as assemblies of mystics or memorials of saintly figures), as well as to communal and family gatherings. The vast poetical corpus was mostly intended for musical performance by soloists and congregations acting as choirs. This entry focuses on the piyyut among the Jews of the Middle East, medieval Spain and North Africa that, since the early 7th century until the mid-20th century, dwelled in the Lands of Islam.

The preposition בעד is found accompanied by יד only in 1 Sam 4:18, which has led to
numerous interpretations and textual emendations throughout the centuries. Most
modern translations render the prepositional phrase as some variation of “beside”,
potentially explained by Driver’s (1890:39) emendation of בעד יד to ביד , even though
such a reading is never attested in the Hebrew Bible for בעד governing an inanimate
landmark with the movement of an animate trajector (BHRG §39.9). The MT as it stands
is intelligible, however, with the יד השׁער in 1 Sam 4:18 fitting the profile for an opening in a wall, in analogy with the clearer cases of "through" for בעד with חלון.

From 1946 to 1948, Yugoslav labour law was influenced by Soviet legislation, but after the conflict between the Yugoslav political leadership and that of the USSR, a political system of self-management had been introduced. Self-management was supposed to defend the selfimportance of the Yugoslav socialist system in relation to the prevailing Stalinism and the leading role of the USSR, as well as to develop a new image of the state that would be acceptable to the West, since selfmanagement negated totalitarianism and opened the possibility for the development of democracy and market relationships. This also influenced the development of the Yugoslav labour legislation ab ovo. Its main characteristics, compared to the classical labour law, were the dilution of subordination, not recognizing the protection of workers (as the weaker party) as being the fundamental objective of labour law (although this did not exclude all aspects of the protective function of this branch of law), and the fact that sources of autonomous law had almost equal importance as legislation. On the other hand, constitutional changes led to the more direct involvement of workers in management (via unions,
workers’ councils, delegates, assemblies, referendums), so that in the end,
the constitution maker made the worker responsible for the protection
of self-management rights, through the concept of social self-protection.
The development of self-management is considered with reference
to the legislative ‘coordinates’. The development of labour law in its
political and economic context is observed within those coordinates, with
special attention paid to the changes in the concept of the employment
relationship, collective rights and the institutional framework for the
exercise and protection of workers’ rights. In light of the dual nature
of the economy (commodity-monetary component and the planning
component) and social property (which had a public law component and
a property law component), the author searches for an explanation as
to why it was self-management, instead of the state, that died out in
Yugoslav society.

This article is a supplement to 'The Diwan of Samuel ha-Nagid: A Geniza Codex'. Published by Jonathan Vardi and Michael Rand in 2015, this book compiled all the extant Cairo Genizah fragments of an ancient codex of the Diwan – i.e., collection of poems – of the great eleventh-century poet Samuel ha-Nagid. In addition to color plates of the fragments, the book also provides a full edition of the text, and its authors produced a codicological reconstruction of the entire codex according to the original layout of the bifolia.
This article is devoted to the discovery of a new bifolio of the Geniza codex, found in the collection of the late Meir Benayahu. The authors discuss the placement of the new bifolio in the reconstructed codex, its significant textual variants, and its contribution to our understanding of the Diwan as a literary oeuvre. Also highlighted is the bifolio’s importance to the study of the Cairo Geniza. The article includes high-resolution images of the four pages of the new bifolio, accompanied by a full critical edition of the text.

In the 13th century, Jacob Anatoli and Moses Ibn Tibbon translated a significant Aristotelian logical and scientific corpus in the form of Averroes’ Middle Commentaries from Arabic into Hebrew and also wrote a series of independent commentaries on the Bible. Despite their investment in these two realms of thought, Averroes and the Bible, there is surprisingly little overlap between them. The Biblical commentaries are clearly philosophical, but do not mention very much of the Averroes that their authors translated. One reason for this is that the commentaries are somewhat supplemental to the Averroes translations, and are intended to supply areas of thought not covered in those translations. Thus, for example, both discuss poetics in the context of Biblical poetry, such as Song of Songs and Psalm 45. Both accounts are clearly based on the Arabic tradition of reading Aristotle’s Poetics, but neither author made that work or any summary of it available in Hebrew. Instead, they turn to the Bible for poetic syllogisms, and especially poetic meaning, i.e., allegory. Their theories are developed and heavily influenced by Al-Fārābī and Averroes. Yet, by including them in works that are not purely philosophical, both Jacob Anatoli and Moses Ibn Tibbon maintain a separation between science and scientific syllogisms and the Bible, with its poetic, allegorical methods of argumentation.


Durant le XIIIe siècle, Jacob Anatoli et Moïse Ibn Tibbon ont constitué un important corpus logique et scientifique aristotélicien en hébreu, à travers la traduction depuis l’arabe d’un nombre conséquent des Commentaires moyens d’Averroès. Ils ont également composé des traités indépendants et des commentaires sur la Bible. Malgré le travail qu’ils engagent en parallèle dans ces deux domaines intellectuels, Averroès et la Bible, il y a étonnamment peu de recoupement entre les deux corpus. Les commentaires bibliques sont d’une teneur clairement philosophique, mais font très peu référence aux textes d’Averroès que leurs auteurs avaient pourtant traduits ou traduisaient. Une manière de l’expliquer tient au fait que les commentaires sont en quelque sorte des compléments aux traductions d’Averroès et visent à couvrir des domaines de la pensée, absents de ces traductions. À titre d’exemple, les deux auteurs abordent la poétique à propos de textes bibliques comme le Cantique des Cantiques ou le psaume 45. Leurs interprétations sont fondées de manière évidente sur la Poétique d’Aristote, mais aucun des deux auteurs n’a pris le soin de rendre ce texte ou son résumé accessible en hébreu. C’est vers le texte biblique qu’ils se tournent pour analyser les syllogismes poétiques et, plus spécifiquement, l’usage poétique du langage que constitue l’allégorie. Leur approche est massivement influencée par Al-Fārābī et Averroès. Toutefois, en proposant ces développements dans des oeuvres qui ne sont pas de nature strictement philosophique, Jacob Anatoli et Moïse Ibn Tibbon maintiennent une séparation entre, d’un côté, la science et les syllogismes scientifiques et, de l’autre, la Bible, caractérisée par ses modes poétiques et allégoriques de raisonnement.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2024933571 Bibliographic information published by the Deutsche Nationalbibliothek The Deutsche Nationalbibliothek lists this publication in the Deutsche Nationalbibliografie; detailed bibliographic data are available on the internet at http://dnb.dnb.de.

In the Cairo Genizah documents there is a dirge on the death of Daniel Gaon by ʽEli ben ʽAmram, which includes the utterance ויָרֹנו כנוגנים על פראים. Some explain this phrase as ‘(they) will sing as birds on branches’. The present paper spells out some difficulties with this explanation and resolves the issue based on the assumption that the usage of the word נוגנים with regard to birds is attributable to a calque from Arabic. It is further suggested that the meaning of נוגנים על פראים is at least two-fold, and is a kind of a Hebraized Aramaic expression גני אפוריא ‘lie on a bed’.

מאמרו של קדם גולדן מקים לתחייה שירים שכוחים שנתגלו בכתבי יד. המאמר עוסק בשירי החול המעטים פרי עטו של ר' אברהם אבן עזרא שהגיעו לידינו. אחד משירי האזור של המשורר, "אין צרי לחילי", התגלה בכתב יד הנמצא באוסף פירקוביץ שבספרייה הלאומית הרוסית בסנקט פטרבורג. שרידים קלושים של השיר פורסמו לפני יובל שנים בידי חיים שירמן, לפי קטע מגניזת קהיר, וכעת הקורא זוכה לקבל את השיר במלואו. בנוסף נידון במאמר שיר אזור לא ידוע שמסגנונו וממקומו בכתב היד, בסמוך לשירים המיוחסים בוודאות לאבן עזרא, מסיק המחבר שגם הוא נכתב בידי המשורר.

Kedem Golden, “Gleanings to the Poems of Abraham Ibn Ezraˮ, El Prezente, 14-15 (2020-2021), pp. )Hebrew Part) 29-40.

מאמרו של יהונתן ורדי מתחקה אחר שירי שמואל הנגיד הלקוחים מתוך כתב היד התימני הקדום ברלין 186 (1233 Or. Fol). כתב יד זה הוא אוצר בלום המשמר שירים רבים מן השירה העברית בספרד המוסלמית (אל אנדלוס). אף על פי שכתב היד ידוע לחוקרים זה שנים רבות, יש לבחון מחדש את שיריו ואת ייחוסיהם. במאמר זה ייבחנו שני שירים שלא נכללו קודם לכן במהדורות שיריו של שמואל הנגיד. הראשון, "מצוות אלוהיך שמור", נכלל בלקט שירי הנגיד שבכתב היד, ולפיכך ייחוסו לנגיד ודאי. זהו שיר פרישות מיוחד שבו הדובר פונה אל פיו ומעודד אותו לעסוק בשבחי הבורא ולא במאכל ובמשתה. השיר השני, "אראה בתוך הכד", לא פורסם מעולם. בכתב היד השיר מופיע בתוך לקט משירי משוררים שונים, בלי שנזכר שם מחברו, אולם על פי סגנונו, תוכנו וזיקתו לשירים אחרים מאת הנגיד, נראה שגם שיר זה יצא מתחת ידו. זהו שיר יין יפהפה המתאר משתה בליל קיץ רווי טל, ויש למנות אותו עם מיטב שירת היין העברית.

This study offers an analysis of critical Themes in the poetry of Todros Abulafia through focusing on three main aspects: the issue of telling the truth and telling lies, his position concerning imitation and innovation, and the issue of poetic plagiarism respectively. This study aims at investigating the critical and rhetorical skills of Todros Abulafia. This is in addition to tackling extent of his being influenced by the Hebrew Andalusian literature and his position concerning literal trends and cultural interactions in the north of Iberia Peninsula in the thirteenth century. Moreover, significance of this study stems from indicating Todros Abulafia's position concerning innovation and imitation as this study sheds light on manifestations of innovation in his poetry as well as indicating a certain aspect of imitation.

Few literaryCultural genres have achieved such an abundance of studies as that of the romance. Attempts have been made by literary scholars, historians, anthropo logists, and those from other disciplines to draw the boundaries and understand the contexts in which romances were created and developed. As the main goal of the present collection of critical essays is to suggest new venues for the study of Jewish medi eval and early modern romance, it will be sufficient to turn, if needed, to that large body of research, for theoretical and historical questions and the study of specific romances. 1 The multitude of definitions of medi eval romance literature can be roughly divided into two subgroups. In the first one are the historical definitions of the genre, which could be summarized as: "tales of chivalric adventure written in romanz (French medi eval vernacular) in Christian Europe between the twelfth and the sixteenth centuries." 2 The second group of definitions is mainly generic: they do not bond the romance to a specific period, space, language, or ethos (for example, chivalric or courtly culture), but to certain literary characteristics which could be achieved in any time, place,

By R Ra ay ym mo on nd d P P.. S Sc ch he ei in nd dl li in n, Jewish Theological Seminary-Menahem Hayyim Schmelzer was born in 1934 in Kecel, Hungary. In childhood, he received a thorough religious and secular education. During World War II, he and his family were moved to a ghetto; later, they were placed in a cattle car intended for Auschwitz but were unexpectedly taken instead to a labor camp in Austria. After the war, the family settled in Budapest, where Schmelzer studied religious and secular subjects in various orthodox schools and yeshivot. After a failed attempt to leave Communist Hungary in 1949, he completed his gymnasium studies in 1952, while also studying Talmud and Hebrew with private teachers. At Eötvös Loránd University, he studied Arabic, Persian, Egyptology, and Assyriology. In the course of a government anti-Zionist campaign in 1953, Schmelzer was arrested and sentenced to three years of forced labor in a coal mine. Though his sentence was later considerably reduced, he was not permitted to return to the university; instead, he enrolled at the Rabbinical Seminary of Hungary, where he came under the influence of Professor Alexander Scheiber, whose works on liturgical poetry, Geniza manuscripts, and Hebrew book-lore were an important influence on Schmelzer's own academic career. Schmelzer and Scheiber remained in close and mutually admiring scholarly contact until Scheiber's death, in 1985. Later in his career, Schmelzer would pay tribute to Scheiber in a number of articles about him in Hebrew, English, and Hungarian. Schmelzer left Hungary after the Hungarian uprising of 1956 and studied Bible and Arabic at Basel University, concurrently serving as librarian of the Jewish community. He subsequently trained as a Judaica librarian in the Simonsen Collection of the Royal Library of Denmark in Copenhagen, receiving a librarian's degree from the State Library School and an M.A. from the University of Copenhagen. In

Judah al-yarizi's Tahkemoni includes a chapter that, in some editions, bears the title "Tefila lemoshe ish ha'elohim."' The chapter opens with Heiman ha-Ezrahi complaining about the loss of his cargo. IJever ha-Qeini con soles him and teaches him a prayer that, he says, is guaranteed to help him out of his plight. Medieval readers would have been surprised, if not shocked, to discover that al-yarizi means not a prayer by Moses but a prayer to Moses. The body of the chapter is indeed a lengthy prayer addressed to Moses, praising him and begging him to intercede with God on behalf of the worshiper. Prayers to dead ancestors and holy men for intercession are marginal in rabbinic Judaism as laid out in classic halakhic texts such as the Talmud and medieval codes. Medieval Jews visited the graves of ancestors and holy men, seeking their intercession, but al-IJarizi's prayer to Moses is not linked to a pilgrimage to a grave. Furthermore, the rabbinic liturgical tra dition kept Moses in the background, excluding him even from the Pass

Jews wrote poetry and drank wine from the earliest times, but the history of Jewish wine poetry begins only in the mid-tenth century.^ This development was part of a larger shift in Jewish literary systems, as Jews in al-Andalus began to write Hebrew poetry that served similar functions to those of Arabic poetry and made use of many of the formal techniques and literary themes typical of the Arabic poetry of the age. The very first Hebrew poet in the new manner, Dunash ben Labrat (mid tenth century), has two lengthy descriptions of wine-drinking parties; and from then on, all the poets who wrote secular poetry wrote wine poetry that greatly resembled Arabic wine poetry. Wine poetry and love poetry-secular poetry, in general-came to exist in Hebrew solely because of the inspiration provided by Arabic poetry. Much Hebrew wine poetry is very similar to the Arabic wine poetry that inspired it. Its existence is a measure of the impact of Arabo-Islamic civilization on medieval Jewry in the Islamicate world. But the social structure and literary history of the Jewish minority were different in many ways from those of the dominant Islamic society within which it was embedded. As a result, slight but significant differences between He brew wine poetry and its Arabic models are observed.

This article focuses on the ways in which modern Hebrew poetry uses the demonstrative pronoun ‘zeh’ (this, that or it): an everyday and efficient word that relies on shared understandings or the illusion of shared understandings between speakers, and in which a long text is often condensed into the act of pointing. The extensive usage of ‘zeh’, sometimes as the poem’s subject or as its main interest, is a poetic phenomenon that needs to be examined and characterized. The article traces various uses of this word in Hebrew poetry, and classifies and examines the insinuation, that is, what is implied, in poems by Rachel Bluwstein, Nathan Zach, Yona Wallach, Mois Benarroch, Dahlia Ravikovitch and Hedva Harechavi. In these poems, the demonstrative – a deixis always implying a context or a frame of reference – is essential and central, and the article shows how the immediate act of pointing in daily language is transformed by the poems for their own purposes.
The article contains four sections, each examining a different usage of ‘zeh’. The first section examines uses that are existentialist in nature, some of which relate to suspicion and its activation in readers; these uses also tend to function as a shibboleth, splitting readers into those who understand and decipher what is implied and those who don’t, the insiders and the outsiders. The other three sections describe uses of the demonstrative ‘zeh’ that can be interpreted as standing against or in opposition to the former ones; poems that use the insinuations to produce different identifications with alternative groups, signal being “like that” [‘ka-zeh’]; poems that point at what is implied and naming it, debunking and ridiculing the very act of implying or insinuating; and lastly poems that point out the powerlessness of poetry and language, doing this by an act of pointing that tries to achieve the impossible in the poems, and to allegedly, revive the dead.

'שמואל, מת בנו לברט' הוא משירי החול המפורסמים ביותר של אבן גבירול. לשיר זה מבנה מיוחד: הוא פותח בחטיבת שבח ארוכה לכבוד שמואל הנגיד, ומסתיים בחטיבת גנאי קצרה וקשה לפירוש. המעבר המפתיע בין החטיבות הִקשה על המהדירים שעסקו בשיר, וחלקם חיבלו בנוסחו מתוך חתירתם ללכידות ולבהירות. מאמר זה פותח בסקירה של העתקות השיר בכתבי היד ופרסומיו בדפוס, ולאור הסקירה המחבר מעלה כמה הרהורים על הדמיון והשוני בין מעתיקי כתבי היד למהדירים. לאחר מכן מוצעות שתי אפשרויות חדשות לפירוש שירו של אבן גבירול: האחת מזהה בשיר עמדה רציפה של שבח לשמואל הנגיד, ולעומתה האחרת רואה בשיר דיאלוג המגנה את הנגיד ואת קהל מעריציו.

This article looks at the role of formal grammatical analysis in the writings of Moses ibn Chiquitilla; tracing the adoption of triliteralism among grammarians in Iberia. One of the enduring difficulties of recounting a history of the major developments in the study of Hebrew grammar is the patchwork nature of the material available. With the availability of the Firkovitch collection at the Russian National Library (RNL), source material from the 11th-century grammarian, translator, and exegete, Moses ibn Chiquitilla, is now available. Of what little survives of Ibn Chiquitilla’s writings, a large portion of his biblical commentary on Psalms is preserved in one manuscript, Evr-Arab. I 3583 alongside smaller portions belonging to other libraries. In this article, I trace the development of debates among grammarians as portrayed in the writings of Ibn Chiquitilla. I reach the conclusion that among the circles of grammarians
in Saragossa in the 11th and 12th centuries, Ibn Chiquitilla tends towards the opinions of Judah Ḥayyūj, accepting the theoretical underpinnings of his system of grammar. He rejects any exceptions to the triradical roots including the biradicalism of Ibn Naġrela and Ibn ʿEzra.

This study seeks to reconsidering Garden and Flower poems in the Andalusian Hebrew Poetry through shedding some light on the Jewish poets who lived during the age of the Taifas’ Kingdom. It focuses on the works of Jewish poets such as Samuel ha-Nagid, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, and Moses Ibn Izra. For this purpose, this study aims to scrutinize poetry of such poets through analyzing images and contents of Garden and Flower poems in the poetry of the concerned poets as an attempt to answer a significant question to determine whether the poets were merely imitating prior poetic images, particularly those found in Arabic poetry, or if they introduced significant innovations and originality in their works. The objective is to answer the question: To what extent did these poets incorporate originality into their Garden and Flower poems? By doing so, the study hopes to shed new light on this fascinating period of Andalusian Hebrew Poetry and contribute to the understanding of the Jewish poets of the Taifas’ Kingdom.

Modern studies of Jewish hymnology are greatly indebted to the works of Leopold Zunz. This article deals with a number of questions with regard to Zunz's oeuvre. how can we evaluate Zunz's contribution to this particular research field after almost two centuries?

Dentre o conjunto de poemas do tipo muachaha legados de Alandalus, um único texto é atribuído a uma mulher da Granada do século XII, Nazhún Bint al-Qilá c í. A muachaha de Nazhún foi estudada e traduzida para o inglês pela primeira vez em 2007 pela estudiosa feminista Marlé Hammond, num artigo que enfrentou a dificuldade de encontrar no discurso do poema uma identidade feminina de fato diferencial com relação ao discurso de outros poemas atribuídos a autores homens. Nosso artigo segue a senda trilhada por aquele estudo, destacando alguns aspectos que podem ser complementares, e analisa o poema aplicando os princípios da "composição circular". Acompanha o artigo uma tradução do poema ao português, segundo nossa interpretação do texto árabe.

* δεν υπάρχει μονοπώλιο εν κόσμω τής εν αληθεία προσεγγίσεως τού άκρως Εφετού *η άγνοια δεν αφορά απλά και μόνο στην έλλειψη γνώσεως, αλλά κυρίως πλήττει τη γνήσια βίωση τής ύπαρξης και της σχέσεώς της με τον κόσμο *η προσευχητική πράξη θεωρείται «εργασία καρδίας» ‫שבלב(‬ ‫)עבודה‬ *ο εντοπισμός τής καρδίας ως του οργάνου-τόπου καθολικής αναφοράς μας στο Εφετόν είναι κοινός *ο … Χαμένος Κύριος, ο Λανθάνων Κύριος, ο Κρυμμένος Κύριος, ο Εξαφανισμένος Κύριος ή, πιο ελεύθερα, ο Κύριος που κρύφτηκε, λανθάνει, χάθηκε, εξαφανίστηκε !!! *λατρευτική πράξη ως έργον τού λαού και από το λαό, ως λείττον έργον δηλαδή λειτουργία * (πολυπαραγοντική…) εξίσωση : παρουσία (=κυριότητα) τού Θεού εν κόσμω μολαταύτα κρυβόμενη * Το εύρος ετέθη. Το αναλόγως πολιτεύεσθαι στον αναγνώστη.

הפיוטים שנכתבו בספרד המוסלמית נקלטו במסורות תפילה רבות במשך מאות שנים. לעתים קרובות, בכתבי היד יימצא פיוט אחד בכמה נוסחים ובייעודים ליטורגיים משתנים. המעתיקים ועורכי הסידורים לא תמיד קיבלו את הפיוטים כטקסטים חקוקים בסלע: לפעמים הם הרשו לעצמם להחליף פיוטים שטעמם התיישן בפיוטים חדשים, ולפעמים אף להתערב בנוסחים.

המאמר יעקוב אחר גלגוליו של הפיוט "שְׁעָרֶיךָ בְּדָפְקִי יָהּ פְּתָחָה" למשורר האנדלוסי שלמה אבן גבירול בין המאות ה־16 וה־18. הפיוט הקצר של אבן גבירול היה מצע להרחבות של מחברים אנונימיים, וההרחבות שנעשו בו מעידות על דינאמיקה יצירתית שליוותה את תהליך הקליטה של הפיוט במנהגי תפילה שונים. המאמר מראה שקהליו של הפיוט "שְׁעָרֶיךָ בְּדָפְקִי יָהּ פְּתָחָה" לא נשמעו לגבול מובחן בינם לבין הטקסט, אלא ביקשו לראות בטקסט שקף לחייהם; לקרב אותו אל חוויתם ולהטמיע בתוכו את המראות הקרובים אליהם.

A Hungarian research team has been exploring previously unknown pieces of Christian Hebraism: 17th-century Hebrew greeting poems (carmina gratulatoria) written by Hungarian Protestant students (peregrini) studying at foreign universities of the time. The publication, study and translation of these 17th century poems is of great importance for the history of Hungarian culture and for Old Hungarian literature. In principle, literary history knew about these poems, but for centuries no research had been done in this field. Our research group has repaid this debt to the history of science: 72 Hebrew greeting poems - hebraica hungarica - have been found, digitised, transcribed, translated into Hungarian and English in archives and libraries in Hungary and abroad, and are now available to anyone on the website www.cgh.hu. The present volume contains essays on the research, the poems, their authors and their connection to the Hungarian peregrination. The oral versions of the papers were presented at the final conference of the research, 28 April 2023, at the Library of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.