This study focuses on the earliest period of creativity in the life of Judah Halevi (1075-1141), the greatest Hebrew poet since biblical times, and offers a portrait of a unique circle of Hebrew ...poets centering on the Muslim city-kingdom of Granada.
Shoshana Zlatopolsky Persitz (1893-1969) was only 24-years old when she founded Omanut Press in Moscow, 1917, during that brief but heady period of Jewish cultural renaissance following the February ...Revolution. The daughter of one of the wealthiest Jews in Russia, Shoshana originally created Omanut as a means of bringing world literature into the treasury of the Hebrew language, but when her four-year-old son Gamliel died, she introduced a series of picture-books for children named the Gamliel Library after her son. Forced to move several times over the course of the next few years, from Moscow to Odessa and from Odessa to Frankfurt am Main, Shoshana nevertheless succeeded in producing some of the most beautiful childrens books ever printed in Hebrew. But up till now, scholars have been unsure of where, exactly, the books were first printed: in Odessa sometime around 1918 or in Frankfurt am Main several years later? Now, thanks to books newly discovered in the Library of Congress, we are able to say that at least six of the picture-books were in fact published for the first time in Odessa. This article focuses on the creation of these beautiful books and the story behind their publication.
The affinity between theScroll of Lovein the Maḥbarot by Immanuel of Rome (1265–1335?) and theVita Nuovaby Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) has long been discussed by Hebrew scholars in terms of influence ...and imitation. What the present study suggests is that theScroll of Loveis, in fact, a parody of Dante's sublime youthful work, and that the elements traditionally read as pseudo-autobiography are instead literary elements contributing to the parody. To strengthen her thesis the author draws attention to theRota Veneris, a thirteenth-century work parodying the literary traditions ofamor carnalisandamor spiritualis, and also notes a curious parallel with Boccaccio'sFilostratoand the changing ways scholars have read that work over the centuries.
The affinity between the Scroll of Love in the Maḥbarot by Immanuel of Rome (1265–1335?) and the Vita Nuova by Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) has long been discussed by Hebrew scholars in terms of ...influence and imitation. What the present study suggests is that the Scroll of Love is, in fact, a parody of Dante's sublime youthful work, and that the elements traditionally read as pseudo-autobiography are instead literary elements contributing to the parody. To strengthen her thesis the author draws attention to the Rota Veneris, a thirteenth-century work parodying the literary traditions of amor carnalis and amor spiritualis, and also notes a curious parallel with Boccaccio's Filostrato and the changing ways scholars have read that work over the centuries.
One of the most delightful stories in the Mahbarot of Immanuel of Rome (ca. 1265–1335) is a rhymed-prose narrative relating the encounter of a group of bored young scholars in Perugia with the sealed ...crates of books belonging to one Rabbi Aaron of Toledo. Rabbi Aaron consigns the barrels into the keeping of these young men and goes blithely off to Rome, thus setting the stage for a story that is not only rich in humor but also a consummate tribute to the power of books and book-learning. The story, fully translated, takes us into the heart of Jewish and Christian book-culture in late medieval Italy, touching on such important topics as the availability of books, the rage for Aristotelian philosophy, and the flow of knowledge from Spain to Italy.
Isaac ibn Khalfun (b. ca. 990) was one of the earliest of the “Golden Age” Hebrew poets in al-Andalus, and the only professional Hebrew poet known to us from this period. Though today he is perhaps ...best-known for the poems which he exchanged with Samuel ha-Nagid of Granada, he was also a wandering poet who travelled through North Africa and the eastern Mediterranean in search of rich patrons. His travels brought him into contact with some of the most illustrious Jews of the age, such as Manasseh ibn al-Kazaz of Damascus, and Abraham ben Nathan and Rabbi Nissim ben Jacob of Kairouan. Though highly regarded in medieval times, Ibn Khalfun's poetry eventually fell into oblivion and was only rediscovered in the twentieth century thanks to the discoveries of the Cairo Geniza. This study analyzes Ibn Khalfun's poems from a literary, social and cultural standpoint. Though he practiced many of the same genres penned by other, non-professional poets in al-Andalus (such as the panegyric), his professional status finds striking expression in almost two dozen “payment poems;” a genre which is almost unique to Ibn Khalfun in Hebrew letters, but common among the professional Arabic poets of his own day and age. This study also examines such issues as literary patronage in Jewish society, the role of the poet in the courtly milieu, and the poet's perception of his art. From all the available data, it appears that the poems found in the Cairo Geniza represent Ibn Khalfun's wandering years outside of al-Andalus rather than a portion of the poet's official dīwān, as is generally assumed in the research. This suggests that the production of secular Hebrew poetry was not limited to the Iberian peninsula even at this early date, as is commonly believed, and that apart from the poems to Samuel ha-Nagid, the main body of Ibn Khalfun's works—the poems composed in al-Andalus remain lost to us.
