Jewish Life in the Middle Ages

CHAPTER IX. LOVE AND COURTSHIP

CHAPTER IX LOVE AND COURTSHIP THE prevalence of child.marriages in the middle ages reduced Jewish courtship to an expression of the will of the parents. But the sons of Israel did not quite forget that the noblest of love poems is contained in the Hebrew Bible. The Song of Songs was perhaps the most popular of all the Books of the Old Testament. It was read in synagogue, and its imagery has left its mark on many pages of the Jewish liturgy. Through a happy misunderstanding of its meaning, this idealization of love became a tradition which tinged the most matter.of-fact marriage bargains with some colour of romance. Nay, there has never been an age in which Jewish love-stories have not relieved the monotony of made-up marriages. In the Talmud and the medieval Jewish records may be found genuine cases of courtship. in the modern sense of the word. There is no need to quote stray instances, for the Ian· guage of the Jewish poets of the middle ages leaves no room for doubt. Moses Ibn Ezra (born in 1070) was so weighted by the sense of man's misery that his liturgical pieces turn mostly on the subject of sin and reconciliation. This serious Spanish-Jewish writer, surnamed the« poet of penitence; was, nevertheless, the author of Hebrew lovesongs worthy of the most light-hearted troubadour. His 163 Love ana Courtsltip passion, he tells us, was never equalled before; the world had never seen the like of his love or of his loved one. Though she frown on him and smile on others, his life would be a slavery if he were released from her bonds. The more she spurns him, the more ardent grows his flame. He is love-sick, but asks no healing, for death would be more tolerable than the quenching of his passion. •Live on,' he cries to the irresponsive object of his affection, 'though thy lips drop honey for others to sip; live on breathing myrrh for others to inhale. Though thou art false to me, till the cold earth claims her own again, I shall remain true to thee. My heart loves to hear the nightingale's song, though the songster is above me and afar.' 1 Jehuda Halevi, the greatest Jewish poet of the middle ages, wrote numerous love-songs which display a similar abandonment to romantic passion. •Ophrah bathes her garment in the water of my tears, and dries it in the sunshine of her bright eyes.' Of the Hebrew wedding odes, however, an opportunity will soon present itself to speak. Let it be noted that Jehuda Halevi, who sings of love, added scores of fine hymns to the prayer-book, and became the exemplar of Judaism for his own contemporaries and for all later centuries. It is in the works just of the poets of this class, the men who left their impress on their people's sacred liturgy and innermost life, that women are treated with the utmost reverence and love is idealized.: It was not till the thirteenth century that a Spanish Jew, Judah ben Sabbatai of Barcelona, composed a diatribe against the fair 1 Kaempf, Niclttand41usisclu Poesil! andalusische,. Dim!",. (Beilagen, P·209)· t These poems found their way into the liturgy itself. cr. the Yemen Prayer-book. Brit. Mus. MS. Or. 2227, where many of Jehuda Halevi', wed-ding odes are Introduced. Satires on Women sex. But can one compare him in importance with the writer who replied to Judah's Woman Hater with a ponderous yet chivalrous plea in defence of the daughters of Israel? Yedaya Bedaresi, who entered the lists on woman's behalf, was the writer of perhaps the most popular ethical prose-poem written in Hebrew during the whole middle ages I It is undeniable that the wit was on the side of the enemy; it is undeniable that the folk-tales of the Jews, betraying their Indian origin, are misogynist to a degree never exceeded, hardly equalled, in other literature . But the compilers of these satires were simply using good tales and smart epigrams without overmuch thought of their tendency. and reproduced the SeveJI Wise Masters or Honein's Maxims of the Philosophers, not because of the sages' sneers against woman's fidelity, but because the stories they told were ingenious anti enthrall. ing. The selection of good motives for tales lay within a very...