שירת החול העברית בימי הבינײם (Secular Hebrew Poetry in the Middle Ages) (review)

Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 377 Reviews and to do penance, admitting: "The greatness of man is only allowed by the will of the Creator" (p. 67). So these great pagan kings began to speak the language of the Hebrew monotheists in this version. Alexander, in particular , always is shown to display magnanimity in victory, as when he sheds tears over the fall of Darius: "You have to understand that kings do not rejoice about the fall of fellow-kings" (p. 73). The Hebrew language of the text is basically biblical, although influenced in crucial instances by Arabic grammar, syntax, and vocabulary, sometimes deploying rare, although not unprecedented, Hebrew usages, such as "lalJ.arof' (for "to hibernate," which is attested in the biblical book of Isaiah, see p. 70). Altogether, we seem to have a version fairly close to its foreign models, but significantly Hebraized in expression and sentiment. We should be grateful to van Bekkum for this helpful, accessible, and reliable edition of a piece of work that helps us to piece together the history of some of the remoter comers of the history of Hebrew literature. Apart from a few infelicities of English expression. this is an exceedingly graceful introduction to an opus known in so many forms and in such far flung traditions. It provides a valuable, and, in some respects, surprising link between the generations. Leon I. Yudkin University College London London, England l.yudkin@ucl.ac.uk C""l":ln "C":l n"':ll)n ",nn n,"Uf (SECULAR HEBREW POETRY IN THE MIDDLE AGES) [Hebrew]. By Tovah Rosen. pp. 149. Tel Aviv: Haqibbutz Hameuchad, Qeren Yehoshua Rabinowitz Laamoniyut , 1997. Paper. Tovah Rosen has written a helpful handbook for the intelligent lay reader on the prosodic types and literary themes in secular Hebrew poetry in the Middle Ages, and on its most prominent practitioners. This book is not for specialists, who are (or should be) familiar with the literature. Rosen introduces her subject with a broad review of Hebrew culture in Muslim Spain during the five hundred year period from the tenth to the fifteenth centuries. She points to Iberian Jewry's "sudden" and "revolutionary" awakening (p. 13) and the emergence of its leading luminaries . Samuel the Nagid, Solomon Ibn Gavirol. Moses Ibn Ezra. Judah Halevi, Dunash ben Labrat, Isaac Ibn Khalfon. and Abraham Ibn Ezra. Hebrew Studies 40 (1999) 378 Reviews However, it should be noted that the foundations for the new literary developments in Spain were already prepared in Babylon, chiefly through the efforts of Sa'adyah Gaon (882-942 C.B.), head of the academy in Sura. In Sa'adyah's poetic writings we find a revived emphasis on the language of the Hebrew scriptures as the preferred medium of literary composition, a practice followed by the Hebrew-Hispanics (p. 16). Moreover, Sa'adya's pupil Dunash ben Labrat-who later became a protege of Sasday ibn Shaprut, the first prominent Jewish courtier in Muslim Spain-pioneered a method of adapting Arabic prosodic conventions to Hebrew. Dunash's achievement was to become the standard for the two prosodic styles in secular (and religious) Hebrew poetry, the qasidah type, with its metrically balanced hemistichs in each verse, and the muwashshal), with its strophes of alternating constant and variable rhymes. In chapter 3, Professor Rosen asks whether it is possible to derive aesthetic enjoyment from Hebrew secular poetry written over a thousand years ago and should we apply modem standards of poetry to the works of Moses Ibn Ezra and his contemporaries. One could argue that the very posing of this question is unsettling. Are we to judge Chaucer and Milton by modem standards, or do we allow their poetry to broaden our sensitivity by familiarizing us with a wide range of experience with which, in the ordinary course of events, we might have no contact? Do we not also deepen our experience from reading Milton or Judah Halevi by making us feel more poignantly and understandingly the everyday events of our lives? A dominant aspect of this experience which Rosen describes (pp. 33-34) was the idealized setting of Hispanic courtly culture where Hebrew poetry was composed for entertainment and not exclusively for prayer...