MEDIEVAL

HEBREW

POETRY

www.medievalhebrewpoetry.org

Jerusalem the Golden, 1

 

The Hebrew of your poets, Zion,

is like oil upon a burn,

cool as oil;

after work,

the smell in the street at night

of the hedge in flower.

Like Solomon,

I have married and married the speech of strangers;

none are like you, Shulamite.

 

--Charles Reznikoff

 

From The Poems of Charles Reznikoff 1918-1975, Seamus Cooney, ed. (Boston: David R Godine Publisher, 2005). Copyright © 2005 by The Estate of Charles Reznikoff. Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

 

About medievalhebrewpoetry.org

Click here for information about the web site.

 

The Poets and Their Poems

Click here for English translations of poems and for information about the poets. NEW! NINETY-EIGHT (98) ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF POEMS BY YEHUDA HALEVI, SAMUEL HANAGID, MOSES IBN EZRA, ABRAHAM IBN EZRA, AND SOLOMON IBN GABIROL, PLUS ONE (1) SPANISH TRANSLATION OF A POEM BY MOSES IBN EZRA. Translators include Israel Abrahams, T. Carmi, Peter Cole, Joseph Davis, Emma Lazarus, Harris Lenowitz, Amy Levy, Alice Lucas, Robert Mezey, Carl Rakosi, Charles Reznikoff, Franz Rosenzweig, Jerome Rothenberg, Nina Salaman, Solomon Solis-Cohen, Meyer Waxman, Leon J. Weinberger, and Israel Zangwill. ALSO NEW: ENGLISH TRANSLATIONS OF EGYPTIAN-JEWISH POET JOSEPH BEN TANCHUM HA-YERUSHALMI, TRANSLATED BY HAYIM SHEYNIN AND PUBLISHED FOR THE FIRST TIME. Updated 2/04/07.

 

General Articles

Click here for full-text articles. INCLUDES SURVEY ARTICLE BY PROFESSOR HOWARD TZVI ADELMAN, NOTE ON HEBREW VERSIFICATION BY PROFESSOR BENJAMIN HARSHAV, AND BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. Updated 12/21/06.

 

Further Reading

Click here for basic and specialized reading lists. Updated 2/1/07.

 

Events and Classes

Click here for information on where to find classes.

 

Archives, Libraries, and Organizations

Click here for information about where to find books and manuscripts.

 

Acknowledgments and Sources

Click here for the names of individuals and publishers acknowledged for their help with, or contribution to, this site.

 

Submissions

Click here for information on how to submit articles, translations, and other material to this site.

 

Feedback

Click here to learn how to send feedback on the web site.

 

About the Editor of This Site

Click here for a brief bio and a link to a longer resume of the web site editor.

 

Links

Click here for links to other web sites with information on medieval Hebrew poetry. Updated 2/1/07.

Modern Spain/medieval Spain (l to r): Court of the Lions at

the Alhambra in Granada; statue of poet Solomon Ibn

Gabirol in Málaga; site of medieval market in Toledo, now a

cafe; statue of translator Yehuda Ibn Tibbon in Granada.

 

About medievalhebrewpoetry.org

 

Greetings and welcome to medievalhebrewpoetry.org, the first and only web site, as far as is known, dedicated entirely to medieval Hebrew poetry. Currently the site includes poems by five important Spanish-Hebrew poets and one Egyptian-Jewish poet. Thank you for your interest!

 

Medievalhebrewpoetry.org is a new web site devoted to Hebrew poetry composed primarily from the fourth to the eighteenth centuries, with an emphasis at least for now on the period from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, the so-called Golden Age of Jewish culture in Spain. However, the Egyptian-Jewish poet Joseph ben Tanchum ha-Yerushalmi, who lived somewhat later, has just been added to the site (2/4/07).

 

In this site you will find information on the poets, their poems, and their poetry, in addition to general articles, bibliographies, and visuals, along with information on current events and scholarship in the field, repositories of manuscripts, institutes for the study of this literature, and other relevant topics.

 

The intended audience for the site includes general readers, poetry lovers, teachers, librarians, and scholars. Right now the site is geared more toward the first two categories; as the site develops, the emphasis will broaden to include the other categories. However, general readers and poetry lovers will always have a home here, since one of the missions of the site is to encourage the publication, in translation, of more poems and poets. For although in the 25 years since T. Carmi published his classic Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse we have begun to see what might be termed a renaissance in the publication of English translations of medieval Hebrew poetry, Carmi’s anthology contained the widest selection available of medieval Hebrew poets--that is, until recently, with the publication by Peter Cole of The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), the largest anthology of Spanish-Jewish poetry ever published in translation.

 

It is hoped that, alongside such offerings as Peter Cole's and a new book by Raymond P. Scheindlin on Yehuda Halevi, this site will additionally satisfy the general reader’s and poetry lover’s curiosity about medieval Hebrew poetry, broaden the audience for the poetry, and stimulate greater interest in the academic study of medieval Hebrew poetry. (Note: Please feel free to link to this site, but please do not copy poems, articles, or other material into another site, since much of the material on this site is copyrighted and permission has been granted for use on this site only. Thank you.)

 

Henry Rasof

Louisville, CO

 

1Legend: Andalucia: Center of Islamic presence in Spain during the time of the medieval

Jewish poets. ■Cities associated with Spanish-Jewish poets represented on this web site

as of 12/21/06. Birthplaces: Tudela (Abraham Ibn Ezra and Yehuda Halevi), Málaga

(Solomon Ibn Gabirol), Granada (Moses Ibn Ezra), Córdoba (Samuel Hanagid). ●Other cities

that had important medieval Jewish presence and that are on the Jewish Spain “Routes of

Sepharad” tour. ♦Other important or interesting Spanish cities.