The Contemplative Soul: Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain (Etudes Sur Le Judaisme Medieval)

THE CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL ÉTUDES SUR LE JUDAÏSME MÉDIÉVAL FONDÉES PAR GEORGES VAJDA DIRIGÉES PAR PAUL B. FENTON TOME X...

Author: Adena Tanenbaum

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THE CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL

ÉTUDES SUR LE JUDAÏSME MÉDIÉVAL FONDÉES PAR

GEORGES VAJDA DIRIGÉES PAR

PAUL B. FENTON TOME XXV THE CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL

THE CONTEMPLATIVE SOUL Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain BY

ADENA TANENBAUM

BRILL LEIDEN • BOSTON • KÖLN 2002

This book is printed on acid-free paper.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Tanenbaum, Adena. The contemplative soul : Hebrew poetry and philosophical theory in medieval Spain / by Adena Tanenbaum. p. cm. — (Études sur le judaïsme médiéval; t. 25) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 9004120912 1. Hebrew poetry, Medieval—Spain—Andalusia—History and criticism. 2. Jewish religious poetry, Hebrew—Spain—Andalusia—History and criticism. 3. Soul in literature. 4. Ibn Gabirol, 11th cent.—Criticism and interpretation. I. Title. II. Series. PJ5023 .T36 2002 892.4’1209384—dc21

2002066678

Die Deutsche Bibliothek - CIP-Einheitsaufnahme Tanenbaum, Adena: The contemplative soul : Hebrew poetry and philosophical theory in medieval Spain / by Adena Tanenbaum. - Leiden ; New York ; Köln : Brill, 2002 (Études sur le judaïsme médiéval ; T. 25) ISBN 90-04-12091-2

ISSN 0169-815X ISBN 90 04 12091 2 © Copyright 2002 by Koninklijke Brill NV, Leiden, The Netherlands All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior written permission from the publisher. Authorization to photocopy items for internal or personal use is granted by Brill provided that the appropriate fees are paid directly to The Copyright Clearance Center, 222 Rosewood Drive, Suite 910 Danvers MA 01923, USA. Fees are subject to change. PRINTED IN THE NETHERLANDS

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CONTENTS

Table of Poems .......................................................................... Preface ........................................................................................

ix xi

1. From Greco-Arabic Thought to Hebrew Poetry .............. 2. God, Man, and the Universe: Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut ............................................................................ 3. A Sermon to the Soul: Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” ................................................ 4. Intertwined Exiles: Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” ............................................................................ 5. The Adornment of the Soul: A Philosophical Motif ...... 6. Meditation on the Soul as a Prelude to Prayer: Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah” ................................................................................ 7. The Motif of Self-Knowledge: “From My Flesh I Behold God” .................................................................... 8. Anti-rationalism or Metaphysical Skepticism? Judah Halevi’s “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” ................................ 9. An Inventive Heir: Judah Al arizi and his Andalusian Models .............................................................. 10. The Afterlife of the Genre: The Reception and Transformation of Andalusian Poems on the Soul ..........

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Bibliography Bibliographical Abbreviations ............................................ Primary Sources .................................................................. Secondary Literature .......................................................... Indices Index of Poems .................................................................... Index of Sources .................................................................. General Index ......................................................................

57 84 106 132

146 160 174 195 218

245 247 253 275 279 284

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TABLE OF POEMS

The following poems are reproduced in full with facing-page English translations: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

Solomon Ibn Gabirol, “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” Moses Ibn Ezra, “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” Abraham Ibn Ezra, “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah” Moses Ibn Ezra, “Ha- el ha-toleh al belimah tevel” Abraham Ibn Ezra, “Yeshenei lev, mah lakhem” Judah Halevi, “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi”

86–87 112–17 148–49 164–65 170–71 182–83

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PREFACE

During the eleventh and twelfth centuries, Jewish poets in Islamic Spain took Hebrew devotional verse in new and striking directions. Remarkably accomplished in the secular sciences as well as in classical Jewish scholarship, these polymath authors infused the ancient, native Jewish tradition of synagogue poetry, or piyyut, with contemplative themes drawn from the Arabic philosophical canon. They also composed philosophically-informed prose works of their own, including Bible commentaries, ethical tracts, and metaphysical treatises—most of them in Judeo-Arabic. Reading their piyyut in light of their speculative writing reveals the impact of the Andalusians’ intellectual and cultural life on their sacred verse. Their poetry reﬂects a conviction that Greco-Arabic philosophy meshed comfortably with— and even enhanced—traditional Jewish approaches to prayer and spirituality. By exploring the two genres in tandem, and by probing the philosophical motifs in their religious verse, the careful reader uncovers new and, at times, unorthodox layers of meaning. The idea of the soul occupied a place of paramount importance in this new type of synagogue poetry, which drew on Neoplatonic philosophy. Though composed for insertion into the ﬁxed liturgy, and anchored in traditional Jewish texts, Andalusian piyyut also incorporated elements of the poets’ distinctly medieval world-view, lending a more contemporary understanding to the classical prayers it served to preface. Where pre-Spanish piyyut was exclusively concerned with the collectivity and its historical relationship with God, the new poems reﬂect an unprecedented awareness of the individual, his spiritual quest, and his eschatological expectations. Yet, even their most daring innovations are couched in language familiar to the worshiper, and are successfully naturalized in their literary setting. Exquisitely crafted, these piyyutim conform to the esthetic ideals of Golden Age Hebrew poetry. Their discriminating ﬁgurative language, subtle symbolism, clever ambiguities, and skillful biblical (and even rabbinic) allusions could indirectly suggest novel interpretations of received ideas in a way that few prose works could. This study focuses on four outstanding members of the Andalusian school whose speculative writing elucidates their poems on the soul:

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Solomon Ibn Gabirol, Moses Ibn Ezra, Abraham Ibn Ezra, and Judah Halevi. It examines the literary and artistic qualities of their works while using poetry as a source for intellectual history. Chapter 1 introduces the poetry in its broader intellectual and literary historical context, surveying Andalusian Jewish cultural creativity in all of its richness, and identifying the varied literary sources on the soul that were available to the poets. Chapter 2 analyzes Ibn Gabirol’s treatment of the soul in Keter Malkhut, a grand hymn that incorporates philosophical ideas to paint a comprehensive picture of God, man, and the universe. Because Ibn Gabirol was the ﬁrst of the Andalusians to integrate a philosophical understanding of the soul into his devotional poetry, and because Keter Malkhut aspires to a systematic exposition of cosmological and metaphysical ideas, it furnishes an important key to understanding the piyyutim discussed in subsequent chapters. Chapters 3, 4, 6, and 8 are each devoted to the analysis of a representative poem by one of our four main authors. Brief citations of other poems are adduced for comparative purposes, conﬁrming the Andalusian school’s preoccupation with the topic of the soul. The organization of these chapters by poet is not meant to imply a historical progression, for these authors all shared the same poetic ideals and fundamental philosophical beliefs. It is rather a means to examining each poet’s verse against the background of his own speculative writings and of the literary school as a whole. Chapters 5 and 7 are thematic studies that attempt to make sense of a particular philosophical motif recurring throughout the Andalusian corpus. My interest in the symbolism of adornment, the topic of Chapter 5, grew out of a close reading of Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah,” the poem discussed in Chapter 4. Chapter 7 is devoted to the idea that self-knowledge can lead to knowledge of God, a motif that occurs in a series of poems, including Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah,” the subject of Chapter 6. The two ﬁnal chapters of the book explore the reception of the Andalusian poem on the soul in other literary circles. Chapter 9 investigates Judah Al arizi’s creative adaptation of the earlier models, and Chapter 10 surveys the appropriation and transformation of the genre by Hebrew poets in widely dispersed geographical centers and cultural environments, over several centuries. This extensive and remarkably varied “afterlife” reﬂects the abiding fascination and appeal of the Andalusians’ signal achievement. Translating medieval Hebrew poetry poses several challenges. One

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grapples with the often incompatible demands of ﬁdelity: to the sense, form, tone, register, and impact of the poem. Clear, unadorned prose translations may convey the meaning of the original as faithfully as possible, but cannot hope to capture its carefully crafted shape, texture, or cadences. Verse translations can parallel the eﬀect of the regular rhyme schemes and meters, clever wordplays, and dense intertextualities of the Hebrew, but inevitably take liberties with the wording. I have tried to steer a middle course. My ﬁrst priority has been to adhere as closely as possible to the original without becoming slavishly literal. But to suggest something of the form as well, I have opted for verse translations that make use of rhythm, alliteration, assonance, and internal rhyme instead of meter and end-rhyme. Unless otherwise indicated, all translations of poems are my own. With few exceptions, medieval Hebrew poems have no titles; the convention is to refer to their incipits, or opening verses. Translations of biblical verses are drawn mostly from The Jewish Publication Society’s Tanakh: A New Translation of The Holy Scriptures (Philadelphia, 1985), although on occasion I have used the Authorized Version, and at times have modiﬁed both of these to reﬂect, or set oﬀ, a poet’s reading of a particular passage. For citations of rabbinic literature I have used the Soncino Press translations of the Babylonian Talmud (London, 1935–52) and Midrash Rabbah (London, 1939). Where secondary sources in Hebrew have existing English titles I have used them; otherwise the Hebrew title is given in transliteration. Hebrew names have generally been given in their Latin forms ( Judah, rather than Yehudah), and hyphens and macrons have been omitted from Jewish family names, even if Arabic in origin (Al arizi, rather than al- ar z ). I have, however, retained certain forms as they appear in bibliographic references. It is my pleasure to acknowledge those individuals and institutions from whose advice and support I have beneﬁted. My teachers, Isadore Twersky, of blessed memory, and Bernard Septimus, a”jlby, generously shared their extraordinary erudition and patiently guided the doctoral research out of which this monograph grew. The project owes its inspiration to Professor Septimus, who introduced me to the exceptional world of Andalusian Hebrew poetry when I was a freshman in college, piquing my curiosity for many years to come. His incisive textual analyses have been a model of scholarship, and I have followed his readings of several poems in this book. Warm thanks are due to Wolfhart Heinrichs for sharing his profound knowledge

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of Arabic poetry and poetics, and to Haggai Ben-Shammai for elucidating Saadya’s theory of the soul and for his ongoing interest in this project. I am grateful to Raymond P. Scheindlin for critiquing early versions of Chapters 3 and 4 and for oﬀering valuable advice on the art of translation. Special thanks go to Fritz W. Zimmermann, whose Oxford seminars in Arabic philosophical texts I was fortunate to attend. I am indebted to Lenn Evan Goodman, who read a preliminary version of this project with tremendous care, oﬀering incisive criticisms and judicious suggestions, both stylistic and substantive. Thanks are also due to Paul Fenton, Series Editor of Études sur le Judaïsme Médiéval, and to Marcella Mulder, Assistant Editor at Brill Academic Publishers for her courteous and professional assistance. Portions of several chapters of this book have appeared in preliminary form as independent articles. A small amount of the material in Chapter 2 ﬁrst appeared in “Nine Spheres or Ten? A Medieval Gloss on Moses Ibn Ezra’s ‘Be-Shem El Asher Amar,’ ” Journal of Jewish Studies 47 (1996): 294–310. I have adapted Chapter 5 from “The Adornment of the Soul: A Philosophical Motif in Andalusian Piyyut,” Hebrew Union College Annual 66 (1995): 223–238. An early, unrevised version of Chapter 6 appeared as “Beholding the Splendor of the Creator: Philosophical Conceptions of the Soul in the Poetry of Abraham Ibn Ezra,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra and His Age (Abraham Ibn Ezra Y Su Tiempo), ed. F.D. Esteban (Madrid, 1990), 335–344. I am grateful to the editors of these publications for their permission to use this material. An initial stage of my research beneﬁted from the generosity of the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture and the National Foundation for Jewish Culture, and the ﬁnal stage was graciously supported by the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures and the Melton Center for Jewish Studies at The Ohio State University. For their intellectual camaraderie and encouragement, I would like to thank the fellows of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, the faculty of the Hebrew Department at University College London, and my colleagues at the Ohio State University. Thanks are also due to the staﬀs of the Oriental Reading Room of the Bodleian Library, Oxford and the Institute for Microﬁlmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and to the indefatigable Yossi Galron of the Jewish Studies Library at The Ohio State University.

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For their continued support, interest, and encouragement, I am profoundly grateful to my mother, Helga Weiss; my sister and brother, Susie and Michael Tanenbaum; and my in-laws, Simon and Yakira Frank. Words are inadequate to express my boundless gratitude to my husband, Daniel Frank, who has so generously given of his time and shared his erudition at every stage of this project. This book is dedicated to him in love as a small token of my thanks.

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CHAPTER ONE

FROM GRECO-ARABIC THOUGHT TO HEBREW POETRY

Now, measuring out my days, ’tis here I rest That is my body, but my soul, his guest Is hence ascended whither neither time, Nor faith, nor hope, but only love can climb; Where being now enlightened she doth know The truth of all things which are talked below; Only this dust shall here in pawn remain, That when the world dissolves, she’ll come again.1

With its “metaphysical” style and theme, this brief poem clearly belongs to the seventeenth-century tradition of English verse.2 Yet, the conception of the soul upon which it draws is quintessentially medieval. It was a commonplace among medieval authors—Muslim, Jewish and Christian—that the human body is a temporary residence for the soul, whose real home is in the celestial realms. Often the body was portrayed not as a benign inn, but as a sinister prison: O who shall, from this Dungeon, raise A Soul inslav’d so many wayes? With bolts of Bones, that fetter’d stands In Feet; and manacled in Hands.3

The duality of soul and body was closely associated with a belief that the cosmos is divided into an upper world of unchanging realities and a lower world of unstable, ephemeral phenomena. Originating in the supernal realm, the soul was incorporeal and immortal. Its union with a mortal body was a result of its descent to the sublunar world of generation and decay. Man, then, was a composite, containing elements of the physical and the spiritual worlds. His bodily passions, if unchecked, might lower him into beastlike behavior 1 Sir Thomas Overbury (1581–1613), “Epitaph on Himself ” in Massingham, A Treasury of Seventeenth Century English Verse, 182. 2 See Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets, 15–29. 3 Andrew Marvell (1621–1678), “A Dialogue between the Soul and Body,” in Gardner, ibid., 245.

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and the pursuit of meaningless, transient goals. But if he was disciplined, his soul could regain the world of intellect and attain “the truth of all things which are talked below.” Grasp of these absolute truths was the summit of human perfection.4 These ideas had their origin in the dialogues of Plato, whose theory of the soul was joined with elements of Aristotle’s psychology, or science of the soul, in the writings of Plotinus (205–270 C.E.).5 Although they did not know him by name, it was largely via his synthesis that the medievals acquired their views of body and soul and the duality of the upper and lower worlds. Plotinus was not an adherent of a monotheistic religion but his scheme lent itself to adaptation by monotheistic scholars. As a result, Neoplatonism penetrated Islamic, Jewish and Christian thought in the Middle Ages, partly by way of a ninth-century Arabic paraphrase of the Enneads pseudepigraphically attributed to Aristotle.6 By the tenth century Jews throughout the Islamic empire had adopted Arabic as their main spoken and written language. Hebrew had become a literary language, reserved for sacred purposes. Their knowledge of Arabic aﬀorded Jewish scholars virtually unlimited access to Islamic high culture and its rich corpus of Greco-Arabic literature.7 The Arab conquests of the seventh and eighth centuries had brought key centers of Hellenistic learning within the Islamic orbit, stimulating an interest among certain Muslim savants in the scientiﬁc, medical and philosophical works of the Greeks. The demand

4 On the contrast between these two worlds in Greek thought, see Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being, 24–66. 5 For Plato see esp. Alcibiades I, Republic, Meno, Phaedo and Phaedrus, relevant portions of which are excerpted in Flew, Body, Mind, and Death, 34–71. See also: Timaeus, 41D–42E, 69C–72D, 90A–D; Guthrie, A History of Greek Philosophy, 4:324–561 passim, 5:292–320 passim; and Lovibond, “Plato’s Theory of the Mind.” For Aristotle see the selections from De Anima in Flew, Body, Mind, and Death, 72–81. See also: De Anima, trans. Hicks, xxxvi–lxxii; Jaeger, Aristotle, 39–53 and 331–34; Lloyd, Aristotle, 181–201; Frede, “On Aristotle’s Conception of the Soul”; and Sorabji, “Body and Soul in Aristotle.” For Plotinus see: Armstrong, The Architecture of the Intelligible Universe; Pistorius, Plotinus and Neoplatonism; Rist, Plotinus; Gerson, Plotinus, esp. 127–63; and Blumenthal, “Plotinus’ Adaptation of Aristotle’s Psychology.” 6 See: Morewedge, Neoplatonism and Islamic Thought; Goodman, Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought; O’Meara, Neoplatonism and Christian Thought; Armstrong, Plotinian and Christian Studies; and Kraye et al., Pseudo-Aristotle in the Middle Ages. Note that the socalled Theology of Aristotle was unknown in the Latin West until the sixteenth century but a similar work, the Liber de causis, was inﬂuential already in the thirteenth century; see Kraye, “The Pseudo-Aristotelian Theology,” 265 and 275. 7 See, in general, on this: Halkin, “Judeo-Arabic Literature.”

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for texts in Arabic had in turn given rise to a proliﬁc translation movement in the ninth and tenth centuries.8 Muslim scholars initially produced Arabic commentaries on the works at their disposal and subsequently contributed original disquisitions of their own. These Arabic-language treatises ﬁltered Greek learning and ideas through the monotheistic lens of Islam and paved the way for the integration of philosophy into Judaism. Jews also beneﬁted from the living scholarly tradition that supplemented this literary enterprise. Small groups of masters and disciples met to discuss and debate the profound issues arising from their theoretical studies. Of a cosmopolitan bent, these circles frequently included Christians and Jews.9 The ﬁrst known Jewish philosophers emerged at an early stage of this program. Like its Islamic counterpart, Jewish speculative thought originated in the East. One of the ﬁrst Jewish authors of a work incorporating Greco-Arabic philosophy was Saadya Gaon (882–942). The sixth treatise of his Kit b al-am n t wa’l-i tiq d t (The Book of Doctrines and Beliefs) is devoted to “the essence of the soul and death and what comes after death.”10 An even earlier Jewish thinker who made important inroads in philosophy was the North African, Isaac Israeli (ca. 850–ca. 950). The Neoplatonic theory of the soul ﬁgures prominently in his extant writings, which subsequently served as a source for Jewish thinkers in eleventh-century Spain.11 Jewish philosophical activity—and philosophical interest in the soul—reached new heights in Islamic Spain in the eleventh and early 8 See Walzer, Greek Into Arabic; Rosenthal, The Classical Heritage in Islam; and Goodman, “The Translation of Greek Materials Into Arabic.” 9 See Rosenthal, “A Jewish Philosopher of the Tenth Century” and Kraemer, Philosophy in the Renaissance of Islam, ix–xiii and idem, Humanism in the Renaissance of Islam, 54–60 and 82–84. For a fascinating epistolary exchange between a Jewish scholar and the eminent Christian philosopher, Ya y b. Ad (d. 974), see Pines, “A Tenth Century Philosophical Correspondence.” Even more intriguing is Haggai Ben-Shammai’s discovery of a group of middle-class Jews engaged in philosophical study of the Bible; see his “A Philosophical Study Group in Tenth-Century Mosul.” 10 See Saadya, Am n t, 193–217 and Rosenblatt, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, 235–63. 11 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli. On the knowledge of Israeli among the Andalusian Neoplatonists, see p. xiii. A philosophical view of the soul is also found in the Ishr n Maq la (Twenty Chapters) of D w d al-Muqamma , an older contemporary of Israeli. A sometime convert to Christianity, Muqamma was known to the Andalusians primarily as a mutakallim (speculative theologian), yet there are suggestive parallels between his chapter on retribution and their treatments of eschatology; see Stroumsa, D w d Ibn Marw n al-Muqammi ’s “Twenty Chapters” ( Ishr n Maq la), 280–301 and Vajda, “A propos de la perpétuité de la rétribution d’outretombe en théologie musulmane.”

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twelfth centuries. Not all Hispano-Jewish scholars fully endorsed GrecoArabic thought.12 To those who did, however, psychology was so central a concern that they did not restrict its discussion to speculative treatises. The topic of the soul permeated biblical exegesis and ethical literature. It also became the focal point of a new type of synagogue poetry, or piyyut. Inserted into the liturgy, poetic meditations on the soul now added a new dimension to the prayers they embellished. But they spoke in an idiom familiar to the worshiper, evoking Neoplatonic ideas with biblical language and rabbinic imagery. The success of the Andalusian poets in naturalizing their philosophical themes in a new literary genre and institutional setting testiﬁes to their great artistic skill, intellectual commitment, and personal piety. Full appreciation of the depth and beauty of their sophisticated compositions requires entry into the extraordinary world from which they emerged. Recent research has conﬁrmed the value of reading Andalusian poetry in light of its cultural and intellectual contexts. In The Compunctious Poet Ross Brann illuminates the cultural ambivalences of the “courtierrabbis” by probing the tensions inherent in their cultivation of Arabicstyle Hebrew poetry. Brann’s lucid survey of earlier scholarship underscores the shortcomings of a purely formalistic approach, which isolates the poem from its broader literary, social and historical setting. Raymond Scheindlin’s Wine, Women, and Death also highlights the remarkable synthesis of aristocratic worldliness and Jewish piety and learning that gave rise to Hebrew courtly poetry. An anthology of poems with facing-page translations, Wine, Women, and Death considers the esthetic sensibilities and ideals of the “Golden Age” poets as products of a fruitful encounter with Islamic civilization. The foundations of this integrative, organic approach were laid by two Israeli scholars: Hayyim ( Jeﬁm) Schirmann in his now-classic anthology, Ha-shirah ha- ivrit bi-sfarad uv-provans (Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence), and numerous articles; and Dan Pagis in Shirat ha- ol ve-torat ha-shir le-moshe ibn ezra u-vnei doro (Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory: Moses Ibn Ezra and His Contemporaries) and his indispensable iddush u-masoret beshirat ha- ol ha- ivrit: sefarad ve- italia (Change and Tradition in Secular Poetry: Spain and Italy). Two posthumous volumes further enhance our appreciation of the ideas, literary theory and social trends informing this

12

See Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 61–62 and p. 147, nn. 5–8.

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corpus: Ha-shir davur al ofnav (Poetry Aptly Explained ) collects articles published by Pagis over the course of his scholarly career and Toledot ha-shirah ha- ivrit bi-sfarad ha-muslimit (The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain) marks the culmination of Schirmann’s comprehensive, synthetic study of the Andalusian school. Like these works, most scholarship on the subject is in Hebrew. Although both Schirmann and Pagis were true humanists, neither published much in European languages.13 Their seminal contributions to the ﬁeld certainly deserve a wider readership. Far less attention has been speciﬁcally devoted to the interplay between poetry and philosophy. As far back as 1899, David Kaufmann published a brief but pioneering study of a philosophical poem by Solomon Ibn Gabirol; and in two classic pieces from the 1940’s, Isaac Heinemann correlated Judah Halevi’s religious thought with his verse.14 During the past twenty-ﬁve years, Israel Levin has shown how the Neoplatonic theory of the soul informs the poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Abraham Ibn Ezra, adducing parallels from their theoretical and exegetical writings.15 Raphael Loewe has given special consideration to Ibn Gabirol’s theological and metaphysical ideas in his elegant, classicizing translations and learned analytical discussions.16 Aaron Mirsky has identiﬁed Ba ya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart as the primary source for the philosophical and ethical themes in Spanish piyyut. His thesis is problematic, not least because he credits Ba ya with ideas that are already pronounced in Ibn Gabirol’s corpus. Still, the copious examples he cites conﬁrm the philosophical

13 See also Schirmann, Toldot ha-shirah ha- ivrit bi-sfarad ha-no rit u-vi-drom arefat (The History of Hebrew Poetry in Christian Spain and Southern France), which includes a chapter on Abraham Ibn Ezra, and which—like Toledot ha-shirah ha- ivrit bi-sfarad ha-muslimit —was edited, supplemented and annotated by Ezra Fleischer; Schirmann, Letoledot ha-shirah ve-ha-dramah ha- ivrit (Studies in the History of Hebrew Poetry and Drama); Pagis, “Trends in the Study of Medieval Hebrew Literature”; and idem, Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. The latter two contributions are some of the few Pagis published in English. 14 See Kaufmann, Me qarim, 160–65, and Heinemann, “Rabbi yehudah ha-levi: ha- ish ve-hogeh ha-de ot” and “Ha-pilosof ha-meshorer.” 15 See Levin, Mystical Trends in the Poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, esp. 137–67 and idem, “He a ezi be sullam okhma.” Levin also posits the inﬂuence of Suﬁ poetry on Ibn Gabirol’s piyyut; for a critique of this thesis see the articles by Scheindlin listed below in n. 19. 16 See his Ibn Gabirol and “Ibn Gabirol’s Treatment of Sources in the Kether Malkhuth.”

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coloration of these devotional poems.17 That poetry is a serious source for intellectual history is clear from Elliot Wolfson’s illuminating studies of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s philosophical cosmogony and medieval Jewish notions of prophecy and visionary experience.18 Raymond Scheindlin elucidates the poets’ spiritual and scholarly concerns in a second anthology entitled The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul. Scheindlin too examines the impact of the Andalusians’ rich intellectual and cultural life on their synagogue poetry, but presents their creations ﬁrst and foremost as literary texts. His corpus is chosen with an eye to two central, intertwined themes: the covenantal bond between God and Israel and the relationship between God and the soul, both portrayed in amatory terms. One of the major innovations he explores is the transfer to the soul of imagery and language traditionally associated with the exile and redemption of the nation. While attentive to their outstanding stylistic and rhetorical features, Scheindlin clearly conveys the novelty and complexity of those poems that blend Islamic philosophical ideas and ascetic motifs with classical Jewish themes.19 The present study focuses on four of the major ﬁgures who wrote poems on the soul: Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021/22–ca. 1057/58), Moses Ibn Ezra (ca. 1055–after 1138), Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089/ 92–1164/67) and Judah Halevi (ca. 1075–1141). Boldly breaking with past practice, these poets now addressed many of their liturgical compositions to the soul, rather than to God. Even when they turned to God directly, they introduced themes and ideas that would have been unthinkable in an earlier age. At home in the Bible and rabbinic literature as well as Greco-Arabic philosophy and science, these authors mined their wide-ranging learning to envision the soul. Which intellectual traditions they drew upon in composing their poems, why they were so preoccupied with the idea of the soul that they kept returning to it, and how they intended a congregation of worshipers to understand their piyyutim are among the questions that we will address. 17 Mirsky’s assertions were ﬁrst made in a series of articles; these have been collected in From Duties of the Heart to Songs of the Heart. 18 See his “God, the Demiurge and the Intellect”; “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb”; and Through a Speculum that Shines, esp. pp. 160–87. 19 See also the following articles by Scheindlin: “Ibn Gabirol’s Religious Poetry and Suﬁ Poetry”; “Ibn Gabirol’s Religious Poetry and Arabic Zuhd Poetry”; and “Contrasting Religious Experience in the Liturgical Poems of Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi.”

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Andalusian Jewish Cultural Creativity Philology, Exegesis and Poetry Stimulated by their interaction with Islamic culture, Jewish scholars in medieval Spain cultivated new ﬁelds of learning and reshaped the traditional disciplines they had inherited from previous generations. In addition to its philosophical dimension, Andalusian Jewish culture developed novel exegetical techniques and a literary program that adapted Arabic poetics for purposes of Hebrew composition. Sound philological training was a prerequisite for several of the constituent disciplines of the Islamic curriculum, including exegesis and poetry, and the attention lavished by Muslim scholars on the Arabic language sparked a renewed interest in Hebrew among Jews.20 Because Arabic was the language of Scripture, Muslims ascribed a religious signiﬁcance to its esthetic virtues. The Arabic of the Qur n was seen as the epitome of eloquence. It could not be humanly duplicated, and so proved the divine origin of the Holy Book. Jews perceived in this theological principle of the Qur n’s inimitability (i j z al-qur n) a challenge to their own sacred language and turned to its rehabilitation.21 The revival of biblical Hebrew had been initiated by Saadya Gaon, who pioneered many of the disciplines that reached full maturity in eleventh-century Spain. In one of the two introductions to his ground-breaking dictionary, the Egron, Saadya laments the neglect of the language.22 This complaint would become a recurrent motif in Andalusian writings on grammar and poetics.23 Issued, as it was, by individuals deeply immersed in Hebrew letters, it reﬂected a renewed concern for the language, rather than universal neglect. Hebrew linguistic studies blossomed in Spain. Around the year 20 On the propaedeutic role of philological studies in the Islamic scholarly tradition see Chejne, Ibn azm: Mar tib al- ul m, 194 and 211–12; and Makdisi, The Rise of Humanism in Classical Islam and the Christian West, 120–29. 21 On the idea of i j z see von Grunebaum, A Tenth-Century Document of Arabic Literary Theory and Criticism, xiii–xxii and Boullata, “The Rhetorical Interpretation of the Qur n: i j z and Related Topics”; on its polemical applications see Rosenthal, “A Jewish Philosopher of the Tenth Century,” 155–57. 22 See Saadya, Ha egron, 156–60. 23 See Ma beret ha- anaq in Ibn Gabirol, Secular Poetry 1:375–81 and Septimus, “Maimonides on Language.” Even after there were no more professing Jews in Andalusia, Judah Al arizi (ﬂ. late 12th–early 13th c.) still complained that Arabic was luring Jews away from Hebrew; see the Introduction to his Ta kemoni, ed. Toporowsky, 8–15 and Brann, “Power in the Portrayal,” 3–4 and p. 16, n. 15.

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1000 a Cordovan Jew named Judah ayyuj made the critical discovery that all Hebrew words—like all Arabic words—derive from triliteral roots.24 Building on ayyuj’s ﬁndings, his compatriot Jonah Ibn Jana , born near the end of the tenth century, composed a series of works that culminated in a comprehensive grammar and a lexicon of biblical Hebrew.25 Ibn Jana ’s contributions were of lasting importance. Ironically, these treatises were written in JudeoArabic, rather than Hebrew. This was true of most prose works composed by Jews in Islamic lands—even commentaries on the Bible and detailed analyses of Jewish law. One reason, perhaps, was that Arabic was an established vehicle of scientiﬁc expression, with an extensive technical vocabulary that did not yet exist in Hebrew.26 Poetry, however, was composed exclusively in Hebrew, reﬂecting a move towards biblical classicism that answered the challenge of Arabic.27 The intensiﬁed interest in biblical Hebrew contributed to the emergence of a new variety of scriptural exegesis. Commentators steeped in grammatical study now focused on elucidating the plain sense of the biblical text. In sharp contrast with the homiletical methods characteristic of the rabbinic period, they employed philological techniques to explicate obscure vocabulary or unusual orthography. This approach is exempliﬁed by the commentaries of Abraham Ibn Ezra for whom grammatical precision is a means to interpreting sensibly and rationally: “First I shall investigate with all the power at my command the grammatical form of each word and then I shall explain its meaning to the best of my ability.”28 In the introduction 24

On the “Spanish Philologists” see Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 7:19–28. On ayyuj see Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, 1:386–91 and Tene, “Linguistic Literature, Hebrew,” esp. 1355–58 and 1380–81. For a detailed survey of medieval Hebrew linguistic usages, see Goldenberg, “Hebrew Language, Medieval.” 25 For the grammar, see Jonah Ibn Jan , Kit b al-luma ; medieval Hebrew translation by Judah Ibn Tibbon, Sefer ha-riqmah. For the dictionary (Kit b al-u l) see The Book of Hebrew Roots; translation by Ibn Tibbon, Sefer ha-shorashim. On Ibn Jana see Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, 3:12–29. 26 This is the explanation oﬀered by the twelfth-century translator Judah Ibn Tibbon; see the translator’s Introduction to Ba ya, ovot ha-levavot, ed. Zifroni, 56–57. See also his Introduction to Jonah Ibn Jan , Sefer ha-riqmah, 4–6. 27 On the linguistic preferences of medieval Jews, see: Blau, “Judaeo-Arabic In Its Linguistic Setting”; Rabin, “Hebrew and Arabic in Medieval Jewish Philosophy”; Halkin, “The Medieval Jewish Attitude Toward Hebrew”; and idem, “Judeo-Arabic Literature,” esp. 789–92. On the gradual displacement of Hebrew (and Aramaic) in prose writing, see Drory, The Emergence of Jewish-Arabic Literary Contacts, 41–54. 28 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Introduction to Peirushei ha-torah 1:10 (Heb. numeration),

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to his commentary on the Pentateuch, Ibn Ezra censures four exegetical methods that diﬀer from his own: (1) the diﬀuse method of commentators who interpolate long excursuses of a technical nature into their explications of a text; (2) the Karaite approach, which ignores the biblical interpretations furnished by the Oral Tradition; (3) the extreme allegorical method, which consistently overlooks the literal meaning of Scripture, and (4) the midrashic method. Despite his critique of unrestrained allegory, Ibn Ezra is not opposed to all ﬁgurative interpretation; he allows for non-literal interpretation in instances where the surface meaning of a verse seems to contradict reason. He also maintains that certain verses may have more than one meaning. His commitment to the plain sense does not, therefore, preclude the possibility of discovering a literal meaning and a more profound stratum of signiﬁcance in one and the same text. In his commentaries the non-literal interpretations are frequently of philosophical or theological import.29 In their study of the Bible, the Andalusians were sensitive not only to philological issues, but also to the esthetic aspects of biblical discourse, due to their preoccupation with the composition and appreciation of poetry. Moses Ibn Ezra, the foremost exponent of Hebrew poetics, composed a theologically motivated treatise on “the meaning of ﬁgurative and literal language” in the Bible (Maq lat al- ad qa f ma na ’l-maj z wa’l- aq qa). In the most substantial chapter of his better known work on poetics, Kit b al-mu ara wa’l-mudh kara (The Book of Conversation and Discussion), he provides an extensive catalogue of the embellishments of Arabic poetry (ma sin al-shi r), which he commends to the aspiring Hebrew poet. He cites not only medieval

trans. Jacobs, Jewish Biblical Exegesis, 16. Elsewhere Ibn Ezra compares a biblical exegete poorly versed in Hebrew grammar to a blind man who gropes at a wall, never knowing what will cause him to stumble (cf. Is. 59:10); see Simon, “Abraham Ibn Ezra: The Exegete and His Readers,” 41. 29 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, Peirushei ha-torah 1:1–10 (Heb. numeration). On the circumstances which call for non-literal interpretation see his critique of the Third Method (and the Fourth Method in the Introduction to his Shorter Commentary); cf. Saadya, Am n t 7:2. On Ibn Ezra’s exegesis see Friedlaender, Essays on the Writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra; Simon, “Ibn Ezra Between Medievalism and Modernism”; idem, Four Approaches to the Book of Psalms, 145–295; idem, “Ibn Ezra’s Harsh Language and Biting Humor—Real Denunciation or Hispanic Mannerism?”; and Sarna, “Abraham Ibn Ezra as an Exegete.” On trends in Andalusian biblical exegesis, see Sarna, “Hebrew and Bible Studies in Medieval Spain” and Simon, “The Spanish School of Biblical Interpretation.”

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Arabic and Hebrew poetry, but also biblical verses to illustrate these tropes and rhetorical ﬁgures.30 Andalusian Hebrew poetry reached its prime in the eleventh century. In the words of the chronicler Abraham Ibn Daud, the “bards” had begun “to twitter” in the previous century, but now they “burst into song.”31 At once learned and sophisticated, these authors produced a wide-ranging corpus of exceptional verse. In all of its facets, their abundant literary creativity bears the impress of their Islamic cultural milieu. Earlier Hebrew poetry was composed exclusively for liturgical purposes. While the Hispano-Jewish poets continued to write synagogue poetry, they made signiﬁcant departures from the classical tradition of piyyut.32 Equally striking was the radically new and diﬀerent variety of poetry that they cultivated side by side with their sacred verse. Inspired by Arabic courtly models, the new poetry was highly stylized and reﬁned, and it fulﬁlled an array of social functions quite remote from the world of the synagogue. It celebrated erotic love, the beauties of nature, the pleasures of wine-drinking and the joys of friendship. Although these themes frequently overlapped, they were explored in discrete genres, each with its own body of conventional motifs and stock images. As the poets were often dependent upon patronage for their livelihoods, their verse frequently served to promote a Maecenas’ public image or, when necessary, to tarnish it.33 The father of Hebrew secular or non-liturgical poetry was Dunash ben Labra (mid-tenth century), a former student of Saadya Gaon and a beneﬁciary of the powerful Cordovan courtier, asdai Ibn Shapru .34 His major innovation was the adaptation of Arabic prosody 30 Maq lat al- ad qa is still in manuscript: Jerusalem JNUL 8° 5701 (formerly Sassoon 412). See Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse; Sassoon, Ohel Dawid, 1:410–17; and Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory. For the rhetorical devices, see Moses Ibn Ezra, Kit b al-mu ara wa’l-mudh kara, 116b–161a (220–310); see also Pagis, ibid., 35–54; Dana, Poetics of Medieval Hebrew Literature, 106–88; and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 69–71 and 79–83. Cf. von Grunebaum, Tenth-Century Document, 1–55. 31 Sefer ha-Qabbalah, 102. The work was composed ca. 1160. 32 On the classical and Andalusian schools of piyyut and the relationship between them see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages; selected articles in Mirsky, Ha piyut; and Scheindlin, The Gazelle. 33 See Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 24–30; Schirmann, “The Function of the Hebrew Poet in Medieval Spain”; and Weiss, “Tarbut ha ranit ve-shirah ha ranit.” For a detailed catalogue of Arabic themes in Hebrew courtly poetry, see Schippers, Spanish-Hebrew Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition. 34 On Dunash see Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, 1:252–63; for his poetry see Dunash ben Labrat, Shirim. On Ibn Shapru see Ashtor, 1:155–227.

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and themes for the composition of Hebrew verse. This revolutionary undertaking elicited heated opposition from certain of his contemporaries, and even Dunash was ambivalent about the new, worldly content of his songs.35 By the eleventh century, however, Arabic-style Hebrew poetry had become the norm for the Andalusian school. The retention of Arabic prosody throughout the Andalusian period reﬂects the hold of Arabic esthetic ideals upon the Jewish literati. But the poets also saw their creativity as proof that the Hebrew language was as graceful and eﬀective a literary vehicle as Arabic. In reaction to the claims of eloquence made for the language of the Qur n, the poets selected pure biblical Hebrew as their preferred medium of expression.36 They strove to limit their poetic vocabulary to words and forms attested in Scripture, although they were not averse to using post-biblical motifs.37 In their pursuit of rhetorical embellishments, they exhibited a fondness for rare words and especially for hapax legomena. One of their favorite rhetorical devices was scriptural allusion, weaving bits of biblical verses and echoes of biblical diction into the fabric of their poems. The contrast between the new and original contexts of these verse fragments could heighten a poem’s eﬀect.38 This “mosaic style” also ensured that their verse was anchored in Scripture. Thus, even the most daring secular poems often were saturated with sacred motifs. In restricting themselves to biblical Hebrew, the Andalusian poets parted ways with the linguistic practices of classical piyyut. The tradition of Hebrew liturgical poetry that developed in Byzantine Palestine 35 See Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 30–34. While Dunash’s adaptation of Arabic quantitative meters and courtly themes was unprecedented, there are extant nonliturgical Hebrew poems which antedate the Andalusian period. These include polemical pieces, rhymed aphorisms, panegyrics and popular wine songs from Babylonia and Byzantine Italy; see Pagis, “Shirei yayin mi-lifnei tequfat sefarad,” in Poetry Aptly Explained, 18–28. Ezra Fleischer has argued that many Spanish innovations were anticipated in the East, and that it was Saadya who paved the way for the acceptance of Hebrew secular poetry; see, e.g., “Saadya Gaon’s Place in the History of Hebrew Poetry.” 36 See Brann, ibid., 23–58, who sees the use of biblical Hebrew not just as cultural nationalism, but as an attempt to validate the poets’ new cultural ideals in the eyes of their coreligionists. 37 See Sáenz-Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language, 219–245 (“The language of the Hebrew poetry of Spain”); Goldenberg, “Hebrew Language, Medieval,” 1616–1622 (“Spanish Hebrew Poetry”); and Septimus, “On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,” 609–11. 38 On the relevance of an allusion’s original context, see Pagis, Change and Tradition, 70–77.

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emerged from a fertile cultural matrix that produced a wide variety of rabbinic literature. Indeed, James Kugel has observed that, “in a sense, early piyyut is a genre of midrash, a liturgical poetry of public exegesis whose very language is infused with the conventions of rabbinic exposition.”39 Reﬂecting the world in which it evolved, piyyut draws freely upon post-biblical Hebrew. Its linguistic fabric is often tightly-knit, studded with neologisms and enigmatic epithets, or kinnuyim.40 Despite its richness, however, the language of early piyyut did not ﬁnd favor with the medieval practitioners and theorists of the new Arabicizing Hebrew poetry. Having internalized the esthetic ideals of their Islamic environment, literary ﬁgures like Abraham Ibn Ezra had little patience for the creations of pre-Spanish liturgical poets. “The piyyutim of Rabbi Eleazar Ha-Qallir have four objectionable features,” wrote Ibn Ezra in an extensive and biting critique of the foremost Palestinian payyetan of the classical period. “They are obscure . . . they are adulterated with ‘the language of the Talmud’ (i.e., post-biblical Hebrew) . . . they are rife with grammatical errors and . . . they are full of midrashic and aggadic material.” Ibn Ezra did not allow that what was opaque or unacceptable to him may not have been so for Qallir and his audience.41 Andalusian Hebrew poetry also diﬀered markedly from classical piyyut in its quantitative meters and rhyme schemes, inspired by Arabic models. Each Arabic meter is a ﬁxed pattern of long and short syllables, repeated in each verse (bayt) of a poem. The natural distinction between long and short syllables in Arabic does not exist in Hebrew, but Dunash adapted the scheme so that similar patterns might be applied to a line of Hebrew verse. Short syllables were pointed with a sheva na or ataf while any other vowel in combination with one or two consonants yielded a long syllable. This division of the language was rather artiﬁcial and provoked sharp criticisms 39 See Kugel, “On All of Hebrew Poetry,” 212, who cites Mirsky’s extensive study of the relationship between piyyut and midrash, “The Origins of the Forms of Liturgical Poetry.” 40 See Yahalom, Poetic Language in the Early Piyyut; and Zulay, Eretz Israel and Its Poetry, 413–527. 41 See Ibn Ezra on Ecc. 5:1; Yahalom, Poetic Language in the Early Piyyut, 11–19 and 183–96; idem, “The Poetics of Spanish Piyyut”; Malachi, “Avraham Ibn Ezra’s Criticism of Elazar Hakalir’s Poetry”; and Friedlaender, Essays, 117–18 and n. 3. Moses Ibn Ezra is more restrained in his criticism, observing that the language of early Andalusian piyyut is unadorned and, for the most part, does not follow the rules of grammar; see Kit b al-mu ara wa’l-mudh kara, 31b–32a (p. 60).

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from opponents. Disciples of Mena em Ibn Saruq, Dunash’s chief adversary, charged that the new prosody violated the rules of Hebrew grammar. In a polemical poem, Isaac Ibn Kapron accused Dunash of “destroy(ing) the Holy Tongue” by forcing Hebrew into “foreign meters.”42 Classical piyyut was largely free of metrical constraints, although the lines might be organized in rhythmic units featuring a certain number of accented words.43 Regular rhymes were introduced during the period of the payyetan known as Yannai (mid-sixth century?). Broad in conception, Yannai’s rhymes included ﬁxed words that recurred at the end of consecutive lines, as well as word-pairs linked by alliteration, or even by semantic parallelism—ka-sumim nemashshesh / ka- ivrim negashshesh (like blind men we grope)—or opposition—ohev / oyev (lover / enemy).44 End-rhymes based on similarity of sound were not restricted to ﬁnal syllables; they extended over complete words, two of whose three root consonants had to match—teQabbeLennah / teQaLLe ennah.45 From Yannai on, classical payyetanim used endrhymes to help delimit lines and strophes, and thus structure their piyyutim. Each strophe typically had its own rhyme (e.g., aaaa bbbb, etc.).46 By contrast, Andalusian poems adhered to one of two Arabic models—the monorhyme pattern of the qa da, or the system of alternating rhymes popularized by the strophic muwashsha , or “girdle poem,” in which each strophe had its own rhyme as well as a rhyme that remained constant throughout (e.g., aa bbbaa cccaa, etc.).47 42 See Schirmann, HPSP 1:43–48, esp. vv. 83–90; idem, HPMS, 129–39; Pagis, Change and Tradition, 105–40; and Allony, The Scansion of Medieval Hebrew Poetry, 101–16. 43 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 124–27. On “word-rhythm” in pre-classical piyyut, see pp. 82–88, and on the “quadripartite rhythm” (four rhythmic units, each with two accented words) in particular, see pp. 43–46. For an English summary of Fleischer’s observations on the formal features of Palestinian piyyut see Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, “Introduction,” esp. 14–19. See also Weinberger, Jewish Hymnography, 28–72. 44 See Yannai, Ma zor 2:35 and 1:173. 45 Ibid., 1:373. On several distinctive formal features of Yannai’s piyyut, see Spiegel, The Fathers of Piyyut, 379–86. 46 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 120–24; Yahalom, “Rhyme in the Early Piyyut”; Hruvshovski, “The Major Systems of Hebrew Rhyme from the Piyut to the Present Day,” 738–42, and idem, “Note on the Systems of Hebrew Versiﬁcation,” 61–62. 47 See Rosen-Moked, The Hebrew Girdle Poem (Muwashsha ) in the Middle Ages. On the origins of the muwashsha form, see Einbinder, “The Current Debate on the Muwashsha .” See also: Studies on the Muwa a and the Kharja, ed. Jones and Hitchcock, and Poesía Estróﬁca, ed. Corriente and Sáenz-Badillos.

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Under the inﬂuence of Arabic poetics, the poets developed a theory of rhyme. Dismissing Qallir’s rhymes as insuﬃciently euphonious, Abraham Ibn Ezra asserted, “Rhyme should be pleasant to the ear; one should sense that the end of this (word) matches the end of that (one).” For Ibn Ezra, the weakest type of rhymes were those in which only the ﬁnal vowel and consonant were identical (shOR / amOR); far more desirable were pairs of words whose penultimate and ultimate consonants, as well as their intervening vowel, matched (lishMOR / yigMOR).48 Where possible, he and his colleagues preferred rhyming syllables whose semantic sense contributed to the meaning of the poem.49 Mediated by secular poetry, these formal innovations penetrated Andalusian liturgical poetry. In its earliest stage, Spanish piyyut retained certain aﬃnities for the language and style of its classical predecessor. The generation of poets from Joseph Ibn Abitur (d. after 1024) to Isaac Ibn Ghiyath (d. 1089) was a transitional one, and alongside piyyutim of the new variety, they continued to compose in the older mode.50 By the time of Moses Ibn Ezra, however, the distinctly Andalusian style of piyyut had completely eclipsed the earlier tradition. The eleventh-century poets appropriated the muwashsha form for their sacred verse, despite its original associations with bawdy lyrics.51 They also employed quantitative meter, although many of their strophic piyyutim were composed in a more forgiving syllabic meter consisting of a ﬁxed number of long syllables only. (Short vowels were permitted, but did not count.)52 The ideal of biblical purism extended to devotional poetry as well, marking a sharp contrast with

48 See Ibn Ezra on Ecc. 5:1; Schirmann, HPSP 4:734–37; idem, HPCS, 678–79; and Hrushovski, “The Major Systems,” 732–38. 49 See Mirsky, “Mashma ut he- aruz be-shirat sefarad,” and “Mashma ut hearuz be-shirei ha- ezor,” reprinted as one article in Mirsky, Ha-piyut, 315–87. 50 See, e.g., the series of nineteen rehi im for the morning of Yom Kippur in Ibn Gabirol, The Liturgical Poetry, 1:149–203, which retain the use of kinnuyim and some post-biblical terms (see, e.g., p. 151, l. 33). Older genres are prominent in the corpus of Isaac Ibn Ghiyath; see, e.g., Ibn Ghiyath, Poems, 7–156. 51 Arabic and secular Hebrew muwashsha t were generally love songs, recited to musical accompaniment. They ended with a line in colloquial Arabic or Romance dialect which was often of a salacious nature; see, e.g., Judah Halevi’s “Ya alat en, ra emi levav” in Schirmann, HPSP 2:435–37, no. 175b. Maimonides, who was critical of the poetic enterprise altogether, singled out muwashsha t for condemnation; see his Commentary on the Mishnah, Avot 1:17. (For a revised view of his attitude towards poetry see Yahalom, “Maimonides and Hebrew Poetic Language.”) 52 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 349–55.

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the classical tradition. The Spanish payyetanim exploited biblical allusion to the fullest: by casting scriptural phrases in a new light, they could indirectly suggest novel interpretations of familiar passages or concepts. In Abraham Ibn Ezra’s poetry this implicit exegesis often parallels interpretations oﬀered in his Bible commentaries. Generic Transformations Although the origins of early piyyut remain obscure, this poetry appears to have functioned as an alternative to, or reformulation of the liturgy of the synagogue.53 It arose during a period when key elements of the liturgy—notably the benedictions—were ﬁxed, but when it was still acceptable for the individual leading the public prayers to replace other, more ﬂuid portions of the service with compositions of his own. Provided that they incorporated certain prescribed themes, these pieces could be quite expansive. Often the point of departure was the day’s Torah reading, but from there the payyetan—who was also the cantor—could launch into more homiletical treatments of his material. Each set of poems, or qerovah, in Yannai’s extensive cycle is a largely midrashic reading of the weekly Torah portion, as well as a reworking of the Amidah prayer.54 These literary creations were composite in nature. They consisted of a series of piyyutim corresponding to successive portions of the prayer being replaced. Each constituent piyyut led up to what has been styled a “liturgical station”—a blessing or biblical verse whose recitation was compulsory.55 As a rule, such sequences served as 53

This is Ezra Fleischer’s view. Now generally accepted, it has supplanted older speculations based on the aﬃnities between piyyut and rabbinic literature; see Fleischer, “Studies in the Problems Relating to the Liturgical Function of the Types of Early Piyyut” and idem, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 23–40. For an English summary of Fleischer’s seminal theory, see Stern, “New Directions in Medieval Hebrew Poetry,” 104–10. According to Fleischer’s periodization, pre-Spanish piyyut developed in three stages: (1) pre-classical (Palestine, ﬁfth c.–sixth c.); (2) classical (midsixth c.–eighth c.); and (3) Late Eastern (Babylonia, mid-eighth c.–eleventh c.); see Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 10–13, 79–80, 117–19, and 279–83. Fleischer stresses throughout that these chronological divisions are fairly ﬂuid, as older forms continued to be composed alongside newer ones. 54 The formal conventions governing these piyyutim are described brieﬂy in Mirsky, Reshit ha-piyyu , 74–85. For a discussion of Yannai’s qerovah on Lev. 4:1–2, see below. On the place of piyyut in the dialectical relationship between ﬁxity and spontaneity in prayer see Langer, To Worship God Properly, 110–87 passim. 55 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 47–58, and Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 19.

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substitutes for one of two central portions of the morning service: the Shema , together with the benedictions preceding and following it, and the Amidah. The composite genre associated with the Shema was called a yo er, after the benediction praising God for creating ( yo er) light and darkness. It comprised as many as seven or eight poems.56 The versiﬁed version of the Amidah was known as a qerovah. Qerovot varied in scope, according to the type of Amidah to which they corresponded: those for Sabbaths and festivals, with their seven blessings, or the weekday Amidah, with its eighteen blessings. The shape of the qerovah was also determined by the inclusion or omission of the Qedushah or Sanctiﬁcation. In Byzantine Palestine, the Qedushah was recited in the morning Amidah for Sabbaths and festivals, and the payyetanic version of such an Amidah came to be known as a qedushta. The Amidah of the other Sabbath and festival services did not include the Qedushah, and its corresponding piyyut is known as a shiv ata, after the prayer’s seven blessings.57 In the Andalusian period these composite forms broke down into smaller, independent genres, completing a process of disintegration that had begun in the East during the geonic period. The qerovah fell largely into disuse, although a modiﬁed form was retained in special prayer cycles, or ma amadot, composed for Yom Kippur.58 From the extensive yo er ﬁve or six self-contained genres emerged. Although still keyed to the benedictions surrounding the Shema , these poems no longer functioned as alternatives to the text of the liturgy. With the canonization of the synagogue service by the Babylonian geonim in the ninth and tenth centuries, the formulation of the prayers became ﬁxed and alternative texts were no longer tolerated.59 The Andalusian piyyutim therefore served as poetic embellishments inserted into the liturgy. Their themes frequently derived from the 56

See Fleischer, ibid., 219–31 and idem, The Yozer, 149–64. See Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 51–53; Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 68, 138–64, and 182–212; and Yannai, Ma zor 1:8–17. On the Palestinian rite, which diﬀered from the Babylonian, see Fleischer, Eretz-Israel Prayer and Prayer Rituals. For shiv atot which conform to the Babylonian rite see Elizur, Shiv atot. 58 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 369–85 and Ibn Ghiyath, Poems, 7–114. 59 On the evolution of the synagogue service see Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, esp. 187–218. On the use of alternative, mainly oral formulations in early worship and the broad liturgical guidelines set by the tannaim and amoraim, see Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, esp. 1–76. On the gradual process of liturgical standardization in the geonic period, see Hoﬀman, The Canonization of the Synagogue Service. For a synthetic treatment of the emergence of the prayerbook see Reif, Judaism and Hebrew Prayer, 122–52. 57

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central motifs of the prayers to which they were attached. Thus the ahavah genre, which was recited in connection with the blessing immediately preceding the Shema (“Blessed are You . . . who chooses His people, Israel, in love [be- ahavah]”), often spoke of divine love for Israel. Other Andalusian genres whose origins lay in the classical yo er were the (shorter) yo er, linked to the ﬁrst blessing before the Shema ; the ofan, tied to the passage in which the angels called ofanim (lit., wheeled, as in Ezekiel 1) glorify God; the me orah, associated with the blessing praising the Creator of the luminaries ( yo er hame orot); the zulat, inserted into the passage following the Shema that aﬃrms the truth and endurance of God’s word and ends with the phrase, “There is no god beside (zulat) You”; and the ge ulah, attached to the closing benediction of the Shema , “Praised be You, O Lord, Redeemer of Israel (ga al yisra el ).”60 To this inherited repertoire, the Spanish payyetanim added a new genre, the reshut. The term reshut has a double sense: it means “permission,” but also denotes something that is legally permissible, although not compulsory. Bearing both meanings in mind, scholars have related the genre to an earlier payyetanic practice of requesting permission to represent the congregation before God, prior to indulging in poetic elaboration of the statutory prayers.61 While the Andalusian reshut retained the prefatory function of these older supplications, it broke new ground with its subject matter and unprecedented attachment to liturgical sites preceding the Shema and the Amidah. The reshut served as an introduction to any one of three passages recited in the preliminary portion of the morning service for Sabbaths and festivals. The ﬁrst of these was Nishmat, a song of praise that opens with the words nishmat kol ay tevarekh et shimekha; “The breath of every living being shall bless Your name, O Lord.” The other two were Qaddish, or the doxology, which follows Nishmat, and Barekhu, the public call to worship. Barekhu leads into the main body of the service consisting of the Shema and its accompanying blessings and the Amidah—the two prayers that had been the focal point of classical payyetanic creativity. No genre of early piyyut had been based 60 See Spiegel, “On Medieval Hebrew Poetry,” 190–96 and Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 53–55. 61 See Fleischer, “The Emergence and Development of the Reshuiot” and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 144–48 and p. 255, n. 10.

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on the preliminary prayers, or Pesuqei de-zimra, because their status vis-à-vis the ﬁxed liturgy was still in ﬂux in the classical period.62 These passages were standardized and their recitation was made obligatory only at a relatively late date; certainly by Saadya’s time, Pesuqei de-zimra and Nishmat were integral to the ﬁxed liturgy.63 A sub-genre of the reshut to Nishmat, called the mu arrak, was also widely cultivated. The derivation of the name mu arrak is unclear. A passive participle of the Arabic verb meaning “to move,” it may refer to the formal features that distinguish this type of poem from the reshut.64 While the reshut was generally brief, metered and monorhymed, the mu arrak was longer, metrically ﬂexible and composed in the alternating rhyme scheme of the strophic muwashsha form. As they were attached to the same “liturgical station,” the reshut lenishmat and the mu arrak drew upon a common pool of thematic material. Many of these poems articulate collective hopes and fears, but the new type devote their full attention to the individual, his soul, and its relationship with God. As the products of an intellectual milieu far removed from the world that gave birth to the statutory prayers, these compositions betray a marked, though creative tension with the plain sense of Nishmat. The poets selected Nishmat as a point of departure for meditation on the soul, eﬀectively reinterpreting the prayer in accordance with their philosophical sensibilities. To this end, they emphasized elements of the text that would not strike a literal-minded reader as the most central, and reworked aspects that were not in harmony with their esthetic or theological principles. While neshamah signiﬁed either “breath” or “soul” to the framers of the liturgy, it could mean only one thing to medievals 62 During the Talmudic period, the morning blessings (Birkhot ha-sha ar) and preliminary passages of praise (Pesuqei de-zimra) belonged to “a kind of ‘middle ground’ between private prayer on the one hand and statutory public prayer on the other”; see Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 156–58. 63 See Saadya, Siddur, 118–20. Nishmat itself is quite old. It is designated in the Talmud as birkat ha-shir (“the blessing of song”), which concludes the Hallel recited at the Passover seder; see bPes. 118a. Even earlier, Nishmat apparently served as a conclusion to the morning recitation of the ﬁnal chapters of the book of Psalms, whose closing verse (“Let every thing that has breath praise the Lord”; Ps. 150:6) it paraphrases; see Heinemann and Petuchowski, Literature of the Synagogue, 9–13. 64 See Schirmann, HPSP 4:708; idem, HPCS, 683–84; and Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 399–400. See also Hazan, “The Signiﬁcance of the Piyyutic Term ‘Mu arakh’ [!],” who speculates that the genre was so called because it was recited at the point in the preliminary service when the precentor stepped forward from his place in the congregation to lead the prayers.

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convinced that the soul is the essence of man and the most important vehicle of praise for God. Another Andalusian favorite was the seli ah, or penitential poem. In function, seli ot occupied an intermediate realm between public and private prayer. They diﬀered from strictly liturgical poems, which were integrated into the regular synagogue service as introductions to speciﬁc prayers. The recitation of seli ot was reserved for penitential prayer sessions that were not technically obligatory, but highly commendable. These gatherings were held during the month of Elul leading up to the Days of Awe, and the Ten Days of Penitence between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when repentance was considered to be particularly appropriate.65 In order to minimize distraction and enhance the worshiper’s concentration, seli ot were recited in “vigils” (ashmurot), during the pre-dawn hours of the night. Although non-statutory, the service followed a ﬁxed pattern, interspersing the poems with specially selected biblical verses and Psalms and formulaic confessions of sins. The custom of rising before dawn to pray for forgiveness went back to geonic times and is mentioned in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah as a widely accepted and ﬁrmly established tradition.66 The rubric of seli ah subsumed several sub-genres. Of these, one of the most dramatic is the tokhe ah, or poem of reproof. An exhortation to repentance, the tokhe ah frequently addresses the individual,

65 In the classical period of Palestinian piyyut, the seli ah was originally part of the payyetanic reworking of the Amidah for fast days; see Fleischer, ibid., 71–72. 66 See Seder rav amram ga on, ed. Goldschmidt, Pt. 2, no. 117 (p. 145). Goldschmidt notes that the piyyutim and seli ot included in Coronel’s 1865 edition are a later addition; see his introduction, p. 19. See also: Saadya, Siddur, 264; Maimonides, MT, “Teshuvah” 3:4; and Assaf, Tequfat ha-ge onim ve-sifrutah, 267. See also Tobi, “Sa adia Gaon’s Attitude Towards Piyyut,” 238–39 and n. 15. The corpus of Sefardic seli ot is vast; see Schirmann, “Seli ot minhag sefarad.” An impressive array of Andalusian poems is also preserved in Siftei renanot, a collection of penitential prayers according to the rite of Tripoli and Jerba. In his introduction to the Livorno edition of 1816, Saul b. Moses Hakohen notes that among Spanish and North African communities there were diverging practices regarding the recitation of seli ot, which was generally accompanied by fasting. In some communities they were said throughout the month of Elul; in others, only between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. Opinions also diﬀered as to whether these customs should be observed on Sabbaths and the actual days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. See the sources he cites: Asher b. Jehiel, Hilkhot ha-rosh on bR.H., Ch. 4; Jacob b. Asher, Arba ah urim: ora ayyim, no. 581 (both of which record geonic practices); ibid., no. 602 and Joseph Karo, Beit yosef, ad loc.; Isaac bar Sheshet Perfet, Responsa, no. 512; see also Nissim Gerondi, iddushim, Rosh Hashanah 16a.

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admonishing him for his waywardness, reminding him of the transience of human life, and urging him to atone for his sins before it is too late. The tokhe ah almost always directs its words to man—or even to his soul—rather than to God. This rhetorical posture set it apart from many other Andalusian piyyutim, and all classical piyyutim, in which the payyetan addressed his prayer to God on behalf of the congregation of worshipers.67 As though no congregation were present, the medieval poet turned inward and confronted himself. New Concerns As prefaces to speciﬁc prayers, Andalusian piyyutim were grounded in traditional Jewish texts. At the same time, new ideas penetrated synagogue poetry. While Jewish law required that the ﬁxed liturgy remain unchanged, the poets broadened the meaning of the prayers with piyyutim colored by their medieval world-view.68 Solomon Ibn Gabirol and his successors took a strong interest in the philosophical culture of their day. In their capacity as religious thinkers, they were convinced that philosophy could be successfully coordinated with Judaism. As payyetanim, they were eager to incorporate such a synthesis into their devotional compositions, thereby conveying its vitality to the congregation of worshipers. Often, this undertaking meant reducing abstruse concepts to a more simpliﬁed form. Here the poets could take advantage of the diﬀusion of Neoplatonic ideas in popularized form that had begun centuries earlier.69 Perhaps the most signiﬁcant Neoplatonic concept was the notion that the soul was a creature of the divine world that descended into captivity in the body, whence it longed to return to its heavenly home. The drama of this scenario clearly appealed to the poets’ artistic sensibilities, for they made liberal use of the myth of the soul. But it was 67 See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 404. Even the classical tokhe ah, whose focus on human shortcomings set it apart from other seli ot, addressed itself to God; see Fleischer, ibid., 95–96. For an early Spanish tokhe ah addressed to the individual, see Joseph Ibn Abitur’s “Oy lakh basar va-dam” in Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 156. On innovations in additional types of seli ot, see Tanenbaum, “The Andalusian Seli ah and Its Individualistic Conception of Penitence.” 68 See Spiegel, “On Medieval Hebrew Poetry,” 189, and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 147. 69 This process of diﬀusion resulted in what Fritz Zimmermann evocatively calls “the conceptual koin of cosmopolitan neoplatonism”; see p. 110 of his review of David R. Blumenthal, The Philosophic Questions and Answers of H ter b. Shel m .

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not simply the plot that attracted them. The odyssey of the soul aﬀorded them a crucial vehicle for exploring the human relationship with God and provided a key to questions of individual piety and spirituality. Through their poetry they probed the implications of the human soul’s origin in the realm of the divine. They inquired into the modes of conduct beﬁtting an individual possessed of a divine soul. They explored the act of prayer as an expression of the soul’s aﬃnity with God. In the Neoplatonic motif of the soul’s yearning to return to its supernal home the poets found a potent symbol of the individual’s desire to draw nearer to his Maker. And in the bliss of the soul’s reunion with her Source they discovered a new way of understanding the concept of ultimate reward. Never before in Hebrew liturgical poetry had there been such a pointed focus on the individual. Classical piyyut spoke of the collectivity and its relationship with God, as did many Andalusian piyyutim, often with great poignance. That an entire class of poems should highlight the individual’s quest for God, however, was strikingly new. This development was part of a broader trend in Hispano-Jewish cultural and intellectual life, which must be viewed against its Islamic background. In the words of A.S. Halkin, . . . the impact of Hellenized Islam on Jewish culture . . . aﬀected Biblical exegesis as it did many other spheres of Jewish literary activity. The intellectual atmosphere favored the development of individualism, which was given expression in a personal lyric poetry such as had not previously existed in the Diaspora, and in a new emphasis on the central position of the individual in the realm of theology and creed.70

The growth of Jewish philosophy contributed greatly to the emergence of the individual. Immersed in Greco-Arabic thought, Jewish philosophers deﬁned man as a rational being and saw intellectual perfection as a necessary condition for achieving knowledge of God.71 These ideas were closely linked with a science of psychology that located the core of human identity in the rational soul. The philosophers construed man’s ultimate happiness as his soul’s attainment of metaphysical knowledge. Apprehension of the truths of the divine world in life would bring the soul to that world after death. There, in perpetual contemplation, close to the divine, the soul would enjoy

70 71

Halkin, “Ibn A n n’s Commentary on the Song of Songs,” 396. See Davidson, “The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation.”

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eternal bliss. Philosophy elevated the exercise of individual reason to a supreme value. Each human being had a potential for intellectual growth which could be fulﬁlled through one’s own agency. One was expected to investigate the nature of the soul as part of his prescribed regime of study. Philosophy thus promoted self-exploration and self-knowledge. While Jewish philosophers often articulated these ideas in the theistic and communal vocabulary of Jewish tradition, they emphasized the aspirations of the individual in a manner that had no parallel in rabbinic Judaism. An allied stimulus for the new emphasis on the individual derived from Islamic pietism. Both the zuhd tradition of asceticism and Suﬁ mysticism accentuated individual modes of piety. By the eleventh century there was a ramiﬁed corpus of Islamic pietistic writings, which included a genre of Arabic poems devoted entirely to ascetic themes. Stressing the transience of human existence, these zuhdiyy t urged the individual to renounce worldly temptations and dedicate himself to fulﬁlling God’s will.72 Pietistic manuals, such as the Kit b al-ri ya li- uq q all h (The Book of Observance of What is Due to God) of rith b. Asad al-Mu sib (“he who examines his conscience”; d. 857), emphasized the importance of serving God with one’s inner being as well as with external observances. This notion gained widespread circulation among Jews via Ba ya Ibn Paquda’s Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart.73 The yearning for communion with the divine was of paramount concern in Suﬁ mysticism. Although Suﬁsm often aspired to the ultimate dissolution of the self ( fan ) in unio mystica, the Suﬁ tradition was an important source for the ideal of withdrawal from mundane aﬀairs and solitary immersion in contemplation and introspection. Finally, our poets’ preoccupation with the individual was also due to their own sense of self. Each of the ﬁgures at the center of this study was a distinct personality who did not shy away from selfexpression in a variety of literary genres. Solomon Ibn Gabirol used his poetry to vent his annoyance with simple-minded opponents of his metaphysical studies, and Abraham Ibn Ezra spiced his Bible commentaries with sharp critiques of earlier grammarians and exe72

See Hamori, “Ascetic Poetry (Zuhdiyy t).” See Smith, Al-mu sib , esp. 86–110; Arnaldez, “Al-Mu sib ”; Vajda, La Théologie ascétique de Ba ya Ibn Paquda; and Goldreich, “Possible Arabic Sources for the Distinction Between ‘Duties of the Heart’ and ‘Duties of the Limbs.’ ” 73

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getes.74 A recent study ﬁnds strong expressions of individuality even in their courtly poetry, thereby revising the received wisdom that such genres were governed by convention.75 Like secular love poems, Andalusian piyyutim devoted to the soul do not necessarily reveal the unique biographical details of a particular poet. Yet their individual voice and intimate, introspective tone reﬂect an intense awareness of the self and one’s own spiritual yearnings.76 Literary Sources Devoted to the Soul 1. Scripture In probing the inner life of the individual, the poets drew upon literary sources reﬂecting diverse ideas about the origin, nature and destiny of the soul. They selected their materials with care and devised novel ways of reconciling seemingly conﬂicting viewpoints. Their immersion in biblical studies led to ongoing eﬀorts to coordinate their poetic and philosophical portrayals of the soul with scriptural verses. They searched intensively for biblical motifs and prooftexts and found many passages suggestive of their philosophical conception of the soul. Even where the surface sense seemed to be in tension with their readings, they believed they were eliciting its deeper meanings and potentialities. They focused especially on verses in which the terms rua , nefesh, or neshamah occurred. Connected etymologically with the notion of breath or wind, these terms overlap semantically. The most common among them, nefesh, bears a range of meanings in the Bible. Frequently it means soul, but it can also designate a living being, life, the self, a person, or the seat of the desires, appetites, emotions or passions.77 Like neshamah, nefesh is

74

See Simon, “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Harsh Language and Biting Humor—Real Denunciation or Hispanic Mannerism?” 75 See Pagis, Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance. On the limits of individualism in medieval society, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:214–16 and the references cited on p. 567, n. 3. 76 Scheindlin notes that these poems are more inward than individualistic; see The Gazelle, 147–48, but see also his “Contrasting Religious Experience.” 77 See Brown, Driver, Briggs, A Hebrew and English Lexicon of the Old Testament, 659–61.

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grammatically feminine, and the Andalusians resorted to the feminine gender in personifying this abstract principle.78 These thinkers found Genesis 2:7 particularly congenial to their philosophical outlook: “The Lord God formed man from the dust of the earth. He blew into his nostrils the breath (or: soul) of life (nishmat ayyim), and man became a living being (nefesh ayyah).” The verse suggested a dichotomy between body and soul which ﬁt well with the Neoplatonic view. Both components were God’s creations, but the apparent textual duality seemed to support the idea that the body is of coarse matter, while the soul is of a more reﬁned, spiritual substance, ﬂowing directly from God Himself—as if by exhalation.79 From other verses too they inferred the divine genesis of the soul.80 They found corroboration for the material nature of the body in Job 4:19, which describes human beings as “those who dwell in houses of clay ( omer), [and] whose origin is dust.” The Hebrew word omer became the medieval philosophical term for “matter,” so the verse seemed to encapsulate perfectly the notion of the body as the soul’s temporary, corporeal residence.81 In the biblical account of creation, the term nefesh is repeatedly paired with the adjective ayyah, yielding the phrase “living creature.”82 The juxtaposition suggested that the soul is the life principle, not only in man, but in all living beings.83 This identiﬁcation found conﬁrmation in Leviticus 17:11: “For the life (nefesh) of the ﬂesh is in the blood.”84 Other scriptural passages supported the view 78

The noun rua could be either feminine or masculine. Cf. the reading of Gen. 2:7 at Gen. Rab. 12:8, ed. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 106–107. 80 See, e.g.: Is. 42:5, 57:17; Ez. 37:14; Job 12:10 and Zech. 12:1. On the latter verse see Saadya, Am n t 6:1, p. 193 (trans. Rosenblatt, 235) and Abraham Ibn Ezra ad loc. 81 This interpretation of the verse is implied in Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s tokhe ah, “Shokhenei battei omer, lamah tis u ayyin”; see Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:213–15, no. 62 (= Schirmann, HPSP, 1:231–33, no. 93). For an explicit interpretation to this eﬀect, see Abraham Ibn Ezra’s comments on Job 4:19. 82 In addition to Gen. 2:7 see, e.g., Gen. 1:20–21, 24. 83 In Gen. 1:30 the nefesh ayyah or “breath of life” is ascribed to all animate creatures. Of course, Greco-Arabic philosophy also viewed the soul as that which gives life to the body. 84 Saadya resolves the seeming contradiction between Lev. 17:11 and Deut. 12:23 by explaining that the latter verse, which identiﬁes the nefesh with the blood, is an instance of scriptural metonymy or, in his words, “the common usage of language which designates an object by the name of the place in which it is located”; see Am n t 6:1, “Sixth Theory,” p. 196 (trans. Rosenblatt, 238–39). 79

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that death is the soul’s departure from the body. Thus Ecclesiastes 8:8 equated man’s inability “to hold back the lifebreath (likhlo et harua )” with the absolute lack of human “authority over the day of death.” Still other verses suggested that, upon death, the body returns to dust while the soul ascends to the spiritual realms.85 This scenario ﬁt well with the Neoplatonic ascription of immortality to the soul alone.86 Verses which referred to the vitality of the nefesh were sometimes interpreted in terms of the continued existence of the soul after death.87 I Samuel 25:29 became a regular prooftext for the medieval conception of spiritual immortality: “The life (nefesh) of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of life ( eror ha- ayyim), in the care of the Lord.”88 In their poetry the Andalusians often referred to the soul simply as ayyah, or “vital one.” They derived this epithet from such biblical verses as Psalm 143:3, in which the terms nefesh and ayyah work as synonyms. Such epithets or kinnuyim were a vestige of the classical tradition of piyyut, but the Hispano-Jewish poets used only those scriptural names for the soul which supported their philosophical ideas. They regularly called the soul ye idah (“singular one”), which like ayyah, was based on biblical parallelisms.89 The same terms were associated with the soul in rabbinic sources well known to the poets. One midrashic passage identiﬁes ayyah and ye idah as two of the ﬁve names for the soul.90 Another describes the soul as unique (ye idah) in the body, just as God is unique ( ya id) in His world.91 Philosopherpoets like Abraham Ibn Ezra saw in the term ye idah a reference to the separable soul of Neoplatonic psychology.92 Similarly, the Andalusians endowed the term kavod—which also occurs in parallelism with nefesh—with profound philosophical signiﬁcance. In Psalm 8:5–6 85

See, e.g., Ps. 146:4 and Ecc. 12:7. More speciﬁcally, the Neoplatonists ascribed immortality to the rational soul alone. Ecc. 12:7 was an important locus for Neoplatonic discussions of the fate of the soul; see: Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 110; Moses Ibn Ezra, Maq lat alad qa, p. 90, lines 10–14; and Abraham Ibn Ezra’s comment ad loc. 87 See, e.g., Ibn Gabirol’s use of Gen. 12:13 in v. 10 of “Shabbe i nafshi leurekh,” in Liturgical Poetry, 2:537. 88 On the eschatological interpretation of this verse implicit already in rabbinic sources, see pp. 74–75 below. 89 For the parallelism between nefesh and ye idah, see Ps. 22:21 and 35:17. 90 See Gen. Rab. 14:9, ed. Theodor-Albeck, 132–33. 91 Lev. Rab. 4:8, ed. Margulies, 1:96–98. These analogies between God and the soul reﬂect a Stoic theme; see Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” p. 201 and n. 33. 92 See his comments on Ps. 22:21–22. 86

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(“What is man . . . that You have made him little lower than the angels, and adorned him with glory [kavod] and majesty”) they saw an allusion to God’s gift of a divine soul whose origins lay in the angelic realm.93 Scriptural support for the notion that the soul is luminous was found in Proverbs 20:27, which declared that man’s neshamah is “the lamp of the Lord.”94 The philosophical theory of the soul was complex. While it associated the highest human ideals and loftiest goals with the spiritual part of man, it also ascribed lower functions to the soul. Drawing upon the ideas of Plato and Aristotle, Neoplatonic thinkers attributed diﬀerent types of activities to three hierarchically arranged aspects or faculties of the soul. At times, they even spoke of three discrete souls. They ascribed the exercise of intellect to the highest, or rational faculty of the soul. Less noble functions—such as emotions, desires and sustaining life through nutrition and reproduction—were attributed to the two lower aspects of the soul. The Neoplatonists believed that the rational soul was unique to man, while the intermediate aspect was common to human beings and animals, and the lowest aspect could be found in all living things, including plants. In its broadest sense, then, the soul was responsible for the entire spectrum of human appetites, emotions and insights.95 Although unsystematic, the Bible itself associated a variety of functions with the soul, so it was not hard for the Andalusians to ﬁnd intimations of their psychology in scriptural passages. Moses Ibn Ezra detected references to the appetitive aspect in Job 33:20 (“so that

93

See Ibn Ezra on Ps. 8:5–6. See, e.g., the use of this prooftext in Isaac Israeli’s Book on Spirit and Soul in Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, p. 109, sec. 4. For a very diﬀerent treatment of this verse, see the intricate rabbinic homily in bShab. 30ab; see Heinemann, Derashot be- ibbur bi-tqufat ha-talmud, 52–56. 95 The Neoplatonic sources which the Arabic-speaking Middle Ages inherited from late antiquity were characterized by a penchant for reconciling Platonic and Aristotelian ideas; see, e.g., Walzer, “Platonism in Islamic Philosophy” in Greek Into Arabic, 236–52. This tendency is evident in the writings of medieval Muslim and Jewish Neoplatonists, who adopted Plato’s tripartite division of the soul, but coordinated with it the Aristotelian faculties of the soul. Their syncretism is reﬂected in their use of the terms “appetitive” (shahw niyya) and “vegetative” (tab iyya / n miyya) interchangeably to denote the lowest aspect of the soul, and “irascible” (gha abiyya) or “animal” ( ayaw niyya) for the intermediate aspect. In general, they refer to the highest part or aspect of the soul as “rational” (n iqa). Such terminological eclecticism is particularly noticeable in Moses Ibn Ezra’s chapter “On the Three Souls” in his Maq lat al- ad qa. 94

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his life [ ayyato] abhors bread, and his soul [nafsho] dainty food”), the irascible aspect in Ecclesiastes 7:9 (“Don’t let your spirit [ru akha] be quickly vexed, for vexation abides in the breasts of fools”), and the rational aspect in Job 32:8 (“But truly it is the spirit [rua ] in men, the breath of the Almighty [nishmat shadday] that gives them understanding”) and Nehemiah 9:20 (“You endowed them with Your good spirit [ru akha ha-tovah] to instruct them [le-haskilam]”).96 Ecclesiastes 3:19–21 seems to attribute the same bleak fate to man and beast. Yet Saadya Gaon understood Ecclesiastes 3:21 to contrast the nobility of the human soul with the lowliness of the soul of animals, and Abraham Ibn Ezra saw in the verse a distinction between the immortality of the human soul and the transience of the lower souls.97 The noblest portion of man’s soul was not only the seat of the human intellect, but also the vehicle by means of which human beings might cling to God. A central verse in the liturgy, Deuteronomy 6:5, enjoins man to love God with all his soul.98 Other verses speak of passionately longing for God with one’s soul. Such expressions of devotion are prominent in the Book of Psalms, one of the most lyrical books of the Bible. The speaker in Psalm 42:2–3 conveys a profound desire to draw near to God: “Like a hind crying for water, my soul cries for You, O God; my soul thirsts for God, the living God. . . .” Similar imagery is employed in Psalm 63:2: “God, You are my God; I search for You, my soul thirsts for You, my body yearns for You, as a parched and thirsty land that has no water.” Psalm 84:3 evokes a soul overcome with longing for God: “My soul longs, indeed, it faints for the courts of the Lord; my heart and my ﬂesh cry out for the living God.” In their plain sense these verses speak of body and soul longing for the earthly courts of the Lord; to the philosopher-poets they conjured up the plight of the heavenly soul, yearning to break free of her corporeal fetters and return to her celestial source.99 The Andalusians found scriptural conﬁrmation of the special role of the soul in prayer. In I Samuel 1:15, Hannah describes her supplication—which became a paradigm for prayer in the post-biblical

96

Maq lat al- ad qa, pp. 93–95. See Am n t 6:2 and Ibn Ezra on Ecc. 3:21. And cf. Ibn Ghiyath, Kit b alzuhd, on Ecc. 3:18–22 (pp. 207–212). 98 See Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 3–13. 99 See, e.g., Moses Ibn Ezra, Maq lat al- ad qa, p. 89. 97

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period—as the “pouring out” of her soul before the Lord.100 Towards the end of the Book of Psalms, a cluster of verses exhort the soul to bless God. These verses became important models for the poets, as much for their content as for their rhetorical orientation.101 The ﬁnal verse of the Book of Psalms enjoins “all that breathes” (kol haneshamah) to praise the Lord. Here too, the philosopher-poets saw a reference to the soul.102 2. Rabbinic Literature Brief, often anecdotal discussions of the soul are interspersed throughout the two Talmuds and a vast array of midrashic compilations. These rabbinic opinions are remarkably varied and lack all pretense to systematic exposition. Their heterogeneity reﬂects internal developments, some of which were the result of an earlier contact with Hellenistic thought.103 In formulating their own views of the soul, the medieval Andalusians carefully took these sources into account. They were deeply committed and creative readers of the ancient canon who tended, however, to regard this material synchronically. From this rich variety of models they selected those which were most congenial to their philosophical sensibilities. Among the rabbinic formulations that seemed readily compatible with the Neoplatonic conception of the soul, the most welcome furnished a biblical vocabulary that meshed with the poets’ esthetic. One of their favorites drew a series of analogies between the human soul and God. It is found in the ﬁrst chapter of the Talmudic tractate Berakhot, as well as in several midrashic compilations.104 The 100

See bBer. 31ab. See below, p. 90. 102 Abraham Ibn Ezra closes his comments on the verse with an allusion to a Neoplatonic interpretation by Solomon Ibn Gabirol, who apparently read neshamah in Ps. 150:6 as a reference to the supernal soul. Levin explains Ibn Gabirol’s intention on the basis of Isaac Israeli’s statement that the individual whose soul attains union with the upper soul “will become one that exalts and praises the Creator for ever and in all eternity.” See his Mystical Trends in the Poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, 163, n. 50 and Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, pp. 25–26, sec. 4. 103 On changes in the attitudes towards body and soul in rabbinic literature, see Rubin, “From Monism to Dualism.” On rabbinic treatments of psychology and eschatology see also: Hirsch, Rabbinic Psychology; Kohler, Jewish Theology, 206–309 passim; Moore, Judaism in the First Centuries of the Christian Era, 1:445–59 and 2:279–395; and Urbach, The Sages, 214–54 and 436–44. 104 See bBer. 10a; Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer, Ch. 34 end; Deut. Rab. 2:37, 101

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passage addresses the exegetical diﬃculty posed by the ﬁve-fold occurrence of the phrase Barekhi nafshi et adonay (“Bless the Lord, O my soul!”) in Psalms 103 (vv. 1, 2, 22) and 104 (vv. 1, 35). The Rabbis explain that each of these admonitions corresponds to one of ﬁve respects in which the relationship of the soul to the body parallels that of God to the world. They conclude by aﬃrming that it is ﬁtting for the soul to praise God, a notion with particular relevance for the medieval payyetanim: To whom did David refer in these ﬁve verses opening with “Bless the Lord, O my soul”? He was alluding only to the Holy One, blessed be He, and to the soul. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, ﬁlls the whole world, so the soul ﬁlls the entire body. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, sees, but is not seen, so the soul sees but is not itself seen. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, nourishes the whole world, so the soul nourishes the entire body. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, is pure, so the soul is pure. Just as the Holy One, blessed be He, abides in the innermost precincts, so the soul abides in the innermost precincts. Let him who has these ﬁve qualities come and praise Him who has these ﬁve qualities.105

The Rabbis’ assumption that body and soul are diﬀerent in nature and function seemed consonant with the poets’ more pronounced body/soul dualism. Considerations of spirit versus matter probably did not enter into the rabbinic understanding of the soul’s purity and aﬃnity to God, but to a philosophically-inclined reader, these themes would have suggested the pristine, immaterial soul of Neoplatonism.106 The idea that the soul “ﬁlls” and nourishes the body and sees without being seen calls to mind the Neoplatonic view of the functions of the lower souls. And the parallel passage in Leviticus Rabbah 4:8 asserts that the soul outlives the body much as God will endure beyond the expected demise of the world. Here a medieval reader might see intimations of the Neoplatonic belief in the immortality of the soul. Hints of the poets’ dualistic conception of body and soul could be found in rabbinic sayings which emphasize the composite nature of human beings. A passage in Sifrei Deuteronomy contrasts supernal beings, whose bodies and souls are heavenly, with terrestrial “Va et annan”; Midrash Tehillim 103:4, ed. Buber, p. 217; and Lev. Rab. 4:8, ed. Margulies, pp. 96–98. The version in Lev. Rab. is the fullest elaboration. 105 bBer. 10a. 106 See Hirsch, Rabbinic Psychology, 154–55 and 163–65.

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creatures, whose bodies and souls are earthly. The speaker, Rabbi Simai, remarks that man is an exception to this rule: his soul is of heavenly origin, while his body derives from the earth. By observing the precepts of the Torah and doing God’s will, man can become like the celestial creatures. Otherwise, he becomes like the lower beings. Although Rabbi Simai does not say so explicitly, he adduces his prooftext (Psalm 82:6–7) in such a way as to imply that the heavenly creatures are immortal, while the earthly ones pass away.107 Thus his dictum could, with some imagination, be seen to reﬂect a dichotomy between man’s mortal, terrestrial body and immortal, celestial soul.108 In the Talmudic tractate agigah, a contrast is drawn between capabilities that human beings share with the ministering angels and functions that are common to man and beast. Of the former, two of those singled out would have been highly suggestive to the philosopherpoets: “They have reason like the ministering angels . . . and speak in the Holy Tongue like the ministering angels.” The Andalusians naturally associated speech with the capacity for reason: the medieval philosophers viewed speech as an external manifestation of the thought process—an idea reﬂected in their use of the Arabic term n iq and its Hebrew equivalent medabber to denote “rational.”109 In its identiﬁcation of eating and reproduction as activities shared by the beasts, the agigah passage would also have ﬁt well with the Neoplatonic delineation of the functions of the lower souls.110 Other rabbinic sources seemed to conﬁrm the Neoplatonic idea that a preexistent soul entered the human body. In one talmudic passage, the Rabbis list seven heavens and their contents. The seventh, which they call Aravot, contains, inter alia, “the spirits and souls 107 Sifrei Deuteronomy, sec. 306, ed. Finkelstein, pp. 340–41. Note that the immortality of the heavenly creatures is made explicit in Gen. Rab. 8:11, ed. Theodor-Albeck, p. 65. 108 That R. Simai did not infer the immortality of the disembodied soul from its heavenly origin may be seen from the sequel, in which he aﬃrms corporeal resurrection. 109 The equation is, of course, Greek in origin; logos denotes both the word by which the inward thought is expressed and the inward thought, or reason, itself. Reﬂecting on the advantages of speech, Ba ya Ibn Paquda calls man’s tongue “the pen of his heart, the interpreter of his soul, (and) the ambassador of his mind.” See Hid ya 2:5, p. 115 (Mansoor, 167). 110 See b ag. 16a. For parallel passages which introduce an additional contrast between the moral rectitude of celestial beings and the sinfulness of earthly ones, see Gen. Rab. 8:11 and 14:3, ed. Theodor-Albeck, pp. 64–65 and 128.

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which are destined to be created.”111 Elsewhere it is stated that “all the souls from (the time of ) Adam till the end of the world were created during the six days of Creation.”112 A variety of sources assert that the Messiah son of David “will not come until all the souls in Guf have been exhausted.”113 The northern-French commentator Rashi understood Guf to signify a treasury housing all the souls destined to be born, which were formed at the time of Creation.114 A midrashic parable compares the embodied soul with a princess married to a common villager. The Andalusians found intimations here of an irreconcilable incompatibility between body and soul: To what may the matter be likened? To a villager who married a woman of royal lineage. Though he bring her everything in the world, it is not esteemed by her at all. Why? Because she is a king’s daughter. . . . So it is with the soul; though you bring it all the luxuries in the world, they are nothing to it. Why? Because it is of heavenly origin.115

Seen through the eyes of a Neoplatonist, the disdain of the noble soul for worldly goods shows the superiority of the spiritual over the corporeal, and underscores the ideal of withdrawal from the sensual as a means of achieving heightened spirituality. The philosopherpoets also invested the ﬁgure of the king’s daughter with Neoplatonic signiﬁcance, because it suggested to them a genetic relationship between the soul and God.116 Elsewhere the soul is portrayed as an unfortunate temporary lodger within the body.117 In Neoplatonic writings, one of the corollaries of

111

See b ag. 12b. On the dating of this passage, see Urbach, The Sages, 238. Midrash Tan uma, “Pequdei,” 3; see also Urbach, ibid., 245. 113 See bYeb. 62a, 63b; bA.Z. 5a; bNid. 13b; and cf. Gen. Rab. 24:4, ed. TheodorAlbeck, p. 233 and Ecc. Rab. on Ecc. 1:6. See also Urbach, ibid., 237. 114 See Rashi on bA.Z. 5a; cf. his glosses on bYeb. 63b and bNid. 13b. See also Urbach, ibid., and p. 792, n. 80 and Hirsch, Rabbinic Psychology, 175–86 passim. For another suggestive passage see Gen. Rab. 31:13, ed. Theodor-Albeck, p. 287. 115 Ecc. Rab. on Ecc. 6:7, s.v. ve-gam ha-nefesh lo timmale. 116 See Septimus, “On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,” 608. 117 See Lev. Rab. 34:3, ed. Margulies, p. 777: ve-hada nafsha alivta lav akhsaneya hi gev gufa. On the probable Greek inﬂuence which this passage reﬂects see Hirsch, Rabbinic Psychology, p. 15. Strikingly, this negative characterization of the body, which is attributed to Hillel the Elder, follows directly after a passage in which he construes respect for the body as a religious obligation. There are also rabbinic plays on qerev-qever, which reﬂect Plato’s punning portrayal of the body (s ma) as a tomb (s ma); see Stein, The Relationship Between Jewish, 112

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such a negative perception of the soul’s sojourn in the body is the notion that death constitutes a release. Rabbinic thought generally aﬃrms the desirability of life, yet this motif—which ultimately derives from Plato—is also attested in classical Jewish sources. The Talmud relates the following exchange between Alexander the Great and the “elders of the south country”: — — — —

What should a man do in order to live? He should mortify ( yamit) himself. And what should a man do in order to die? He should vivify himself.118

Laconic and paradoxical, the passage clearly reﬂects an ascetic current of thought. Its prescription for deadening the bodily appetites as a means of attaining loftier goals appealed to subsequent thinkers who construed “true” life as the pursuit of intellectual or spiritual truths, free from the distractions of the corporeal passions.119 When the Andalusian poets portray the existence of the soul following its ﬁnal separation from the body, they often use imagery and motifs derived from classical Jewish sources. One of the rabbinic ideas they borrow is that the souls of the righteous are stored after death in a special repository.120 A variation on this theme describes the souls of the righteous as stowed away under the kisse ha-kavod, God’s Throne of Glory.121 By coordinating these motifs with their cosmological and theological speculations, the poets invest them with philosophical signiﬁcance.122 Alongside these passages, the poets confronted pronouncements which appeared to contradict their view of the soul. Rabbinic texts that portrayed man’s body and soul as an organic unit would have posed particular diﬃculties for them. Such sources often had recourse to the scriptural statement that God created man in His own image Greek and Roman Cultures, 243–44, who cites bM.Q. 9b; see also Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 9–10. 118 bTam. 32a, trans. Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 202. Cf. the paradoxical formulation which occurs at the end of Gen. Rab. 14:3, ed. Theodor-Albeck, p. 128: “If he sins, he will die, and if he dies, he will live.” 119 On the Platonic origin of the motif of “killing” the passions, and for a survey of medieval thinkers who invoke this idea, see Altmann and Stern, ibid., 200–202. Many of the same sources are adduced in Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 20–24. 120 See Sifrei Deuteronomy, ed. Finkelstein, sec. 344, p. 401 and Siphre ad Numeros, ed. Horowitz, sec. 139, p. 185. See also Urbach, The Sages, 238–41. 121 See bShab. 152b. 122 See below, pp. 65–68.

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(Genesis 1:26–27). By applying the concept of divine “image” or “likeness” to man as a whole, they emphasized the inherent dignity of the body, and thus conferred an equal status upon body and soul. Representative of this approach is Leviticus Rabbah 34:3, which recounts an exchange between Hillel the Elder and his disciples. When the master characterizes bathing in the bath-house as a religious obligation, his students register their surprise. He explains by way of an analogy drawn from contemporary life: If the statues of kings, which are erected in theaters and circuses, are scoured and washed by one appointed to look after them . . . how much more so (are) we, who have been created in the (Divine) image and likeness (obligated to do so). . . .123

Additional challenges to Neoplatonic beliefs were implicit in dicta which appeared to deny that the soul has an independent existence after the death of the body: “The body cannot exist without the soul, the soul cannot function without the body. . . .”124 Nor was the soul necessarily imperishable in the view of the midrashic authors. If God wished, it could be destroyed.125 One of the most dramatic anti-dualistic scenarios evoked the heavenly judgment of body and soul: Antoninus said to Rabbi Judah the Patriarch: The body and soul can free themselves from judgment. How? The body can say: It is the soul that sinned, for since the day that it left me, I have lain as still as a stone in the grave. And the soul can say: The body has sinned, for since the day that I left it, I have ﬂown in the air like a bird.

In response, Rabbi Judah oﬀers a parable: To what can the case be compared? To that of a human king who had a beautiful orchard full of ﬁne early fruit and who posted two watchmen there, one lame and the other blind . . . So the lame man got astride the blind man and they took the fruits and ate them. After a time, the owner came. Said he to them: Where are the ﬁne early fruits? Said the lame man: Have I then feet to walk with? Said the blind man to him: Have I then eyes to see? What did (the king) do?

123 Lev. Rab. 34:3, ed. Margulies, pp. 775–77. For additional rabbinic dicta reﬂecting this approach see Urbach, The Sages, 227. 124 Midrash Tan uma, “Vayyiqra” 11 as cited in EJ 4:1165 and Hirsch, Rabbinic Psychology, p. 208, n. 2. 125 See, e.g., Ecc. Rab. on Ecc. 12:7, cited in Hirsch, ibid., 164. See also bNid. 30b and bSan. 106b, cited in Hirsch, p. 156, n. 29.

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He put the lame man astride the blind man and judged them as one. Even so, the Holy One, blessed be He, takes the soul and casts it (back) into the body and judges them as one.126

For thinkers of a Neoplatonic bent, Rabbi Judah’s solution involved a diﬃculty. Where he portrayed the re-embodiment of the soul after death as a necessary prerequisite to man’s ﬁnal judgment and ultimate recompense, the Neoplatonic scheme viewed the reunion of the disembodied soul with her celestial source as the pinnacle of spiritual achievement. In availing themselves of such rabbinic sources, therefore, the Andalusians sometimes engaged in a process of reinterpretation which allowed them to reconcile the classical texts with their own eschatological beliefs. 3. Philosophical Sources Alongside their poetry on the soul, each of the ﬁgures at the center of this study composed prose works incorporating theoretical discussions of psychology. In The Improvement of the Moral Qualities (Ar. Kit b isl al-akhl q, Heb. Sefer tiqqun middot ha-nefesh), Solomon Ibn Gabirol relates the ethical qualities of the soul to their physiological foundations in the ﬁve senses and the four humors.127 Metaphysical issues are addressed in his seminal Neoplatonic treatise entitled Meqor ayyim.128 A central concern of this philosophical dialogue between master and disciple is the quest for knowledge, which Ibn Gabirol describes as the noblest undertaking in which an individual may engage: “Since the knowing part of man is the most important part, that to which he must aspire is knowledge.”129 As the seat of rational thought, the soul plays a pivotal role in this attempt to make 126 bSan. 91a–b, trans. after Urbach, The Sages, 223. For additional versions of the parable of the lame and the blind see: Lev. Rab. 4:5, ed. Margulies, pp. 88–90; Midrash Tan uma, ed. S. Buber, “Vayyiqra,” 12; and Mekhilta, “Shirata,” ed. Lauterbach, 2:21. The parable also occurs in Christian and Islamic literature; see Urbach, ibid., p. 786, n. 23; Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 454–57; and Meisami, The Sea of Precious Virtues, 319–20. 127 See Wise, The Improvement of the Moral Qualities. 128 Henceforth: MH. See: Munk, Mélanges de Philosophie Juive et Arabe; Kaufmann, Me qarim, 78–159; Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, 59–79; Pines, “Fragments of the Arabic Original of Fons Vitae in Moses Ibn Ezra’s Work Arugat Habbosem”; Guttmann, Philosophies of Judaism, 101–117; Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol; Sirat, A History of Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 68–81; Loewe, Ibn Gabirol. 129 MH 1:2.

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sense of the universe, of man’s place in it, and of the relationship between man and the Divine. For Ibn Gabirol, the attainment of knowledge is the means to achieving the supreme goal of human existence—the reunion of the soul with its supernal “Source of Life”: “What is the purpose of man’s existence? The cleaving of his soul to the supernal world . . . How do we attain this end? By means of knowledge and action. . . .”130 Meqor ayyim is unlike most other eleventh- and twelfth-century works of Jewish philosophy in that it dispenses with scriptural prooftexts. Only the Hebrew title recalls Psalm 36:10, but this echo would have been faint in its original Judeo-Arabic form, which was likely Yanbu al- ay t, judging from one of the brief citations preserved in Moses Ibn Ezra’s Maq lat al- ad qa.131 Indeed, there is virtually nothing in the work which reveals the religion of its author, so that for many centuries the Latin translation, Fons Vitae, eluded identiﬁcation as the work of a Jew.132 Ibn Gabirol is equally discreet about the identity of his philosophical sources, although there are important parallels between Meqor ayyim and a number of philosophical writings that were in circulation at the time of its composition. On the basis of these similarities, scholars have attempted to reconstruct Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical library, or what Jacques Schlanger calls the thinker’s “famille doctrinale.” This group of works includes The Theology of Aristotle and related Arabic texts based on Plotinus; The Epistles of the Ikhw n al- af ; and the writings of Isaac Israeli.133 As the pioneer of Jewish Neoplatonism in Spain, Ibn Gabirol set the tone for the entire school of Andalusian philosopher-poets. The psychological writings of Moses Ibn Ezra, Abraham Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi suggest that these authors shared Ibn Gabirol’s basic 130

Ibid. and 5:43. The Hebrew title is medieval; it occurs already in Shem Tov Falaquera’s thirteenth-century abridged translation. On its allusion to Ps. 36:10, see Goodman, Neoplatonism and Jewish Thought, 6. Aside from the brief quotations in Ibn Ezra’s ad qa, the Arabic original of MH is no longer extant; see Pines, “Fragments.” The text of MH has been preserved in a medieval Latin translation entitled Fons Vitae, ed. C. Baümker. The modern Hebrew rendition by Jakob Bluwstein is based on Baümker’s edition; see Rabbi shelomoh ben gabirol: sefer meqor ayyim. There is a complete translation into modern French by Schlanger, Salomon Ibn Gabirol, Livre de la Source de Vie (Fons Vitæ). See also the translations by Wedeck (partial) and Jacob (complete), both entitled The Fountain of Life. 132 See Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, 60–63. Cf. Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 39–41. 133 See Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 52–109. 131

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conception of the soul. It is reasonable to assume, therefore, that the philosophical sources available to Ibn Gabirol also informed the works of his successors. Meqor ayyim itself was a crucial conduit of psychological theory for the other Andalusians. Moses Ibn Ezra’s Maq lat al- ad qa concludes with a lengthy chapter “On The Three Souls” ( f ’l-nuf s al-thal th), which quotes liberally from Meqor ayyim, albeit without mentioning the work or its author by name.134 The Theology of Aristotle The writings of Ibn Gabirol and his contemporaries indicate familiarity with the inﬂuential work known as the Theology of Aristotle.135 One of the principal mediators of Neoplatonic thought to the Arabicspeaking world, the Theology was a product of the ninth-century translation movement that rendered Greek works of philosophy and science into Arabic.136 Although ascribed to Aristotle, the Theology is actually an expansive Arabic paraphrase of portions of Plotinus’ Enneads. It is one of three collections that rework parts of the Enneads in Arabic; the other two are the text ascribed to “The Greek Sage” and the Treatise on Divine Science.137 Taken together, these texts are apparently the remainder of what was at one time a complete Arabic version of Enneads IV–VI.138 Enneads IV is devoted in its entirety to matters of psychology. Its constituent treatises examine “The essence of the soul,” “Diﬃculties

134 See Pines, “Fragments” and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 393–403, and idem, “Gleanings from M eh Ibn Ezra’s Maq lat al- ad qa.” 135 The most recent edition of the Arabic text of the Theology is by Badaw in his Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab. An earlier edition by Dieterici, entitled Die sogenannte Theologie des Aristoteles apparently does not take account of all the manuscript evidence. For a comprehensive treatment, see Zimmermann, “The Origins of the So-called Theology of Aristotle.” 136 On the dating of the Theology, see Zimmermann, ibid., 135–36. Zimmermann notes that the Theology is one of a large number of pseudepigraphic works to emerge from this ambitious project of cultural transmission; see pp. 111–113. 137 For the precise portions of Plotinus to which these texts in their extant form correspond, see the indices in Henry and Schwyzer eds., Plotini Opera, 2:489–501. This volume contains an English translation of the Arabic Plotinus by Geoﬀrey Lewis. 138 See Zimmermann, “Origins.” The Theology actually exists in a short and a long recension; see Fenton, “The Arabic and Hebrew Versions of the Theology of Aristotle,” who puts forward the tantalizing hypothesis that the Longer Version represents “a recension of the work created by a circle of Jewish Neoplatonists” active in Egypt during the Fatimid period.

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about the soul,” “The immortality of the soul” and “The descent of the soul into bodies.”139 Thus, a substantial portion of the Theology is concerned with the soul, its origin in the supernal world, and its sojourn here below.140 Like the underlying Enneads text, the Theology is remarkably unsystematic.141 Yet, Jewish as well as Muslim thinkers were particularly attracted to the ﬁrst person account of heightened spirituality in the work’s opening treatise, beginning with the phrase, “Often have I been alone with my soul and have doﬀed my body. . . .”142 With its suggestion of mystical union and emphasis on contemplative activity as the means to achieving it, this passage appealed to mystics as well as philosophers of Neoplatonic orientation. Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Moses Ibn Ezra are two of the many thinkers who quote these lines.143 Some of the most salient motifs of Neoplatonic psychology are concentrated in this initial section of the Theology. The text recounts the ecstasy of withdrawal from the body and recognition of the soul’s supernal nature: “Then do I see within myself such beauty and splendour as I do remain marvelling at and astonished, so that I know that I am one of the parts of the sublime, surpassing, lofty, divine world, and possess active life.”144 The attainment of self-knowledge elevates the speaker into the divine world. Although unable to endure the overwhelming splendor of that world for long, he describes the experience in the most glowing of terms. He then reviews the opinions of several philosophers—notably Plato—on the descent of the soul, and underscores the necessity of studying the soul as a means of gaining insight into the lofty world from which she derives.145

139

See Plotinus, Enneads, vol. 4. For the prominence of the soul in the Theology as originally conceived, see the Preface appended by the work’s medieval editor and the list of topics which follows it; Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, 3–7 and 8–18. On the Preface, see Zimmermann, “Origins,” 121ﬀ.; on the “headings,” see pp. 126–8, and Appendices XI and XII. 141 See Zimmermann, ibid., 125–26. 142 This passage is adapted from Enn. IV, 8, 1–2; see Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, 22–25 (Lewis, 225–31). On the fate of the Theology in Islamic circles, see Zimmermann, 128 ﬀ. and Appendices XIV, XV and XIX. 143 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 191–92 and Fenton, “Arabic and Hebrew Versions,” 257–59 (Appendix I) and 259 n. 2 and idem, “Shem Tov Ibn Falaquera and the Theology of Aristotle.” 144 Trans. Lewis, 225. The speaker is Plotinus, although the Theology seems to have attributed the account to Plato; see Zimmermann, “Origins,” Appendix VI. 145 The necessity of the soul’s self-knowledge is a motif that ﬁnds expression in Andalusian piyyut; see Chapter 7. 140

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The speaker portrays the body not only as inferior, but also as detrimental to the soul’s attainment of its noble goal. Such hostility towards the body is evident throughout the Theology and grows out of a negative view of the material world which goes back to Plato.146 The Neoplatonic animus towards things corporeal is most frequently expressed through the image of the body as the soul’s prison.147 At the same time, however, the speaker credits Plato with a more benevolent attitude towards the body, regarding it as a useful instrument for the soul during its sojourn in this world, and attributing a deﬁnite purpose to the soul’s descent. Scholars have remarked on the coexistence of these seemingly contradictory positions. Arthur Hilary Armstrong emphasizes that Plotinus is aware of the tensions between the two strands of Plato’s thought, and notes that the more positive Neoplatonic view of the physical world results from the belief that it originates in a Creator who is good.148 John M. Rist observes that “On the one hand he (Plotinus) believes with Plato’s Phaedo that the soul is a prisoner in the body and that the material world is an inferior version of the intelligible; on the other he holds with Plato’s Timaeus that the material world is a product of God and the best possible world of its kind. . . .”149 The opening section of the Theology also reﬂects Plotinus’ distinction between the soul and the intellect. Unlike Aristotle, for whom reason is simply the highest faculty of the soul, Plotinus diﬀerentiates between the soul and reason.150 The rational soul occupies an intermediate position between sense perception, which is below it, and intellect, which is above it.151 In the Theology’s description of ecstasy, it is technically the intellect that cleaves to the upper world: “When I am certain of that (viz. the soul’s sublime nature), I lift my intellect up from that world into the divine world and become as if I were placed in it and cleaving to it. . . .”152 When the speaker is overwhelmed by that experience, he descends from the world of intel146 See, e.g., Theology IX (= Enn. IV, 7, 1–4), where the dualism of body and soul is made explicit. 147 Following its underlying Plotinus text, the Theology ascribes to Plato the view that “the soul is in the body only as a prisoner”; see Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, 24, line 6 (Lewis, 229); and cf. Plato, Phaedo, 64–68; 82–83. 148 See his Introductory Note to Enn. IV, 8 in Plotinus, Enneads, 4:394–5. 149 Rist, Plotinus: The Road to Reality, 112. Cf. Timaeus 41d–42e. 150 Compare De Anima III, 4 and 5 with Enn. V, 3. 151 See Armstrong’s synopsis of Enn. V, 3 in Plotinus, Enneads, 5:70. 152 See Lewis, 225.

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lect (al- aql ) to that of discursive thought and reﬂection (al-ﬁkr wa’lraw ya). These distinctions originate in Plotinus’ epistemological hierarchy, which ranks unmediated apprehension, of which only the intellect is capable, above discursive thought, which is characteristic of the soul.153 The technical distinction between soul and intellect becomes blurred in most Andalusian piyyutim devoted to the soul, although it is retained in more rigorous theoretical works like Meqor ayyim.154 The Theology, following Plotinus, envisions the upper world as a triad of hierarchically arranged hypostases. At the pinnacle stands the transcendent One, from which the Universal Intellect (Gr. nous, Ar. aql) and Universal Soul (Gr. psukh , Ar. nafs) emanate in descending order. The Universal Soul is generally portrayed as the source of all individual souls, but sometimes human souls are said to originate in the Intellect.155 Either alternative implies that man’s soul derives from the world of eternal and quasi-divine realities, and is therefore immortal itself. The notion that the universe is an organism, and that the human soul therefore has a cosmic counterpart, underlies the Neoplatonic belief that man is a microcosm. These paired motifs occur repeatedly in the works of the Hispano-Jewish authors.156 The Epistles of the Ikhw n al- af The Andalusians also appear to draw upon the Ras il ikhw n al- af or Epistles of the Sincere Brethren, composed anonymously by a group of Muslim philosophers active in Basra during the second half of the tenth century.157 Introduced into Spain early in the eleventh century, 153 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 166 and Husik, History, 65–66; but cf. Sorabji, Time, Creation and the Continuum, 137–56, who argues that even Plotinus’ non-discursive thought is propositional in nature. 154 See, e.g., MH 3:56. Armstrong observes that Plotinus himself at times minimizes the distinction between intellect and soul; see Plotinus, Enneads, 4:26. 155 Reﬂexes of these ideas in the prose and poetry of the Andalusian school are discussed in subsequent chapters. 156 See, e.g., Chapter 7. 157 For a recent study, see Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists. See also: Marquet, “Ikhw n a - af ”; Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines; and Goodman, The Case of the Animals versus Man. On the identity of these authors see Stern, “New Information About the Authors of the ‘Epistles of the Sincere Brethren.’ ” Evidence for Ibn Gabirol’s dependence upon the Epistles seems to derive primarily from the ﬁeld of astronomy, but scholars have adduced parallels in matters pertaining to the soul as well. See Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 94–97, esp. 96; Loewe “Ibn

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these essays clearly represent a synthesis of Greek philosophy and Islam, although their precise doctrinal orientation has long been a subject of dispute.158 Of encyclopedic scope, the ﬁfty-two Epistles (ras il) are organized under the rubrics of Mathematical Sciences, Natural Sciences, Psychological and Rational Sciences, and Theological Sciences. These divisions are not, however, ironclad. The mathematical section includes an “Epistle on Numerical and Geometrical Relation in the Reﬁnement of the Soul and The Improvement of The Moral Qualities,” while a chapter “On the Excellence of the Substance of the Soul” occurs in the “Epistle On the Saying of the Sages that Man is a Microcosm,” which is included in the section devoted to natural sciences.159 Psychological material of Neoplatonic inspiration is found throughout the work. The conception of the soul articulated in the Epistles closely resembles that of the Theology. Indeed, the Ikhw n quote verbatim from the Theology’s description of ecstasy.160 It was apparently this intermediate source which furnished Moses Ibn Ezra with his citation of the passage.161 Several of the images used in the Epistles have poetic counterparts in piyyutim devoted to the soul. Their evocation of the puriﬁcation, illumination and union of the soul, for example, features motifs also found in the Andalusian corpus, albeit in simpliﬁed form: When the soul awakens from the sleep of negligence and the slumber of foolishness and makes an eﬀort and throws oﬀ the shell and veil of the body, i.e. the natural habits, beastly dispositions, and foolish opinions, and is cleansed from material appetites, it escapes and experiences its resurrection, it becomes luminous, and its substance will be brilliant, and its gaze will be sharpened. It will then behold this spiritual form, contemplate the eternal substances of light, and behold the hidden things and secret mysteries

Gabirol’s Treatment of Sources in the Kether Malkhuth”; Ratzaby, “Shirat keter malkhut le- or ha-sifrut ha- aravit,” and Levin, Mystical Trends in the Poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, esp. 137–67. 158 On the introduction of the Epistles into Spain as related by id al-Andal s (1029–1070), see Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 94–95. Many scholars have emphasized their Ism l proclivities; see Netton, ibid., 95–104. 159 These are, respectively, Epistle Six in Ras il, 1:242–57 and Epistle TwentySix in Ras il, 2:456–79. 160 See Epistle Three in Ras il, 1:138 and Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists, 30. 161 See Fenton, “The Arabic and Hebrew Versions of the Theology of Aristotle,” 257 and Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 192.

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which cannot be perceived by the corporeal senses and by corporeal impressions. Having contemplated these hidden things, it will cling to them, even as the lover clings to the beloved. It will become one with them, as light unites with light, and will eternally remain with them in a bliss which speech cannot describe and which thought is unable to grasp.162

Exhortations to awaken from spiritual slumber are prominent in poems of the soul, particularly in the tokhe ah genre. And the soul’s return to her Source is frequently portrayed as a reunion of separated lovers, reﬂecting the philosophical idea that cosmic love moves each element of the universe with an ardent desire to return to its origin. Like the Ikhw n al- af , the philosopher-poets believed that intellectual love enabled the human soul to transcend the physical realm and unite with the eternal supernal truths.163 Isaac Israeli Most of the Andalusians’ philosophical sources were of Islamic provenance. A key exception was the corpus of speculative writings by the North African Jewish thinker and physician, Isaac Israeli (ca. 850–ca. 950). Israeli’s fusion of Neoplatonism and classical Judaism provided the philosopher-poets with an important precedent. His attempt to reconcile creation ex nihilo with emanation anticipated Ibn Gabirol’s, and his philosophical interpretation of traditional eschatological motifs found further elaboration in the poetry of the Andalusians.164 Particularly noteworthy is his equation of the return and illumination of the soul with the traditional concepts of Paradise and ultimate reward.165 There are also signiﬁcant parallels between his conception of purgatory and Ibn Gabirol’s portrayal of the soul’s purgation in Keter Malkhut.166 While it seems that Ibn Gabirol was 162 Epistle Twenty-Seven, Ras il, 3:9, trans. Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 186. On puriﬁcation, illumination, and union as the three stages of the soul’s ascent or “Upward Way” see Altmann and Stern, ibid., 185–95. On the resonance of these images for Judah Halevi, see Hamori, “Lights in the Heart of the Sea.” 163 See Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 49–51; Vajda, L’Amour de Dieu, 85–117; Netton, Muslim Neoplatonists, 43; and Ivry, “Neoplatonic Currents in Maimonides’ Thought,” 125. For the Aristotelian underpinnings of the idea of cosmic love, see Lloyd, Aristotle, 142–44. 164 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 171–80; see also Altmann, “Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli: A Reappraisal.” 165 See Altmann and Stern, ibid., 192–93. 166 See below, pp. 79–81.

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familiar with Israeli’s thought, it is diﬃcult to determine whether he had ﬁrst-hand knowledge of his predecessor’s writings.167 It is clear, however, that Moses Ibn Ezra was well acquainted with them. In his ad qa, he makes extensive use of Israeli’s Book of Deﬁnitions without citing it by name, and expressly attributes to Israeli the philosophical interpretation of I Samuel 25:29, which is repeatedly invoked by the Hispano-Jewish authors.168 Israeli appears to have had an impact on subsequent Andalusians as well.169 Ibn S n (Avicenna) The works of the Muslim philosopher, Ab Al al- usayn b. Abd All h Ibn S n (980–1037), aﬀorded the later Andalusians an additional source of psychological material.170 Treatments of the soul are included in Ibn S n ’s two major works, Kit b al-shif (The Book of the Cure) and Kit b al-ish r t wa’l-tanb h t (The Book of Remarks and Pointers), as well as in a variety of smaller treatises.171 Scholars have identiﬁed multiple strands of thought in Ibn S n ’s vast corpus: Kit b al-shif bears aﬃnities with the philosophy of his predecessor, Al-F r b , while Kit b al-ish r t wa’l-tanb h t—the product of a later period— betrays an attraction to Suﬁsm.172 Recent studies examine his rela-

167 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, xiii. Basing himself on a statement by Stern, Schlanger suggests that Ibn Gabirol could well have known Israeli’s works; see La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 97. 168 On Ibn Ezra’s quotations of Israeli see Altmann and Stern, ibid., 7; Stern, “Isaac Israeli and Moses Ibn Ezra”; Fenton, “Gleanings,” 288–91 and Philosophie et exégèse, 121, 150–52, 160–61 and 194. On the exegesis attributed by Ibn Ezra to Israeli see Altmann and Stern, 107–108. 169 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, xiii and 194–95. 170 Ibn S n ’s philosophical works apparently reached Islamic Spain at a relatively late date, although his exegetical writings may already have been known to Ibn Gabirol; see Pines, “Sh ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari,” 216 and idem, “ ‘And He called Out to Nothingness.’ ” 171 For a critical edition of the psychological portion of the Shif see Ibn S n , De Anima. Ibn S n produced a shorter work called Kit b al-naj t (The Book of Salvation); for an English translation of the section on the soul see Rahman, Avicenna’s Psychology. For a translation of Kit b al-ish r t see Goichon, Ibn S n (Avicenne): Livre des directives et remarques. For the titles of other psychological works by Ibn S n see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, index, s.v. “Avicenna: works.” See also Goodman, Avicenna, esp. ch. 3. 172 See Fakhry, A History of Islamic Philosophy, 128–62. But cf. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, who denies that there is any esotericism or mysticism in Ibn S n ’s corpus.

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tionship with Aristotelianism on the one hand, and Neoplatonism on the other.173 Signiﬁcant for our purposes is the fact that Abraham Ibn Ezra composed a philosophical allegory of the soul’s quest for wisdom which is closely modeled on Ibn S n ’s ayy Ibn Yaq n.174 Entitled ay Ben Meqi , Ibn Ezra’s rhymed prose account of a journey through the cosmic realms employs biblical diction and classical Jewish motifs to convey the ideal of the soul’s return to the Divine. Like Ibn Ezra’s psychological poems, it represents a synthesis of philosophy and classical Jewish theology.175 Ibn S n stands out among the Islamic philosophers as the author of a qa da on the soul. His poem evokes the plight of the soul using the symbolism of a bird who falls to earth from her lofty abode. Although she descends unwillingly and is trapped in a hunter’s snare, she grows accustomed to her bleak surroundings. Ultimately, the time comes for her to separate herself from “all that remains in the dust.” With the aid of knowledge ( ilm), she ascends to the top of a mountain, where she apprehends “that which sleeping eyes cannot see” and rejoices. The ﬁnal verses of the poem seek the cause and purpose of her fall, but do not resolve the question unequivocally.176 With its extended avian metaphor, desert imagery and somber closing reﬂections, this poem bears little resemblance to most of the Hebrew poems on the soul. Yet the very fact of its composition by an eminent Muslim philosopher may have inspired the HispanoJewish poets.177 173 See Gutas, ibid. and Morewedge, Neoplatonism in Islamic Thought, 41–125. Note that as part of his comments on the Aristotelian corpus, Ibn S n wrote glosses to the Theology of Aristotle, although he was skeptical of its Peripatetic provenance; see Gutas, 63–66 and 130–40. For the text see Badaw , Aris inda ’l- arab, 35–74 and Vajda, “Les notes d’Avicenne sur la ‘Théologie d’Aristote.’ ” 174 On ayy Ibn Yaq n see Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital and Goichon, Le Récit de ayy ibn Yaq n commenté par des textes d’Avicenne. 175 See: Abraham Ibn Ezra, ay ben Mekitz; idem, Reime und Gedichte, 167–200; idem, D w n, 139–47, 177–82; and Greive, Studien zum jüdischen Neuplatonismus, 104–75 passim. See also Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres or Ten?” 176 For an edition of the Arabic with French translation, see Carra de Vaux, “La Kaçidah d’Avicenne Sur L’âme.” For an English translation see Arberry, Avicenna on Theology, 77–78. For other published versions of the qa da and commentaries on it, see Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Litteratur, Supplementband 1:818, no. 35 and Mahdavi, Bibliographie, 195–97. On the signiﬁcance of the form as well as the content of Ibn S n ’s philosophical allegories, see Stroumsa, “Avicenna’s Philosophical Stories” and Heath, Allegory and Philosophy in Avicenna. 177 The soul is often depicted as a bird in Jewish speculative works; see Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Body and Soul,” 475–78. The metaphor occurs in Andalusian Hebrew poetry, but rarely in such a sustained fashion. Hebrew rhymed prose

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4. Earlier Piyyutim on the Soul Yannai’s qerovah on Leviticus 4:1–2 While the Andalusians possessed numerous prose sources for their theory of the soul, they lacked poetic precedents. Only a handful of earlier compositions are devoted to psychological themes. Among these is a qerovah by the classical payyetan Yannai. It is not clear that Yannai was known in Spain, but his verses on the soul aﬀord a remarkable antecedent to the Andalusian poems.178 Yannai’s qerovah did not result from philosophical stimuli; it emerged from a purely midrashic world. Indeed, portions of his piyyutim bear close resemblance to passages in midrashic compilations.179 The qerovah on the soul takes as its point of departure Leviticus 4:1–2, and shares a number of motifs with Midrash Leviticus Rabbah. Centering on the phrase nefesh ki te e a vi-shgagah (“When a person unwittingly incurs guilt . . .”), Yannai’s piyyut understands the term nefesh to refer to the soul, even though its plain sense denotes an individual. The same exegesis occurs in the fourth chapter of Leviticus Rabbah.180 Several of the themes of Yannai’s qerovah have midrashic counterparts which the Andalusians would ﬁnd congenial to their philosophical sensibilities. Its third section opens with an aﬃrmation of the soul’s praise for God. Referring to the soul as ayyah, Yannai links her praise to her survival of death. The juxtaposition of these two ideas is reminiscent of the analogies between the soul and God formulated in Leviticus Rabbah 4:8. Further parallels with this passage are evident in the lines that follow: She is unique ( ye idah) and You are unique ( ya id); Vital ( ayyah) is she, as are You ( ayy); versions of Ibn S n ’s allegorical Epistle of the Bird (Ris lat al- ayr) are extant only from the thirteenth century; see Levin, “The Gazelle and the Birds” and Yahalom, “The Function of the Frame-Story.” On the Epistle, see Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, 178–203 passim. 178 See Yannai, Ma zor 1:370–73 and Rabinowitz, Halakha and Aggada in the Liturgical Poetry of Yannai, 132–36. On his poetry see Lieberman, “ azzanut yannai,” Schirmann, “Yannai ha-payye an,” and Spiegel, The Fathers of Piyyut, 287–386. 179 See Halakha and Aggada, where Rabinowitz systematically traces parallels between Yannai’s qerovot and various Palestinian midrashim. While he often assumes Yannai’s dependence upon these texts, other scholars have preferred to view the two genres as parallel expressions of the same ideas; see, e.g., Schirmann, “Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian Hymnology,” 140 and 143–44, and Elbaum “Messianism in Pirqe de-Rabbi Eliezer,” p. 247, n. 4. 180 See Rabinowitz, Halakha and Aggada, 127 and 132–36.

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Undeﬁled ( ehorah), as You are pure ( ahor); Awake ( erah), as are You ( er).

The piyyut closes with an evocation of the divine treasury (o ar) in which souls are stored after death.181 When Yannai asserts that the soul remains alive after the death of the individual and that it is then housed in the divine o ar, he does not suggest that it remains perpetually disembodied, or that such a state would be desirable. He does not even appear to be conscious of his alternation between a “moderate dualism” of body and soul and a more uniﬁed conception of the human person.182 His qerovah is ﬁrmly rooted in classical rabbinic thought and his subsequent references to God as the omnipotent Redeemer who controls the fate of all souls are entirely in keeping with traditional eschatology.183 Saadya Gaon’s “Barekhi abberet ve- amme et” Saadya Gaon also devoted a full piyyut to the topic of the soul, “Barekhi abberet ve- amme et.”184 During the nearly three centuries between Yannai and Saadya, a succession of payyetanim produced an extensive and richly variegated corpus of liturgical poetry. “Barekhi abberet” cannot, therefore, be construed as an unmediated continuation of Yannai’s qerovah, even though much of Saadya’s poetry displays strong lines of continuity with the classical Palestinian tradition of piyyut which he knew well.185 As Ezra Fleischer has observed, Abraham Ibn Ezra’s censure of Qallir’s poetics could equally be applied to Saadya’s more obscure piyyutim.186 But “Barekhi abberet” 181

See Yannai, Ma zor 1:371–72, lines 8–11. Compare lines 3–6 with line 13 where, in accordance with the literal meaning of the biblical verse (Ez. 18:4), Yannai uses nefesh to refer to the human being as a whole. For the term “moderate dualism” see Rubin, “From Monism to Dualism.” 183 Yannai, Ma zor, 372–73, lines 13–18. 184 For the text see Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School, 111–114. 185 Critically edited texts of Saadya’s piyyutim may be found in Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School and Tobi, “The Liturgical Poems of Rav Sa adia Gaon.” On Saadya’s familiarity with Palestinian piyyut see Tobi, ibid., 62–68 and idem, “Sa adia Gaon, Poet-Paytan.” For a ﬁne, concise overview of Saadya’s poetic contributions, see Brody, The Geonim of Babylonia, 323–29. 186 See Fleischer’s review of Zulay’s The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School, 392. For examples of Saadya’s classical usages, see Zulay’s chapter on his style, pp. 13–40. Note that two of Saadya’s compositions were congenial to Ibn Ezra’s poetic sensibilities. In the same comment on Ecc. 5:1 he praises Saadya’s baqqashot for their biblical language, grammatical precision and their straightforward, non-homiletical formulations. For the text of the baqqashot see Saadya, Siddur, 47–81. 182

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is one of Saadya’s poems whose stylistic and substantive innovations paved the way for later Spanish developments.187 “Barekhi abberet” is the opening poem in “Barekhi nafshi,” a cycle of ten piyyutim written in the classical rahi genre. In classical piyyut, the rahi embellished biblical verses relevant to the theme of the day. Often, a complete piyyut was constructed around each of a chosen verse’s component words, or several of its constituent phrases, yielding a series of rehi im. These cycles generally formed part of a qedushta. There are no extant qedushta ot by Saadya, so it is not clear whether his “Barekhi nafshi” cycle was originally conceived as part of a larger work or as an independent composition.188 Either way, manuscript evidence suggests that “Barekhi nafshi” enjoyed wide popularity in the Middle Ages.189 Intended for recitation on Yom Kippur, this composite work is constructed around the ﬁrst four verses of Psalm 104, which Saadya further subdivides into ten segments.190 A double alphabetic acrostic, “Barekhi abberet” consists of twenty-two individually rhymed couplets that are structurally and semantically parallel to the ﬁrst of these segments (“Bless the Lord, O my soul”). Each couplet combines stable and variable elements: the imperative “Bless” and the direct object marker et are ﬁxed, while expansive phrases replace the terms “my soul” and “the Lord.”191 By varying these descriptive phrases from one couplet to the next, Saadya provides a counterpoint to the regularity of the recurrent formula, “Barekhi . . . et. . . .” Elements of the traditional and the novel converge in “Barekhi abberet,” which draws on classical rabbinic conceptions, as well as Neoplatonic ideas. Its very suggestion of Neoplatonic psychology is 187 See: Tobi, “Sa adia Gaon’s Attitude Towards Piyyut”; idem, Proximity and Distance, 65–109; idem, “The Liturgical Poems of Rav Sa adia Gaon,” 298–304; and Fleischer, “Saadya Gaon’s Place in the History of Hebrew Poetry.” Fleischer is critical of Zulay’s construct of a Saadyanic “school” of piyyut, comprising the Andalusians Joseph Ibn Abitur, Isaac Ibn Ghiyath and Solomon Ibn Gabirol. See his review and Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 325–27. 188 See Zulay, ibid., 106–107; Tobi, “The Liturgical Poems of Rav Sa adia Gaon,” p. 112 and n. 17 and Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 325. 189 See Tobi, “The Liturgical Poems of Rav Sa adia Gaon,” 110. “Barekhi abberet” inspired a series of Andalusian imitations; see Zulay, ibid., 102–104. 190 Saadya’s use of Ps. 104 for this purpose was apparently an innovation. Earlier rahi cycles ﬁguring in qedushta ot for Yom Kippur made use of the Torah reading for the Day of Atonement (Lev. 16:1ﬀ.) or I Chron. 29:11–13, a passage which speaks of God’s grandeur; see Tobi, ibid., 110. 191 See Tobi, ibid., 112–13.

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noteworthy in light of the more conservative view of the soul set forth in the sixth treatise of Kit b al-am n t. There Saadya adheres closely to ideas familiar from traditional sources, but ensures that his theory of the soul is consonant with such rationally demonstrated truths as the unity and eternity of God and the createdness of everything other than the Creator.192 The idea that the soul is created is of paramount importance; to postulate its preexistence would be to undermine the uniqueness of God’s eternity.193 According to Saadya, God not only creates man’s soul directly and in a speciﬁc substrate (the body), but also appoints a speciﬁed term (Arabic: ajal ) for the joint existence of body and soul. When this predetermined period has elapsed, God temporarily separates the soul from its body, ultimately reuniting them and recompensing them jointly.194 As deﬁned in Kit b al-am n t, the soul is a uniﬁed entity; Saadya rejects the notion of separate or even multipartite souls.195 The three faculties of discernment (quwwat al-tamy z), appetition (quwwat alshahwah), and irascibility (quwwat al-gha ab) inhere in the soul in potentia and become manifest only once the soul is joined with the body.196 Although it is epistemologically superior to the body, which it governs, the soul cannot act in isolation from it.197 Saadya’s psychology is free of the pointed body/soul dualism which in Neoplatonic or Gnostic-type systems results in viliﬁcation of the corporeal. He maintains that the body of man is not inherently impure, and refers to the soul’s separation from the body in neutral language, rather than in terms of liberation, calling it muf riqah (separation) and khur j (exit).198 The portrayal of the soul in “Barekhi abberet” is more ﬂuid and eclectic. The ﬁrst ten couplets underscore aﬃnities between the soul 192 See Am n t 6:1. On the ﬁrst four theories of the soul which Saadya mentions here in passing, see Am n t 1:3. 193 See Am n t 6:3, p. 199. 194 See Am n t 6:7, p. 213. The question of ajal and its theological ramiﬁcations preoccupied Muslim mutakallim n. For Jewish echoes of this debate see: Am n t 6:6, pp. 209–10; Weil, “Teshuvato shel rav hay ga on al ha-qe ha-qa uv la- ayyim”; and Weil and Schwarz, Teshuvat ha-rambam bi-sh elat ha-qe ha-qa uv la- ayyim. 195 Am n t 6:1, p. 195. 196 See Am n t 6:3, p. 201 and Saadya on Job 1:6 (Goodman, The Book of Theodicy, 154–55). 197 Am n t 6:3–4, pp. 199–201, 205. 198 On the inherent purity of the body, see Am n t 6:4, p. 206. For muf riqah see 6:3, p. 199; for khur j see 6:7, p. 210. The terms he uses to designate the joining of body and soul are also neutral.

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and God by means of etymologically related epithets: the soul, e.g, is sovereign (geveret u-moshelet) over the body as God is sovereign (gibbor u-moshel) over the world.199 Saadya derives the last six of these pairs from the analogies drawn in bBerakhot 10a and its midrashic parallels. Like these rabbinic sources, his piyyut conﬁrms that it is ﬁtting for the soul to praise God. Following its ﬁrst twenty verses, however, “Barekhi abberet” shifts away from parallels between the soul and God. Eschewing etymologically related pairs of phrases, Saadya now accentuates the contrasts between them.200 His initially sharp focus on the soul becomes more diﬀuse: now the main opposition is between the human predicament and God’s consistently restorative role.201 Indeed, the soul here is best construed as a synechdoche for the whole person. Ironically, the transition to a less dualistic conception of the individual occurs precisely when Saadya invokes the one term laden with Neoplatonic overtones: kelu ah, “imprisoned one.”202 Despite the Neoplatonic resonances of this epithet, the tension between body and soul is not central to “Barekhi abberet.” The ﬁrst half of the poem explicitly aﬃrms the superiority of the soul over the body, but does not speciﬁcally repudiate the corporeal.203 The hierarchy of body and soul that Saadya articulates is no more dualistic than that assumed in the rabbinic analogies he uses. These dicta 199 In one instance, etymological identity highlights a contrast: for Saadya the distinction between beru ah (created) and bore (Creator) is of doctrinal signiﬁcance; cf. Am n t 6:1, 3 and see Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School, 101, sec. 1. 200 Note that Saadya resumes the device of etymologically related epithets in the ﬁnal couplet, but that this pair does not underscore a similarity between the soul and God. Like beru ah/bore in vv. 3–4, the pair tekhunah (formed) and tokhnekh (the One who forms you) emphasizes the createdness of the soul. 201 Note the recurrent emphasis on suﬀering (vv. 21, 25, 27, 33, 35) and the human proclivity for sin (vv. 31, 37, 41). God’s role as Healer and Redeemer is highlighted in vv. 22, 24, 26, 28, 30, 32, 34, 36, 38, and 42. 202 V. 21 more or less bisects the poem, so the transition it marks is stylistic as well as substantive. 203 These are the terms Saadya uses to designate the body: guf (vv. 5, 9); golem (v. 15); kol ever va- ever (v. 13); kol ha- evarim (v. 19); and nadan (v. 43). A biblical hapax legomenon, golem carries with it the sense of “unformed matter.” Saadya juxtaposes golem with ayyati, presumably in order to stress the soul’s animating role. On the various senses of the term golem see Idel, Golem, 296–305. Nadan signiﬁes “sheath” and is used to designate the body in relation to the soul in bSan. 108a; cf. Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 471. Regarding his attitude to the body, note that Saadya rejects asceticism as the summum bonum in Am n t 10:4; cf. Goodman, “Saadiah’s Ethical Pluralism.”

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too attribute preeminence to the soul—perceived as the invisible animating force within man—but do not malign the body. References to eschatological issues in “Barekhi abberet” are few, but here Saadya’s juxtaposition of traditional motifs with philosophical themes is particularly tantalizing. On the one hand, he invokes the classical image of God as a compassionate judge, before whom the sinning individual is called to account: “Bless, O sinful one, the One who forgives your trespasses and bears your iniquities”; “Bless . . . your Judge; perhaps He will grant you grace and not judge you harshly.”204 On the other hand, there are intimations of Neoplatonic eschatology towards the poem’s close: “Bless . . . the exalted One who placed you (where you are), and to Whom you shall return, for with Him is the source of life.”205 Psalm 36:10, to which this verse alludes, would acquire a celebrated Neoplatonic sense with the advent of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, but even in “Barekhi abberet” it is diﬃcult to escape such a reading.206 Similarly, the poem’s ﬁnal couplet describes the soul as “the one who is formed from nothing, and who returns (to the upper world) as if she had never been in my body.”207 These suggestions that the soul enjoys a disembodied immortality contrast sharply with the eschatological views elaborated in the seventh through ninth treatises of Kit b al-am n t. There Saadya adheres fairly faithfully to rabbinic precedent, averring that the advent of the Messiah marks the redemption of Israel and paves the way for the Resurrection of the Dead. Resurrection consists of the reunion of souls with their bodies; body and soul are then requited together in the World to Come.208 These discrepancies between Kit b al-am n t and Saadya’s piyyut 204

See vv. 31–32 and 41–42. See vv. 39–40. 206 In his commentary on Psalms, Saadya does not remark on the phrase meqor ayyim, which he renders ma din al- ay h; see Saadya, Tehillim, 112. Elsewhere, however, he attributes eschatological signiﬁcance to the second half of the verse, interpreting “by Your light do we see light” as a reference to the supernal light which is the reward of the righteous in the world to come. See his commentary on Job 33:30, (Goodman, The Book of Theodicy, 354 and p. 144, n. 54); and Am n t 9:5, p. 272. 207 Vv. 43–44. Saadya appears to be contrasting the soul’s constantly changing state with God’s absolute immutability. Formed from nothing, the soul is then embodied, and ultimately leaves the body as if it had never resided therein. The possessive plural suﬃx on nedanay is apparently necessary for rhyming purposes. 208 Regarding the extent to which Saadya’s eschatology is rooted in rabbinic tradition see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 41. 205

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may be due to diﬀering contexts. In Kit b al-am n t Saadya is interested in deﬁning the soul precisely; consequently, he reacts to and rejects alternative views which he ﬁnds unacceptable.209 Presumably, this is why he does not allow for any ambiguities in his stance on the soul and its fate. But in his piyyut he does not feel constrained to present a doctrinaire scenario. Making selective use of Neoplatonic imagery while evoking a traditional picture of Judgment Day, he heightens the drama and urgency of his exhortation. The soul also ﬁgures in two stanzas of Saadya’s stirring tokhe ah, a work whose popularity among Eastern Jews is attested by the existence of a Judeo-Arabic translation and two commentaries.210 Opening with the words “Im leﬁ bo orkha urenu ba- adam ha-zeh ha-dal,” his tokhe ah consists of twenty-two stanzas of four lines, arranged in an alphabetic acrostic. Aside from the acrostic, the only formal feature lending structure to this unrhymed poem is a stress meter which divides every line into four feet, each with three stresses.211 Like tokhe ot from the classical period, “Im leﬁ bo orkha” laments man’s lowliness and propensity to sin. A refrain that recurs at the end of every other stanza urges that man “be mindful of (his trespasses), be ashamed, and be humble before his Maker.” Despite its focus on human folly, most of the poem is addressed to God. The four ﬁnal stanzas take the form of a collective confession and a plea for divine compassion in judgment.212 In addition, this closing section incorporates a brief exhortation to repentance which is addressed directly to the individual. From the period of Ibn Gabirol on, such a rhetorical orientation would become a hallmark of the Andalusian tokhe ah.213 The two stanzas concerned with the soul conclude Saadya’s catalogue of human shortcomings. Corresponding to the letter peh, the ﬁrst of these evokes the soul’s separation from the body and return 209 See Davidson, “Saadia’s List of Theories of the Soul.” On Saadya’s responses to doctrinal challenges generally, see Ben-Shammai, “The Exegetical and Philosophical Writing of Saadya Gaon.” 210 For the text see: Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School, 63–77; Brody, Miv ar ha-shirah ha- ivrit, 48–58; and idem, “A Toke ah by Saadya Gaon.” See also Tobi, The Liturgical Poems of Rav Sa adia Gaon, 32–40, and idem, “The Translation and the Commentary of R. Isaac Ben Samuel Ha-Sefardi.” 211 See Tobi, The Liturgical Poems, 33–34, who notes that tokhe ot from the classical period typically consist of lines of three feet each; see also Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 95–96. 212 On the basis of formal and substantive considerations, Tobi divides the poem into two sections; the ﬁnal four stanzas constitute Part Two. 213 See Tobi, ibid., 34–35.

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to her supernal home. Saadya anticipates several characteristic Andalusian usages, calling the soul’s home me onah, and applying the biblical phrases eror ha- ayyim (“the bundle of life”; I Samuel 25:29) to the reward of the deserving soul, and kaf ha-qela (lit., “the hollow of a sling”; ﬁg., purgatory) to the punishment of the wicked soul.214 But he does not dwell on the eternal bliss of the disembodied soul. Instead, he portrays the suﬀerings experienced by body and soul once they have been separated. His description of the isolated soul as an aimlessly wandering bird (line 132) recalls the soul’s selfdefense against the accusations of the body in the heavenly trial depicted in bSanhedrin 91a–b and Leviticus Rabbah 4:5. These accounts of the judgment of body and soul also underlie the ﬁrst line of the next stanza: “God calls to the soul on high, and to the earth to judge the ﬂesh” (line 137). Here Saadya draws on his rabbinic sources for an interpretation of Psalm 50:4 (“He summoned the heavens above, and the earth, for the trial of His people”) which identiﬁes the soul with the heavens and the body with the earth and, in a midrashic wordplay, transforms the collective trial of His people ( ammo) into the individual’s Day of Reckoning ( immo).215 As in the classical sources he cites, Saadya indicates that body and soul will be judged together and rewarded or punished as one.216 The Judgment of Body and Soul in Early Spanish Tokhe ot The trial scene in Leviticus Rabbah 4:5 inspired a series of early Andalusian tokhe ot for Yom Kippur.217 Joseph Ibn Abitur and Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul, two poets of the generation following Dunash and Mena em, elaborated fancifully upon the mutual recriminations of body and soul.218 Their tokhe ot built upon an older literary tradition, 214

See lines 129–30 in Zulay’s edition which numbers every hemistich. Cf. Am n t 6:7, p. 213; for la-din ammo/ immo see Lev. Rab. 4:5. Allusions to Ps. 50:4 also occur in tokhe ot on the judgment of body and soul by Joseph Ibn Abitur, Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul, and Ba ya Ibn Paquda; see below. 216 Cf. Am n t 6:5, p. 209, where he cites the parable of the lame and blind watchmen to prove that body and soul are a single agent. 217 For a discussion of these four tokhe ot, see Itzhaki, Man—the Vine; Death—the Reaper. Later practice included the two by Ibn Abitur and Ibn Mar Shaul among the seli ot recited during vigils (ashmurot) for Rosh Hashanah; see Seder Rav Amram Gaon, ed. Coronel, Pt. 2, 22 and 27. Ibn Gabirol’s poem appears in numerous ma zorim as a seli ah for the eve of Yom Kippur; see Davidson, Thesaurus, 3:447 (no. 881). 218 These two poets were active from approximately 970–1025. On Ibn Abitur 215

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for the judgment of body and soul featured in Palestinian penitential piyyutim as well as in Syriac poems going back to late antiquity.219 In his “Ammi shokhen ere ,” Ibn Abitur sets the scene with a frame narrative which conveys the aura of solemnity and awe surrounding God’s judgment.220 He describes God summoning the two defendants who, trembling, come together to face their Maker. Then, shifting to a dialogue format, he has the body open its own defense. The body pleads innocence, accusing the soul of leading him astray. The soul retorts that the body is the one who engaged in all kinds of base excesses. The body protests that without the soul it is merely clay. He contends that, since the soul left him, he has remained like an “inert stone” (v. 27), so that responsibility for sin cannot reside with him.221 The soul repeatedly reminds God that she was pure when He set her in the body, insisting that it was the body that deﬁled her and caused her to sin.222 This emphasis on the soul’s purity sounds Neoplatonic and suggests that the poet might have absorbed dualistic ideas that were in circulation. But body and soul are both described as God’s creations in the epigraph, . . . Ha-neshamah lakh le-vadakh ve-ha-guf po olakh, usah al amalakh, which links the poem with the Yom Kippur liturgy, and apparently served as a refrain recited after every third verse.223 Moreover, Ibn Abitur’s resolution of the argument reaﬃrms the traditional rabbinic idea of conjoint responsibility. After silently hearing out all of the charges and countercharges, God reunites soul and body and judges them as one.

see Schirmann, HPSP 1:53–56 and HPMS, 150–73. For the revised date of his death, previously thought to be sometime after 1012, see Goitein, “The Time and Circumstances of the Lamentations of Joseph Ibn Abitur on Palestine” and Fleischer, “A Historical Poem.” On Ibn Mar Shaul see Schirmann, “Yi haq ben mar sha ul ha-meshorer mi-lusena” and idem, HPMS, 144–50. 219 Indeed, the poetic dispute between personiﬁed objects was an ancient literary genre, popular throughout the Middle East. On the Syriac poems see: Brock, “The Dispute Between Soul and Body,” and “Syriac Dialogue Poems,” and Drijvers, “Body and Soul: A Perennial Problem.” Drijvers’s speculation that the Syriac poems were recited during Holy Week penitential practices is intriguing, in light of what we know about the recitation of seli ot. For the early piyyut, “Ayom ve-nora om he- asor,” in which the topos occurs, see Ormann, Das Sündenbekenntnis des Versöhnungstages, 9–14 and 24–27, and Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 24–34. See also Spiegel, “Mil emet ha- evarim,” in The Fathers of Piyyut, 387–426. 220 For the text see Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 154–55. 221 Cf. Lev. Rab. 4:5. 222 See vv. 19, 24, and 30. 223 See also v. 37. The phrase, “Ha-neshamah lakh . . .” already occurs as a refrain in the piyyut published by Ormann; see pp. 9–10 and 24.

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A similar scenario is played out in Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul’s tokhe ah, “Ha-kol yif adu ve-yirhu.”224 As in Ibn Abitur’s tokhe ah, each line of Ibn Mar Shaul’s piyyut consists of three feet, and ends with a scriptural citation.225 Unlike Ibn Abitur’s poem, in which the three feet of each line have their own rhyme (aaa bbb ccc, etc.), Ibn Mar Shaul’s piyyut resumes the rhyme of the ﬁrst line at the end of each subsequent line (aaa bba cca, etc.). In practical terms this means that the biblical citations must not only be contextually relevant, but must also share the same rhyming syllable. The poet rises to the challenge, even managing to incorporate a double entendre. Describing the body’s approach to the bench, he quotes Proverbs 7:23: ve-lo yada ki ve-nafsho hu.226 In its biblical context, the phrase refers to a man who is unaware that what he is doing will incur guilt. Here it has the added sense that the body is oblivious to its impending reunion with the soul. In Ibn Mar Shaul’s rendition, body and soul lack all humility. Called ramim (“the haughty ones”), they are even more arrogant than their counterparts in Ibn Abitur’s piyyut, who also refuse to admit their guilt.227 From the moment he introduces the ﬁrst defendant, Ibn Mar Shaul indicates that his defense will be in vain.228 And after God has heard out both pleas—here termed “reproaches” (v. 22)— He not only returns the soul to the body, but “casts (the composite being) down to the ground and humbles him.”229 Immediately following this harsh treatment, however, we are assured that God will not punish them as severely as their deeds warrant, since He is gracious and merciful.230 Like Ibn Abitur, therefore, Ibn Mar Shaul remains faithful to his rabbinic sources in his portrayal of ultimate judgment and recompense. The drama of the midrashic trial also appealed to two Andalusian payyetanim of the eleventh century. Solomon Ibn Gabirol and Ba ya 224

For the text see Schirmann, “Yi haq ben mar sha ul,” 507–508. The tripartite lines common to all these poems are characteristic of earlier tokhe ot composed in the East; see Schirmann, HPMS, 318 and 321–22, and Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 24–34. 226 See v. 11. 227 In v. 18 the soul brazenly reproaches God for embodying it, although in the following verse, it seems to acknowledge having overstepped its bounds. 228 See v. 11. 229 V. 22. The ﬁnal foot alludes to Dan. 8:7, which depicts the humbling of an arrogant nation (symbolized by a two-horned ram). 230 V. 23. 225

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Ibn Paquda were transitional ﬁgures who continued to cultivate older genres alongside the newer type of devotional poems. Both composed tokhe ot on the judgment of body and soul which retain the structural framework of the earlier piyyutim.231 Although based on a rabbinic topos, both later poems betray hints of Neoplatonic conceptions. In Ibn Gabirol’s “She ar alay be- edim ve-qinyan” the soul states its case in almost Gnostic terms, accusing God of imprisoning it (v. 10), and deriding the body as a putrid carcass (v. 11). Ibn Gabirol also reverses the order of the speakers of the earlier tokhe ot, allowing the body the ﬁnal word in refuting the soul’s argument. The eﬀect, however, is to shift the responsibility for sin onto the soul, thereby granting it primacy. The suggestions of Neoplatonism in this tokhe ah give only an inkling of the elaborate philosophical theory which informs Ibn Gabirol’s oeuvre. A hint of Neoplatonism may also be detected in Ba ya’s tokhe ah, “Be-yom le-mishpa eqare,” which characterizes the soul as “the pure one, emanated from the (divine) light” (v. 10). Towards the poem’s close the soul implores God to let her return to her “place,” presumably her abode in the supernal world (v. 19). God rejects this request, replying that both body and soul are guilty and must be chastised. The response is in keeping with the poem’s midrashic model. But it also implies that re-embodiment or resurrection constitutes a form of punishment for the soul. Ba ya thus seems to have worded his poem so as to allow for a Neoplatonic reading between the lines. Like the tokhe ot of Ibn Abitur and Ibn Mar Shaul, those of Ibn Gabirol and Ba ya work with a rabbinic narrative which ascribes equal status to body and soul and reﬂects a belief in corporeal resurrection. Yet both later poems intimate a new approach to the relationship of body and soul and their fate after death. Samuel Hanagid Samuel Hanagid (993–1056) was the ﬁrst truly outstanding member of the Andalusian school.232 Boldly exploiting the full range of sec231 For Ibn Gabirol’s “She ar alay be- edim ve-qinyan,” see Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:31–34. For Ba ya’s “Be-yom le-mishpa eqare” see Itzhaki, Man—the Vine; Death—the Reaper, 22. There seem to be some minor problems with Itzhaki’s text which is reproduced from Yedidya Peles’s unpublished 1977 Tel Aviv University dissertation. It would appear, e.g., that el in v. 11 should be emended to al. 232 See Samuel Hanagid, Diwan; Scheindlin, Wine, Women and Death; Weinberger,

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ular genres and motifs introduced by Dunash, he had none of his predecessors’ reservations about Arabic-style Hebrew poetry.233 His bacchic and erotic poems are audacious and his versiﬁed accounts of military exploits are unique. Samuel’s verse is replete with biblical allusions, and many of his poems betray religious sensitivity, yet he did not write in any recognized liturgical genre.234 Drawing on biblical wisdom literature and Arabic gnomic poetry, his two extensive collections of aphoristic poems, Ben Mishlei and Ben Qohelet, proﬀer pithy political advice and universal truths about mortality. But Samuel does not seem to have been interested in sustained philosophical study. His boasts of proﬁciency in “Greek learning” (tevunat ha-yevanim) and the “wisdom of the Arabs” ( okhmat ha- aravim) have long been adduced as proof of his accomplishments in metaphysics as well as the mathematical and linguistic sciences. Yet, there is little, if any, evidence in his poetry of the Neoplatonic ideas which his contemporaries found so compelling.235

Jewish Prince in Moslem Spain; and Cole, Selected Poems. The secondary bibliography on the Nagid is extensive; see, e.g., Schirmann, “Samuel Hannagid, the Man, the Soldier, the Politician”; idem, HPMS, 183–256; and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 47–58. 233 Dunash’s wine and nature poem, “Ve- omer al tishan” has been singled out as an illustration of his ambivalence towards Arabic courtly ideals; see Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death, 40–55 and Brann, ibid., 32–33. 234 Samuel did, however, designate several of his poems celebrating military or political victories for recitation in a ritual context; see Brann, ibid., 55 and 185, n. 150. In a recent study, Joseph Yahalom suggests that much of Samuel’s devotional poetry has gone unnoticed because it is not obviously for synagogue use, and closely resembles secular love songs; see “The ‘Supplications’ and the ‘Sung Prayers’ of Samuel Ha-Nagid.” 235 See Levin, Shemu el ha-nagid: ayyav ve-shirato, 39; cf. Schirmann, “Samuel Hannagid, the Man, the Soldier, the Politician,” 99 and Weinberger, Jewish Prince in Moslem Spain, 5–6 and p. 135, n. 35. For the boast, see “Shemuel qaddemah yoshev qeruvim” in Schirmann, HPSP 1:120–24, esp. vv. 24–26, where he also vaunts his reputation for eloquence, suggesting that he has in mind the broad knowledge and literary reﬁnement of the ad b. Levin also cites Moses Ibn Ezra, who says—in Halper’s free translation—that Samuel incorporated okhmat ha-ﬁlosoﬁya into his poetry. But from Halkin’s more precise rendering, it is clear that the reference is to Greco-Arabic gnomic sayings (amth l al- arab . . . wa- ikam al-fal sifa); see Kit b al-mu ara, 62–63. The quote from Ibn ayy n at the end of Schirmann, “Samuel Hannagid, the Man, the Soldier, the Politician” seems to restrict Samuel’s skill in “the learning of the ancients” to the mathematical sciences (astronomy, geometry, logic). The responsum of Hai Gaon supposedly criticizing the Nagid’s philosophical activity has long been considered spurious; see Lewin, Otzar ha-ge onim, Tractate agigah, 65–66; Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 8:68 and p. 311, n. 22; and Graetz, “Ein pseudepigraphisches Sendschreiben, angeblich von Hai Gaon an Samuel Nagid.” Note too that the Epistles of the Ikhw n al- af were

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Samuel’s approach is evident in his poetic meditations on death. Particularly telling are the cycle of nineteen elegies for his brother Isaac and the lyrical complaint entitled “Ha-nim a be-re ay mar levavo le-marotay,” which was written towards the end of his life.236 As one who had enjoyed the recognition and material wealth which accrued to him in this world, Samuel viewed death with trepidation. Repeatedly emphasizing its ﬁnality, he laments the inescapable decay of the grave in gruesome detail.237 His only solace derives from the thought that death may be reversed through resurrection. Although he is anxious about rising from his grave to stand in judgment, it is precisely this traditional scenario that oﬀers him hope of an afterlife.238 He is thus a staunch adherent of classical rabbinic eschatology, seemingly unimpressed by the spiritual concerns that enﬂamed his younger contemporary, Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Neoplatonism led Ibn Gabirol to view death not as the cessation of life, but as a veritable release. Genuine life would begin only when the soul had withdrawn from the body and was free to contemplate the true realities of the upper world. His passion for drawing near to that “sublime, surpassing, lofty, divine world” marked a new chapter in medieval Hebrew poetry.

introduced into Spain during Samuel’s lifetime, yet there is no evidence that he was aﬀected by their pervasive Neoplatonism. 236 See Samuel Hanagid, Diwan, 1:236–50 and 121–24 (= Schirmann, HPSP 1:125–29). For a translation of “Ha-nim a be-re ay” see Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 298–301; for a discussion see Pagis, Hebrew Poetry of the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, 16–18. On the elegies for Isaac see Levin, The Lamentation Over the Dead, 95–106. 237 See, e.g., “Ha-nim a be-re ay,” vv. 20–24 and 32–36 (= Schirmann, lines 39–48 and 63–72), and Bregman, “The Realistic and the Macabre in the Poetry of Samuel Ha-Nagid.” 238 See “Ha-nim a be-re ay,” vv. 15–19 (= Schirmann, lines 29–38) and vv. 37–42 (Schirmann, lines 73–84). See also “Ha-kha-yamim be artem ba-meradim,” Diwan, 1:230–31, vv. 12–14.

CHAPTER TWO

GOD, MAN, AND THE UNIVERSE: SOLOMON IBN GABIROL’S KETER MALKHUT The ﬁrst Jewish philosopher in Spain, Solomon Ibn Gabirol (1021/ 22–ca. 1057/58) was also a poet of exceptional skill.1 His impressive poetic corpus preserves topoi and genres favored by earlier generations, but also features brave new departures in form, style and substance. Following in the footsteps of his sometime patron, Samuel Hanagid, he brought linguistic virtuosity and rhetorical polish to the courtly genres of wine, love, and nature verse. Like much of the Nagid’s oeuvre, Ibn Gabirol’s lyrical pieces express a strong sense of individuality and do not easily ﬁt into ﬁxed literary categories. But where his predecessor’s personal poems reﬂect worldly ambitions, Ibn Gabirol’s reveal an ardent commitment to metaphysical study. Indeed, the incorporation of speculative ideas into these poems was one of his most signiﬁcant innovations. Ibn Gabirol was a transitional ﬁgure in sacred verse as well. He continued to cultivate the extensive, composite forms, opaque style and peculiar neologisms of classical piyyut, while pioneering the independent genres and clear biblical diction that became the hallmarks of Andalusian devotional poetry. As in his secular verse, much that is new in his piyyut results from the interplay of philosophy and poetry. Moses Ibn Ezra would record that Ibn Gabirol “trained and reﬁned his natural dispositions, abandoning earthly things, and inculcating his soul with higher things after he had cleansed it of its deﬁling cravings, so that it was receptive to the subtleties of the philosophical sciences.”2 The spiritual quest is central to his poems 1

Ibn Gabirol’s death date is uncertain; the dating ca. 1057/58 is based on the testimony of Moses Ibn Ezra and other medievals that he died in his thirties; see Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 23 and Wise, The Improvement of the Moral Qualities, 6–7. The Bodleian ms. of the latter work bears the date 1068 Seleucid, but some scholars now think that the scribe may simply have referred to the Seleucid era out of habit. This would mean that Ibn Gabirol died after 1068; see the entry on Oxford Bodleian ms. Hunt. 382 (Neubauer 1422/2) in Beit-Arié and May, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library: Supplement to Vol. I, 237. 2 Moses Ibn Ezra, Kit b al-mu ara 36b–37a (p. 68). Ibn Ezra’s complete comment is translated, following Halkin’s Hebrew, in Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 18–20.

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that mesh philosophical motifs with traditional liturgical themes. Focusing on the individual in an unprecedented fashion, these works attest to their author’s great learning and religious sensitivity. Neoplatonism led Ibn Gabirol to portray man as a composite— an immortal, inherently pure soul linked to a perishable, passionridden body. His piyyutim devoted to the soul explore the relationship of the individual to his Maker, conveying startling new interpretations of what it means to serve and praise God, and a novel understanding of what is meant by ultimate recompense for living a life of piety. These innovations set trends that would dominate Andalusian piyyut through the middle of the twelfth century. Isaac Ibn Ghiyath, Levi Ibn Altabban, Moses Ibn Ezra, Judah Halevi, Joseph Ibn addiq and Abraham Ibn Ezra all wrote devotional poems that reﬂect the impact of Ibn Gabirol’s new approach. They too hoped to communicate to the worshiper a spiritual vision based on a synthesis of contemporary philosophical culture and their classical Jewish heritage. They found superb models in Ibn Gabirol’s piyyutim on the soul and his Keter Malkhut.3 Keter Malkhut is a monumental composition in rhymed prose that combines sublime praise for God with philosophical contemplation and penitential themes.4 In his epigraph Ibn Gabirol describes the work as his own private prayer, but expresses the hope that it will serve as a source of inspiration and instruction for others: “May this

3 For David Kaufmann’s brief but pioneering study of a philosophical poem by Ibn Gabirol (1899), see his Me qarim, 160–65. For the most up-to-date overview of Ibn Gabirol’s life and poetry see Schirmann, HPMS, 257–345. See also the following recent monographs: Breuer, The Liturgical Poetry of Salomon Ibn Gabirol; Katz, Openwork, Intaglios and Filigrees; Levin, Mystical Trends; Loewe, Ibn Gabirol; and the articles collected in Malachi, Studies in the Work of Shlomo Ibn-Gabirol. 4 The Hebrew text of Keter Malkhut (henceforth KM) can be found in Schirmann, HPSP 1:257–285 and in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:37–70. See also Zeidmann’s well-annotated edition with a brief but useful introduction. An English translation by Zangwill was published together with the Hebrew text in Ibn Gabirol, Selected Religious Poems, 82–123. For additional translations see Lewis, The Kingly Crown; Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 105–162; Slavitt, A Crown for the King; and Cole, Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol, 137–95. On the comparative merits of several of these complete English versions see Tanenbaum, “On Translating Keter Malkhut.” Secondary scholarship devoted exclusively to KM is fairly limited; the following studies should be noted: Schirmann, HPMS, 331–45; Loewe, “Ibn Gabirol’s Treatment of Sources in the Kether Malkhuth”; Ratzaby, “Shirat keter malkhut le- or ha-sifrut ha- aravit,” and Pines, “ ‘And He Called Out to Nothingness and It Was Split,’ A Note on a Passage in Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut.” See also Liebes, “Rabbi Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Use of the Sefer Ye ira and a Commentary on the Poem ‘I Love Thee.’ ”

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my prayer aid mankind/The path of right and worth to ﬁnd.”5 That it was inﬂuential is attested by several imitations and by the work’s eventual inclusion in the Sephardic rite for the Day of Atonement.6 But Keter Malkhut transcends the limits of prayer as traditionally conceived. This carefully constructed ediﬁce is an unprecedented attempt to present within a hymnic framework a comprehensive picture of man’s place vis-à-vis God and the universe. Keter Malkhut deﬁes precise classiﬁcation. By the strict canons of Andalusian poetics, its lack of a ﬁxed rhyme scheme and identiﬁable meter disqualiﬁes it as a poem. From a purely formal point of view, its elevated rhymed prose is closer to the literary technique of the maq ma, a form popular in Hebrew belles lettres from the late twelfth century.7 Yet, its biblical diction, ﬁgurative language, and deeply religious sentiments lend it a profound aﬃnity with those devotional poems that adhere more rigorously to the precepts of Andalusian prosody. The precise relationship to the ﬁxed liturgy that Ibn Gabirol envisaged for Keter Malkhut also requires clariﬁcation. Although the work was ultimately accorded a role in public worship, it was apparently intended for use in private meditation. Its closing eight cantos comprise a series of confessions and petitions which, although not necessarily autobiographical, are intensely personal in tone. Yet, its indeterminate liturgical status is not an isolated phenomenon. Andalusian Hebrew poetry is commonly divided into liturgical and nonliturgical compositions, but there is a signiﬁcant body of devotional and meditative verse that lies between these two well-deﬁned realms. Such works seem to be private prayers, but are thematically and

5 Bi-tﬁllati yiskon gever/ki vah yilmad yosher u-zekhut. The translation is Zangwill’s; see Ibn Gabirol, Selected Religious Poems, 82. 6 Moses Ibn Ezra’s extensive poem, “Be-shem el asher amar” is modeled on KM; it in turn inspired an imitation by Meir Halevi Abulaﬁa. See Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, 248–52, and Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems 2:438. On imitations inspired by the confessional portion of KM, see Ratzaby, Migginz Shirat Hakkedem, 322–331 and “Millu im le-‘ha-vidduy be-kheter malkhut.’ ” There is not yet any sign of KM in the Yom Kippur service as outlined by the fourteenth-century Castilian, David ben Joseph Abudarham in his siddur, but it is included in Sephardic ma zorim from the early sixteenth century. According to Elbogen, it was incorporated into the Ashkenazi rite in the seventeenth century, under the inﬂuence of Lurianic mysticism; see Jewish Liturgy, 294. 7 Scholars have also noted certain stylistic and substantive similarities with Saadya’s two baqqashot (private meditations in elevated prose); see: Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 317; Schirmann, HPSP 4:703 and HPMS, 331–35; and Ratzaby, Migginz Shirat Hakkedem, 322–26.

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often stylistically indistinguishable from poems composed for the service of the synagogue.8 The theoretical content of Keter Malkhut springs from contemporary scientiﬁc investigation and philosophical speculation and can, in part, be correlated with Meqor ayyim.9 But unlike Meqor ayyim, Keter Malkhut integrates philosophical conceptions into a devotional context, directly translating speculative motifs into a more traditional, familiar idiom. In this respect it resembles Ibn Gabirol’s shorter, philosophically colored piyyutim. These shorter poems do not, however, aspire to a systematic exposition of technical ideas. Thus, Keter Malkhut furnishes a crucial key to understanding their philosophical content. Keter Malkhut is tripartite in structure.10 Part One consists of nine cantos of expansive praise for God. Introducing the work’s major themes, the ﬁrst canto extols God’s splendor, majesty, and sovereignty over all His creations; acknowledges the recompense He has stored up for the righteous; and meditates on the riddles of His eternity and existence, mystery and transcendence. Each of the remaining eight cantos develops these encomia, reverently expounding on a particular divine attribute: Unity, Existence, Life, Grandeur, Strength, Luminosity, Divinity, Wisdom.11 Part Two, the most substantial of 8 The concept of a private prayer which operates outside the orbit of the prescribed liturgy can be found already in the writings of Saadya Gaon; see the prefatory remarks to his two baqqashot in his Siddur, 45–46. Like Saadya, Ba ya Ibn Paquda accompanies the supererogatory devotions he composes with instructions for their use; see his Hid ya, 10:6. Unfortunately, the intended functions of most not-quite-liturgical poems from Andalusia are less readily apparent. The diﬃculties inherent in determining the precise boundaries between liturgical poems and poems with religious content but no discernible liturgical function are discussed by Hazan, The Poetics of the Sephardi Piyut, 15–23. 9 This is not to imply that there is a precise or complete correspondence between MH and the philosophical content of KM, but there are areas of congruence between the two. On the methodological unsoundness of assuming an absolute correlation, see Liebes, “Sefer Ye ira,” 77–85 passim. Schirmann assumes that the emanative schemes elaborated in MH and KM are identical; see his note to KM, line 229. 10 Part I: cantos 1–9; Part II: cantos 10–32; Part III: cantos 33–40. Canto and line numbers correspond to those in Schirmann, HPSP 1:257–85. Jarden’s edition has the same canto numbers but diﬀerent line numbers. 11 Alexander Altmann observes that Ibn Gabirol interprets negatively each of the aﬃrmative attributes he ascribes to God. He notes that phrases such as “You are wise . . . without having acquired knowledge from elsewhere” (KM canto 9) echo kal m formulations intended to counter the notion that God’s attributes are distinct from His Essence. Ibn Gabirol’s negative language is in keeping with the approach of Plotinus to the problem of describing an unknowable God (Enn. V, 5,

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the three, is a paean to the Creator. Each canto celebrates God’s formation of one of the components of the universe. Here Ibn Gabirol reverses the order of emanation, plunging down to earth and ascending step by step from the sublunar world through the celestial spheres that surround it, glorifying God at each successive stage.12 This progression has a decided rhetorical function: by starting with the most mundane level of creation, Ibn Gabirol ensures that each veneration of God will be more exalted than the previous one. After reaching the outer limits of the physical universe, he explores the formation and functions of the soul. A transitional subsection on the teleology of the soul’s embodiment and of human anatomy paves the way for the third and ﬁnal part. Turning inward, the poet closes the work with a personal prayer that combines a lyrical confession of sins and shortcomings with petitions for divine compassion. The Realm of the Incorporeal: The Sphere of the Intellect To the nine concentric spheres of the medieval philosophers’ cosmology, Ibn Gabirol adds a tenth—the sphere of the Intellect: lGæl]G" y[iyviT]h' lG"l]G" l[' Úm]yrIh}B' Úì yt,/ayrIB] t/d/s ˆybiy: ymi !y:yl' vd
It is not immediately apparent that this passage marks a conceptual turning point: Ibn Gabirol continues to employ the rhetorical pattern of the preceding cantos and—most signiﬁcantly—the designation 13); see Altmann, “The Divine Attributes: An Historical Survey of the Jewish Discussion,” esp. 40–46, and Sells, Mystical Languages of Unsaying, 1–33. On the inclusion of Luminosity among God’s attributes see Cantarino, “Ibn Gabirol’s Metaphysic of Light,” who argues that light occupies an elevated rank in the ontological hierarchy elaborated in MH. Unlike the light of the sublunar world, this sublime light is incorporeal and “partakes of the divine Essence” (p. 61). For the identiﬁcation of the divine kavod as incorporeal light, see below. 12 This progression is reminiscent of what Altmann and Stern have called “The Upward Way”; see Isaac Israeli, 185–217. 13 KM canto 24, lines 222–23.

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galgal. Yet it emerges that this “sphere” is qualitatively diﬀerent from those below it. Together with the sublunar world, the ﬁrst nine celestial spheres constitute the physical universe. Ibn Gabirol furnishes astronomical data regarding the orbits and the relative dimensions of the heavenly bodies contained in the ﬁrst eight spheres. The corporeal nature of the ninth, or diurnal, sphere is also evident from his observation that it encompasses all the other spheres and their contents and so dwarfs them that they are “as a mustard seed in the vast sea.”14 In progressing to the transcendent sphere of the Intellect, however, we cross the boundary between the physical and the metaphysical. Exalted above all the others, this sphere has no spatial dimensions, and its orbit is purely metaphorical, revolving around God alone.15 Lofty beings stem from the realm of the incorporeal. Following his introduction of the tenth sphere, Ibn Gabirol praises God for creating the ministering angels from the “radiance” of the sphere of the Intellect (mi-ziv galgal ha-sekhel).16 While he describes their nature and functions with terms drawn from traditional angelology (mal akhei re onekha, mesharetei fanekha), the poet identiﬁes these angels as “exalted souls” (ha-nefashot ha-ramot), signaling that angels, like disembodied human souls, are purely spiritual beings.17 Although distinct from the angels, the individual human soul also derives from the sphere of 14

See KM canto 23, lines 215–16 and 218–219. See KM canto 24. There is apparently no known precedent for Ibn Gabirol’s tenth sphere of the Intellect; see Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 115 and idem, “Ibn Gabirol’s Treatment of Sources in the Kether Malkhuth,” esp. 189–92. The concept provoked some debate among later thinkers; see Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres or Ten?” A number of scholars have correlated the sphere of the Intellect in KM with the hypostasis of the Intellect as described in MH. See Husik, History, 77–78 and Loewe, “Ibn Gabirol’s Treatment,” 190. As such, it should not be confused with al-F r b ’s tenth intellect, the last of the emanated incorporeal intelligences; see Davidson, Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes on Intellect, 16 and 44–73 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 159. 16 See KM canto 25, lines 229–31. 17 Comparisons between angels and souls are common in medieval speculative writings. When Maimonides wishes to underscore the incorporeality of existence in olam ha-ba, he says that the souls of the righteous will be disembodied like the angels; see MT, Teshuvah 8:2. Abraham Ibn Ezra also believes that individual souls are of the angelic species. But he insists that angels are superior to human souls, whose purity and intellectual capacity are diminished through their inevitable embodiment. He engages in a heated polemic with those who assert that human beings are exalted above the angels, overtly attacking Saadya Gaon for maintaining this classical rabbinic position. Ibn Ezra allows that the human soul may, through the acquisition of wisdom, regain the angelic realm. See his commentaries on Gen. 1:1, Ex. 3:15, Ps. 8:5–6, Ps. 82:6–7, Dan. 2:11, and his Shorter Commentary on Ex. 23:20. See also Stroumsa, “ ‘What is Man.’ ” 15

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the Intellect. Within the space of a few lines, Ibn Gabirol lauds God for creating the soul from both the radiance of the divine “Glory” (mi-ziz kevodkha) and “the ﬂames of the ﬁre of the Intellect” (mi-lahavot esh ha-sekhel).18 The apparent discrepancy is resolved, however, if one assumes an identity between the divine kavod and the sphere of the Intellect.19

The Kavod The term kavod (“glory”) has a history of its own in Jewish literature. Scripture is replete with references to the divine kavod, which is frequently associated with theophany.20 But the term only acquires technical signiﬁcance with the advent of Saadya Gaon.21 In his theory of the kavod nivra, a created light becomes visible to the prophet to verify the divine origin of his visions. Accordingly, where Scripture mentions God’s kavod in a theophanic context, Saadya glosses the term as nur allah (God’s Light).22 Ibn Gabirol also employs kavod as a technical term, although without apparent connection to Saadya’s doctrine of a temporary manifestation of God’s Glory. There is no explicit exposition of the nature and function of the divine Glory in Keter Malkhut, but in canto 24 Ibn Gabirol locates the apiryon of the divine Glory within the sphere of the Intellect.23 A biblical hapax legomenon (Canticles 3:9), apiryon is

18

Compare KM canto 29, line 280 with line 283. Loewe does not consider that the two ﬁliations might be identical. Accordingly, he devises an extremely elaborate explanation for Ibn Gabirol’s seeming vacillation on the origin of the soul. See “Ibn Gabirol’s Treatment,” 189–92. 20 See, e.g., Moses’ request to behold God’s presence (har eini na et kevodekha; Ex. 33:18) and the verses adduced by Efros, Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, p. 152, n. 48. See also Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, p. 22 and n. 52. Wolfson’s treatment of the kavod is exceedingly rich; see his index s.v. divine glory. 21 An earlier attempt to eliminate the anthropomorphic aspects of the kavod was made by Philo of Alexandria (1st century C.E.), but his writings were unknown to the medievals. See Wolfson, Philo 2:143–47. 22 See, e.g., his Tafs r to Ex. 16:10 and 24:17 in Version arabe du pentateuque. He also identiﬁes the kavod with several biblical and rabbinic terms designating divine immanence: rua ha-qodesh (the Divine Spirit); kisse ha-kavod (the Divine Throne); and shekhinah (the Divine Presence). On Saadya’s theory of the kavod nivra see Am n t 2:10, pp. 103–104 and Sefer ye irah ha-shalem, 108–109. See also Altmann, “Saadya’s Theory of Revelation: Its Origin and Background.” 23 See KM lines 224–25: ve-hu ha-galgal ha-na aleh al kol elyon/asher lo yasigehu ra yon/ ve-sham ha- evyon/asher hu li-khvodekha le- apiryon. 19

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often rendered as “palanquin,” but it may also designate a canopy or chamber.24 It has this sense in his cosmological piyyut, “Lekha shadday” and in his panegyric, “Lekha re i,” where it describes a palace dome.25 Ibn Gabirol thus intimates that the incorporeal sphere of the Intellect is the realm of the kavod. In canto 29 we learn that the soul is derived from the radiance of the divine kavod, which is set in apposition to the eﬀulgence of the sphere of the Intellect. The poet’s light imagery suggests that the kavod is luminous. Some elucidation of the term can be derived from the writings of Ibn Gabirol’s fellow poet and Neoplatonist, Abraham Ibn Ezra, who applies kavod to “the spiritual or incorporeal light that is the substance of the intelligible realm.”26 Like Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra identiﬁes this realm as the source of both the angels and the human soul.27 He describes this supernal world as “entirely glorious (kavod )” and “permanent,” thus conﬁrming that at which Ibn Gabirol only hints: the divine kavod is the enduring, luminous substance of the supernal Intellect, the source of angels and pure souls.28 In many instances where the word kavod occurs in Scripture, Ibn Ezra equates it with “soul.”29 Elsewhere he uses it as a synonym or substitute for “soul,” pairing it with “body” to convey the totality of

24 See Jastrow, Dictionary 1:108 and Ben Yehuda, Thesaurus 1:361, who indicates that apiryon is used in post-biblical literature as an epithet for the Temple. The phrase asher hu li-khvodekha le- apiryon suggested to Schirmann the kisse ha-kavod, even though elsewhere he recognizes that the Throne of Glory is above the sphere of the Intellect; see his notes to KM lines 223–25. 25 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:533, v. 15 and idem, Secular Poetry 1:69, v. 12. 26 This is Elliot Wolfson’s formulation; see “God, the Demiurge and the Intellect: On the Usage of the Word Kol in Abraham Ibn Ezra,” esp. 84–87. Wolfson cites Ibn Ezra on, inter alia, Ps. 76:5: “There is no incorporeal, spiritual substance that is visible except light . . . and this corresponds to the kavod.” 27 See e.g. Ibn Ezra on Ex. 3:15: “The supernal world is the world of incorporeal angels . . . and the human soul is of their species.” See Wolfson, ibid., 84–85. 28 For poetic reﬂexes of the notion that the soul derives from the kavod, see Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:54, no. 30 (“A ulah mi-kevodo el bera ekh”) and 1:55, no. 31 (“A ulah mi-meqor ayyim me irah”), esp. vv. 1 and 7. See also Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, no. 45, “A irah shenat eini,” vv. 25–26, and no. 55, “Mah niﬂeta,” v. 6, and idem, Secular Poems 1:148, no. 144, “Heqi oti tenumat ra ayonay,” vv. 7–9 and 2:275 for parallels. On the luminous substance of the Intellect, see also Joseph Ibn addiq, Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, p. 37, lines 27–28. 29 See his comments on Gen. 49:6, where—adducing Ps. 30:13 and 16:9—he endorses Moses Ibn Gikatilla’s equation of kavod with “soul” over the criticisms of Judah Ibn Bil m. See also Wolfson, “God, the Demiurge and the Intellect,” pp. 86–87 and n. 39.

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the human being.30 The exegetical association of the human soul with the term kavod is found in Saadya’s Tafs r, and is supported by biblical parallelisms between kavod and words signifying “soul” or “heart.”31 To the Neoplatonists, plainly, the soul is the “glory” or kavod of the body.32 It is also called kavod for its ultimate derivation from, and potential for reunion with the supernal kavod. This relationship is frequently implicit in Ibn Ezra’s comments and, on some occasions, it becomes explicit.33 A similar linking of the human soul with the supernal kavod seems to motivate Ibn Gabirol’s usage of the term in Keter Malkhut.

The Divine Throne After leaving behind the sphere of the Intellect in his continuing ascent through the spiritual domain, Ibn Gabirol comes to the kisse ha-kavod, or Divine Throne (canto 26), a classical Jewish construct which he integrates into his Neoplatonic model of the universe. The poet extols God for exalting the Throne of Glory above the sphere of the Intellect, describing it as a realm of divine mystery, beyond which lies the impenetrable Divine Essence. Despite the terminological similarity between kisse ha-kavod and kavod, the two are clearly distinct in Ibn Gabirol’s scheme. Apparently, he does not subscribe to the traditional understanding of the kisse ha-kavod, according to which the kavod is a manifestation of the divine which sits on the Throne (as, for example, in Ezekiel’s vision), for this would imply that the realm of the kavod is superior to the sphere of the Intellect.34 30

See, e.g., Ibn Ezra on Deut. 30:15 and Ps. 91:16. See, e.g., Saadya, Tehillim, on Ps. 30:13 and Ps. 108:1–2. Note that Saadya’s exegetical equation of kavod and “soul” does not seem to be in any way related to his theory of the kavod nivra. 32 See, e.g., Ibn Ezra on Ps. 103:1, 5 and Wolfson, ibid. 33 The soul-kavod nexus is implicit in Ibn Ezra’s Short Commentary on Ex. 23:20. For an explicit statement, see Wolfson’s discussion of Ibn Ezra’s comment on Gen. 25:8, pp. 85–87. 34 Cf., e.g., the diagram in Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 114. Note that Abraham Ibn Ezra identiﬁes the kisse ha-kavod with the tenth sphere or heaven, which is the angelic realm of the kavod; see Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres or Ten? ” p. 306 and n. 57. In the Introduction to his Sefer ha-Ma or the twelfth-century Catalonian halakhist, Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi, says that the soul emanates from the Throne of Glory, which the philosophers call the Sphere of the Intellect. On the kabbalistic critique provoked by this claim see Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,’ ” p. 28 and n. 65, and Vajda, Recherches sur la philosophie et la kabbale, 371–84. 31

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Ibn Gabirol’s “positioning” of the kisse ha-kavod at the outer limits of the supernal world may have been suggested in part by rabbinic passages which locate the Throne of Glory in the highest of the heavens.35 It may also reﬂect familiarity with the equation of the qur nic Divine Throne and the outermost of the celestial spheres in the cosmology of the Ikhw n al- af .36 Moreover, his ascription of a superior position to the Divine Throne vis-à-vis the sphere of the Intellect is motivated by a synthesis of rabbinic and Neoplatonic ideas. In canto 27 of Keter Malkhut Ibn Gabirol alludes to the aggadic dictum that the souls of the righteous are stored after death under the kisse ha-kavod (nishmatan shel addiqim genuzot ta at kisse ha-kavod ).37 Having just located the kisse ha-kavod above the sphere of the Intellect, he now implicitly identiﬁes this sphere with the rabbinic repository for souls. The equation is reinforced by the Neoplatonic belief that the souls originate in, and return after death to the sphere of the Intellect. The philosophical symbolism of the kisse ha-kavod may be elucidated on the basis of a correspondence between Keter Malkhut and Meqor ayyim. Ibn Gabirol describes the Throne of Glory as the realm of “the Mystery and the Foundation,” ha-sod ve-ha-yesod. Scholars have ascribed technical meanings to these enigmatic terms, identifying them with Universal Form and Universal Matter, two concepts central to Meqor ayyim. In the ontological hierarchy elaborated in Meqor ayyim, Matter is a substratum upon which Form is impressed, hence its identiﬁcation with yesod (“foundation”).38 Moreover, Ibn Gabirol describes Matter as the seat (Latin: cathedra) of the One, upon which rests the Will as it imparts Form.39 Form and Matter 35

See, e.g., b ag. 12b, where seven heavens are enumerated. See Wolfson, Repercussions of the Kalam in Jewish Philosophy, 113–20; Nasr, An Introduction to Islamic Cosmological Doctrines, 39 and 76; Huart, “Kurs ”; and Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 305. Note that the Ikhw n equate the Throne, or arsh, with the ninth or diurnal sphere, and thus do not furnish a precise precedent for Ibn Gabirol’s identiﬁcation of the Throne with the realm beyond the sphere of the Intellect. 37 See bShab. 152b. 38 Shem Tov Falaquera actually uses the term yesod to designate Matter; see his digest of Meqor ayyim published as an appendix to Bluwstein’s translation. 39 See MH 5:42 (Fons Vitae, p. 335). This passage has been adduced as evidence that the kisse ha-kavod in KM represents Universal Matter; see Husik, History, 77–78; Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 289–90; and Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, p. 139, n. 119. Ibn Gabirol’s symbol of the Divine Throne and its place in his emanative scheme have precise parallels in the thought of the Muslim philosopher and mystic, Ibn Masarra; see Altmann, “Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli: 36

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are superior to the hypostasis of the Intellect, just as in Keter Malkhut the Divine Throne is exalted above the sphere of the Intellect.40 Thus the kisse ha-kavod represents “the fundamental principles of all existence” which issue from the First Essence.41 Ibn Gabirol’s skillful incorporation of the rabbinic construct of the kisse ha-kavod into his cosmic hierarchy reﬂects his conviction of the underlying harmony between the classical Jewish tradition and Neoplatonic thought. It also underscores the educational function of Keter Malkhut, for the reader who works out these subtle correspondences clearly learns to associate the two approaches to God, man, and the universe. At the same time, Ibn Gabirol’s treatment of the kisse ha-kavod conveys his stance on the limits of human apprehension. The human intellect may reach “up to” the realm of the Divine Throne, “but there must halt” (ve adav yagia ha-sekhel ve-ya amod ).42 Does this mean that human beings are incapable of attaining any knowledge, however partial, of Universal Form and Matter? The answer depends on the sense assigned to the preposition ad, “up to.” If it is exclusive, then the human intellect indeed stops short of penetrating the realm of the kisse ha-kavod. But Meqor ayyim suggests that ad must be understood as “up to and including” the Throne of Glory. Towards the end of the work (5:35), Ibn Gabirol describes Form and Matter as “two closed gates” which the intellect ﬁnds exceedingly diﬃcult to “open and enter.” He allows, however, that the exceptional individual “whose soul is reﬁned and whose intellect is pure” can attain knowledge of Universal Form and Matter through philosophical study. This knowledge is the ultimate goal of human apprehension, for “it is impossible to ascend to the First Essence, the most exalted of all.” In Keter Malkhut too, God in His Essence cannot be known: Higher still, You are exalted upon Your mighty throne, and no man may ascend with You.43

A Reappraisal,” p. 13, n. 19 and Asín Palacios, The Mystical Philosophy of Ibn Masarra and His Followers, p. 82, n. 23. See also Dillon, “Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Doctrine of Intelligible Matter.” 40 See, e.g. MH 5:1. 41 See Husik, History, pp. 67–68. 42 KM canto 26, line 255. 43 KM canto 26, line 256. In its original context, ve- ish lo ya aleh immakh (Ex. 34:3) is addressed to Moses, who alone is granted a ﬁrst-hand experience of revelation. In its new poetic setting, however, the phrase is addressed to God and suggests

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The kisse ha-kavod thus marks the boundary between what is knowable and what lies beyond human ken.44 The Soul’s Embodiment and Origins In Meqor ayyim Ibn Gabirol describes the soul’s embodiment and terrestrial existence as imprisonment.45 A similarly negative perception of the soul’s earthly sojourn colors many of his piyyutim. The soul is “a maidservant, bound in bones”; exiled from her “true world,” she “chases vain breath.”46 Elsewhere, however, the poet adopts a more favorable view, portraying the soul’s descent as a necessary and useful, albeit limited mission: “She thanks You for her servitude—to do Your will You sent her.”47 Such a teleological approach is found in Keter Malkhut, where Ibn Gabirol emphasizes the beneﬁts the soul brings to the body. He praises God for sending the soul to quicken the body and act as its moral guide (canto 31). He applauds the soul’s divinely ordained mission to “serve and preserve” the body (canto 29). He marvels at God’s wisdom in endowing the soul with reason, and observes that it is the soul’s rational aspect that distinguishes man from beast (canto 31).48 Evidently, Ibn Gabirol’s positive approach to the body in Keter Malkhut is contextually determined. In a hymn to the Creator of all that the human intellect cannot reach up beyond the realm of the Throne, to know God in His Essence. Raphael Loewe’s verse translation captures the biblical allusion with ingenuity: Upon thy throne of might Thou dost retreat, Nor may man climb that Sinai’s peak to share thy seat. 44 In canto 24, line 224 there is a suggestion that the human intellect cannot even penetrate the supernal Intellect: ve-hu ha-galgal ha-na aleh al kol elyon/asher lo yasigehu ra yon. But Ibn Gabirol may simply be saying that the realm of the Intellect is one which human beings can only grasp incompletely or with diﬃculty. 45 See, e.g., the reference to the “prison of nature” in the ﬁnal paragraph of MH 3:56. The original Arabic of this passage is preserved in Moses Ibn Ezra’s ad qa; see Pines, “Fragments,” 221–22. 46 See “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh,” Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:538, v. 17 and “She i la- el ye idah ha- akhamah,” ibid. 1:80, v. 2. On the latter see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 202–207 and Wittenberg, “A Reshut to Nishmat.” 47 “Lekha nafshi tesapper,” Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:528, v. 4. 48 As noted earlier, both attitudes are already present in the writings of Plato and the Neoplatonists of late antiquity. A variation on the teleological approach in KM can be found in the poetry and biblical exegesis of Abraham Ibn Ezra, who stresses the body’s role as a useful, but ephemeral instrument of the soul. See the discussion of his tokhe ah, “Yeshenei lev mah lakhem,” in Chapter 7.

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things great and small, the human body must be celebrated as God’s handiwork. Each facet of human anatomy plays a positive role in the service of God (canto 32). Yet, even in Keter Malkhut Ibn Gabirol betrays a certain dualism: the body depends upon the soul for its life, and without the soul’s wise guidance would naturally gravitate to evil.49 The soul, by contrast, is inherently pure (canto 29) and, through its capacity for reason, immortal.50 In his descriptions of the soul’s origin Ibn Gabirol uses metaphors suggesting emanation. Light imagery is conspicuous in these passages, in keeping with the classic Neoplatonic analogy between emanation and the sun’s radiation. This was a favored comparison, for the sun’s brilliance is not diminished by imparting light, just as God is in no way altered or diminished by bestowing existence.51 Ibn Gabirol adapts the Neoplatonic scheme when he styles the angels “the splendor of the souls” (zohar ha-neshamot) and notes that God fashions them from the “radiance” (ziv) of the sphere of the Intellect.52 He conveys an image of radiation when he says that these angelsouls are “drawn” ( yimmashekhu) from “the source of light” (meqor haor),53 and when he marvels at God’s creation of a “pure resplendence” ( yif at ehorah), the soul, from the “radiance” of His Glory (mi-ziz kevodekha).54 The poet might seem to mix his metaphors when he then describes this “pure resplendence” as “hewn from the rock of the Rock” (miur ha- ur nigzerah umi-maqqevet bor nuqqarah).55 Philosophically, however,

49

See KM canto 31, lines 297–98. The phrase lo yishla aleha killayon (line 289) harks back to the opening canto of KM, where it evokes God’s immortality (lines 11–12). Its reprise here underscores the aﬃnity between the soul and God. 51 The analogy originates with Plotinus; see Enn. V,1,6 (trans. Armstrong): “So if there is a second after the One it must have come to be without the One moving at all . . . How did it come to be then, and what are we to think of as surrounding the One in its repose? It must be a radiation from it while it [the One] remains unchanged, like the bright light of the sun which, so to speak, runs round it, springing from it continually while it remains unchanged.” See also Enn. V, 3,12; V, 4, 1–2; Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 176 and MH 3:54 (end). 52 KM canto 25, line 229. 53 KM canto 25, line 236. One of the meanings which the root m.sh.kh. acquired in medieval philosophical Hebrew was derivation via emanation; see Klatzkin, Thesaurus 1:180, s.v. hamshakhah and 2:293, s.v. meshekh. Note KM canto 9, line 79 where this root signiﬁes both “to derive via emanation” and “matter.” See also Liebes, “Sefer Ye ira,” p. 81 and n. 21. 54 KM canto 29, lines 280–82. 55 Ibid. In KM canto 9, Ibn Gabirol employs hewing as a metaphor for the 50

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the two metaphors are complementary: both suggest that the product of the emanative process is akin to its divine Source. As “pure resplendence,” the soul partakes of the radiance of God’s Glory. Quarried from the Rock, it shares in the “substance” of the Rock. As a scriptural appellation for God, ur evokes His strength, stability, and protection.56 But the ﬁrst instance of the word here alludes to Isaiah 51:1: “Look to the rock whence you were hewn, to the quarry whence you were dug.” In this verse ur has the sense of “source,” and does not refer to God, but to the nation’s ancestors.57 Ibn Gabirol’s juxtaposition of the two meanings of the term reﬂects the Andalusian poets’ penchant for paronomasia. But the resultant phrase is not merely a stylistic embellishment; it represents a fusion of biblical and Neoplatonic symbolisms.58 According to the theory of emanation, each successive order of being emerges from one more perfect than itself, and all being ﬂows ultimately from one perfect Source. For Ibn Gabirol God is a Rock of strength and the Neoplatonic Source of all things.59 The sensitive reader will not fail to notice the convergence of biblical, rabbinic and Neoplatonic insights in Keter Malkhut. With great subtlety, Ibn Gabirol redeﬁnes some of the fundamental assumptions and symbols of classical Judaism. Yet, his innovations are couched in such familiar rhetoric and imagery that they may elude those who are not philosophically informed. His treatment of creation clearly preparation of ayin—or formless matter, according to one interpretation—to receive form. This process is one of the initial stages of emanation. See Pines, “ ‘And He Called Out to Nothingness And It Was Split’ ” and cf. Liebes, “Sefer Ye ira,” 78–85 who views this passage as a mythical description of creation which has its basis in Sefer Ye irah. 56 See, e.g., Abraham Ibn Ezra’s comments on Deut. 32:4, s.v. ha- ur tamim po alo, where he explains that Scripture here refers to God as “Rock” to indicate His enduring permanence. (He acknowledges the diﬃculty involved in comparing God with one of His creations, noting that this is a scriptural concession to the limitations of human discourse.) He adduces a similar usage in Ps. 73:26 ( ur levavi ) where ur conveys God’s qualities of supportiveness, strength and endurance. 57 The plain sense of ur and bor in Is. 51:1 is elucidated by the following verse, which refers to the nation’s ancestors. See Ibn Ezra ad loc. 58 Note too the rabbinic gloss on “there is no ur like our God” (I Sam. 2:2), adduced at bBer. 10a as proof of God’s unique power to animate His creations: “There is no ayyar (one who forms or shapes) like our God.” 59 Cf. Maimonides, Guide 1:16, who indicates on the basis of Is. 51:1 that ur designates a quarry which is the source of something else. Hence, when applied ﬁguratively to God, ur means that He is the source or cause of all things. Cf. the similar usage in MT, Teshuvah 3:7: ve-khen ha- omer she eino levado ha-rishon ve- ur la-kol.

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illustrates this far-reaching synthesis. On the surface, Keter Malkhut seems to reﬂect a traditional view of God’s formation of the universe. At every step of the way, the poet praises God for “creating” (be-vor akha), “making” (be- asotekha), or otherwise fashioning a particular component of the cosmos. His biblical language suggests an omnipotent God who creates ex nihilo. Upon closer inspection, it becomes apparent that the principle of emanation also plays an important role in his cosmogony. He represents emanation with the biblical verb a al, but he subordinates the emanative process to God’s will by making God the agent of the verb.60 He also uses phrases which suggest derivation via a naturalistic process (mi- ur ha- ur nigzerah; mi-meqor ha- or yimmashekhu), intimating a new reading of God’s volitional creation.61 In any synthesis, the constituents must each undergo modiﬁcation before a new, coherent whole can be produced. By incorporating a volitional God who sets the creative mechanism in motion, Ibn Gabirol deviates from orthodox Neoplatonism. Yet his use of the theory of emanation implies a thorough reinterpretation of creation.62

60 See, e.g., KM line 282: ve- a alta aleha rua okhmah ve-qarata shemah neshamah. For similar usages of the root . .l., see lines 78, 198–99, 204, 214, and 299. Two scriptural verses underlie Ibn Gabirol’s formulation in line 282; these are Num. 11:17: ve- a alti min ha-rua asher alekha ve-samti aleihem and Num. 11:25: va-ya el min ha-rua asher alav. While the plain sense of . .l. in these verses is to “separate out,” “set aside,” or “reserve” (a portion of something), it is clear from the context that in KM Ibn Gabirol understands the verb in the Neoplatonic sense of “emanate” or “cause to overﬂow.” (In the nif al the verb means “to be derived via emanation”; see KM, lines 198–99). But cf. Na manides’ Commentary to Num. 11:17, where he criticizes “the translators’ ” use of the root . .l. to designate emanation, citing as an example a verse from a poem about the soul by Judah Halevi; see Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,’ ” p. 27, n. 58. For the view that . .l. does not yet signify the Neoplatonic notion of emanation in Ibn Gabirol’s writings see Liebes, “Sefer Ye ira,” 87–88. 61 The use of nif al verbs, which have no explicit agent, suggests a naturalistic scheme. See also Abraham Ibn Ezra’s comments on Gen. 1:1. According to Ibn Ezra, most commentators insist that bara signiﬁes creation ex nihilo, but in doing so they overlook a second meaning of the term, which is “to delimit” (something already in existence). His appended ve-ha-maskil yavin indicates that the latter is the preferred, philosophically sophisticated reading of the term. Cf. his Shorter Commentary on Gen. 1:1 in Friedlaender, Essays on the Writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra, Hebrew Section, 19–25. For an overview of Ibn Ezra’s stance on creation and the remarks it elicited from supercommentators and subsequent Jewish thinkers, see Lipshitz, “On Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Doctrine of Creation.” 62 According to some scholars, even in MH there is an attempt to modify the naturalistic Neoplatonic scheme so that it accommodates the monotheistic principle of divine volition by interposing the Divine Will between God and the universe

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Ibn Gabirol’s preference for traditional terminology and motifs in Keter Malkhut is inﬂuenced by considerations of genre and function. The work is formally much closer to poetry than philosophical prose, and so adheres to the ideal of biblical purism. This linguistic ideal restricts the poet to classical vocabulary, even though much of what he says is to be understood in a new way. Indeed, almost every canto closes with a cleverly appropriated biblical citation. As a devotional piece, whether for synagogue use or private meditation, Keter Malkhut would naturally use formulations familiar to the worshiper from the liturgy and Scripture. The use of traditional terminology is also a pedagogic device: to the careful reader, it conveys a subtle message about the desirability of meshing classical Judaism with elements of Neoplatonism. At the same time, the poet’s linguistic delicacy makes Keter Malkhut accessible to a reading public of varied sophistication: by couching daring interpretations in familiar phrases, Ibn Gabirol reduces the potential for oﬀending a non-philosophically inclined reader. As Jacob Petuchowski has observed, Statements and arguments which, in prose, would immediately be branded as ‘heretical’ have become, once they were couched in poetic form, ingredients of the liturgy, and continue to be rehearsed—often with more devotion than comprehension—by multitudes of the unsuspecting pious who would be utterly shocked to discover the true intent of their authors.63

There was a growing tendency among Andalusian authors to write works addressed simultaneously to a philosophically informed intelligentsia and an intellectually less sophisticated audience. Hence, Abraham Ibn Ezra’s periodic interjection of ve-ha-maskil yavin following cryptic remarks in his Bible commentaries. An awareness of the diﬀerent needs of the two audiences was also projected back onto Scripture in order to justify the need for philosophical exegesis. In his Shorter Commentary on Genesis 1:1, Ibn Ezra writes: “Now I will state a principle for you: Know that Moses our master did not give the Torah only to the wise of heart, but to all . . . Thus, in discussing the wonders of creation he spoke only of the lower

that comes into existence via emanation. See Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 277–98 and 308–312 and Hyman, “From What is One and Simple,” 118–21. See also Wolfson, “The Meaning of Ex Nihilo in Isaac Israeli” and cf. Altmann, “Creation and Emanation in Isaac Israeli.” 63 Theology and Poetry, 5.

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world, created for man’s sake, and did not mention the sacred angels.”64 Ibn Gabirol, of course, does not exclude the abstractions of the supernal world from his grand hymn, but takes care to clothe them in familiar garb. Simply making one’s way through Keter Malkhut, then, requires a certain degree of learning, yet the work’s two-tiered approach could insulate the naïve believer from the shock of theological innovation.

Theological Innovations: Eschatology There is marked doctrinal boldness in Ibn Gabirol’s reinterpretations of traditional eschatological ideas. Particularly striking is his philosophical reading of the world to come ( olam ha-ba). In measured phrases whose regular rhymes and familiar language belie their daring content, he identiﬁes the rabbinic olam ha-ba with the immortality of the individual soul: Who can equal Your almighty deeds? Beneath Your Throne of Glory You have made A place for all the souls of Your saints. Abode of pure souls, Bound in the bond of life. Where those weary and worn Their strength restore. ... A place of endless bliss, It is the world to come.65

Ibn Gabirol’s portrayal of the future world spiritualizes the common view of olam ha-ba as “the historical period ushered in by resurrection in which the righteous receive their ultimate reward and the wicked their ultimate punishment.”66 In Keter Malkhut, the world to come is not a historical period, nor predicated on bodily resurrection, but rather, the timeless existence of the disembodied souls of the righteous. Having returned to their supernal abode, they enjoy 64 See Friedlaender, Essays on the Writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Hebrew sec.), 20. See also Yesod Mora 7:12 (end) in Levin, Abraham Ibn Ezra Reader, 333. On GrecoArabic attitudes towards withholding knowledge from the unworthy or ignorant, see Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 225–34. 65 KM canto 27, lines 257–62. See also lines 263–68. 66 See Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 40–41.

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not material rewards, but “the sweet fruit of the intellect” in the King’s own palace.67 “This,” says the poet, “is the serenity and the legacy whose goodness and beauty are endless; the milk and honey of the promised land.”68 Of all Ibn Gabirol’s poetic compositions, Keter Malkhut is the only one that explicitly equates olam ha-ba with the soul’s summum bonum. Some of his poetic elegies observe that the deserving soul alone survives death and enjoys the rewards of illumination and eternal repose.69 And all of his philosophical piyyutim on the soul assume a purely spiritual interpretation of olam ha-ba. But Keter Malkhut is unique in its clear translation of the philosophical view of ultimate felicity into traditional terms. In his depiction of the soul’s ultimate bliss, Ibn Gabirol invokes a series of rabbinic motifs associated with life in the world to come. To each of these he applies a philosophical interpretation. Eﬀortlessly, he transforms the aggadic repository under the kisse ha-kavod into the permanent abode of the pure, disembodied souls who have returned from their terrestrial sojourn. Although he uses the imagery of aggadic texts, the Divine Throne is now Universal Matter, marking the outer limit of the intelligible world. Below it lies the sphere of the Intellect, the “place” of the soul’s origin and ultimate repose. The rabbinic sources that speak of a celestial storehouse for the souls of the righteous adduce as a prooftext I Samuel 25:29: “. . . the soul of my lord will be bound up in the bundle of life, in the care of the Lord.”70 In doing so, they imply an eschatological interpre67

KM line 266: u-mit addenot be-meteq peri ha-sekhel. See Loewe’s ﬁne translation, Ibn Gabirol, 140. A similarly spiritualized interpretation of olam ha-ba is evident in a Hebrew prose work from roughly the same period—Abraham Bar Hiyya’s Hegyon ha-nefesh ha- a uvah—and is widespread in the writings of philosophically informed thinkers following Ibn Gabirol and Bar Hiyya; see Idel, “Types of Redemptive Activity in the Middle Ages.” In the wake of the early thirteenth-century controversy sparked by Maimonides’ purely spiritual view of olam ha-ba, Moses Na manides noted that Maimonides’ controversial stance was anticipated by Ibn Gabirol in KM. See Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,” 11–34, esp. 27–28, and Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 39–60. 69 In poetic laments for the dead, assurances of the soul’s immortality are intended as a kind of consolation; see Levin, The Lamentation Over the Dead, 155–206 passim. Some of Ibn Gabirol’s philosophical meditations on the soul are modeled on the standard elegy; see Levin’s discussions of “A i tevel” and “Be-shuri ha- aliyyah” in The Lamentation Over the Dead, 191–95 and Mystical Trends, 148–49, 159–64. 70 See, in addition to bShab. 152b, Sifrei Deut., sec. 344 on Deut. 33:3 and Sifrei Num. on Num. 27:16, no. 139, and no. 40 which does not explicitly mention an o ar, but does adduce I Sam. 25:29. 68

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tation of the verse, whose plain sense refers to divine protection of David in the here and now. The clearest articulation of this gloss is furnished by the Targum, which reads: “The soul of my lord will be stored in the storehouse of eternal life.” Relying on this gloss, medieval Jewish philosophers freely used the phrase eror ha- ayyim as a metaphor for the immortal existence of the disembodied soul.71 Ibn Gabirol is among the exponents of this exegetical tradition; in Keter Malkhut he describes as bound up in “the bundle of life” the “pure souls” who inhabit the world to come. Repose from toil is another motif that classical Jewish texts associate with the Afterlife. The rabbis characterize the world to come as menu ah (“rest”), or a form of Sabbath for which one toils in this world and of whose joys one partakes in the next.72 In a variation on this theme, the righteous are granted relief from their struggles against earthly temptations only upon death.73 The motif of otherworldly menu ah plays a salient role in the description of olam ha-ba in Keter Malkhut. Here, however, its relevance is restricted to the soul. In resonant biblical phrases the poet speaks of the supernal abode of the pure souls as a place where the weary may rest, and, as 71 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 107–8, and 113–14. Stern notes that Israeli’s exegesis of I Sam. 25:29 is cited by Moses Ibn Ezra in his ad qa (p. 92). See also Joseph Ibn addiq, Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, p. 76 and Maimonides, MT, Teshuvah 8:3. Even Saadya Gaon, whose Neoplatonic tendencies are generally tempered by his adherence to rabbinic eschatology, refers in his tokhe ah to the reward of the deserving soul as eror ha- ayyim; see above, pp. 50–51. 72 See, e.g., bBer. 57b: “Three things are a reﬂex of the world to come: Sabbath, sunshine and tashmish”; and ibid.: “Sabbath is one-sixtieth part of the world to come.” See also bRH 31a: “On the seventh day (the Levites) said, ‘A psalm, a song for the Sabbath day’ (Ps. 92), that is, for the day which will be all Sabbath.” The association of the Sabbath with Redemption and the world to come recurs throughout the wider corpus of medieval Sabbath hymns, or zemirot. See, e.g., the ﬁnal stanza of “Mah yedidut menu atekh at shabbat ha-malkah.” The earliest printed version of this song is apparently of Sephardic provenance, from Constantinople, 1545; see Davidson, Thesaurus, 3:86, no. 373. A seventeenth-century Yemenite Hebrew poem states that the Sabbath “is a ﬁgure of the world to come”; see Maswari Caspi, “Sa adya ben Abraham al-Bash r ,” 192. For the nexus between Sabbath and Redemption in the poems of Meir Halevi Abulaﬁa (c. 1165–1244), see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 125, n. 92. 73 Gen. Rab. 9:7. The original context of the prooftext adduced in this passage (“there rest those whose strength is spent”; Job 3:17) is the tirade in which Job curses the day of his birth. Ibn Gabirol also makes use of the phrase ve-sham yanu u yegi ei khoa , but where Job speaks of the ﬁnality and equalizing eﬀect of death, Ibn Gabirol refers to the eternal tranquillity of an elite group of souls. See KM line 261 and note the wonderful pun, ve- elleh benei noa , which suggests a certain universalism.

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mentioned above, he concludes his survey of the intellectual delights of the Hereafter by aﬃrming “this is the repose . . . whose goodness and beauty are without end.”74 These themes recur in many of his shorter piyyutim addressed to the soul: “Your rest He has readied, and under His throne He has made your place”; “When you behold your Rock in His grandeur, you will ﬁnd rest from your toil.”75 Ibn Gabirol’s spiritualized version of the rabbinic menu ah motif reﬂects a convergence of his classical Jewish and philosophical sources, for the soul’s tranquillity is also a topos of Neoplatonic texts. The Theology of Aristotle describes the eﬀorts of the soul to transcend the material world as “toil,” and the attainment of this goal as “that ease after which there is no fatigue and no toil.”76

Future Recompense: The Beatific Vision Ibn Gabirol’s brief description of the ultimate reward accorded the souls of the righteous is highly evocative. In the two lines immediately following the declaration, “this is the world to come,” his imagery is borrowed from rabbinic sources that could have been understood anthropomorphically: the souls peer intently into mirrors in which they “see” the “face” of the Lord, and in which their reﬂections are visible to God.77 The motif of gazing into mirrors occurs in rabbinic literature in connection with prophetic visions. It also features in mystical texts of the merkavah tradition.78 A Talmudic 74 KM line 267: zot ha-menu ah ve-hana alah asher ein takhlit le- uvah ve-yofyah. This line echoes the earlier phrase, u-vo no am beli takhlit ve-qi bah (line 262), which evokes the endless delight in store for the pure souls. For the view that no am adonay is one of Scripture’s metaphorical appellations for the spiritual rewards of the world to come, see Maimonides, MT, Teshuvah 8:4. 75 “Se i ayin ye idati le- urekh,” Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:334, v. 4 and “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh,” ibid., 2:538, v. 13. See also “Shikhe i yegonekh nefesh homiyyah,” ibid. 1:291, v. 25. Cf. Joseph Ibn addiq, “Yafetah almat en,” Schirmann, HPSP 2:553, esp. vv. 13–14. On Ibn addiq’s poem, see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 143–44. 76 These characterizations are attributed to Heraclitus; see Theology, Treatise I, in Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, p. 23, lines 1–5 (Lewis, 227). See also Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 193: “This world is the place of labour, the next the place of reward.” 77 KM lines 263–64: ve-sham ma amadot u-mar ot la-nefashot ha- omedot be-mar ot haov ot et pnei ha- adon lir ot u-lehera ot. 78 On visionary experience in Jewish texts from antiquity through the late Middle Ages, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines. On the prophetic technique of

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passage, bYevamot 49b, singles out Moses as the only prophet to have “looked into an illuminated mirror” (nistakkel ba- ispaqlarya hame irah) and relegates every other prophet to the status of one who looked into a “dim mirror” (ispaqlarya she- einah me irah).79 This text and a variant found in Leviticus Rabbah 1:14 are discussed by some of the later geonim. Both Hai Gaon (d. 1038) and Hananel b. Hushiel (d. 1055/56)—who understand ispaqlarya not as a mirror that reﬂects, but as a glass through which one looks—appear committed to eliminating the text’s anthropomorphic implications. Hananel speaks of prophetic visions of the kavod, rather than of God Himself, suggesting that the object of vision is similar to Saadya’s kavod nivra. He distinguishes between Moses, who was allowed to see the “back” of the Shekhinah, but no more, and the other prophets, whose “visions” were purely imaginary.80 Visual perception of God also ﬁgures in midrashic passages as a reward bestowed upon the deserving in the next world.81 Taken literally, these texts too seem to imply that God has a visible form. Such an anthropomorphic conception of God would have been highly problematic for Ibn Gabirol, but precedents for its reinterpretation could, again, be found in geonic writings. Hananel b. Hushiel systematically treated visions of God in the Bible and aggadic texts as “purely psychic phenomena occurring in the mind of the beholder and having no objective reality perceivable by anyone else.”82 Commenting on a particularly troubling aggadah, he asserts that God is seen through “the vision of the mind” (re iyyat ha-lev), not “the vision

gazing into a mirror or into water in the writings of asidei Ashkenaz and the thirteenth-century Kabbalists of Northern Spain, see Idel, “Le-gilguleha shel ekhniqah qedumah shel azon nevu i bi-mei ha-beinayim.” 79 The discussion is prompted by the apparent contradiction between Ex. 33:20 (“. . . you cannot see My face, for man may not see Me and live”) and Is. 6:1 (“. . . I saw my Lord seated on a high and lofty throne.”). 80 See Lewin, Otzar ha-Gaonim: Tractate Yebamoth, Pt. 1, (Responsa), 123–25 and Appendix, 314. On this passage and Hananel’s comments on bBer. 6a (discussed below), see Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 144–48. Note that looking through a “dim glass” indicates an unclear or blurred vision. 81 See, e.g., Midrash Tan uma (ed. Buber) 4, 18, s.v. ba- olam ha-zeh hayu mitkallin. See also bTa anit 31a: atid ha-qadosh barukh hu la asot ma ol la- addiqim. On classical Jewish attitudes towards God’s visibility, see Boyarin, “The Eye in the Torah: Ocular Desire in Midrashic Hermeneutic.” 82 Saperstein, Decoding the Rabbis, 13. For a programmatic statement by Hai Gaon justifying the non-literal interpretation of anthropomorphic portrayals of God, see ibid., p. 12.

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of the eye” (re iyyat ha- ayyin).83 He refers to internal vision of God with the Talmudic phrase ovanta de-libba, which in bMegillah 24b refers to an experience of the merkavah that does not involve physical sight. But where the geonim may use ovanta de-libba to refer to an internal image that is pictorial, Ibn Gabirol uses vision as a metaphor for pure intellectual apprehension.84 What then is the signiﬁcance of the reﬂection that the soul “sees” in the mirror? As part of a composite of body and soul in this world, the righteous soul strove to achieve philosophical insight. But in the world to come, the soul is disembodied, stripped of all things corporeal. When it stands facing the mirror, therefore, all that it can “see” is the knowledge of God that it acquired.85 This image may have been inspired by contemporary Islamic philosophical and mystical writings: the pure soul turning towards God is often compared to a polished mirror in which the Divine light is reﬂected. Just as a metallic plate needs polishing, the soul requires proper burnishing to remove the worldly rust and ﬁlth that block its receptivity to divine illumination.86 Ibn Gabirol also depicts the souls partaking of a royal feast. With its aggadic resonances, the image preserves a semblance of the popular conception of the world to come, but the context and presentation preclude an anthropomorphic reading. The souls’ pleasure is purely intellectual, “the sweet fruit of the intellect” in which they delight at “the table of the King.”87 Perhaps the poet had in mind the well-known passage at bBerakhot 17a that portrays the righteous in the next world enjoying purely spiritual deserts: “In the world to come there is no eating (or) drinking . . . rather, the righteous sit with their crowns on their heads, delighting in the splendor of the Shekhinah, as it is said, ‘they beheld God, and they ate and drank’ 83 See Saperstein, ibid., p. 13, and Lewin, Otzar ha-Gaonim: Berakhoth, Appendix, p. 3 (on bBer. 6a). 84 On the distinction between imageless contemplative visions and those which “have recourse to sensible images” see Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 58–60. 85 I owe this explanation to my teacher, Bernard Septimus. 86 See: Ibn S n , Kit b al-ish r t wa’l-tanb h t 3:231; Goichon, Livre des directives et remarques, p. 331 and n. 4, pp. 495–96 and nn. 2–3; Goodman, ayy Ibn Yaq n, 97; Altmann, “Ibn B jja on Man’s Ultimate Felicity,” 62–63; Ghaz l , I y 1:27 (Faris, 48–49); Ba ya, Hid y 8:4; and the references cited by Fenton in Deux traités de mystique juive, p. 154, n. 65. See also Matt, The Book of Mirrors, 9. 87 Isaac Israeli also describes man’s ultimate reward in purely spiritualized terms; see Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 25–26 and 115–116. Stern notes that the same spiritualized eschatology occurs in Joseph Ibn addiq’s Microcosm; see p. 117, n. 1.

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(Exodus 24:11).”88 Where, however, earlier sources may conceive of a spiritual reward that is experienced in a historical olam ha-ba, or an internal vision of God achieved by body and soul jointly, Keter Malkhut reserves these supreme delights for bodiless souls in an eternal state of repose.89 Greco-Arabic philosophical writings conﬁrmed that visio beatiﬁca belongs to the soul’s intellectual contemplation, not to lowly sense perception. The Theology of Aristotle, for example, predicated apprehension of the Divine upon the soul’s “leaving the body behind,” using vision as a metaphor for the mind’s grasp of sublime truths.90 It described the ultimate bliss of the disembodied soul as apprehension of the supernal realm in “the gaze of the intellect” (na ar al- aql ), the most elevated mode of thinking, in which the mind functions in a sight-like fashion, grasping the objects of its apprehension with great immediacy.91 This theme of “seeing” God with “the eye of the mind” ( ein ha-lev; ein ha-da at) recurs throughout the corpus of Andalusian piyyutim on the soul.92 The Purgation of the Soul A philosophical conception of purgatory complements Ibn Gabirol’s spiritualized interpretation of ultimate reward. The poet speciﬁes that his remarks pertain to the rational soul, whose capacity for reason renders her immortal.93 If tainted by sin at the conclusion of her earthly sojourn, this highest of souls must undergo an ordeal “more 88 Maimonides cites this passage in support of his view that there are no bodies in olam ha-ba, only the souls of the righteous who have attained knowledge of the divine; see MT, Teshuvah 8:2 and the Commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin, Introduction to Chapter 10 (“ eleq”). 89 Saadya Gaon envisages the reward of olam ha-ba in spiritual terms, but insists on the joint presence of body and soul; see Am n t 9:4–5. 90 See Theology, Treatise I, in Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, p. 22 (Lewis, 225). 91 For the contrast between this non-discursive variety of thought and discursive thought and reﬂection ( ﬁkr wa-raw ya), see Theology, Treatise I, ed. Badaw , 22, lines 8–9. See also Treatise X, 157, line 5, where the “gaze of the intellect” is contrasted with the epistemologically inferior processes of logic (man iq) and speculative thought (qiy s). 92 See Wolfson, Through A Speculum That Shines, 170–72, who distinguishes Halevi’s use of this motif from that of the other Andalusians. See also the discussions below of Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” and Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah.” For poetic expressions equivalent to ein ha-lev, see Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, p. 202, n. on lines 11–12 and Secular Poems 3:305, s.v. ein ha-lev. 93 See KM canto 30.

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bitter than death.”94 Only so will she be purged of her impurities and made ﬁt to “approach the sanctuary,” that is, to take her place in olam ha-ba.95 Ibn Gabirol represents this puriﬁcation process as an unspeciﬁed, but ﬁnite period of enforced wandering that entails much suﬀering. His powerful images of isolation and banishment interweave scriptural phrases evoking the mandatory seclusion of the niddah (Leviticus 12:4), and God’s temporary repudiation of his people Israel (Isaiah 54:8, 49:21). Implicit in all of these allusions is the notion that the process of puriﬁcation and expiation of sin, however unpleasant, is ﬁnite.96 The motif of the wandering soul ﬁgures prominently in texts of Neoplatonic origin, where it reﬂects a naturalistic conception of retribution. According to Neoplatonic thought, the soul that has allowed itself to be tainted by corporeal attachments is prevented from reunion with its supernal source: He too who is to suﬀer punishment is carried unknowing to what he has to suﬀer; on his unsteady course he is tossed about everywhere in his wanderings, and in the end, as if utterly weary, by his very eﬀorts at resistance he falls into the place which suits him, having that which he did not will for his punishment as a result of the course which he willed.97

Indeed, according to Isaac Israeli the impure soul cannot pass beyond the sphere of ﬁre surrounding the earth’s atmosphere. Where Ibn Gabirol speaks of temporary banishment, however, Israeli dooms the deﬁled soul to eternal wandering: If the sinful soul is not righteous and is not cleansed from the deﬁlement of this world and its desires which destroy every goodness, and its

94 KM canto 30, lines 291–92: ve-ha-nefesh ha- akhamah lo tir eh mavet, akh teqabel al avonah onesh mar mi-mavet. 95 Cf. KM canto 24, where Ibn Gabirol describes the sphere of the Intellect as ha-heikhal lifnai. 96 In alluding to Lev. 12:4, Ibn Gabirol explicitly states that the soul may approach things sacred once “her period of puriﬁcation has been completed” ( ad melot yemei aharah). Is. 54:7–8 reads as follows: “For a little while I forsook you, but with vast love I will bring you back. In slight anger, for a moment, I hid My face from you; but with kindness everlasting I will take you back in love . . .” Similar sentiments are expressed in Is. ch. 49. 97 Plotinus, Enn. IV, 3, 24. Cf. Plato, Phaedo 81 b–e. On punishment as an outgrowth of the universal order that directs the world, see Enn. IV, 3, 16. For a Hebrew text antedating Plotinus which features the motif of the sinful soul’s tortured wandering, see the passage from IV Ezra cited in Urbach, The Sages, 240–41.

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delights which carry with them all evil, and does not act in accordance with truth and does not understand it—it is then worthy of remaining in exile from the world of the intellect and removed from the light and the splendour of its Creator and His great bounty which is treasured up for such as fear Him. It remains sad and despondent and joins the ﬁre which comes-to-be by the power of the movement of the sphere; that ﬁre prevents it from passing to the great good— instead, it must revolve with the sphere’s revolution, perplexed and full of desire, hungering and thirsting to ﬁnd a way to go home to its country and return to its native place.98

Parallels to the positions of Israeli and Ibn Gabirol can be found in the rabbinic understanding of Gehenna. In classical Jewish eschatology, sinners descend after death to Gehenna, where they undergo a process of puriﬁcation that removes their accumulated sin. Once purged, they ascend again to enjoy the rewards of olam ha-ba. Only the most wicked of the wicked are consigned to hell forever.99 If Ibn Gabirol believed that there are some individuals for whom the puriﬁcation process can never be complete, he does not say so in Keter Malkhut. Possibly, he preferred not to accentuate such a hopelessly pessimistic view in a work designed to edify.

Resurrection The sole conceivable reference to resurrection in Keter Malkhut occurs in the work’s closing canto, where the poet asks for a place in olam ha-ba: “When You take me out of this world, bring me in peace to the life of the world to come. . . . Seat me among your saints . . . And make me worthy to bask in Your light. Revive me, and from earth’s depths raise me up once more.”100 It is diﬃcult to read this petition in any but a spiritual sense. Ibn Gabirol speaks of going 98 See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 113–17. The citation is from the text Stern called “Ibn asday’s Neoplatonist.” Zimmermann has argued, contra Stern, that this text may well be based on Israeli; see “The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle,” 190–96. The spiritualized conception of punishment was widespread; see Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 473–74 and n. 70. On rabbinic precedents for the idea that the soul is purged while tossed in the air, see also Lieberman, “After Life in Early Rabbinic Literature,” 499–501. 99 See, e.g. bRH 16b–17a: shalosh kitot hen le-yom ha-din; bBM 58b: ha-kol yoredin le-gehinnom hu mi-sheloshah. And cf. Plato, Phaedo 113d–114c. 100 KM canto 40, lines 504–508: uv- et min ha- olam ha-zeh to i eini, le- ayyei ha- olam ha-ba be-shalom tevi eini . . . ve-tashuv te ayyeini, umi-tehomot ha- are tashuv ve-ta aleini.

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directly from olam ha-zeh to olam ha-ba, omitting the intermediate stage of bodily resurrection, which in rabbinic eschatology occurs after souls and bodies have been temporarily separated.101 In Keter Malkhut, then, he seems to eschew a literal understanding of te iyyat ha-metim. Yet in his poetic corpus, a more traditional conception of resurrection coexists with this spiritualized interpretation. One of the laments Ibn Gabirol composed following the death of his patron, Yequtiel, closes with a brief reference to resurrection which may warrant a literal reading.102 And in “She ar alay be- edim ve-qinyan,” his tokhe ah that preserves an earlier payyetanic-midrashic topos, Ibn Gabirol suggests that body and soul are reunited after death, to be judged jointly.103 Perhaps he allowed for bodily resurrection, but envisaged a second death, after which there would be no further corporeal existence, but only spiritual immortality. Such a scheme is found in the writings of Abraham Ibn Ezra and in Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection.104 Indeed, one phrase in the closing supplication of Keter Malkhut might be interpreted as a request for a second revival: “Revive me, and from earth’s depths raise me up once more” (Ps. 71:20).105 In the ﬁnal analysis, however, it is impossible to ascertain this philosopher-poet’s true stance regarding corporeal resurrection. What can be said with certainty is that in Keter Malkhut Ibn Gabirol is absorbed to a far greater degree in the fate of the soul than in the issue of physical resurrection. After all, it is on the merits of the soul alone that one gains entrée into the realm of everlasting tranquillity and intellectual delight.

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Na manides cites this passage together with canto 27, as evidence of Ibn Gabirol’s denial of bodily resurrection; see the ﬁnal paragraph of Sha ar ha-gemul in Kitvei ha-Ramban, 2:311. 102 See “Bimei yequtiel asher nigmaru,” Schirmann, HPSP 1:201, v. 101. As noted above, Andalusian laments for the dead generally close with consolatory assurances of the future felicity of the deceased. Resurrection motifs are often invoked, but so are more spiritualized scenarios of the soul’s immortality. It is thus diﬃcult to ascertain whether the Andalusian philosopher-poets subscribe to a traditional conception of bodily resurrection or whether—in light of their stance on the incorporeal existence of the soul in olam ha-ba—they understand te iyyat ha-metim ﬁguratively. For citations of both sorts of elegiac conclusions, see Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, 219 and Levin, The Lamentation Over the Dead, 154–56. 103 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:31–34 and above, pp. 51–54. 104 See Finkel, “Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection,” esp. pp. 98–102. 105 KM canto 40, lines 507–508, quoted above, and see Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 161. The idea of repetition is conveyed by the verb tashuv which is used here twice: vetashuv te ayyeini . . . tashuv ve-ta aleini.

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What, then, are the aﬃnities between Keter Malkhut and Ibn Gabirol’s piyyutim on the soul? The piyyutim that he devotes to the soul do not elaborate a theory of psychology—or cosmology or theology— yet it is clear that they assume many of the technical ideas set forth in Keter Malkhut. They too reﬂect the poet’s desire to correlate Neoplatonic psychology with classical Jewish dicta on the origin and nature of the soul, the relationship between the spiritual and the corporeal, and the status of the soul after death. Like the discerning reader of Keter Malkhut, the worshiper who recites these piyyutim learns to link tradition with philosophy, even while deriving inspiration.

CHAPTER THREE

A SERMON TO THE SOUL: SOLOMON IBN GABIROL’S “SHABBE I NAFSHI LE- UREKH”

The speaker in “Shabbe i nafshi” looks inward and addresses his own soul, exhorting her to piety so that she may save herself from worldly temptation and win eternal repose. Beginning in a gentle but ﬁrm tone, his chain of admonitions rises to an urgent climax. Its cumulative eﬀect is a sense of relentlessness, which intensiﬁes his pressing message. The power of this strophic poem is enhanced by its great economy of language: a hemistich of three or, at most, four words often contains a complete idea. Ibn Gabirol highlights salient ideas by relying on syntactic inversion and paronomasia, alliteration and assonance. Frequent echoes of classical Jewish texts engage the reader in the decipherment of his meaning. Like Keter Malkhut, “Shabbe i nafshi” uses the familiar language of Scripture and the liturgy as a vehicle of imagery and themes that betray a marked Neoplatonic perspective. In piyyutim of this type Ibn Gabirol omits the ﬁne details of Neoplatonic psychology, exploiting only the most compelling of its symbols. Yet simpliﬁcation does not compromise his synthesis. Just as the speaker’s pious admonitions are philosophically colored, the images of the soul’s return are “Judaized” by the context in which they occur and the language in which they are voiced. If, at ﬁrst blush, there seems to be a discrepancy between the poem’s intimate tone and its public liturgical function, it is resolved by the omission of personal details. The speaker who addresses his soul in “Shabbe i nafshi” is the poet-philosopher’s Everyman, and his quest for spirituality and immortality is meant to speak to every thinking person.1 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 86‒87.]

1 The Hebrew text of the poem is found in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:537–38; see also Shirei shelomoh 3:46–47 and Davidson, Thesaurus 3:414, no. 255.

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Structure and Genre The rhetorical and conceptual progressions in “Shabbe i nafshi” suggest two possible structural models. The poem may be divided into two equal halves of two stanzas each, with the leading couplet or madrikh serving as a refrain.2 This scheme is based on evidence of two distinct, but complementary approaches to piety, each conﬁned to a separate section of the text.3 In the ﬁrst half the speaker advises his soul to praise (vv. 1, 2, 4), fear (v. 3) and love God (4b); to fulﬁll His will and walk in His ways (v. 7).4 As his sense of urgency increases, he alters his emphasis, and in the second half he exhorts her to renounce worldly pleasures (vv. 11, 12, 16–17). While both types of admonition ultimately seek the same end, distinct sound patterns correspond to each, reinforcing the impression of a division between the two. A euphonious vocalic quality links the imperative verbs enjoining positive acts in verses 3–7: simi, zikheri, ifeni, limedi, lekhi. By contrast, the verbs used in recommending withdrawal have a heavier sound, due to the addition of a syllable and a lower vowel: himmale i, ma asi, hibbadeli.5 The unfolding of ideas in “Shabbe i nafshi” is only partially linear. The ﬁrst ten verses sketch a self-contained picture of the soul’s return to her Source, but (with notable exceptions) the following eight verses revert to the tribulations of her earthly existence. It is as though the poet wishes to evoke the bliss of spiritual self-perfection, but then calls our attention back to our present ﬂawed state. A series of lexical and semantic correspondences between the two halves lends

2 Bialik and Ravnitzky single out the second verse of the madrikh as the refrain. On the role of the refrain in strophic piyyutim, see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 349–54. 3 This division reﬂects the general thrust of the two halves, although there are individual verses in each section that echo the distinguishing theme of the other. 4 Verse 7b reﬂects the ideal of imitatio dei; see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism”; idem, “Homo Imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology”; Berman, “The Political Interpretation of the Maxim: The Purpose of Philosophy is the Imitation of God”; and Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection, 41–64. 5 The one verb on this pattern which does not have a negative sense in context is hitra i (v. 14). The second half of v. 14 also poses diﬃculties: its image of the soul returning to dust is at odds with the Neoplatonic view of death as the soul’s departure from the body and the material world. The verse seems to mark a temporary shift to a more biblical understanding of nefesh (cf. Ps. 119:25), and may be an attempt to translate into traditional terms the enigmatic warning of v. 12b.

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Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh Solomon Ibn Gabirol Praise your Rock, my soul— He made you for His sake. Each head and knee bows to Him, so every soul blesses Him.

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His glorious, dreaded and awesome name— Place the fear of it in your heart. Proclaim His unity every day; Store your love for Him deep within. Then He will ordain your deliverance from the foe who lies in wait; For He is your life and the length of your days; your salvation and light. Learn to do His will and imitate His ways— You will be saved from the ﬁre of His wrath and the heat of His heavenly spheres; You will come to graze in His garden with all who hope and wait for Him. When you return to your Source then I will fare well, thanks to you. From the vanities of this world take ﬂight, singular soul! Spurn its pleasures, its delights; remember the day you must part! When you behold your Rock in His grandeur you will ﬁnd rest from your toil. Seek His favor with your song before you return to your dust.

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Here is sound counsel for you, undeﬁled soul of my God: From the hidden lust of the body escape, pure innocent one! To God the eternal refuge, O maidservant bound in bones. For He is your hope and your help, Who heals your sickness and hurt.

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ËrEx;y“ /Z[u d/bk]li yKi / ËrEWxl] yvip]n" yjiB]v' ËrEb;T] yj' lK; tm'v]nI μG" / Ër
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hd:yjiy“ vp,n< yfil]M;hi / /lt]h,w“ μl;/[ yleb]h'me hd:yrIP]h' μ/y an: yrIk]zI / /lygIw“ /tj;m]ci ysia]m' hd:/b[}h; ˆmi yjiWnT; / /ld“g:B] ËrEWx yzIj]T, t[e ËrEp;[} la, ËbeWv μr
15

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the poem cohesion.6 God is called “your Rock,” or urekh in verses 1 and 13. His unity, yi udo (4a), is recalled in the epithet ye idah, “singular soul,” (verse 11).7 In verse 4 the soul is advised to store—literally, to “hide”—( ifeni ) the love of God within her, while in verse 16 she is urged to separate herself from the concealed (ha- efunah) desire of the body.8 And the longings of “those who hope and wait” for God (qovav ve- okhav; 9b) ﬁnd their resolution in the closing assurance that God is the soul’s “hope and help” (to altekh ve-sivrekh; 18a). In several instances, a verse from the second half echoes and supplements a verse from the ﬁrst half. Verse 13 resembles verse 10 in phrasing (“When you . . . [then] I/you will . . .”) and content, but rather than simply duplicating the earlier image, it further develops it by alluding to the reward that awaits the soul. Similarly, the poem’s ﬁnal verse (18) echoes verse 6 (“For He is your . . . and your . . .”), but by mentioning the embodied soul’s illness, it closes the poem on a solemn, cautionary note. Alternatively, the poem may be divided into a three-stanza body and a one-stanza conclusion, signaled by the rhetorical break in verse 15. This verse sounds an arresting call to attention (“Here is sound counsel for you . . .”) which forces the reader to stop and reﬂect on what has already been stated, as well as to heed what is about to be said. A similar summons divides Ibn Gabirol’s piyyut 6 On the unifying eﬀect of semantic relationships between the various sections of the Hebrew qa da, see Feldman, Polarity and Parallel. Although “Shabbe i nafshi” is not written in qa da form, many of Feldman’s observations are pertinent. See also Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature, 101–18. 7 The pair calls to mind the analogies between the soul and God found in Lev. Rab. 4:8 and its parallel passages. Here ye idah modiﬁes the noun nefesh, but in many Andalusian piyyutim it occurs on its own as an emblematic epithet, or kinnuy, for the soul; cf. Ibn Gabirol’s reshut “She i la- el ye idah ha- akhamah” in Liturgical Poetry 1:80–81, no. 25. In his comments on Ps. 22:21–22, Abraham Ibn Ezra says that the human soul is called ye idah because it separates from the Universal Soul (nishmat ha-kol ) in order to join with the body. This suggests the translation “separate” or “individual.” Saadya writes that the soul is called ye idah because “there is nothing like it among created beings, whether celestial or terrestrial”; see Am n t 6:3, p. 201. His gloss suggests the translation “unique,” which is closer to the midrashic sense. In rendering nefesh ye idah as “singular soul,” I have attempted to convey something of both meanings. 8 In v. 16, ha- efunah implies concealment, but in the context of v. 4 ifni has the sense of making internal something (i.e., the love of God) which has external manifestations as well. It is this sense of the root .f.n. which is conveyed by Ibn Tibbon’s rendering of am r (“heart,” “mind” or “conscience”) as ma pun in his translation of Ba ya’s Hid ya; see, e.g., 8:3, p. 343, 4 lines from the bottom, and ovot ha-levavot, ed. Zifroni, top of p. 472.

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“Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi,” marking the shift between reprimand and counsel: “Take heed, lass, and note, incline your ear!”9 In “Shabbe i nafshi,” where advice has been given all along, the clarion call in verse 15 announces that the poem is drawing to a close, lending the ﬁnal verses the weight of a summation. The phrase nishmat eli ha- ehorah (“undeﬁled soul of my God”; v. 15b) highlights the divine origin of the soul. But in contrast with nafshi of verse 1, it places the speaker at a remove from his soul, as though it had been transferred back to God. Still, the three verses that follow remind the worshiper that this goal has yet to be achieved: the soul is a servant of the Eternal God, yet cannot serve Him fully as long as she remains a prisoner of the body. The allusion in verse 2 is a clear indication that “Shabbe i nafshi” is an introduction to the Nishmat prayer. Many piyyutim hint at their liturgical locus in the concluding verse, leading directly into the ﬁxed prayer. If, in Andalusian practice, the madrikh (or second verse of the madrikh) was repeated as a refrain after each stanza, then “Shabbe i nafshi” would have ended with the words nishmat kol ay tevarekh. As noted earlier, poetic prefaces to Nishmat were of two main varieties, the monorhymed reshut and the strophic mu arrak. In view of its strophic form, leading couplet and muwashsha -like rhyme scheme, “Shabbe i nafshi” must be a mu arrak.10 A philosophical meditation on the individual soul and the meaning of prayer, it uses the salient themes of Nishmat as a point of departure. While the modern reader can only imagine the poem’s liturgical setting, the medieval worshiper who recited “Shabbe i nafshi” in synagogue would have found new ways of understanding Nishmat. The audible recitation of the piyyut might well have encouraged active self-examination, for by

9 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:545, v. 24: lakhen shim i vat ur i ve-ha i oznekh. The words are a verbatim quote of Ps. 45:11, which continues, “forget your people and your father’s house, (v. 12) and let the king be aroused by your beauty; since he is your lord, bow to him.” Ibn Gabirol clearly has the Psalm in mind, for some ten lines later the speaker adjures his soul to “arise, cry out to your king in the night . . . and bow low to him” (vv. 33–34). On the use of biblical imagery to describe the soul as God’s beloved, see below. 10 Jarden tentatively classiﬁes “Shabbe i nafshi” as a nishmat, but this genre, introduced by Joseph Ibn Abitur, consists of unmetered three-line strophes which open with the word “nishmat” and close with a verbatim citation of a biblical verse. The ﬁnal strophe closes with the phrase ve- illu ﬁnu male shirah ka-yam from the second section of the Nishmat prayer. (For the reading ve- illu, see Saadya, Siddur, 119.) See Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 397–99.

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assuming the role of the speaker, the worshiper would in eﬀect confront his own soul.

Direct Address: Models One of the poem’s most signiﬁcant rhetorical features is its direct address to the soul. At once intimate and forthright, the second person address is well suited to the hortatory content of “Shabbe i nafshi.” While exhortations to piety are not alien to classical Jewish literature, the idea of directing a sermon to the soul reﬂects an intellectual milieu in which individual spirituality was a major preoccupation. There is no precedent for such a composition in classical piyyut, where the payyetan speaks as a representative of the community before God. Indeed, Saadya Gaon’s “Barekhi abberet” is the only piyyut from the period prior to Ibn Gabirol that anticipates the rhetorical posture and some of the pious themes of Andalusian admonitions to the soul. Scriptural apostrophes to the soul furnished the poets with apt stylistic and thematic models. Every couplet in Saadya’s “Barekhi abberet” parallels the opening of Psalm 104. The Andalusians eagerly exploited every one of the relatively few biblical verses in which a speaker addresses his soul in the second person, incorporating them verbatim, or paraphrasing them freely.11 The opening hemistich of “Shabbe i nafshi” recalls Psalm 146:1 (“Praise the Lord, O my soul!”) as well as Psalms 103:1 and 104:1 (“Bless the Lord, O my soul!”). In addition, the composite of verses 10 and 13 might be seen as a philosophical gloss on Psalm 116:7 (“Return, my soul, to your rest, for the Lord has been good to you”), a verse that Ibn Gabirol quotes verbatim in the ﬁrst line of “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi.”12 Arabic models were also available. Although there is no exact Arabic counterpart to Hebrew liturgical poetry, the tradition of ascetic poems, or zuhdiyy t, was well-established by Ibn Gabirol’s time. These gnomic poems stress the ephemeral nature of human existence and

11 Following are the verses: Jud. 5:21; Ps. 42:6,12; Ps. 43:5; Ps. 103:1, 2, 22; Ps. 104:1, 35; Ps. 116:7; Ps. 146:1. 12 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:543–46, where the verse is clearly reinterpreted in Neoplatonic terms. See also Judah Halevi’s “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” in Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 2:372–73 and Schirmann, HPSP 2:514–515.

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starkly proclaim the worthlessness of worldly pursuits. “O son of earth, to be consumed of earth on the morrow, desist from thy pride, for thou wilt be food and drink to the earth,” warns one such poem that Ibn Gabirol cites in his ethical work.13 Among the best-known zuhdiyy t are those of the Abbasid court poet, Abu ’l- At hiya (748–825).14 Resembling sermons, they exhort their audience to abandon the vanities of this world for pious deeds. The irredeemably dark tone of these Arabic poems distinguishes them from a piyyut like “Shabbe i nafshi,” but their world-renouncing themes and hortatory orientation were easily adaptable.15 Appeals to one’s soul are found in classical Arabic qa das, where abrupt shifts from narration to apostrophe (iltif t) are a common rhetorical device.16 There were also medieval Arabic prose texts devoted to the discipline of the soul. The pseudepigraphic Book of the Chiding of the Soul (Kit b mu dhalat al-nafs) is concerned with the soul’s rescue from the seductions of the material world and restoration to the spiritual realm.17 Each section of the work opens with the vocative phrase, y nafs, “O soul!” While there is no evidence of direct borrowings, our piyyutim were clearly conceived against a background of rich literary tradition. Like the Arabic nafs, the Hebrew nefesh signiﬁes both soul and self.18 The primary meaning in “Shabbe i nafshi” is plainly soul; for 13

See Wise, The Improvement of the Moral Qualities, 59 (Eng.), 21 (Ar.). See: Guillaume, “Abu ’l- At hiya”; Nicholson, A Literary History of the Arabs, 296–303; and Schoeler, “Bashsh r b. Burd, Ab ’l- At hiyah and Ab Nuw s,” 286–90. For translations of ascetic poems by Abu ’l- Al al-Ma arr (973–1058), see Nicholson, Studies in Islamic Poetry, 125–41. 15 See Scheindlin, Wine, Women and Death, 136–41. In “Ibn Gabirol’s Religious Poetry and Arabic Zuhd Poetry” Scheindlin argues that it was not the universalizing zuhdiyy t, but private Arabic prayers in verse which furnished models for the intimate tone of Ibn Gabirol’s reshuyot. 16 See Van Gelder, “The Abstracted Self in Arabic Poetry,” who notes that Arabic qa das may contain “an erratic sequence of several . . . shifts [in grammatical person]” (p. 22). Part of a poem of Kh rijite (early Islamic sectarian) provenance, in which the speaker rouses his soul to courage in the face of death on the battleﬁeld, is reproduced in Gabrieli, “Religious Poetry in Early Islam,” 13. 17 For the Arabic text see Badaw , al-Aﬂ niyya al-mu dathiyya inda ’l- arab, 51–116. For an English translation made from O. Bardenhewer’s 1873 edition of the Latin, see Scott, Hermetica 4:277–352. There is a brief discussion of the text in Aﬃﬁ, “The Inﬂuence of Hermetic Literature on Muslim Thought.” Isaak Heinemann posited this text as the source for Ba ya’s dialogue of the soul and the intellect (Hid ya 3:5–10), but David Baneth and Georges Vajda disputed his claim of direct dependence. See: Baneth’s review of Heinemann in KS 3; Vajda, “Le dialogue de l’âme et de la raison,” 98–103; and La théologie ascétique, 57–60. 18 For the various senses of nafs in the Qur n and post-qur nic literature, see 14

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the term is used in parallel with neshamah (verses 2 and 15), and much of the imagery makes sense only in the context of an exhortation to the soul. This rhetorical posture enables the speaker to distance himself from his soul and admonish her as though she were an autonomous entity. Yet, the fundamental identity between soul and self is preserved. The impulse to deﬁne the self in terms of the soul derives from Neoplatonic thought, whose exponents maintained that the soul is that which makes man “what he is.”19 “Shabbe i nafshi” assumes that the soul is the essence of man, both in life and after death. The devotions recommended here devolve upon the living person conceived as a whole, yet the soul alone is held responsible for these actions.20 Death ( yom ha-peridah; v. 12b) brings the disintegration of the body and the liberation of the immortal soul, without which there can be no “self.” Yet, for rhetorical purposes, the poet separates this unity, even where the distinction makes no sense philosophically: When you return to your Source, then I will fare well, thanks to you. (v. 10)21

A similarly dramatic split between the speaker and his soul marks the climax of Ibn Gabirol’s tokhe ah, “Nafshi de i mah tif ali.” Here too the burden of action rests on the soul: “My soul, know what MacDonald, “The Development of the Idea of Spirit in Islam” and Calverley, “Nafs.” Note that in Muslim ethical writings nafs signiﬁes the physical appetites which must be restrained and regulated. This usage informs Ba ya, Hid ya 3:5–10, where the intellect admonishes the soul to abandon its base instincts and serve God. 19 See Plotinus, Enn. IV, 7, 1: “. . . the soul is the self ” (Armstrong, 4:341). The corresponding Arabic in the Theology of Aristotle has: “fa’l-ins n idhan huwa ’l-nafs, liannahu bi’l-nafs yak n huwa m huwa.” (Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, p. 122, lines 15–16.) In English this is rendered, “Man is therefore the soul, for through the soul he is what he is . . .” (Lewis, 179). 20 In classical Neoplatonism, the role of the rational soul is entirely contemplative; see Plotinus, Enn. III, 8 (“On Nature and Contemplation and the One”) and Pistorius, Plotinus and Neoplatonism, 12: “Plotinus ascribes acts only to lower beings; an act is no more than an imperfect form of ‘contemplation’ which is the ‘act’ of the Higher Beings.” Such an approach could potentially lead to antinomianism, but Ibn Gabirol gives religious observance a soteriological role by making it the duty of the soul. Cf. the dual emphasis on knowledge and action at the end of MH 1:2, where the text clearly reﬂects the phrase al- ilm wa’l- amal, which is often used in Islamic and Jewish speculative texts to recommend a synthesis of contemplative and active ideals. See below, p. 135, n. 10. 21 The eﬀect of this partial allusion to Gen. 12:13 (“. . . that it may go well with me because of you”) would have been reinforced in the reader’s mind by the continuation of the biblical verse, which Ibn Gabirol does not quote: “. . . so that I [Heb. nafshi ] may remain alive, thanks to you.”

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you must do before ascending to your Rock,” urges the speaker. After twenty-four verses exhorting her to confess her sins, renounce the vanities of this world and prostrate herself before God, he concludes: “If you act, all will be well for you and for me.”22 The Piety of the Soul: Prayer, Love, and Fear of God Philosophically, “Shabbe i nafshi” is subtler than Keter Malkhut. It does not mention emanation, the sphere of the Intellect, or the soul’s derivation from the divine kavod. Yet the full import of the poem’s rich symbolism is apparent only in light of Ibn Gabirol’s synthesis of philosophy and tradition. Against the backdrop of the Neoplatonic odyssey of the soul, the very notion of piety, and the familiar themes of suﬀering in this world and salvation in the next acquire new, spiritualized meanings. Prayer, conceived as pure worship, is a recurrent motif in Ibn Gabirol’s piyyutim: “Bow to God, my singular, wise soul, and run to serve Him in awe”; “Make sweeter than honey the songs of your lips; arise, sing out in the night to your King.”23 “Shabbe i nafshi” opens with a resounding call to the soul to praise her Maker. From the outset, Ibn Gabirol depicts prayer as the special prerogative and obligation of the soul. By linking the two hemistichs of the ﬁrst verse with the conjunction ki, he indicates that the soul’s praise, like her very existence, redounds to God’s glory.24 Although he does not say so explicitly, he hints at the idea that the soul’s essential aﬃnity with God is what entitles and obliges man to laud his Creator.25 The midrashic analogies between God and the soul are recalled in the pair yi udo (v. 4)—ye idah (v. 11). And the juxtaposition of the similar-sounding urekh and ye arekh (v. 1) calls to mind the description 22 Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:291–93, no. 88. On the poem’s closing play on words, see below, p. 141. 23 “She i la- el ye idah ha- akhamah,” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:80–81, v. 1 and “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi,” ibid., 2:545, v. 33. 24 For the classical rabbinic notion that everything God created was for His glory, and that God craves the praise of all His creations, see, e.g., Ex. Rab. 17:1 on Ex. 12:22. Verse 1 of “Shabbe i nafshi” recalls Is. 43:7, which is adduced as a prooftext for the following assertion in Tosefta Yoma 2:5 and bYoma 38a: lo bara haqadosh barukh hu et ha- olam ela li-khvodo. 25 For an explicit statement, see the opening line of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah,” discussed in Chapter 6.

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in Keter Malkhut of the soul as that which is “quarried from the rock of the Rock,” and hence as an emanation that partakes of the very “substance” of its divine Source. Verse 2, which alludes to Nishmat, links outward with inward expressions of worship: “Each head and knee bows to Him, so every soul blesses Him.” The complementary sense of the two hemistichs is accentuated by the Hebrew gam (verse 2b), as well as by the auditory and etymological similarity of berekh and tevarekh. But Ibn Gabirol inverts the order of these images as they originally occur in the Nishmat prayer, suggesting a weightier emphasis on the interior component. As a refrain, verse 2 would have served as a constant reminder that prayer calls upon the limbs as well as the soul. Yet, the poem makes no other reference to the role of the body in the service of God. The omission is striking in light of Nishmat itself, where praise is the duty of mouth, tongue, lips, eyes, hands, knees and feet, as well as soul. The pairing and contrasting of exterior and interior in religious devotion found its fullest development in The Book of Direction to the Duties of the Heart (Kit b al-hid ya il far i al-qul b) by Ibn Gabirol’s younger contemporary, Ba ya Ibn Paquda, whose thought shows strong aﬃnities with Islamic ascetic and mystical teachings.26 It is instructive to read “Shabbe i nafshi” while bearing in mind Ba ya’s pietist distinction between the “Duties of the Limbs” ( far i aljaw ri ) and the “Duties of the Heart” ( far i al-qul b).27 While both are essential for genuine service of God, Ba ya grants primacy to the Duties of the Heart: I have come to know for certain that the duties of the members are of no avail to us unless our hearts choose to do them and our souls desire their performance.28

26

See Vajda, La Théologie ascétique de Ba ya Ibn Paquda and above, p. 22. This is not to endorse Aaron Mirsky’s claim that Ba ya’s Hid ya was the sole conduit for the philosophical and ethical themes in Andalusian piyyut. His insistence that Ba ya antedated Ibn Gabirol is problematic, and there is no reason to assume that a later thinker of the stature of Abraham Ibn Ezra would have had to rely exclusively on the Hid ya for ideas which were in circulation prior to Ba ya’s advent. While the parallels Mirsky adduces are of phenomenological interest, his claims for Ba ya’s direct inﬂuence on the poets are untenable; see From Duties of the Heart to Songs of the Heart. 28 Hid ya, Introduction, 19 (Mansoor, 89). 27

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To Ba ya, the heart represents concentration and inwardness, but it is also the seat of reason. The Duties of the Heart are rationally veriﬁable, and include such obligations as the belief in the Creator and the profession of His absolute unity. Like the soul in “Shabbe i nafshi,” the heart plays a crucial role in Ba ya’s conception of prayer: When a man prays only with his tongue, his heart preoccupied with something other than the meaning of the prayer, then his prayer is like a body without a soul, or a shell without contents, for only his body is present; his heart is absent from his prayer.29

Ibn Gabirol’s interiorized conception of prayer reﬂects a similar concern with meaningful devotion. In part, the poetic device of exhorting one’s soul to prayer is an injunction to engage one’s intellect in the act of worship. Indeed, verse 4 of “Shabbe i nafshi” makes the recitation of the Shema into an intellectual aﬃrmation of God’s unity. Reﬁned under the inﬂuence of Greco-Arabic thought, the doctrine of Divine Unity became one of the cornerstones of medieval Jewish theology.30 Yet Ibn Gabirol does not neglect the experiential aspect of serving God, for the second hemistich enjoins a profound love of Him. These two expressions of piety complement each other: one turns an inward meditation into a ritual proclamation, the other keeps within a wordless emotion which, as it gains intensity, may burst forth as prayer. In another reshut Ibn Gabirol speaks of a concealed love for God which can no longer be contained, and pours out as prayer: “I hide in my heart Your glorious name, but desire for You swells ‘till it bursts from my lips.”31 There he is troubled by puny man’s uncontrollable need to praise God, but here the sustained allusion in verse 4 encourages a passionate attachment to Him. Just as “Proclaim His unity every day” alludes to the Shema (Deuteronomy 6:4), “Store your love for Him deep within” recalls the Ve- ahavta, the injunction to love God “with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your might” (Deuteronomy 6:5–9). 29

Hid ya 8:3, p. 343 (Mansoor, 365), and cf. Wise, The Improvement of the Moral Qualities, 72 on the hateful man: “He acts as though he were praying, but his secret thoughts ( f am rihi ) are quite diﬀerent.” 30 See Saadya, Am n t, Treatise Two and Ba ya, Hid ya, Treatise One. Ba ya declares that the “sincere profession of the unity of God” (ikhl taw d al-kh liq) is the foundation of Judaism, but it is insuﬃcient to assert God’s unity on the basis of authority alone; the principle must be veriﬁed by means of rational investigation. 31 See “She artikha be-khol sha ri ve-nishpi” in HPSP 1:238 and the discussion in Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 182–87.

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While some rabbinic and medieval glosses saw in these verses a duty to love God to the point of death, liturgical poems like “Shabbe i nafshi” are not naturally read as exhortations to die for the sake of spiritual perfection. Rather, they urge pure devotion to God in this life through ascetic piety that frees the soul to pursue wisdom and thus draw near to her Rock and Redeemer.32 The idea of inwardness is pronounced in the second half of verse 4; both the verb and the prepositional phrase convey interiority. Beqirbekh, here rendered “deep within,” recalls Psalm 103:1, “Bless the Lord, O my soul, and all that is within me (ve-khol qeravay), bless His holy name.”33 Both the Targum and Abraham Ibn Ezra understand qeravay there as a reference to the body. If we apply this interpretation to “Shabbe i nafshi,” qerev (4b) would correspond to guf (16a). And, as we have seen, the imperative ifeni (4b), meaning “place inside” or “make internal,” derives from the same root as ha- efunah (16a), here translated as “hidden.” These common elements highlight the contrast between the two verses: where verse 4 commends the love of God as a passion one should carry “deep within” oneself, verse 16 vigorously condemns the lust (literally: “appetite”) that lurks deep down within the body. The second hemistich of verse 4 also parallels the second hemistich of verse 3. The similarity of their syntax, verbs and prepositional phrases calls attention to their central terms, yir ato and ahavato. The association of fear and love of God can be traced back to Scripture. In Deuteronomy 10:12 the pair is embedded in an exhortation which, were it addressed to the individual, might serve as an epigraph for “Shabbe i nafshi”: “And now, O Israel, what does the Lord demand of you? Only this: to fear the Lord your God, to walk only in His paths, to love Him and to serve the Lord your God with all your heart and soul.” The two impulses for serving God are also linked in classical texts, among them homilies on the Shema .34 32 For a discussion of the rabbinic glosses, see Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 3–13. Fishbane stresses the otherworldliness of the medieval philosophical and mystical quest for ultimate felicity, citing Judah Halevi’s “Adonai negdekha khol ta avati.” Yet Halevi’s extreme submissiveness and self-abandonment to God are not representative of the Andalusian school; see Scheindlin, “Contrasting Religious Experience in the Liturgical Poems of Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi.” 33 In the Ashkenazic rite, Ps. 103:1 is the prooftext for illu ﬁnu. Although the verse is not cited in the geonic-Andalusian version of Nishmat, the poets clearly associated it with that prayer. 34 See Urbach, The Sages, 400–19, esp. 402–403. Rabbinic sources reﬂect two

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The nexus between fear and love of God is explored in medieval philosophical and ethical literature. Ba ya classiﬁes the pair as duties of the heart. He cites the order of their occurrence in Deuteronomy 10:12 and 10:20 as evidence that fear is a prerequisite to the disinterested love of God, which is the ultimate goal of all piety.35 His deﬁnition of the true love of God is in the spirit of “Shabbe i nafshi”: “It is the yearning of the soul, the desire of its very substance to be attached to God’s supreme light.”36 Judah Halevi distributes the entire Law among the three principles of fear, love and joy.37 In his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides sometimes pairs fear and love of God, but at other times contrasts them sharply, giving priority to a spiritual love so intense that the devotee is continually possessed.38 Technically, verse 3 of “Shabbe i nafshi” enjoins the soul to fear “His glorious, dreaded and awesome Name.” In classical Jewish literature, the phrase ha-shem ha-nikhbad ve-ha-nora refers to God’s Ineﬀable Name, the Tetragrammaton, which applies only to God. When the High Priest pronounced the Name on Yom Kippur, the priests and the people in the Temple court responded with the phrase, barukh shem kevod malkhuto le- olam va ed, which was also the response to the public recitation of the Shema .39 Clearly, the unique Name would be the most appropriate focus of an intellectual meditation on Divine Unity. But verse 3 also has a broader signiﬁcance for the poem’s imagery. In the Bible, the admonition le-yir ah et ha-shem ha-nikhbad ve-ha-nora (Deuteronomy 28:58) occurs in one of the most celebrated

diﬀerent conceptions of fear. One is an inferior sort, which is motivated by the dread of punishment, while the other is a more elevated reverence for God, which is inspired by love (ibid., 406–409). 35 See Hid ya, Introduction, 20 (Mansoor, 90) and the preface to Treatise Ten, 409–10 (Mansoor, 426–27). See also Davidson, “The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation,” 59–62. 36 Mansoor, Duties, 427. 37 See Judah Halevi, Al-khazar , 2:50 and 3:11, and note that on pp. 70 and 100 the words yir ah and ahavah (and sim ah) occur in Hebrew, implying that they are technical terms. 38 See, e.g., MT, Yesodei ha-torah 2:1–2, and cf. Teshuvah Ch. 10. For additional references see Vajda, L’Amour de dieu, index, s.v. “Crainte et amour.” 39 The High Priest’s pronunciation of the Name is recalled in the avodah portion of the liturgy for Yom Kippur: ve-ha-kohanim ve-ha- am ha- omedim ba- azarah, ke-she-hayu shome im et ha-shem ha-nikhbad ve-ha-nora . . . hayu kore im u-mishta avim . . . ve- omerim: barukh shem kevod malkhuto le- olam va ed. See, e.g., Birnbaum, High Holyday Prayer Book, 815, and cf. mYoma 3,8 and 4,2. On the origin of this response in the reading of the Shema in Temple times, see Urbach, The Sages, 401. On the early Palestinian avodah, see Yahalom, Priestly Palestinian Poetry.

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of hortatory contexts, the tokhe ah or admonition that Moses addresses to Israel prior to their entry into the Land. A reader immersed in Scripture would be struck by the implicit analogy resulting from the borrowing: vis-à-vis her divine Source, the soul in this world is like Israel on the banks of the Jordan, poised to enter the Promised Land. Although there are more explicit statements of this analogy elsewhere in Ibn Gabirol’s poetry, “Shabbe i nafshi” does use language and imagery traditionally associated with national deliverance to evoke the salvation of the individual soul. These usages reﬂect a shift away from collective, historical concerns toward individual spirituality—a trend that is typical of Andalusian piyyutim on the soul. Deliverance from the Enemy: The Interiorization of a Motif Promises of deliverance are a leitmotif of “Shabbe i nafshi.” Formulated as declarative sentences, they provide a welcome balance to what would otherwise be an unrelenting barrage of exhortations.40 Ibn Gabirol’s deft interweaving of the two types of sentence implies a causal connection: “If you are sincere in your eﬀorts, then you will be saved.” Broadly speaking, “Shabbe i nafshi” hints at two stages of redemption: rescue from the “enemy” in this world (v. 5), and spiritual restoration in the next (vv. 9–10). In both cases, the poet’s use of imagery and symbolism reﬂects a philosophical understanding of traditional motifs. In verse 5 the speaker assures his soul: “[God] will ordain your deliverance ( yesha u-ﬁdyom) from the foe who lies in wait.” The language of this verse is reminiscent of biblical promises of salvation extended to Israel during periods of struggle with hostile nations.41 Even more closely, it recalls the complaints of persecution at the hands of anonymous “foes” that are voiced by the speaker in the Book of Psalms.42 Transposed to the realm of the individual soul, such images are interiorized. Who, then, is the unnamed enemy of the soul, and what does 40 Note, however, that the second person feminine indicative verbs in vv. 8, 9, 10 and 13 sound very much like the imperatives in the surrounding verses. 41 See, e.g., Deut. 33:7, or Jud. 2:18, and note the recurrence of the root y.sh. . in vv. 6 and 8 of the poem. 42 See Kugel, “Topics in the History of the Spirituality of the Psalms,” esp. 115–17.

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deliverance from him signify? The key to his identity lies in the wise counsel that the speaker oﬀers in the poem’s ﬁnal stanza, particularly in verse 16. Emphasizing his soul’s essential purity, the speaker urges her to free herself from the clutches of “the hidden lust of the body”; ta avat guf ha- efunah. Clearly, the adversary is associated with the realm of the corporeal, which, in the Neoplatonic scheme, is inimical to the progress of the most reﬁned soul. More telling is the term ta avah, the medieval Hebrew equivalent for the Arabic shahwa.43 In Arabic Neoplatonic writings, the adjective shahw niyya (“appetitive” or “concupiscent”) is applied to the lower souls, which the highest soul must subdue before she can be fully liberated. But why does the poet, who carefully weighs every word, call the appetitive impulse “concealed”? Here a rabbinic parallel is crucial: the Babylonian Talmud tractate Sukkah 52a refers to ye er ha-ra sheafun ve- omed be-libbo shel adam (“the evil inclination which is concealed and lies in wait in man’s heart”). Ibn Gabirol’s ta avat guf ha- efunah thus fuses the rabbinic evil inclination with the Neoplatonic concupiscent soul. Echoes of the Talmudic phrase can be heard in the construction, ar she- omed le-rivekh. The identity of this “enemy” with the baser instincts is borne out by the frequent rabbinic portrayal of the ye er ha-ra as an adversary. The Evil Inclination is an insidious foe who accompanies man from his youth and causes him to fall even in old age. Sone (“one who hates”) and mikhshol (“stumbling block”) are two of his biblical names, and he is identiﬁed with the sa an, the adversary par excellence.44 An aggadic passage glosses the “little city” of Ecclesiastes 9:14–16 as the body; the “great king” who besieges it as the ye er ha-ra ; and the “poor wise man” who delivers it yet goes unnoticed as the ye er ha- ov.45 Towards the end of Keter Malkhut Ibn Gabirol confesses that his evil ye er has led him to deﬁle his pure soul. Even worse, the “cruel” ye er is poised to lead him further astray, thereby preventing his soul from attaining her eternal rest.46

43 See, e.g., Saadya on Num. 11:4 in Version arabe du pentateuque and Saadya, Mishlei to 13:12, 13:19, 18:1; and 21:26. 44 See Gen. Rab. 54:1; bSuk. 52a; bB.B. 15b; and Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 242–63. 45 See bNed. 32b and Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 454. 46 See KM canto 36. Ba ya also personiﬁes the evil impulse as the Enemy ( ad w); see Hid ya, 5:5. See also Wise, The Improvement of the Moral Qualties, 69 (Eng.), 26 (Ar.).

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Since the poet identiﬁes the evil ye er with the lower souls of the Neoplatonic triad, it stands to reason that he would correlate the good ye er of rabbinic psychology with the rational soul.47 In the simpliﬁed terms of our piyyut, the Evil Inclination corresponds to the body, so the Good Inclination should correspond to the soul. The midrash Avot de Rabbi Natan describes the Evil Impulse as a king who controls man’s limbs, driving the body to concupiscence. As long as the Evil Impulse is sovereign, the Good Impulse is like a captive in prison.48 While the Rabbis do not locate the evil inclination in the body and the good inclination in the soul, the image of the captive ye er ha-tov could easily be assimilated to the Neoplatonic motif of the soul imprisoned in the body.49 Echoes of another rabbinic passage enjoining the suppression of the Evil Inclination may be heard in “Shabbe i nafshi”: A man should always incite the good impulse to ﬁght against the evil impulse . . . If he subdues it, well and good. If not, let him study the Torah. . . . If he subdues it, well and good. If not, let him recite the Shema . . . . If he subdues it, well and good. If not, let him remind himself of the day of death.50

The speaker in our piyyut exhorts his soul to recite the Shema (v. 4) and to remember the day of death (v. 12).51 Here too the poet interprets the rabbinic admonitions along philosophical lines: the recitation of the Shema becomes an aﬃrmation of the principle of Divine Unity, and the day of death is the day of the soul’s separation from the body. For Ibn Gabirol, inciting the Good Impulse against the Evil Impulse means enjoining the soul to spurn worldly vanities and escape “from the hidden lust of the body.” He thus sees in the rabbinic dichotomy of the ye arim a pointed hostility to the body and a marked antipathy to mundane concerns.52 47 For an explicit equation of the good ye er with the intellect (sekhel ) and the evil ye er with the passions (ta avot) that the intellect must subdue, see Ibn addiq, Haolam ha-qatan, 70. 48 See Goldin, The Fathers According to Rabbi Nathan, 83; Aboth De Rabbi Nathan, version I, ch. 16, p. 63. 49 See: Urbach, The Sages, 472; Fishbane, The Kiss of God, 9–10; and Septimus, “On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,” 607–608. 50 bBer. 5a. See also Altmann, “Homo Imago Dei,” 248–49 and Schechter, Aspects of Rabbinic Theology, 272–76. 51 See also Ibn Gabirol’s “Shuvi nafshi,” in Liturgical Poetry 2:543–46, v. 26: la ami et yi rekh be- arvot torah. 52 Cf. Urbach, The Sages, 475: “The struggle against the ye er does not . . . mean

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If Ibn Gabirol perceives the enemy of the soul purely in terms of physical passions, which may be subdued by ascetic withdrawal, it might seem superﬂuous to speak of divine deliverance. The ﬁrst hemistich of verse 5 is, however, carefully worded. In saying that God “will ordain your deliverance,” he suggests that God is the ultimate Redeemer, but the individual may initiate his own salvation by reﬁning his soul.53 A similar balance is achieved in verse 8, which alludes laconically to the fate that awaits the impious soul. The two halves of the verse are syntactically parallel and semantically similar, and both promise deliverance from an ordeal by ﬁre. Where the ﬁrst hemistich evokes the anger of a personal, volitional God, the second alludes obliquely to a naturalistically conceived purgatory: the sinning soul wanders within the sphere of ﬁre surrounding the earth until she is puriﬁed. The Soul’s Return to Her Source The ﬁnal stage of the soul’s redemption is evoked in two parallel verses which, embedded at the very heart of the poem, mark its rhetorical climax. Verse 9 uses the biblical motif of “grazing in the garden,” while verse 10 explicitly mentions the soul’s return to her Source. The philosophical resonances of the term maqor are unmistakable. In his comments on Psalm 36:10 (“With You is the fountain of life; by Your light do we see light”) Abraham Ibn Ezra glosses the phrase meqor ayyim as the immortal supernal Soul (ha-neshamah ha- elyonah), the source of life for the individual human soul.54 The same idea is reﬂected in the opening line of his reshut, “A ulah mimeqor ayyim me’irah” (“Splendid one, sprung from the fountain of life”).55 The pairing of life and light in the biblical verse—which is paralleled in verse 6 of our poem—suggested to Ibn Ezra the eternal intellectual reward of the redeemed soul. The Hebrew title by withdrawal from the world and from activity therein, but the conquest of the ye er while working in the world.” 53 Fishbane speaks of “an activist mode of individual salvation in the here and now”; see The Kiss of God, 8–9. 54 ayyei ha-neshamah ha- elyonah she-lo tamut. See Wolfson, “God, the Demiurge and the Intellect,” 82. Ibn Ezra’s identiﬁcation of the “source of life” with an emanation, rather than with God Himself, may have been motivated by the distinction which the verse seems to draw between the two (“With You is the source of life”). 55 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems 1:54–55.

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which Ibn Gabirol’s magnum opus came to be known clearly reﬂects a Neoplatonic reading of this verse, as does the work’s closing promise that knowledge of the divine world brings “freedom from death and union with the Source of life.”56 In Keter Malkhut the poet says, “You are wise and wisdom, source of life, ﬂows from You.”57 The Neoplatonic sense of the phrase seems clear, whether meqor ayyim describes God’s wisdom, or is addressed to God Himself.58 In their metaphysical writings, the Andalusians identify either the supernal Intellect or the supernal Soul as the source of the human soul, while in their piyyutim they often refer to God as the soul’s divine Source.59 Presumably, in a devotional poem it is more satisfying to speak of reunion with God than with a hypostasis like Intellect or Soul.60 In “Shabbe i nafshi” the parallelism of “When you return to your Source” and “You will come to graze in His garden” aligns the potentially abstract notion of maqor with an image of God as divine Shepherd, lending it a more personal hue. At the same time, the pastoral image takes on philosophical overtones. The correspondence between verses 9a and 10a implies an identiﬁcation of the “garden” with the soul’s supernal source. Understood in this light, verse 9 paints an idyllic picture of the soul’s restoration that is strongly suggestive of Paradise. Abraham Ibn Ezra reports that Ibn Gabirol saw in the biblical Eden story an allegorical parallel to the Neoplatonic myth of the soul: Adam—the rational soul—was exiled from the supernal realm of Eden for succumbing to the temptations of Eve and the serpent, the animal and concupiscent souls.61 The bucolic imagery of verse 9 also echoes the Song of Songs. In particular, the diction of the verse recalls Canticles 6:2, “My 56

See MH 5:43. KM canto 9, line 74. 58 See Liebes, “Sefer ye ira,” 89 who suggests that the phrase is addressed to God there. 59 On Ibn Ezra’s vacillation between the supernal Intellect and Soul, see Wolfson, “God, the Demiurge, and the Intellect,” 80–87. For poems describing God as the soul’s source see, e.g., “Shikhe i yegonekh”; “Nafshi de i,” and “Se i ayin ye idati le- urekh,” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:289–93 and 2:333–34. 60 The epithet ma on is often used to describe God as the soul’s dwelling place (see v. 17 of “Shabbe i nafshi”), implying a Neoplatonic reading of Deut. 33:27, me onah elohey qedem (“The ancient God is a refuge”). On this usage, see below, pp. 130 and 157. 61 Ibn Ezra calls Ibn Gabirol “profoundly learned in the mystery of the soul”; see the Short Commentary on Gen. 3:21 in Friedlaender, Essays on Ibn Ezra, Hebrew Section, 40–41 and Kaufmann, Me qarim, 126–35, esp. 129–32. 57

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beloved has gone down to his garden (le-gano), to the beds of spices, to feed (lir ot) in the gardens and to pick lilies.” The allusion takes on added signiﬁcance in light of the traditional exegesis of Shir hashirim. From rabbinic times the eroticism of the book had precluded a literal interpretation. Midrashic exegetes read the Song as an allegory of the love between God and Israel. The harmonies and strains of this amatory relationship were portrayed in terms of the events of the nation’s history, particularly those revolving around the twin axes of exile and redemption.62 With the advent of philosophical exegesis in the Middle Ages and a growing interest in personal spirituality, the book became a dialogue between the individual soul and the Deity, and the national themes of exile and deliverance were spiritualized.63 The ﬁrst explicit statement of this interpretation occurs in Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah, although a few decades earlier Abraham Ibn Ezra had censured the anonymous practitioners of this approach in the introduction to his Commentary on Canticles.64 Even earlier, Ibn Gabirol intimated a philosophical reading of Shir ha-shirim in piyyutim describing the soul’s return to God with biblical images of love and redemption, which had previously applied only to Israel.65 In “She arim eqre ah urah kevodi” (“Morning I call out: Awake, my soul!”) he portrays the act of prayer as the thirsting soul’s quest for God, who is described as malki ve-dodi, “my King and my Beloved.” These epithets, which recall Canticles 1:4 (“. . . The King has brought me to his chambers. Let us delight and rejoice in your love, savoring it more than wine . . .”), are later paired with go ali u-fodi, “my Redeemer and my Deliverer,” for the redemption of the soul is an expression of divine love.66 In “Lekha el ay tikhsof ye idati” (“To You, Living God, my only soul yearns”), Ibn Gabirol refers to the soul as bat ahavah olah (“a girl sick with love”), 62

See Cohen, “The Song of Songs and the Jewish Religious Mentality.” See Halkin, “Ibn A n n’s Commentary on the Song of Songs.” For the text, see Ibn Aqnin, Inkish f al-asr r wa- uh r al-anw r. See also Rosenberg, “Philosophical Hermeneutics on the Song of Songs.” Technically, the protagonists in Ibn Aqnin’s philosophical commentary are the rational soul (the beloved) and the Active Intellect (the Lover). 64 See MT, Teshuvah 10:3. Note, however, that a philosophical interpretation of Shir ha-shirim is implicit in Ibn Ezra’s ay Ben Meqi ; see Rosenberg, ibid., 136–37. 65 Ibn Gabirol often uses much of the same intimate language and romantic imagery in piyyutim that speak of God and Israel, so that only explicitly national references (“I have returned to Jerusalem in mercy” or “Shall I reject the tribes of Judah”) diﬀerentiate the two types of poem. See Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 36–49. 66 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poems 2:357–58. 63

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clearly alluding to Canticles 2:5 and 5:8, where the beloved describes herself as olat ahavah (“faint with love”). At the poem’s close, God assures the soul that she will drink “from the waters of My salvation (Isaiah 12:3), for you are my awesome one (Canticles 6:4).”67 The implicit equation of gano and meqorekh in “Shabbe i nafshi” also points to a reading of Canticles in which the female protagonist is the soul, yearning for reunion with her divine Source. Indeed, the same use of gan is found in the closing line of Ibn Gabirol’s powerful tokhe ah, “Shikhe i yegonekh, nefesh homiyyah” (“Forget your sorrow, sighing soul”): Tremble, poor needy one, like a dove; Remember always your celestial rest. Cry out, each moment, to your Abode . . . Earn His favor, for then To your garden His angels will lead you.68

Future Recompense The soul’s return to her true home marks her entry into a state of bliss. As in Keter Malkhut, Ibn Gabirol alludes to the philosophical conception of immortality, while retaining elements of the popular picture of the world to come. Verse 9 can be understood on two levels: its reference to the soul’s “companions” (9b) preserves the midrashic notion of the eschatological fellowship of the righteous.69 A simple reader could thus rest assured that “a man will live after his death and return to his family and dear ones to eat and drink and never die again.”70 To a philosophically attuned reader, however, this verse would have suggested the congregation of deserving souls in the incorporeal world.71 A glimpse of the soul’s ultimate felicity is aﬀorded by verse 13:

67

See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:485–86 and Scheindlin’s discussion of the poem, The Gazelle, 43–44. 68 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:289–91, esp. v. 28. For a complete translation see Loewe, Ibn Gabirol, 92–94. 69 See, e.g., bBer. 17a and bTa an. 31a. 70 See Maimonides’ Commentary on the Mishnah, Introduction to eleq, in Twersky, A Maimonides Reader, 403. 71 See, e.g., Abraham Ibn Ezra’s gloss on the description of Abraham’s death in Gen. 25:8, interpreting “and he was gathered to his kin” as his disembodied soul’s

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When you behold your Rock in His grandeur you will ﬁnd rest from your toil.

Once again, Ibn Gabirol uses the metaphor of visual perception to evoke the soul’s apprehension of the Divine. Unlike the more expansive rhymed prose of Keter Malkhut, though, the highly compressed verses of “Shabbe i nafshi” leave little room for elaboration. There is no mention of peering into mirrors or enjoying palace banquets, nor does the poet specify that the “vision” is to be understood in purely intellectual terms. In light of Keter Malkhut, however, it is impossible to understand this image in any other fashion. The second half of verse 13 invokes another motif familiar from Keter Malkhut. As we have seen, Ibn Gabirol merges the rabbinic theme of otherworldly rest with the Neoplatonic topos of the soul’s repose from the toil of transcending the material world. The term avodah here takes on two closely related senses. In view of the dominant imagery of the poem’s second half, it suggests the strenuous eﬀorts needed to “escape” the seductions of the corporeal world, while the juxtaposition of the two halves of verse 13 implies that avodah is the rigorous intellectual training and self-perfection that are prerequisite to attaining the summum bonum. In substance and in craftsmanship, “Shabbe i nafshi” is representative of Andalusian piyyutim that focus on the soul. Many of its characteristic motifs recur in the poetry of Ibn Gabirol’s successors. But even when drawing from a common pool of ideas and a shared repertoire of genres, the later payyetanim produced fresh treatments. Adding their own stylistic and thematic emphases, Ibn Gabirol’s heirs enriched the corpus of piyyutim devoted to the soul. In the chapters that follow, we examine poems by Moses Ibn Ezra, Abraham Ibn Ezra and Judah Halevi before going on to trace the reception of their quintessentially Andalusian models in other literary circles.

return to “its kin” in the realm of the supernal kavod. On this passage, see Wolfson, “God, the Demiurge, and the Intellect,” 85.

CHAPTER FOUR

INTERTWINED EXILES: MOSES IBN EZRA’S “NAFSHI IVVITIKHA BA-LAYLAH”

The topic of the soul continued to fascinate the eleventh-century poets who followed Ibn Gabirol. Isaac Ibn Ghiyath (1038–1089), head of the rabbinical academy in Lucena, addresses the subject in his philosophical commentary on Ecclesiastes, known as Kit b al-zuhd, or The Book of Asceticism.1 In his gloss on Ecclesiastes 3:18–19 (“. . . man has no superiority over beast, since both amount to nothing”), he notes that many people are dismayed that their fate seems no diﬀerent from that of beasts. They know that they share an animal soul with the beasts, but they don’t realize that man is distinguished by reason and the noble rational soul. The text continues, “Who knows if a man’s lifebreath (rua benei ha- adam) does rise upward and if a beast’s breath (rua ha-behemah) does sink down into earth?” (3:21) because people neglect to contemplate their divine souls and their fate after death. They don’t know that the pure rational soul ascends to its source in the eternal world of spirits, while the coarse animal soul descends and returns to dust. After death the beatiﬁc rational soul enjoys that which she attained in this world, while the animal soul is deprived of everything for which it labored.2 Ibn Ghiyath’s attraction to the Neoplatonic model of the soul is also evident in his prodigious corpus of piyyut.3 Reﬂexes can be found even in the older, composite genres which he continued to cultivate alongside the newer, shorter poems. His ma amad for Yom Kippur, an impressive cycle of penitential piyyutim, perpetuates an 1 Kit b al-zuhd was mistakenly attributed to Saadya Gaon by Joseph Qaﬁh, who published it in his edition of amesh Megillot; see Ibn Ghiyath, Kit b al-zuhd. 2 Ibn Ghiyath, Kit b al-zuhd, pp. 208–210. See also: pp. 281–96 (on Ecc. Ch. 12); Vajda, “Quelques Observations,” and “Ecclésiaste XII, 2–7”; and the appendix to Pines, “Four Extracts.” 3 Ibn Ghiyath’s piyyutim were published in an uncritical edition by Yonah David, which relies heavily upon the doctoral thesis of Menahem Schmelczer (Schmelzer), “The Poetic Work of Isaac Ibn Giyat”; see Ibn Ghiyath, Poems. For additional bibliography, see Schirmann, HPMS, 364–71. For an appreciation of Ibn Ghiyath by Moses Ibn Ezra see K. al-mu ara, 39a (p. 72).

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archaic form, yet many of its component poems draw upon contemporary scientiﬁc investigation and philosophical speculation.4 Its introductory piyyut, “Ve- ere ikkaf,” praises the Creator of the cosmos using metaphors of emanation, and suggests that man’s pure soul derives from the sphere of the Intellect.5 Representative of the newer genres, his distinctly Andalusian mu arrak, “El elohim ni i,” includes a stanza on the soul whose lean, spare language belies its doctrinal richness: Hidden within me, precious, exalted, Kingly he reigns in the lower worlds. Apart, yet he clings to the heavenly Throne. He guides me until I return to my root; till my death gives me life.6

Philosophical and cosmological ideas also inform many of Ibn Ghiyath’s stirring seli ot for the month of Elul. Despite—or perhaps because of—their theoretical content, these poems have retained a prominent place in Sephardic ma zorim through the centuries.7 Psychological themes feature as well in the more modest collection of extant liturgical poems by the Saragossan poet and grammarian, Levi Ibn Altabban, who ﬂourished during the second half of the eleventh century.8 His contemporary and fellow Saragossan, Ba ya Ibn Paquda recommended the performance of supererogatory devotions out of a concern that prayer be meaningful. For this purpose, Ba ya composed a poetic exhortation to the soul entitled “Barekhi nafshi,” which he appended, along with a baqqashah, or confessional meditation, to his Hid ya, including instructions for their 4

See Ibn Ghiyath, Poems, 7–114. Ibid., 7–11. On the poem’s emanationist scheme see Schmelzer, “Two Philosophical Passages.” The stanza devoted to the soul is discussed brieﬂy in Schmelczer, “The Poetic Work of Isaac Ibn Giyat,” pp. 136 and 140, n. 11. 6 Ibn Ghiyath, Poems, 166–67. Note the masculine language used to describe the soul. For other poetic references to souls “bound to the throne in the angelic realm,” see Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb,” p. 203, n. 69, and Ibn Ghiyath’s “Yeda tikha be-shem,” discussed in Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 194–97. 7 See especially Siftei Renanot, a collection of penitential piyyutim according to the rite of Tripoli and Jerba, where Ibn Ghiyath is singled out on the title page. See also Schmelzer, “The Piyyutim of Isaac Ibn Giat” and Hazan, Halikhot ve-halakhot, 83–87. 8 See Ibn al-Tabb n, Poems. Ibn Ezra (K. al-mu ara, 42b [pp. 78, 80]) mentions Ibn Altabban as a contemporary of Joseph Ibn addiq, Judah Halevi and Abraham Ibn Ezra, but Pagis notes that Ibn Altabban was a good deal older than the others; see Poems, 15–16. 5

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recitation in the work’s ﬁnal treatise.9 Written in unmetered verse, Ba ya’s tokhe ah highlights most of the psychological motifs current in the Andalusian repertoire.10 The works of these three poets demonstrate a continued preoccupation with individual spirituality, but it is only with Moses Ibn Ezra (c. 1055–after 1138) that we encounter a substantial body of poems focusing on the soul and a full-ﬂedged critical exposition of psychological theory. The scion of an inﬂuential Granadan family, Moses Ibn Ezra was a distinguished literary theorist and a master of poetry, sacred and profane.11 His rich creative output testiﬁes to his dual-curricular education: a sometime student at the talmudic academy in Lucena, he was also thoroughly versed in the adab skills required of an Andalusian gentleman.12 His book of tajn s (homonymic) rhymes, Sefer ha- anaq, is in the best tradition of Arabic manneristic verse.13 His poetic celebrations of gardens in spring and the pleasures of wine are exemplars of graceful style and reﬁned wit, and his erotic poems are playfully scandalous, incorporating sacred imagery into salacious contexts.14 Some of his most intensely personal poems 9

See Hid ya, 10:6. For the Hebrew text, see Schirmann, HPSP 2:344–53. An English translation by David Goldstein can be found in Mansoor, Duties, 448–52. For a detailed thematic analysis, see Ramos-Gil, “La Toke á de Ba ya Ibn Paq da.” That Ba ya belongs to the generation between Ibn Gabirol and Moses Ibn Ezra was established by Paul Kokowzoﬀ; see “The Date of Life of Bahya ibn Paqoda.” 11 For an overview of his accomplishments see Brody’s Introduction to Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, xxiii–xxxix; for more recent portraits see Schirmann, HPMS, 380–420 and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 59–83. On the prominence of the Ibn Ezra family see Ibn Daud, Sefer ha-Qabbalah, 71–72 (Heb.), 97–98 (Eng.). The poet himself is called ib al-shur a (“head of the police”) in the editorial superscription to his Sefer ha- anaq; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:297 and 3:37. Goitein notes that this honoriﬁc title was borne by a number of Hispano-Jewish eminences, but rarely occurs in Geniza documents as the name of an actual oﬃce; see A Mediterranean Society, 2:368 and 607, n. 26. Cf. Schirmann, “The Life of Jehuda Ha-Levi,” in HPD 1:256 and n. 18 who assumes that Moses Ibn Ezra did hold a government oﬃce under the Z rid ruler Abdallah, who reigned from 1073 until the Almoravid conquest. 12 Ibn Ezra mentions having been the disciple of Ibn Ghiyath; see K. al-mu ara 39a (p. 72). 13 For the full text of Sefer ha- anaq (also known as Tarshish and in Arabic as Kit b zahr al-riy ) see Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:295–404; for excerpts with English translation see Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 66–92. Following his Arabic models, Ibn Ezra treats homonyms as a variety of paronomasia (tajn s, jin s); see his catalogue of poetic embellishments in K. al-mu ara 125b–127a (238–242); see also Dana, Poetics, 125–130 and Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, 92–95. 14 For a representative selection of Ibn Ezra’s secular poems, see Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death. On his poetics, see Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory. 10

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bemoan the extended exile he endured after ﬂeeing to Christian Spain following the Almoravid conquest of al-Andalus.15 Ibn Ezra’s descriptions of his separation from family and friends and all the valued cultural institutions of Jewish Andalusia convey a keen sense of isolation and alienation from his new surroundings. Images of wandering, displacement and captivity recur throughout these lyric pieces: “I cry out from my wanderer’s cell, and groan in turmoil’s bonds”; “From the abysmal depths of my distant pit, alone, I shout, but no one hears.”16 The same imagery is often used in his piyyutim to evoke the plight of the Jewish nation, “in their exile, in their wretched pit,” or the yearnings of the soul, “locked in the body’s prison.”17 Ibn Ezra is the only member of the Andalusian school from whose pen we have two complete Judeo-Arabic prose works on literary topics. The sole extant book of Hispano-Hebrew poetics, Kit b al-mu ara wa’l-mudh kara (The Book of Conversation and Discussion) is an important document of Jewish intellectual history. The work reﬂects Ibn Ezra’s attitudes towards the cultivation of Arabic-style Hebrew poetry and includes critical evaluations of other Andalusian Hebrew poets.18 His Treatise of the Garden, Maq lat al- ad qa f ma na ’l-maj z wa’l- aq qa, is devoted to “the meaning of ﬁgurative and literal language” in the Bible. Like the closing chapter of Kit b al-mu ara, the ad qa reveals Ibn Ezra’s sensitivity to the esthetic dimension of the Scriptural text. Drawing upon contemporary Arabic literary theory, he applies the

15 The precise reasons for his departure from al-Andalus are not known; see Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 62, and Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, xxvi–xxvii. 16 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:118, v. 15 (“ aradah laveshah tevel”) and 1:132, v. 8 (“Hayitapaq enosh”); on the intellectual and cultural inferiority of Castilian Jewry see 1:26, vv. 31–37 (“Shavti ve-taltalei zeman lo shavu”), cited by Fenton in Philosophie et exégèse, 21–22. Ibn Ezra also describes himself as a lonely exile in the introductions to Maq lat al- ad qa, p. 12 (= Sassoon, Ohel Dawid 1:416 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 68–69), and K. al-mu ara, 5b (p. 4); see Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 63. 17 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 34, v. 2 (“Yenu amu yeru amu”) and p. 149, vv. 43–44 (“Elohim el nora me od ve- ayom”). See also: p. 3, vv. 11–14 (“Shoreru yaledei emunay”); p. 7, vv. 3–7 (“Ein be-ﬁ millah”); p. 13, vv. 3–8 (“Qumi bat u-lkhi”); p. 19, vv. 1–4, 10–11 (“Yonat elem re oqim”); p. 76, v. 17 (“Middei yamay ve-shanay”); and p. 103, v. 49 (“Anshei emunah niqdashu”). 18 Raymond Scheindlin and Ross Brann have identiﬁed a fundamental ambivalence towards Andalusian Hebrew poetry in the work; see Scheindlin, “Rabbi Moshe Ibn Ezra on the Legitimacy of Poetry,” and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 59–83. Other scholars have tended to view K. al-mu ara as an unreserved endorsement of Arabic poetics; see, e.g., Dana, Poetics and Drory, “The Hidden Context.”

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technical term maj z to language which is ﬁgurative or characterized by tropes, and juxtaposes maj z with aq qa, the proper or literal use of words. As Paul Fenton’s recent monograph demonstrates, Ibn Ezra’s eﬀorts to identify rhetorical ﬁgures and tropes in the Bible are not motivated exclusively by literary concerns. Inspired by Saadya and the later geonim, he also invokes the concept of maj z to resolve the theological diﬃculties posed by anthropomorphisms and other seemingly illogical or obscure expressions.19 In the work’s second half, he draws up an inventory of anatomical terms whose literal and ﬁgurative usages he illustrates with scriptural examples. This major lexicographic contribution occupies the ﬁnal two-thirds of his closing chapter “On the Three Souls.” Informed by Neoplatonic psychology as well as kal m speculations, the ad qa preserves portions of Ibn Gabirol’s Meqor ayyim in its original Arabic, and shares its philosophical conception of the soul. Ibn Gabirol’s inﬂuence is also evident in the extensive poem, “Be-shem el asher amar,” which prefaces the ad qa. Like Keter Malkhut, “Beshem el” celebrates the totality of God’s creation with a survey of the cosmos, culminating with man, whose crowning glory is his “pure soul, hewn from the divine kavod.”20 The poignancy of Ibn Ezra’s devotional poems is perhaps best conveyed by the testimony of his younger contemporary, Abraham Ibn Daud, who memorializes him as a great scholar learned in Torah and in Greek wisdom, who renounced this world and looked forward to the world to come, and a composer of poems and hymns that could melt the hearts of all who heard them and ﬁll them with awe of their Creator.21 19 In calling for the non-literal interpretation of problematic biblical verses and aggadic passages, Saadya and his heirs drew upon Mu tazilite exegetical models, which viewed maj z as a tool for resolving the theological diﬃculties raised by qur nic anthropomorphisms and divine attributes. The Islamic hermeneutic tradition applied maj z to a variety of idiomatic or “unnatural” features of qur nic language, while literary theorists eventually restricted the term to ﬁgurative language proper; see Heinrichs, “On the Genesis of the aq qa-Maj z Dichotomy” and “Contacts Between Scriptural Hermeneutics and Literary Theory in Islam: The Case of Maj z” and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 258–92. On Ibn Ezra’s extensive treatment of, and complex attitudes towards the use of metaphor in poetic discourse see Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, esp. chs. 1–3, and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, esp. 72–83. 20 For the text of the poem see Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:237–44, no. 134. On its cosmological and metaphysical parallels with KM see Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres or Ten?” 21 Trans. after Cohen; see Ibn Daud, Sefer ha-Qabbalah, 102–103; Heb. p. 73.

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Poetry, traditional and philosophical learning, pietism and eschatology—Ibn Daud could well have had Ibn Ezra’s piyyutim on the soul in mind. Like Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra combined philosophical, biblical and aggadic motifs in poems that are esthetically pleasing and spiritually edifying, but also intellectually challenging.22 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 112‒17.] In “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” Moses Ibn Ezra evokes the yearnings of the earth-bound soul for her celestial Source. Between stanzas lamenting the soul’s plight and voicing her hopes, Ibn Ezra interweaves warnings of the transience of man’s earthly existence and allusions to prayerful night vigils held in atonement for youthful sins. Rich in rhetorical modes, the poem moves from descriptive passages to petitionary addresses to God, lyrical complaints, expressions of remorse and exhortations to the soul. One of its most striking and distinctive features is its artful mingling of individual and collective perspectives. Selective ambiguity allows a series of stanzas to refer both to Israel and to the soul. Rather than retreating from the national plane, Ibn Ezra unites the collective and the individual, the historical and the spiritual. The poem thus reveals a deep belief in the complementary nature of these strands of the worshiper’s experience and identity. “Nafshi ivvitikha” is a seli ah, or penitential poem, a genre for which Ibn Ezra was renowned, earning him the cognomen ha-salla .23 As we have noted, Andalusian seli ot were recited during non-statutory 22 The Hebrew text of the poem that follows is taken from Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 68–70. It is also found, with a number of variant readings, in Schirmann, HPSP 2:413–17 and in Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 148–51. Davidson lists the poem by its incipit, “Ivvetah nafshi” (which is the beginning of the acrostic, Ani moshe be-rabbi ya aqov azaq); see Thesaurus, 1:96, no. 2058. I have included the opening motto, “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” (Is. 26:9), which Bernstein omits but Brody and Schirmann both preﬁx to their texts. There is good reason, on structural and thematic grounds, to view the motto as an intergral part of the original composition; see below. Aside from this addition, my translation follows the text as it appears in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry. Where variant readings signiﬁcantly aﬀect the poem’s interpretation, they are noted in the discussion. I have made use of the complete English verse translation by Solomon Solis-Cohen in Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 148–51 and the partial translations of Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 331–32 and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 45–46. 23 See the Introduction to Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, p. xxxii and 191, n. 40. Yedaya Bedersi (late 13th c.) is one of the ﬁrst to call him ha-salla ; see his Ketav ha-hitna lut in Solomon Ibn Adret, She elot u-tshuvot, 1:166–67, and Zunz, Die Synagogale Poesie, p. 228.

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Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah Moses Ibn Ezra “With my soul I long for You in the night!” I My soul yearns for the place of her rest, And pines for the site of her Source, And longs for her holy habitation— Journeying day and night. II 5

She would view His Glory with her inner eye, And ﬂy to Him winglessly. She longs to gaze at Him in wonder At twilight, as the day wanes, in the heart of the night. III

10

She sees His splendor in His handiwork, And yearns to draw near Him. Day by day she speaks His praises— And night after night. IV

15

The banner of Your grace has always been over me; The awning of Your awe has never been cut oﬀ. Lord, You have probed me and You know: You have tested my heart in the visitations of the night. V

20

I have had my ﬁll of sleeplessness, My feet hurry me to hallowed halls When deep sleep falls on men With thought-ﬁlled visions of the night. VI I was a fool and strayed all my younger days, I am ashamed, for I have wasted my youth. That is why tears Are my food day and night.

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hl;y“L'B' ˚;ytiyWIai yvip]n" I

Hv;p]n: μ/qm] la, yvip]n" ht;W“ai Hv;r“v; μ/qm] la≤ ht;l]k;w“ Hv;d“q; hwEn“li hp;s]k]nIw“ >hl;y“l;w: μm;/y tk,l,l; II

ha≤r“Ti t['D'h' ˆy[´B] d/bK;hæ μ['nO èha≤d“Ti wyl;a´ rb≤a´ yliB]miW ha≤T;v]tiw“ wyl;a´ πa'v]tiw“ >hl;y“l' ˆ/vyaiB] μ/y br<[≤B] πv≤n
5

III

wyl;[;p] ydEy“ l[' rWvt; /rq:y“ èwyl;ae tv≤ghl;y“l'l] hl;y“l'w“ IV

[d:/n ÚD“s]j' lghl;y“L' T;d“q'P; yBili T;n“j'B; V

μyviWna} t/cr“[' l[' μydIdUn“ yTi[]b'c; μyvi/dq] t/n/[m]li ym'[;p] ynIWxyrIh≤“ μyvin:aÄ l[' hm;DEr“T' lpøn“Bi >hl;y“l; t/n/yz“j≤m´ μyPi[ic]Bi 20 VI

ytiWrj}v' ym´y“ lK; hGhl;y“l;w: μm;/y μj≤l≤

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VII 25

Pure one, bound in the body’s prison, Reﬂect: this world is a bridge, a stepping-stone! Awake, awake at the beginning of the watch, Arise, cry out in the night. VIII

30

Rush, pure one, to crush the body’s lusts, Choose a straight path all your days— Your life is like yesterday that has passed, Like a watch of the night. IX

35

Against his will, man is born to toil, Evil are all his thoughts and schemes. Like a ﬂower, he blossoms and withers, He is banished like a vision of the night. X

40

Time thunders over them, Death pursues them and their shadows fade. To others they leave their wealth, Suddenly they die, in the middle of the night. XI The burden of my sins weighs heavily on me For I’ve yet to mend my errant ways. I am weary with groaning, with tears I drench My bed every night. XII

45

My heart’s blood ﬂows from my eye without cease Like a great owl in the wilderness am I. By day my soul moans in secret And rises while it is still night. XIII

50

Exiled, she grieves in captivity, She lowers her ornaments to the ground, She wanders, tears on her cheeks, Bitterly she weeps in the night.

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ètr≤x≤[‘n< πWGh' al≤k≤B] èhr:B; 25 trhl;y“L'b' yNIrø ymiWq VIII

rBov]li hw:aÄT' rx≤yE èhK;z" èyxiWr rè bol; ËyIt'/my“ lK; hr:v;y“ Ërhl;y“L;b' hr:Wmv]a'w“ IX

lm;[;l] dL'Wy v/na‘ /jr“K; l['B] èlm;[;w“ ˆwhl;y“l; ˆ/yz“j≤K] dD"yUw“ X

èμl;/q Wac]yI μh≤yl´[} μymiy: μL;xi rWsy:w“ μ[´r“yI tw<m; èμl;yj´ μyrIj´a}l' Wbz“[;w“ >hl;y“l; t/xj}w" Wtmuy: [g"r< 40 XI

ytiaF;j'B] ynI/[} l[ø yl'[; dB'k]yI ytib;WvM]mi hKo d[' yTib]v' aOl yKi yti[;m]dIB] ytiF;miW èytij;n“a'B] yTi[]g"y: .hl;y“l' lk;b] hj,c]a' XII

èhm≤d“ti aOlw“ yBili μd"b] hr:G“nI ynIy[´ 45 èhm≤/d ynIa} rB;d“mI ta'q]li hm≤h‘T≤ μyrIT;s]miB] yvip]n" μm;/y >hl;y“l' d/[B] μq;T;w" XIII

èHy:b]vi ym´y“ tWlg:B] tr
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XIV

55

Before dawn I cry for help and do not rest; I pour forth my heart’s blood and sigh. My soul is cast down, I speak with my heart, I recall my song at night. XV

60

The days of my youth have all ﬂown by, My years have been swifter than eagles. Of the time of my joys I recall Neither day nor night. XVI Arrogant men oppress me and gloat They speak peace but gnash their teeth. Let their evil deeds be recalled Before You day and night. XVII

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Proclaim an assembly, cleanse and hallow yourselves, Remove your hearts’ dross, be steadfast You who invoke the Lord, be not still Day or night. XVIII

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My daughter, rejoice! I will yet grant you My grace And gently lead you to My dwelling place. You have no kinsman closer than I— Stay, wait out the night!

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hj…Wna… aOlw“ yti[…w“v' yTim]D"qi πv,N
èyt'/mWl[} lk; Wpl]j; yè t'/nv] μyrIv;N“mi WLq'w“ yt'/jm]ci ˆm;Z“mi ryKia' aOlw“ .hl…y“l; aOlw“ μ/y aOl 60 XVI

μh≤ypi yl'[; WlyDIg“hiw“ ynIWqyxih‘ μydIzE μh≤yNEviB] μykiv]/nw“ μ/lv; μyrIb]/D μh≤yl´l]['m' ['ro rKoz“ti an: .hl;y“l'w: μm;/y μ/Yh' Úyn
WvD:q't]hiw“ Wxj}r"w“ hr:x;[} WvD“q' 65 Wvv;/at]hiw“ t/bb;l] gysi Wrysih; Wvj‘T, la' yn:doa} ta≤ μyrIyKiz“M'h' .hl;y“L'h' lk;w“ μ/Yh' lK; XVIII

yNIji Ël´yjin“a' d/[ èyTiBi èyrIC]B't]hi ynI/[m]li Ëa´ybia}w" ËgEh;n“a, fa'l]W 70 yNIM,mi b/rq; la´GO ˆya´ yKi .hl;y“Læhæ ynIyli

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pre-dawn prayer sessions—called ashmurot, ma amadot, or tiqqunim— held during periods associated with atonement, such as the month of Elul.24 Formally, “Nafshi ivvitikha” belongs to the sub-genre of seli ah known as mustaj b (var.: mustaj b), a term that derives from the Arabic root meaning “to answer.” An Andalusian innovation, this type of stanzaic poem is typically long and unmetered. The mustaj b opens with a biblical verse or verse-fragment, which serves as its motto. Each stanza then ends with a diﬀerent biblical verse or versefragment, whose ﬁnal word rhymes with, or even reproduces the last word of the opening citation. As in the muwashsha form, the ﬁrst three verses of each quatrain have their own rhyme, which diﬀers from stanza to stanza. Consequently, the echo of the ﬁnal syllable or word of the motto in every fourth line produces an “answering” eﬀect.25 In our poem, the phrase “With my soul I long for You in the night” is a verbatim quote from Isaiah 26:9. “This verse expresses love for God,” Ibn Ezra notes in Maq lat al- ad qa, glossing nafshi as “the soul that never sleeps, i.e., the rational soul.”26 Carefully chosen, the motto adumbrates the central theme of the soul’s yearning for God, and occasions the repetition of the word “laylah” at the end of each stanza, drawing attention to the idea of night in its literal and symbolic senses. In its literal sense, night ﬁgures as a time for solitary reﬂection and undistracted prayer, and so mirrors the actual function of this poem intended for recitation in the early hours of the eve of Yom Kippur. The speaker alludes to praying for forgiveness late at night while others sleep (vv. 17–20 and 53–56); exhorts his soul to arise and “cry out in the night” (vv. 27–28); and depicts her rising “while it is still night” (v. 48). On a ﬁgurative level, Ibn Ezra uses biblical references to dreams and night-visions to evoke impermanence, particularly the evanescence of human existence.27

24 See above, p. 19. For the term ashmurah or ashmoret, which refers to a night watch, see vv. 27 and 32 of “Nafshi ivvitikha”; the motif of pre-dawn penitential prayer is one of the poem’s secondary themes. Cf. “Be-leili al mishkavi,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 47, v. 2. 25 On the poetics of the mustaj b, see Schirmann, HPSP 4:709–10; idem, HPCS, 685; Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 352; and Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 379–80. Note that Fleischer treats the opening motto as a refrain which recurs after the biblical phrase at the end of each stanza. 26 ad qa, p. 93, lines 5–6. 27 See, e.g., vv. 35–36. Stanzas VIII and X also conclude with biblical citations which evoke the transience of human life.

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By contrast, the pair “day and night” signiﬁes continuity or perpetuity.28 Night and day are also symbols of exile and redemption, whether historical or spiritual.29 When applied to the soul, darkness represents embodiment, which obscures intellectual vision, while light signiﬁes illumination.30 With its multiplicity of perspectives and various modes of address, “Nafshi ivvitikha” initially gives an impression of disjointedness, but upon closer scrutiny it proves to be topically coherent and possessed of an underlying structural pattern. A thematically uniﬁed framework is furnished by the stanzas devoted to the soul (I–III, VII–VIII, XIII, XVIII) which are distributed at regular intervals, trisecting the poem.31 Each third begins by portraying the exile of the soul and her longings for reinstatement, and then continues with penitential motifs. The speaker expresses remorse over past transgressions (XI) and regret at having wasted his youth (VI, XV), and mentions attempts to atone for his misdeeds through prayer (V, XII, XIV).32 The juxtaposition of these themes suggests a causal link between sin and the suﬀerings of the soul. Threaded into this fabric of verses focusing on the individual is a gradually increasing emphasis on the collectivity. In the ﬁrst third of the poem there is almost no mention of a larger community. In the second third, the speaker turns his attention to corporate humanity in two quatrains that lament the human predicament (IX–X). In the ﬁnal third the conﬂuence of individual and collective reaches its fullest development in two stanzas which may be read with reference to Israel as well as the soul (XIII and XVIII). These are accompanied by a complaint of marked national and historical coloration (XVI), and an exhortation to repentance which assumes the presence of a congregation (XVII). Yet, the poem’s fundamental unity is not undermined: a crucial analogy between the plight of the embodied 28

See vv. 4, 11–12, 23–24, 63–64, 68. For a negative formulation, see vv. 59–60. This symbolism is common in midrashic literature; see, e.g. Gen. Rab. 2:5 and Cant. Rab. 3:1. 30 On the symbolism of darkness and illumination in Neoplatonic writings about the soul, see Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 184–95. See also the overview of light symbolism in Islam in Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, 155–93 passim. 31 Coincidentally, this division corresponds to Bernstein’s typographical layout, which has the stanzas pertaining to the soul at the top of each page. 32 The renunciation of youthful frivolity—particularly the composition of erotic poetry—is a topos which the Andalusian payyetanim cultivate widely; on repentant poets who nevertheless continue to compose, see Brann, The Compunctious Poet. For the speciﬁc case of Moses Ibn Ezra, see pp. 59–83. 29

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soul, the alienation of the individual, and the exile of the nation ensures that its disparate strands reinforce one another. Having set forth the poem’s central motifs in its ﬁrst third, Ibn Ezra does not so much develop them in a linear fashion as amplify them in later portions of the piyyut. Nevertheless, “Nafshi ivvitikha” has a readily identiﬁable climax: the ﬁnal stanza marks not only a formal conclusion but also a thematic culmination. Its divine assurances of redemption promise to resolve the soul’s intense yearnings for her Source (I–III) and to redress the wrongs suﬀered by the soul and Israel in their respective exiles (XIII, XVI). This vision of repatriation and rehabilitation provides the poem with a crucial sense of closure. Rhetorically, the unique appearance of God as speaker answers the petition for deliverance addressed to Him in stanza XVI, as well as the request for unceasing providential care implicit in stanza IV. By resuming the protective imagery of stanza IV, God’s pledge to guide His “daughter” safely to His abode, or ma on, conﬁrms that the “banner” of divine grace will continue to shield the supplicant throughout his long night of tribulation.

The Soul’s Longings With its alliteration in shin, the opening stanza of “Nafshi ivvitikha” has a sound of rushing air that suggests sighing, or even the labored breathing of one whose strength has been depleted through intense yearning. The object of the soul’s passionate desire is evoked with three parallel phrases: meqom nofshah (“the place of her rest”), meqom (var.: meqor) shorshah (“the site/source of her root”) and neve qodshah (“her holy habitation”).33 Despite their terseness, these spatial images yield an evocative picture of the soul’s sacred, supernal “place” of origin and ultimate repose. (Metaphysically speaking, the spiritual realm beyond the physical universe is not limited by a spatial dimension, yet the Andalusian payyetanim regularly evoke the soul’s supernal source with spatial images.)34 The expression meqom nofshah also 33 Although the most literal meaning of shoresh is “root,” I have preferred the translation “source.” This choice was in part motivated by the desire to capture something of the variant reading, meqor shorshah, which both Carmi and Solis-Cohen render as “fountainhead.” For the rendering “site of her root” see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 45. 34 Cf., e.g., Ibn Gabirol’s description of olam ha-ba in KM canto 27. Moses Ibn

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plays on the word nafshi which precedes it (v. 1), furnishing an auditory analogue to the idea of the soul’s essential aﬃnity with her Source, which helps to explain her anguish at being separated from Him.35 Ibn Ezra suggests God’s identity with the soul’s abode by echoing the language of the motto in verse 1, and by using the verbs kaletah and nikhsefah in verses 2–3. These two verbs of yearning occur as a pair in Psalm 84:3, “My soul (nafshi ) pines for the courts of the Lord; my body and soul cry out for the Living God.”36 The unmistakable references to the Creator in stanza III conﬁrm that He is the soul’s “place of rest.” By means of this identiﬁcation and by personifying the soul, Ibn Ezra introduces a sense of intimacy which is reinforced by the image of a warm and caring God in stanza IV, and which reaches its fullest development in stanza XVIII, where redemption is portrayed as an expression of divine love. The continuity of the actions and emotions described in the ﬁrst three stanzas is, as noted above, suggested by the temporal phrases at the end of each quatrain. The ﬁrst stanza speaks of the soul striving “day and night” to return to her heavenly home, while the third portrays her praising the Creator “day by day . . . and night after night.” The temporal progression in the second stanza conveys the Ezra observes that since God transcends space, scriptural or liturgical statements locating Him in the heavens must be read as metaphorical expressions of his sublimity; see ad qa, pp. 42–43 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 115. 35 I have preferred Bernstein’s reading, nofshah, to the alternate vocalization, nafshah, which yields: “My soul yearns for the place of her soul.” Schirmann, HPSP 2:413, n. 2 explains nafshah as a reference to the Universal Soul, the source of the individual soul, while Brody reads it as a reference to God, who is “the soul of souls”; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 324. Both editors cite parallels from KM. While nafshah is semantically acceptable, nofshah seems preferable, since it aﬀords a contrast between the soul’s disquiet in the lower world and her peaceful repose in the upper. Ibn Ezra often emphasizes that this world is not the soul’s ﬁnal resting place; see, e.g., “Zeman hevli,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 48, v. 14 and “Hitbonenu ve-neda ah,” ibid., pp. 241–42, esp. vv. 1–2 and 13–14. In addition, nofshah complies with the extra rhyming requirement which Ibn Ezra sets himself in the ﬁrst stanza of “Nafshi ivvitikha.” Although the rules of Andalusian prosody only require the ﬁnal syllable to rhyme, Ibn Ezra matches the vocalization of the ﬁrst syllable as well. For the pair nofshi-nafshi see “Be-yom a aqi,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 21, vv. 21–22. 36 Like his use of the phrase neve qodshah, which is borrowed from descriptions of the Temple, Ibn Ezra’s implicit transformation of the earthly “courts of the Lord” into the soul’s heavenly abode suggests a philosophical interpretation of the aggadic notion that there is a heavenly Temple corresponding to the earthly one. See Aptowitzer, “The Heavenly Temple in the Agada.” Maimonides lists ha erot ha-shem as one of the metaphors for the spiritual rewards of the world to come; see MT, Teshuvah, 8:4.

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soul’s unbroken longing to apprehend the Divine Glory, and hints at the eternity of the apprehension itself.37 This image of marveling at the Divine in perpetuity recalls the righteous souls’ timeless vision in Ibn Gabirol’s portrayal of olam ha-ba.

Redemption Through Contemplation Like Ibn Gabirol, Ibn Ezra understands man’s ultimate felicity as the attainment of philosophical insight into the nature of the Divine.38 The soul longs to apprehend no am ha-kavod (v. 5), a phrase which harks back to the divine kavod of Keter Malkhut, the spiritual substance of the sphere of the Intellect. Since the medieval Neoplatonic tradition deﬁned man’s “utmost happiness . . . (as) the contemplation of the supernal world of Forms,” which is “localized in the Supernal Intellect or Wisdom,” verse 5 can be read as an allusion to this philosophical conception of man’s summum bonum.39 As the object of a verb denoting vision, the phrase also recalls the Psalmist’s request “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord,” la azot be-no am adonai (Psalm 27:4). Certainly, other Andalusians read this biblical verse in light of their contemplative ideal: Abraham Ibn Ezra interpreted it as a petition for metaphysical knowledge, while Maimonides identiﬁed no am adonai as one of the metaphorical names for the spiritual rewards of the world to come.40 The visual metaphor is sustained in verse 7 37 Due to the elasticity of the tense system in biblical Hebrew, one has a certain ﬂexibility in translating the imperfect verbs in stanzas II–III. Stanza III portrays the soul contemplating Creation and praising God. As these are ongoing processes which she pursues while still embodied, I have used the present continuous. Despite the partial parallelism of vv. 5 and 9, stanza II lends itself to a slightly diﬀerent interpretation. It suggests a reverie, in which the soul longingly imagines her ultimate apprehension of the Divine and successful return to her Source. To convey this sense, I have used the modal verbs “would view” and “(would) ﬂy.” A more literal translation of v. 7 would be: “She longs for Him so that she might gaze at Him in wonder.” For this construction see Driver, Treatise, 64–69, “The Voluntative with Waw.” 38 ad qa, p. 84, lines 4–7, citing MH 3:49, says that man’s supreme joy lies in his soul’s apprehension of the intelligibles, which paves the way for knowledge of the Divine. See Pines, “Fragments,” 229 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 398–99. 39 The quote is from Altmann, “Ibn B jja on Man’s Ultimate Felicity,” 47–48. Cf. ad qa, p. 84, lines 7–9 (= MH 3:49): “You must strive to contemplate the simple substances, especially the substance of the Intellect and the Soul, for . . . in them is the form of every thing.” 40 Ibn Ezra comments as follows: she-yitgalu lo sodot mi-ma aseh ha-bore she-lo yeda am al ken. (Cited according to Bomberg’s Venice, 1525 printing; the standard editions

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of our poem, where Ibn Ezra uses a rare biblical verb, ve-tishta eh, to evoke the wonder that will overcome the soul when she apprehends her divine Source.41 His choice of words closely parallels a line in Keter Malkhut, where Ibn Gabirol addresses God as Supernal and Eternal Light, observing that “the eye of the intellect longs for You and is overcome with wonder (ve-tishta eh).”42 Ibn Ezra also uses the verb to describe the disembodied soul “ris(ing) up in wonder to the palaces of wisdom” in his seli ah “Me-ha-yom ha-ba,” which implicitly reinterprets the classical Judgment Day as the death of the individual.43 In the third stanza the object of the soul’s “vision” is God’s yeqar, a term which is symbolically and even semantically equivalent to the divine kavod.44 Here, insight into the nature of the divine is gained by contemplating the works of creation. The idea that rational examination of the physical universe can lead to knowledge of its Creator was regularly invoked by Andalusian Jewish advocates of philosophical study. As Ibn Ezra observes in Maq lat al- ad qa, “works wisely created testify to their wise Creator, even though He is concealed from view.”45 In this context, Ibn Ezra’s allusion to Psalm 19:3 (vv. 11–12) of the miqra ot gedolot garble the ﬁnal verb, replacing the dalet with a resh. Note, however, that the common abbreviation yielding al ken should perhaps be read as ad kan or ad koh [till here, thus far, up to now].) For Maimonides on no am adonai, see MT, Teshuvah, 8:4. Cf. KM line 262 where no am describes the joys of olam ha-ba. 41 The verb occurs in the hitpa el only once, in Gen. 24:21, where it indicates the awed response of Abraham’s servant to Rebecca’s initial appearance. 42 See KM canto 7, line 55. 43 See Schirmann, HPSP 2:406–407, no. 164; Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 83, no. 76; Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 132–133, no. 56. 44 The Targumim regularly translate kavod as yeqar; see, e.g., Targum Onqelos to Gen. 49:6 and Ex. 16:10, and Targum to Ps. 24:9, 30:13, 108:2 (in standard editions). For the idea that the soul ( yeqarah) derives from the divine yeqar, see “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” in Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 2:372, v. 3 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:515, v. 3). 45 ad qa, p. 18, line 14. Here Ibn Ezra points to the harmonious construction of man’s body as proof that creation is by divine design and not by chance. In his chapters on the signiﬁcance of divine names and the creation of the world (chs. 4 and 6) he again notes that only by contemplating creation can human beings infer something about the Creator, whose Essence is unknowable; see Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 113–14 and 127–28. See also Davidson, “The Study of Philosophy as a Religious Obligation,” esp. 60–64 and idem, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God, 213–36. Ba ya Ibn Paquda devotes the second treatise of his Duties of the Heart to the idea that traces of God’s wisdom may be discerned in His handiwork; see Hid ya, 94–126 (Mansoor, Duties, 150–75). On the history of the term th r alikma (“traces of wisdom”), see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism,” p. 218 and n. 123. For poetic reﬂexes of the related idea that self-

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suggests a philosophical reading of Psalm 19:2, even though that verse is not explicitly quoted in the poem. The germ of such an interpretation is contained in the Targum to this verse, which translates “The heavens declare the glory of the Lord” as “those who examine the heavens declare the glory of the Lord.” In the same vein, Abraham Ibn Ezra cautions that Psalm 19 can be understood only by those knowledgeable in astronomy and astrology. When discussing the regimen required for the perfection of the soul, medieval Islamic and Jewish philosophers stress the need to couple ilm, or theoretical study, with amal, or good works which inculcate virtuous ethical habits.46 As a means of puriﬁcation, amal also involves an element of asceticism or withdrawal from worldly indulgences. In stanzas VII–VIII the speaker addresses his soul in typically Neoplatonic fashion as the “pure one, bound in the body’s prison,” urging her to overcome the lure of the mundane, and to atone for her sins through prayer and upright behavior. His plea that she reﬂect upon the transience of the corporeal realm (v. 26) combines the zuhd theme of dhamm al-duny (“the censure of the world”) with the rabbinic motif of this world as a passageway to the next.47 He suggests that the terrestrial world is fraught with peril for the pure soul by describing it as a ma beret, or bridge, a word that conjures up a mental image of waters raging all about.48 One of the dangers threatening the soul is alluded to when he exhorts her to “crush the body’s lusts” (v. 29). Like Ibn Gabirol’s phrase ta avat guf ha- efunah (“the hidden lust of the body”), Ibn Ezra’s expression ye er ta avah fuses the Neoplatonic concupiscent soul (Ar. al-nafs al-shahw niyya, contemplation leads to knowledge of God, see the discussion below of the microcosm motif. 46 See below, p. 135, n. 10. Underlying the terms al- ilm wa’l- amal are the Aristotelian categories of the theoretical and the practical sciences; see Wolfson, “The Classiﬁcation of Sciences.” 47 A ﬁgure whose name is readily associated with the condemnation of worldy concerns is the Muslim ascetic, Ibn Ab ’l-Duny (d. 894); see Dietrich, “Ibn Abi ’l-Duny ,” and Ella Almagor’s “English Introduction” to Kit b Dhamm al-Duny . The phrase dhamm al-duny appears in Jewish works as well; see, e.g., the editorial superscription to Ibn Ezra’s poem, “Tevel teni libbekh” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems 1:151. For the rabbinic characterization of this world as a vestibule leading to the main chamber of the world to come, see Avot 4:23. For an Arabic paraphrase of this dictum which uses the terms al-duny and al- khira, see Saadya, Am n t 9:4, p. 269. 48 On ma beret (var.: ma boret), see Ben-Yehuda, Thesaurus, 6:3144–45. For the motif of the world as a shaky bridge, see Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 468–69.

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Heb. ha-nefesh ha-mit avvah) with the rabbinic ye er ha-ra ; the sinful impulse which deﬂects a person from “the straight path.” By eliminating the “ra ” from ye er ha-ra , Ibn Ezra removes all traces of the demonic from the evil inclination. In his rationalistic scheme, the body and its passions are the soul’s only enemy.49 Certain poems even suggest that Israel’s historical foes might be understood in an interiorized sense. Ibn Ezra’s mu arrak for Purim, “Tinnaten li vi-sh elati / nafshi ve- ammi be-vaqashati,” opens with an allusion to Esther 7:3: “Grant my plea for my life, my appeal for my people.”50 Almost imperceptibly, the poet shifts the emphasis of the biblical verse, placing the word nafshi in the stressed position after the caesura. If the theme of national salvation dominates the original story, the poem, he seems to be signaling, focuses on the soul. Aside from the refrain, the only word that clearly harks back to the historical Esther narrative is “Agagite” (v. 7), a reference to Haman son of Hammedatha the Agagite, the foe of the Jews (Esther 3:10): A healing sun by Your light shone for me, the day the Agagite bowed to my soul. So may it please You to grant me relief . . .

In a diﬀerent context, the speaker’s ﬁrst person appeals for deliverance might actually be voiced on behalf of the community, but here they lead directly into a celebration of his God-given soul, which is the vehicle of his prayer. By moving so far from the historical realm, Ibn Ezra hints that Agag is a spiritual enemy, and that the story of Purim might proﬁtably be viewed through the prism of an internal moral conﬂict.51 49 Not all rabbinic texts have a demonic image of the ye er ha-ra , but consider the following: “Satan, ye er ha-ra , and the Angel of Death are one” (bBB 16a) and “Who is the strange god residing in man’s body? It is ye er ha-ra ” (bShab. 105b). Elsewhere, Ibn Ezra personiﬁes man’s internal enemy; see “Be-shem el asher amar,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:243, vv. 123–126. For the phrase ye er ta avah, see also “Elohim, el nora me od ve- ayom,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 148, v. 16. 50 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 24–25. At ﬁrst glance it seems odd to have a mu arrak for Purim, when Nishmat is not included in the liturgy. But “Tinnaten li” was apparently recited only when Shushan Purim coincided with Shabbat. The sole source for this poem is Ma zor izzunim (Constantinople, 1580 or 1585), which preserves the rite of Sicilian Jews who settled in the Ottoman Empire in the sixteenth century. See Davidson, “ izzunim,” esp. p. 66. 51 Scheindlin discusses a poem by Judah Halevi whose personal tone suggests a

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chapter four Intentional Ambiguity: The Galut of Israel and the Soul

Ibn Ezra often spiritualizes themes and symbols traditionally linked with the historical exile and redemption of Israel. Yet, at times he achieves an ambiguity so compelling that the reader is confronted with the possibility of a double reading. Sometimes, even when the national theme seems dominant, the poet leaves open the possibility of a spiritual reading. In “Maddei erut u-vigdei ofesh” the speaker complains of oppressive foes, and entreats God to restore His glorious dwelling place. Yet the odyssey of the soul is never far from the reader’s mind, due to the absence of explicit historical references and the recurrence of the word nefesh at the end of each stanza.52 Ibn Ezra’s powerful hortatory poem, “Anshei emunah niqdashu” (“Men of faith have hallowed themselves”), moves from a rousing sermon on penitential themes to a supplication of the Creator “who breathed the soul into the body.” Couched within this prayer— which closes with a plea for national restoration in the Messianic age—are two stanzas of remarkable ambiguity: Heed the voice of the stricken gazelle, Buried alive. Hunted, she ﬂees from the lion And looks down on the valley of Zeboi im. Lost in the prisons of her exile, She comes, terriﬁed, to confess her sins And to recount what has befallen her— All such things are wearisome.53

similarly allegorical interpretation of its lone reference to Amalek; see The Gazelle, 47–48. For additional (mostly prose) examples of this interpretive trend, see Horowitz, “From the Generation of Moses to the Generation of the Messiah: The Jews Confront Amalek’ and his Incarnations,” esp. 443–45, and Cooper, “Amalek in SixteenthCentury Jewish Commentary: On the Internalization of the Biblical Enemy.” 52 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 5–6. See also “Hitbonenu ve-neda ah,” ibid. 241–42, which, like “Anshei emunah” and “Nafshi ivvitikha,” combines a variety of rhetorical modes. 53 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 101–103, esp. vv. 45–52. This mustaj b of ﬁfteen stanzas opens with the motto, “Shuvu, shuvu mi-darkeikhem ha-ra im” (“Return, return from your evil ways!”). There is a long tradition of penitential piyyutim beginning with the phrase, “Anshei emunah avadu” (“The men of faith are gone”); see Davidson, Thesaurus, 1:311, nos. 6850 and 6851. See also nos. 6854 and 6856.

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The gazelle, a stock symbol of the beloved in secular poetry, is often used by the liturgical poets to represent God’s beloved people. Piyyutim lamenting the humiliations of exile depict Israel as a pursued or captive gazelle and portray Christendom and Islam—her oppressors and rivals for divine favor—as wild animals.54 Yet, the psychological theme introduced in several preceding stanzas (vv. 21–44) suggests that these verses are also about the soul. The “lion” pursuing the soul would then be the evil inclination or bodily passions, whose defeat is urged a few lines earlier (vv. 33–36). (Indeed, elsewhere the poet confesses to being lured by his ye er, which is “stronger than a lion”: “I have followed my willful heart and the desire of my ye er; I found it sweeter than honey, but it is stronger than a lion. It has blocked my intellect and made me hateful to my Maker. Ah my ye er, you have troubled me, and to vain things you have lured me!”)55 The phrase kil ei galuteha (“the prisons of her exile”) heightens the ambiguity: although laden with national overtones, it also evokes the soul’s incarceration in the corporeal world, as does qevurah ve- ayyeha (“buried alive”). By accommodating both readings, “Anshei emunah” rouses the worshiper to thoughts of individual and collective repentance. Stanza XIII of “Nafshi ivvitikha” also allows for a double reading by invoking the historically resonant term galut while leaving its feminine subject unspeciﬁed. Seen in its larger context, the stanza’s imagery of banishment, captivity and mourning could equally describe the soul’s suﬀerings in the lower world or Israel’s anguish in exile. The term shivyah, “her captivity” (v. 49), harks back to the earlier, explicit reference to the soul’s imprisonment in the body (v. 25), but also summons up Israel’s subjugation by historical overlords. The themes of spiritual and national despair also overlap in the verb qoderet which means “to become dark or gloomy” or “to be bent over in grief,” as well as in the stanza’s three remaining verses, which draw upon language and imagery from the book of Lamentations. Verses 51–52 reproduce (in slightly inverted order) the ﬁrst six words of Lamentations 1:2, which describe Jerusalem weeping bitterly over 54 See “Shoreru yaledei emunay”; “Direshu shemi hamonay”; and “Maharu na elei me onei ahuvim” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 3–4 (esp. vv. 11–14); 33 (esp. vv. 3–7); and 38. See also “Ya alat en mi-me onah ra aqah” in Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 3:775–76 and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 52–57 and 64–69. 55 See “Elohei tehillati, me- ayin bera tani” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 119, vv. 11–14. Cf. Judah Al arizi, Ta kemoni, ed. Toporowsky, 140 (thirteenth maqama). For an aggadic depiction of the ye er ha-ra as a lion, see bYoma 69b.

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her destruction and the banishment of her inhabitants. Ibn Ezra’s addition of the verb tanud, “she wanders,” underscores even further the motifs of exile and separation.56 When extended to the spiritual realm, these images of misery, desolation and displacement add great poignancy to the philosophical concept of the soul’s dislocation from her source. As we shall see, the stripping of ornaments (v. 50) signiﬁes Israel’s degradation in exile, but also carries symbolic weight for the soul. Since ﬁve of the earlier stanzas refer unequivocally to the soul, one might argue that the national motifs in stanza XIII can only be understood in a spiritualized sense. Such a reading would preserve the poem’s dramatic unity by eliminating sudden shifts of subject or perspective.57 Yet, the double readings of stanzas XIII and XVIII are conﬁrmed by stanza XVI, the most historical of all the poem’s quatrains. Although the speaker’s ﬁrst person singular complaint of oppression at the hands of “arrogant men” lends itself to an interiorized interpretation, its particular cluster of allusions suggests that it is also voiced on behalf of the congregation addressed in the following stanza. The phrase “they speak peace but gnash (noshekhim) their teeth” (v. 62) calls to mind a midrashic play on the near-homophones, nashaq / nashakh, occasioned by the unusual scribal markings over the word va-yishshaqehu (“and he [Esau] kissed him [ Jacob]”) in Genesis 33:4. The authors of the midrash explain the dots which appear over the phrase as an indication that Esau did not actually kiss his brother, but rather bit him.58 Now, in Talmudic times, rabbinic tradition viewed Jacob and Esau as symbols of Israel and Rome. Biblical accounts of the wickedness of Edom, the nation identiﬁed 56 For words deriving from the related root, n.d.d., see vv. 17 and 36. On the relevance of these allusions see also the brief discussion in Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 45–46. 57 These perceived shifts and the unspeciﬁed subject of stanzas XIII and XVIII have prompted varied interpretations. Brody rejected the suggestion that stanza XIII refers to the soul, and supported his national reading by pointing to the historical overtones of stanza XVI. His translator, Solis-Cohen, allowed that “the personal and the national” might be “commingled”; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 327 and 386–88. See also Schirmann’s notes on vv. 50 and 70–73 in HPSP 2:416–17. Scheindlin reads all eighteen stanzas with reference to the soul; see The Gazelle, 45–46. 58 See Gen. Rab. 78:9 and the parallels noted on 2:926–27, and Shinan, “The Midrashic Interpretations of the Ten Dotted Passages of the Pentateuch,” esp. 201–203. The midrashic allusion is nicely captured by Solis-Cohen’s translation, “They mutter ‘peace,’ and kiss to bite the cheek.”

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with Esau, were seen to preﬁgure the cruel aﬄiction of Israel by the Romans.59 Following the Christianization of Rome, the symbolism of Esau and Edom was extended to Christendom. While it is not clear that verse 62 alludes speciﬁcally to Christian oppression in Ibn Ezra’s day, the association of the Jacob/Esau typology with Israel’s subjugation to hostile nations certainly increases the stanza’s historical resonances. The same is true of the epithet zedim. The prophecies of Obadiah and Malachi associate the terms zadon and zedim with the arrogant kingdom of Edom, whose downfall they foretell.60 In light of their own historical circumstances, the Rabbis applied these prophecies to Rome.61 Shortly after the destruction of the Second Temple, a blessing which included a petition for the extirpation of malkhut zadon and the humiliation of the zedim was incorporated into the weekday amidah prayer. Jews throughout the ages understood malkhut zadon to refer to the contemporary oppressors of Israel.62 In light of these associations, the speaker’s plea in verses 63–64 calls to mind Psalm 137:7, “Remember, O Lord, against the Edomites the day of Jerusalem’s fall . . .,” which the Talmud cites in connection with liturgical requests for vengeance against the Gentiles.63 These historical overtones also heighten the multivalence of the ﬁnal stanza, where God tenderly assures His “daughter” of deliverance. The combination of national motifs and a female ﬁgure who is identiﬁed only as an intimate of God lends these verses, like those of stanza XIII, to a dual reading. If God’s promise to lead His daughter back to His dwelling place sounds like a prophecy of national restoration, it also evokes the return of the soul to her Source. Resolving the distressing images of galut, Ibn Ezra now introduces 59 See Cohen, “Esau as Symbol in Early Medieval Thought.” For the identiﬁcation of Esau with Edom, see Gen. 25:30 and 36:1, 8, 19. 60 See Obad. 3 and Mal. 3:15, 19. 61 On the rabbinic interpretations of Obadiah, see Cohen, “Esau as Symbol,” 246–47. For a midrashic passage which promises the ultimate overthrow of the wicked Edomites, and which draws many of its prooftexts from Obadiah and Malachi, see Num. Rab. 11:1. 62 Cf. “Mevasser le- am shafal ve-nivzeh” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 20, esp. vv. 5–8. The venom of the so-called Birkat ha-minim may originally have been directed against Jewish sectarians; see: Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, p. 22, n. 5 and pp. 225–26; Elbogen, Jewish Liturgy, 31–36 and 45–46; Davidson, Thesaurus, 2:192–94; and Kimmelman, “Birkat Ham-Minim and the Lack of Evidence for an Anti-Christian Jewish Prayer in Late Antiquity.” 63 See bR.H. 32b and Cohen, “Esau as Symbol,” pp. 261–62, n. 4.

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the go el, or redeemer. The poem’s melliﬂuous closing words, lini ha-laylah (“Stay, wait out the night!”) promise that, with the arrival of morning, the period of dark and painful separation will come to an end.64 Redemption as an Expression of Divine Love The language of verses 71–72 is borrowed from the biblical story of Ruth and Boaz (Ruth 3:12–13), suggesting romantic love as well as redemption. The two themes are also intertwined in verse 70, which echoes Canticles 8:2, “I would lead you, I would bring you to the house of my mother . . . I would let you drink . . . of my pomegranate juice.” The authors of the Targum to Shir ha-shirim saw in these words of the beloved assurances of Israel’s future return to the restored Temple.65 By replacing “the house of my mother” with me oni, Ibn Ezra ampliﬁes these associations. Ma on is the biblical term for God’s dwelling place, and in piyyutim lamenting the nation’s exile it refers either to the Temple or the Land of Israel. In a creative adaptation of a stock motif of the classical Arabic qa da, the Andalusian poets depict this sacred place as a desert encampment where the lovers, God and Israel, were once united.66 But ma on is also God’s celestial abode; the “site” of the soul’s Source and her “holy habitation.” For Ibn Ezra, she too was the beloved of the Song of Songs, whose passionate longings could only be requited by ascending to her true home. Thus, in another seli ah, citing Canticles 7:1, he urges, “Awake, pure soul, and return, O Shulammite!”67

64 Scheindlin notes the use of the biblical text underlying vv. 71–72 (Ruth 3:12–13) in a poem urging Israel’s forbearance in exile; see The Gazelle, 46 and “Anushah anushah,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:171, vv. 22–23. Note also that the closely related phrase, ki ein zulatekha lig ol (“For there is no one to redeem but you”; Ruth 4:4) is addressed to God in Halevi’s complaint about the exile, “Yonah nesatah al kanfei nesharim”; see Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 2:413, v. 10 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:472). 65 See Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 46. 66 Originating in pre-Islamic times, the qa da opened with an amatory prelude in which the poet voiced nostalgic longings, prompted by his recognition of an abandoned campsite where he had once been united with his beloved. See Arberry, Arabic Poetry, 5–6, and Hamori, On the Art of Medieval Arabic Literature, 6–7. On Moses Ibn Ezra’s novel use of this imagery, see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 66–69. 67 See “Middei yamay ve-shanay,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 76, vv.

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While the eroticism of these verses is extremely subtle, another sort of love relationship is suggested. The biblical go el signiﬁes not only “redeemer,” but also “kinsman.”68 Together with the term of endearment, bitti, and the tender, fatherly tone of God’s words, the allusion to Ruth suggests a familial relationship. There are sound midrashic precedents for portraying Israel as God’s daughter, but the soul also ﬁgures as a daughter in classical sources.69 The rabbinic parable of the bat ha-melekh married to a common villager implies that the soul is daughter to the King of Kings.70 God also addresses the soul as bitti in a moving midrash, which recounts the divine eﬀorts needed to coax Moses’ soul out of his body at his appointed time of death.71 Yet Ibn Ezra does not simply appropriate a midrashic motif. His suggestion of a genetic relationship captures the Neoplatonic idea of the soul’s origin in the divine, while preserving the warmth and intimacy of rabbinic portrayals of God and the soul.72 Like his fellow philosopher-poets, he softens the impersonal, naturalistic elements of the Neoplatonic scheme by blending them with biblical and rabbinic imagery familiar to his audience.

15–18. For a discussion of the poem, see Tanenbaum, “The Andalusian Seli ah and Its Individualistic Conception of Penitence.” 68 See Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 46. See also Num. 5:8. 69 See, e.g., bBer. 32b and bTa an. 4a. 70 See Ecc. Rab. on Ecc. 6:7. 71 Midrash Pe irat Moshe from Deut. Rab. on Deut. 33 in Jellinek, Bet ha-Midrasch, vol. 1, pt. 1, 115–29 and Halper, Post-Biblical Hebrew Literature, 1:19–20. See also Ginzberg, The Legends of the Jews, 3:471–73. Fishbane stresses the erotic overtones of the passage, in which God extracts the soul by means of a kiss; see The Kiss of God, 18–19. 72 Compare the closing verses of Halevi’s “Shuvi nafshi,” discussed below: “Return, return O Shulammite / To your Father’s house, as in your youth.”

CHAPTER FIVE

THE ADORNMENT OF THE SOUL: A PHILOSOPHICAL MOTIF

One of the most enigmatic lines in Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” depicts the fettered soul divesting herself of her ornaments. This striking image occurs in a stanza in which Ibn Ezra portrays the soul’s separation from her divine Source with the historically resonant term galut, and conveys her despair with language drawn principally from the Book of Lamentations: èHy:b]vi ym´y“ tWlg:B] tr
In light of its biblical echoes, the image of the soul doﬃng her ﬁnery might simply be read as a further sign of her grief here below. The phrase horidah la- are edyah recalls the mournful scene evoked in Lamentations 2:10, where the Elders of Zion sit silently on the ground, strewn with dust and girt with sackcloth, and the maidens of Jerusalem bow their heads to the ground (horidu la- are roshan). Also called to mind are Lamentations 5:16, where the fallen crown symbolizes national humiliation, and Exodus 33:4–6, where the removal of ﬁnery is a gesture of collective mourning and self-abasement ordained in the wake of the sin of the Golden Calf. Already in the classical period there were payyetanim who used the stripping of

1 Stanza 13 (vv. 49–52); for the text of the poem see the previous chapter. As noted there, verses 51–52 reproduce (in slightly inverted order) the ﬁrst six words of Lam. 1:2, while v. 50 is reminiscent of two other passages from that biblical book. On the relevance of these allusions see also the brief discussion in Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 45–46.

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ornaments to signify Israel’s degradation in exile.2 Elsewhere, Ibn Ezra does so himself.3 By transferring this symbolism to the spiritual realm, he would seem to be signaling the anguish of the captive soul. But would this motif have had a more speciﬁc meaning for the medieval reader? I believe that, when applied to the soul, the doﬃng— and, indeed, donning—of adornments has a particular philosophical signiﬁcance, which the discerning reader would have recognized. Like other reﬂexes of speculative themes in Andalusian Hebrew poetry, the twin motifs of embellishing and stripping the soul make creative use of symbols and terminology drawn from classical Jewish texts. The Bible is replete with clothing metaphors which are far from monolithic in import.4 While Israel is castigated for beautifying herself in order to seduce false lovers, she is also promised garments of splendor as a sign of divine love.5 And while the removal of ﬁnery may signify humiliation, the stripping of ﬁlthy clothes is a symbol of puriﬁcation.6 Scripture frequently represents the act of embellishment with the verb la adot, and the adornments to be donned or doﬀed with the related noun, adi. “Ve-kha-kalah ta deh khelehah,” promises Isaiah 61:10: 2 See Eleazar ha-Qallir’s qinah for the Ninth of Av, “Eikhah yashevah ava elet ha-sharon” in Goldschmidt, Seder ha-qinot le-tish ah be- av, 47–52, especially p. 48, lines 5–6. (Coincidentally, these same verses caught the attention of Anton Shammas who cites them in his novel, Arabesques, trans. Vivian Eden (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), 11.) Cf. the anonymous qinot, “Esh tuqad be-qirbi” in Goldschmidt, ibid., p. 113, vv. 37–38 and “Eli iyon ve- areha,” ibid., p. 145, vv. 11–12. Goldschmidt believes that the former is of Spanish provenance and notes that the latter is written in the Andalusian style; see his Introduction, pp. 11 and 14. 3 See his “Yonat elem re oqim” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 19, esp. vv. 7–9, where he also alludes to Ex. 33:6 and Lam. 1:2. Note the variant readings in Schirmann, HPSP 2:408, vv. 7–8. See, too, Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s qinah for the Ninth of Av, “Shomron qol titten” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 2:449, v. 10. There are also Andalusian piyyutim in which ornamentation is a symbol of national restoration; see, e.g.: Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s ge ulah, “Shekhura akhurah” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 2:499–501, esp. p. 501, vv. 6, 31–33; Moses Ibn Ezra’s two mu arrak t for Shavu ot and Passover, “Ma iv adamah ve-khol gevulehah” and “Rua sesoni ve- en man amav” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 29, esp. v. 12 and p. 40, esp. v. 14 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:411–12, v. 14); and Abraham Ibn Ezra’s ahavah, “Raneni bat ha-betulah” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 2:223–26, esp. p. 226, v. 22. 4 See, e.g., Haulotte, Symbolique du vêtement selon la Bible. I am grateful to Dr. Sebastian Brock of Oxford University for drawing this work to my attention. 5 For the motif of adornment in order to seduce see, e.g., Jer. 4:30 and Hos. 2:15. For adornment as national redemption see Is. 49:18, 61:10; Ez. 16:7, 11–13. 6 For doﬃng as a symbol of national humiliation: see Ex. 33:4–6; Is. 3:18–24; Ez. 23:26. For puriﬁcation see Zech. 3:3–5.

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Israel redeemed will be like “a bride bedecked with her ﬁnery.” “Vae dekh edi,” the nation is reminded in Ezekiel 16:11. The prophet proceeds to list a dazzling array of jewels and sumptuous apparel lovingly bestowed upon Israel before she went astray, abusing her divine gifts for depraved purposes. Adi also occurs in Exodus 33:5, which is echoed in Ibn Ezra’s phrase horidah la- are edyah. The biblical images that underlie Ibn Ezra’s verse suggest that the soul is guilty of sin. In the episode of the Golden Calf, the Israelites disgrace themselves through their lack of trust in God, which culminates in the sin of idolatry. Various midrashim explain that the ornaments now removed were those bestowed upon the people when they willingly accepted the Torah at Sinai.7 Other sources identify the Torah itself as an adornment: the Targum on Ezekiel 16:11 interprets the ﬁnery with which God bedecked Israel as the words of the Torah. Abraham Ibn Ezra apparently equated the adornments of Exodus 33:4 with the Torah, although this gloss is extant only in a comment by Isaac Abravanel.8 And in his discussion of Ezekiel 16:7, David Qimhi volunteers that the phrase va-tavo i ba adi adayim may be a metaphor for “the beneﬁcent laws and statutes of the Torah, which are like an adornment.” Assuming that this exegetical tradition informs Ibn Ezra’s poetic symbolism, the willful rejection of Torah must have an analogue meaningful in a Neoplatonic context. As we have seen, the speaker in “Nafshi ivvitikha” confesses to errant ways and urges his soul to crush the body’s lusts. He also entreats her to reﬂect upon the dangers of this ephemeral world. These exhortations imply that the soul has sinned by allowing herself to be excessively immersed in mundane matters and distracted by corporeal concerns, squandering her terrestrial existence on material pursuits when she should have been honing her rational faculty. These themes suggest that there is an ethical as well as an intellectual dimension to the symbolism of doﬃng. 7 See bShab. 88a; Midrash Pesiqta Rabbati, 10:6 (p. 37a); Ex. Rab. 51:8; and Pirqei de-rabbi eliezer, Ch. 47. There are even rabbinic sources which indirectly suggest a link between these ornaments and the soul. The term edyekh in Ps. 103:5— a verse which is addressed to the soul—is glossed with reference to the motif of adornment at Sinai; see Midrash Tehillim, 103:8. The same identiﬁcation is made in Midrash Hagadol on Ex. 33:5, which adduces Ps. 103:5 as a prooftext. 8 Isaac Abravanel, Peirush al ha-torah, sefer shemot, 321, cited in Kasher, Torah Shelemah, vol. 22, p. 4, n. 11 (on Ex. 33:4). Cf. “A ulah le-fanim” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 2:156–58, esp. 157, v. 5. On this poem see Ratzaby, Migginz Shirat Hakkedem, 299–301.

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The full import of this symbolism only becomes clear in light of contemporaneous speculative writings. The motif of adornment recurs in discussions of the perfection of the soul in texts of Islamic and Jewish provenance. Representative of these passages is the following extract from Ibn S n ’s Ris la f ’l-nafs al-n iqa, or Essay on the Rational Soul: The bliss [of the soul] comes about when its substance is rendered perfect, and this is accomplished when it is puriﬁed through knowledge of God and works for God (bi’l- ilm bi-’ll h wa’l- amal li-ll h). Its puriﬁcation through works for God consists of (a) its being purged of vile and wicked qualities of character, (b) its rehabilitation from blameworthy attributes and evil and oﬀensive habits by following reason and religious law, and (c) its being adorned with good habits, praiseworthy qualities of character, and excellent and pleasing traits by following reason and religious law (ta liyatuhu bi’l- d t al- asana wa’l-akhl q alam da wa’l-malak t al-f ila al-mur iya aqlan wa-shar an).9

Here the adornment of the soul is clearly a metaphor for the cultivation of impeccable ethical habits and the acquisition of virtuous character traits. There is also an explicit link between such ethical perfection, punctilious religious observance, moderate asceticism and the pursuit of metaphysical knowledge. Ibn S n predicates the soul’s attainment of her ultimate felicity on a combination of these active and contemplative ideals. Such a synthesis is also advocated in speculative texts of Jewish origin, several of which explicitly invoke the phrase al- ilm wa’l- amal.10 Ibn S n ’s philosophical works apparently reached Islamic Spain at a relatively late date. While they were known to Judah Halevi and Abraham Ibn Ezra, they may not have been available to Ibn Gabirol.11 The adornment of the soul does ﬁgure, however, in the 9 Trans. Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, 74. For the Arabic text see al-Ahw n , A w l al-nafs, 196. 10 See, e.g., Solomon Ibn Gabirol, MH 1:2 (Bluwstein, 7); Moses Ibn Ezra, Maq lat al- ad qa, p. 88, lines 10–17, printed in Pines, “Fragments,” 231–32; Goldziher, Kit b ma n al-nafs, 54*–60* and Ch. 21, pp. 64–69 = Broydé, Les Réﬂexions sur l’âme, 85–92; Judah Halevi, Kit b al-khazar , 1:103, pp. 34–35; Joseph Ibn addiq, Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, 66 and 76; Joseph b. Judah Ibn Aqnin, Inkish f al-asr r, on Cant. 1:10, pp. 54–55. 11 Abraham Ibn Ezra modeled his philosophical allegory of the soul’s quest for wisdom on Ibn S n ’s ayy Ibn Yaq n; see ay Ben Mekitz. Judah Halevi incorporated part of a treatise on the soul by Ibn S n into Book V of his Khazar ; see Pines, “Shi ite Terms and Conceptions in Judah Halevi’s Kuzari,” esp. 210–19. Pines conjectures that Halevi became familiar with Ibn S n ’s philosophical works dur-

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Theology of Aristotle with which Ibn Gabirol was familiar. Treatise Four of the Theology, entitled “On the Glory and Beauty of the World of Mind,” contains the following statement: . . . the beauty of the soul appears to you in the upright man because, when the upright man casts earthly deﬁled things from his soul and adorns his soul with acceptable works (wa-zayyana nafsahu bi’l-a m l almur iya), the ﬁrst light pours some of its light upon his soul and makes her beautiful and splendid.12

The notions of puriﬁcation and embellishment with acceptable works are parallel in the two texts: where Ibn S n has ta liya for adornment, the author of the Theology employs the verb zayyana. In the Theology passage the ornamentation of the soul is intimately linked with illumination. The author goes on to say that “when the soul sees her beauty and splendour, she knows whence that beauty is, and does not need ratiocination (al-qiy s) in order to know that, because she knows it by means of the mind.”13 Ibn S n also indicates that, in purifying herself “through knowledge of God,” the soul attains a higher state of awareness which enables her to dispense with discursive thought.14 Our extract from the Theology corresponds to Enneads V, 8, 3, part of Plotinus’ discourse “On the Intelligible Beauty.” Here too we ﬁnd a reference to adorning the soul (Greek: kosm sas gar t n psukh n). While Plotinus makes no explicit mention of good works, he does say that the beauty of the rational principle “is clearest in a nobly good soul.”15 The phrase kosm sas t n psukh n does occur in an ethical context in Plato’s Phaedo. Towards the end of the dialogue Socrates asserts that the man “who in his life has rejected the pleasures . . . of the body” and has adorned his soul with the virtues of “selfrestraint, . . . justice, . . . courage, . . . freedom and truth” need not

ing the course of writing the Khazar and suggests that their reception in Spain took place sometime during the ﬁrst half of the twelfth century. Elsewhere he theorizes that Ibn Gabirol did know Ibn S n ’s exegetical works; see “ ‘And He Called Out to Nothingness And It Was Split.’ ” 12 Trans. Lewis, Plotini Opera, 2:381–83. For the Arabic, see Badaw , Aﬂ n inda ’l- arab, p. 61, lines 19–21. 13 Lewis, ibid.; Badaw , p. 61, line 21–p. 62, line 1. 14 See Gutas, Avicenna and the Aristotelian Tradition, p. 74, pars. 3, 4 and 7 and alAhw n , A w l al-nafs, 195–96. See also Gutas’s comment, p. 259, n. 43, on the parallel in Ibn S n ’s Kit b al-ish r t wa’l-tanb h t (Book of Pointers and Reminders). 15 See Plotinus, Enneads, 5:245.

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be apprehensive about the fate of his soul after death.16 Our medieval metaphor is, then, ultimately of Platonic derivation. A variation on this theme is found in Ba ya Ibn Paquda’s Hid ya. In connection with the obligation of self-reckoning, Ba ya discusses the duty to adorn one’s conscience, heart and limbs with obedience of God (al-tazayyun bi- atihi f ’l- am r wa’l-qul b wa’l-jaw ri ). He too sees this regimen as a stage preparatory to illumination, which he describes as elevation to the point where the believer “sees without his eyes and hears without his ears; . . . talks without his tongue, senses things without his senses and perceives with no need of logic” ( yash uru bih d na qiy s).17 Clothing metaphors are prominent in Kit b ma n al-nafs, an anonymous Judeo-Arabic treatise on the soul of Neoplatonic and Platonic inspiration, contemporaneous with our poets.18 In Chapter 21 the soul is compared to a garment, while in Chapter 17 the descending soul is said to be enveloped in the garments of the spheres.19 The four cardinal virtues of the soul are not linked to the adornment motif, but in Chapter 2 they are described as accidents of the soul, a philosophical construct that may underlie the image of embellishment.20 In Chapter 1 the author ascribes to some Mu tazilites and all Karaites the erroneous view that the soul is merely “a bodily ornament ( ilya badaniyya) and an accident borne by the substance of the body . . . so that when the body passes away and its matter ceases to exist, its ornament and accidents perish with it.”21 While ilya may simply denote the form, character or characteristic quality of a thing, this juxtaposition suggests an analogy between embellishment and the manner in which accidents attach to a substance. In his Microcosm, Joseph Ibn addiq also enumerates four virtues that 16

Plato, Phaedo 114d–e, pp. 391–93. See Ba ya, Hid ya, 8:3, pp. 347–48 (Mansoor, 368–69). 18 Isaac Broydé’s 1896 Hebrew translation ascribes the work to Ba ya Ibn Paquda, but Ignaz Goldziher, who published the original Arabic in 1907, showed this attribution to be incorrect; see: Husik, A History of Mediaeval Jewish Philosophy, 106–113; Sirat, A History of Jewish Philosophy in the Middle Ages, 83–85, and additional bibliography cited there. 19 The motif of the soul as a garment occurs in rabbinic literature; see bShab. 152b (on Ecc. 12:7) and Altmann, “Gnostic Motifs in Rabbinic Literature,” 131–32. On the garments of the spheres see Brock, “Clothing Metaphors as a Means of Theological Expression in Syriac Tradition,” p. 28, n. 6 and p. 33, n. 52. 20 See Goldziher, 6 and Broydé, 7. 21 See Goldziher, 4 and Broydé, 4. For other thinkers who refute the claim that the soul is an accident of the body, see below, pp. 152–153. 17

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lead to the soul’s salvation without making reference to adornment.22 But in his comments on reward and punishment, he compares the merits of the soul to ﬁnery and her sins to ﬁlthy clothes. He adduces as his prooftext Zechariah 3:3–5, which itself remarks on the symbolism of replacing soiled garments with undeﬁled ones. This metaphor of moral puriﬁcation is accompanied in the biblical text by the bestowal of a pure diadem, a symbolic act which is also suggestive of adornment.23 Even Maimonides’ younger contemporary, Joseph ben Judah Ibn Aqnin, invokes the ornamentation motif in his philosophical commentary on the Song of Songs. He interprets Canticles 1:10 (“Your cheeks are comely with plaited wreaths; your neck with strings of jewels”) as the praise of the Active Intellect for the rational soul’s ﬁne knowledge and works (al- ilm wa’l- amal ). The Intellect lauds the soul for her qualities of character and for becoming beautiful when engaged in the good works prescribed by her knowledge. “And he says: ‘Just as ornaments perfect the woman who adorns herself with them, so excellent qualities of character beautify the rational soul. And just as this ﬁnery renders one beautiful when worn, but when removed diminishes its wearer’s beauty, . . . so it is with you.’ ”24 Ibn Aqnin oﬀers a similar interpretation of Canticles 7:2 (“How lovely are your feet in sandals, O daughter of nobles!”), remarking: “Just as sandals protect the soles of the feet from hard, painful things, so excellent moral qualities protect the soul from drowning in her desires and from neglecting to acquire wisdom.”25 In light of these parallels, Moses Ibn Ezra’s poetic image of the captive soul lowering her ornaments to the ground gains additional symbolic dimensions. It signiﬁes the erosion of praiseworthy character traits which results from excessive involvement in worldly matters. And if adornment represents a stage just prior to illumination, then the stripping of ﬁnery must also signify a state in which the

22

See Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, 38. Ibn addiq substitutes hope (ha-to elet) and humility (ha- anavah) for Plato’s courage and self-restraint (sophrosun ); see Haberman, “The Microcosm by Joseph Ibn Zaddik,” p. 114, n. 2 and Vajda, “La Philosophie et la théologie de Joseph Ibn Çaddiq,” 130. 23 See Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, 76. The metaphor of ﬁlthy clothes recurs in connection with the purgation of the sinful soul; see 77–78. 24 See Joseph b. Judah Ibn Aqnin, Inkish f al-asr r, 54–55 and cf. his philosophical interpretation of Cant. 4:9, pp. 204–205. 25 Ibid., 364–65.

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soul’s intellectual insight is obscured. The metaphor of darkness is already present in the previous verse of “Nafshi ivvitikha” (v. 49), where the verb qoderet is used to evoke the soul’s sorry condition. As noted earlier, liqdor means “to be bent over in grief,” or “to become dark or gloomy.” Neoplatonic writings on psychology regularly describe the diminution of intellectual powers resulting from the soul’s embodiment as the eclipse of her light. Ibn Ezra himself invokes this topos in the ﬁnal chapter of his Maq lat al- ad qa: When the soul is united with a physical substance and is thoroughly fused with it, she is deprived of her receptivity to the traces of (supernal) wisdom because the murkiness of the physical substance overcomes her to the point where her light is extinguished and she becomes coarse.26

In the introduction to Maq lat al- ad qa Ibn Ezra cites with approval an unnamed thinker who uses embellishment as a metaphor for intellectual perfection: God adorned the world with three ornaments, more perfect than which cannot be imagined: wisdom, good and power . . . we therefore ﬁnd the philosopher adorning his soul with these three.27

Here, one who attains the contemplative ideal and acquires virtuous moral traits is deemed a philosopher.28 In adorning his soul he mirrors God’s muniﬁcence to the world. The theme of “resembling” or “imitating” God is further developed in what follows. Having explained that adornment with power means that nothing which man has the capacity to attain is beyond him, Ibn Ezra remarks, “therefore Plato added in his deﬁnition that philosophy consists of assimilation to God according to human capacity.” As Alexander Altmann

26 ad qa, 84–85, corresponding to MH 5:41. Cf. ad qa, p. 88, lines 10–17, corresponding to MH 1:2; and see Pines, “Fragments,” 230–32. Note that in both passages Ibn Ezra conveys the darkening of the soul’s light by means of the Arabic verb kadira, which is similar in sound, although not cognate to the Hebrew qadar. For further instances of this topos see Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, p. 184; Ibn addiq, Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan, p. 42, lines 3–4 and Ma n al-nafs, Ch. 7 (Goldziher, 24 and Broydé, 30). See also Rosenthal, Knowledge Triumphant, 155–93 (“Knowledge as Light”). 27 ad qa, 23. Like many portions of the ad qa, this section is a pastiche of unascribed citations of earlier works; see Fenton, “Gleanings from M eh Ibn Ezra’s Maq lat al- ad qa”; idem, Philosophie et exégèse; Pines, “Fragments”; and Stern, “Isaac Israeli and Moses Ibn Ezra.” 28 It is possible that al-faylas f refers to the Philosopher, viz. Aristotle.

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has shown, this deﬁnition occurs in a series of Arabic speculative texts which antedate the ad qa, and ultimately derives from Plato’s Theaetetus (176b).29 Its relevance to the ideas behind the ornamentation motif is further elucidated in two works known to Ibn Ezra— the Epistles of the Ikhw n al- af and Isaac Israeli’s Book of Deﬁnitions. Both construe “assimilation to God according to human capacity” in intellectual and moral terms or, in Israeli’s words, as “acquiring true knowledge” and “doing what corresponds to the truth.”30 In their poetry the Andalusians also extend the symbolism of adornment to the intellectual plane. In the ﬁnal stanza of Ibn Ezra’s mu arrak for Purim, “Tinnaten li vi-sh elati,” the speaker describes his soul as “the ﬂawless one who is bound to the body” (qeshurah bagev beli migra at). Addressing God, he then remarks, “from Your wisdom she adorns herself with knowledge” (me- okhmatekha ta deh da at).31 Moreover, the motif is not restricted to liturgical pieces. In a mordant poetic response to nameless opponents of his philosophical studies, Solomon Ibn Gabirol compares metaphysical wisdom to an adornment ( ali ), or ﬁnery for the soul ( adi nefesh): How can I abandon wisdom, when God’s spirit has made a covenant between us? How can she leave me? She is like a mother to me, and I am the child of her old age Or like an ornament, ﬁnery for the soul, or her necklace. How can you say to me: “Doﬀ your ﬁnery and strip the jewels from her throat?” In her my heart rejoices; delighting in the purity of her refreshing streams. It is not good for my soul to be like the sun obscured by clouds. As long as I live I will raise my soul and make her home beyond the stars. For I have sworn not to rest until I grasp knowledge of the Lord!32 29

See Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 196–208. Ibid., 200. 31 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 24–25, vv. 14–15. Note that the juxtaposition of vv. 14–15 in “Tinnaten li” suggests that embodiment need not deﬂect the soul from her quest for illumination. 32 “Nefesh asher alu she oneha,” in Ibn Gabirol, Secular Poetry, 1:204–207, vv. 24–31 = Schirmann, HPSP 1:189–90. Cf. “Ni ar be-qor i geroni” (Ibn Gabirol, Secular Poetry, 1:227–233 = Schirmann, HPSP 1:207–210), v. 30, where Ibn Gabirol scornfully tells his detractors that their necks are not ﬁt to bear the gold of his crescent-shaped ornament (saharon), viz. his wisdom. In “Nefesh asher alu she oneha” the subject of v. 26 could be either wisdom or the speaker; the antecedent is ambiguous, just as the pronominal suﬃx of avroneha (“her neck”) could refer either to the 30

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Like Ibn Ezra, he imparts philosophical signiﬁcance to the imagery of Exodus 33:5 when he asks indignantly, “How can you say to me: ‘Remove your ornaments . . .’?” The ethical sense of adornment is evident as well in Ibn Gabirol’s corpus. His “Nafshi de i mah tif ali” opens with the admonition, “My soul, know what you must do before ascending to your Rock.” Looking inward, the speaker in this tokhe ah urges his soul to confess her sins, renounce the empty pleasures of this world, bow humbly to God and thus win eternal repose. These exhortations culminate in a masterful play on words, which exploits the precedent set by Proverbs 25:20, where the verb la adot seems to have the sense of removing a garment: ylij} yDI[]T' ylij’ yDI[]T' / ylih‘a≤ yh'løa‘ tyB´ d[' Pitch your tent before God’s house; Cast oﬀ illness, don your jewels.33

Perhaps the most explicit linkage between liberation from the body, adornment and illumination is found in a piece by Judah Al arizi, a late twelfth-century heir to the Andalusian poetic tradition. The ﬁnal maq ma of his Ta kemoni includes the following verses on the rational soul: Hy:w“G< r/bB] tr
soul (nefesh; v. 26) or to wisdom ( okhmah; v. 24). I have tried to preserve this ambiguity in my translation. According to the alternative reading, the wise man (philosopher) is an adornment for wisdom; cf. “Be-shuri ha- aliyyah,” Ibn Gabirol, Secular Poetry, 1:324, v. 23. Note also that ali is cognate to the Arabic ilya, which occurs in our speculative texts. 33 Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:291–93. For the interpretation of ma adeh beged in Prov. 25:20 as disrobing see, e.g., Jonah Ibn Jan , The Book of Hebrew Roots (Kit b al-u l), 505 and David al-F s , Kit b J mi al-Alf , 2:371.

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chapter five Conﬁned in the cell of the body she stays stripped of her jewels from the day she lodged there. Though lofty, she unites with the worm— who can compare its defect with her grace? The day that she casts oﬀ the body she dons her jewels, removing her prisoner’s clothes. She shines like the sun rising from gloomy lands, as she goes forth from the shadows of her dingy jail. Her heavenly Maker she praises, for thus must all that have breath in them worship the Lord.34

Al arizi here invokes two discrete, but equally prevalent doﬃng motifs. On the one hand the soul is stripped of her jewels. On the other, she doﬀs the body, thereby purifying herself in preparation for illumination. The latter variation also occurs in the Introduction to the Ta kemoni, where the souls of the righteous peel oﬀ their servants’ clothes as they emerge from their bodies into the “outer court” of the divine palace, and don sacred garments as they enter the King’s inner sanctum.35 This theme recalls the well-known passage in the Theology of Aristotle, opening with the phrase “Often have I been alone with my soul and have doﬀed my body. . . .”36 Moses Ibn Ezra quotes this famous description of ecstasy together with other “ancient” and “wise” dicta which advocate casting oﬀ the corporeal trappings of this world so that the soul may ascend to the splendor of the celestial realm.37 It has been shown that one of these citations corresponds to a section of Ibn Gabirol’s Meqor ayyim which is itself based on the passage in the Theology.38 Several of the other sayings derive from the Third Epistle of the Ikhw n al- af .39 Elsewhere, the Ikhw n also speak of the soul divesting herself of “her 34 This translation is modeled on Reichert’s English renditions in The Tahkemoni of Judah Al-harizi, 2:393–94; for the Hebrew text see Judah Al arizi, Ta kemoni, ed. Toporowsky, 409–10. 35 See Reichert 1:25 and Al arizi, Ta kemoni, 4–5. 36 Theology 1:21; Lewis, 225; Badaw , 22. On this passage as an illustration of “the doﬃng of thisworldliness with a view to donning the splendour of the higher world” see Zimmermann, “The Origins of the So-Called Theology of Aristotle,” 114, 138–41 (App. IV) and 228–29, n. 38, where additional clothing metaphors from the Theology are adduced. 37 See ad qa, p. 21, line 15–p. 22. 38 Ibn Gabirol, MH 3:56–57 (Bluwstein, 263–64). See: Pines, “Fragments,” 221–22 (extract no. 2) and Fenton’s proposed emendation in “Gleanings,” p. 293, n. 27; Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 191–92; and Altmann, “Delphic Maxim,” 226. 39 Compare ad qa, p. 21, line 15–p. 22, line 5 with Ras il ikhw n al- af , 1:137–38. That Ibn Ezra quoted the Theology passage from the Ras il is demonstrated by Fenton; see his “Arabic and Hebrew Versions,” 257–59 (App. I).

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bodily shells” before she can become luminous. They explicitly equate these corporeal impediments with “beastly dispositions” and “material appetites.”40 This motif also occurs in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s ay Ben Meqi , a rhymed philosophical allegory of the soul’s quest for metaphysical wisdom modeled on Ibn S n ’s ayy Ibn Yaq n. In preparation for his journey through the cosmos, the narrator (the soul) is disrobed and immersed in the healing waters of the spring of life.41 In a line whose imagery recalls Plato’s Phaedrus, his guide, ay Ben Meqi (the Active Intellect), assures him that these acts of puriﬁcation will restore his lost wings, enabling him to soar to the heavens.42 When they ﬁnally enter the angelic realm at the outer reaches of the cosmos, the narrator-soul exclaims, “How awesome is this place I see!” (cf. Genesis 28:17).43 Responding with another allusion to a biblical theophany (Exodus 3:5), ay instructs him: “Remove your sandals from your feet, and strip your only soul of your material body . . . Then see with your inner eye!”44 In another version of the adornment motif, illumination is symbolized by the divine bestowal of a crown. The speaker in Ibn Gabirol’s tokhe ah, “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” reminds his soul how God in His muniﬁcence “crowned you with knowledge and understanding,” and admonishes her for having gone so badly astray: You rejected your wisdom and turned towards evil;

40

Cf. Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 186; Ras il ikhw n al- af , 3:9. Doﬃng and donning motifs ﬁgure prominently as well in the Syriac Hymn of the Soul. Also known as the Hymn of the Pearl, this gnostic allegory of the soul’s mission in the lower world is found in the apocryphal Acts of St. Thomas; see Wright, Apocryphal Acts of the Apostles, 2:238–45 and Brock, “Clothing Metaphors,” p. 21. It is possible that the Andalusians appropriated gnostic themes, perhaps via texts emanating from the ancient Jewish tradition of merkavah (chariot) mysticism, and reinterpreted them philosophically. The idea that the souls of the righteous will wear splendid attire or “garments of life” in Paradise apparently occurs in some of these texts; see Scholem, “The Paradisic Garb of Souls.” For two recent studies which explore the role of merkavah motifs in Andalusian Hebrew poetry see Liebes, “Sefer Ye ira” and Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb: Judah Halevi Reconsidered.” 41 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, ay Ben Mekitz, p. 60, lines 70ﬀ. 42 Cf. Phaedrus 246a–248c, pp. 470–79. On the soul as a winged being in Ibn S n ’s allegories see Corbin, Avicenna and the Visionary Recital, 178–83. 43 Abraham Ibn Ezra, ay Ben Mekitz, p. 83, lines 204–205. 44 Abraham Ibn Ezra, ay Ben Mekitz, lines 205–207. Note that the language of Ex. 33:6 is used here to evoke the doﬃng of the body.

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chapter five You stripped oﬀ your clothes of love, and wore in their stead tattered rags; You extinguished the splendor of your sun, and cast away the crown from your head.45

Similarly, in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s penitential poem “Et ef i male” the speaker addresses God, saying “You wreathed me with crowns, that I might cleave to your splendor.”46 Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Be-shem el asher amar,” which prefaces his Maq lat al- ad qa, extols God’s creation, surveying the cosmos and the beings of the sublunar world, the most noble of which is man. Reworking Psalm 8:6, the poet remarks that God has made man “little lower than the angels47 . . . crowning him in splendor with the intellect which derives from his divine Source . . .”48 The poets’ diadem of metaphysical wisdom may well reﬂect the midrashic tradition that the ornaments mentioned in Exodus 33 were the crowns with which Israel was rewarded for accepting the Torah.49 Crowns also ﬁgure in the famous aggadic passage at bBerakhot 17a as a part of the reward of the righteous in olam ha-ba: “In the world to come there is no eating, drinking, sexual intercourse, business dealings, jealousy, hatred or competition; rather, the righteous sit

45 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:543–46, especially vv. 5–10, and cf. “Lekha el ay tikhsof ye idati,” ibid., 2:485–86, v. 17 where the speaker describes his soul as a crown of wisdom. 46 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:382, v. 22. Ezra Fleischer questions the attribution of this seli ah to Ibn Ezra on the grounds that it appears to repudiate philosophical speculation; see his review, p. 667. While the poem does voice a certain skepticism about metaphysical inquiry (vv. 29, 35–37), it also reﬂects a fascination with the divine soul in man (vv. 5–11, 20), which is certainly characteristic of Ibn Ezra. Moreover, the belief that God’s essence lies beyond human ken (v. 21) is not inconsistent with Neoplatonic doctrine: even Ibn Gabirol asserts that the human intellect may reach up to the realm of the Divine Throne, “but there must halt”; see KM canto 26 and cf. ay Ben Mekitz, pp. 84–86, par. 27–28. It is instructive to compare “Et ef i male” with Judah Halevi’s “Yah shimekha” and “Yashen al teradam”; see Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 1:30–33 and 2:614–616. 47 For the interpretation of elohim as angels see, e.g., the Targum, Rashi and Abraham Ibn Ezra ad loc. On the ranking of angels and human beings see above, p. 62, n. 17. 48 See Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:242, vv. 112–113, and cf. Abraham Ibn Ezra, who interprets the second half of Ps. 8:6 with reference to the rational soul. “Be-shem el asher amar” is, of course, modeled on Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut. While it is tempting to link the title of Ibn Gabirol’s magisterial work with our crowning motif, there is no evidence of such a usage in the poem itself. 49 See above, n. 7. See also Ex. Rab. 45:2, which links the “splendid crown” ( a eret tif eret) of Ez. 16:12 with the ﬁnery of Ex. 33:6.

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with their crowns on their heads, delighting in the splendor of the Shekhinah.” In his Commentary on the Mishnah and his Mishneh Torah, Maimonides interprets these crowns as a metaphor for the knowledge of the divine which is attained by the souls of the righteous, and on account of which those souls merit eternal life.50 His exegesis would seem to draw upon an idea that is already implicit in the symbolism of the Andalusian poets. Of course, the poets themselves derived inspiration from a shared fund of speculative ideas. Yet, as we have seen, there is a distinctiveness to their appropriation of the metaphor of adornment. Their originality lies in their elegant fusion of an essentially philosophical conceit with richly suggestive biblical and midrashic motifs. Guided by their belief in the underlying harmony of their sources, they translated a complex symbol of ethical perfection and ultimate felicity into an idiom familiar from Scripture and the liturgy. Unfortunately, we have no record of how such sophisticated piyyut was understood by the average worshiper. We can only surmise that it elicited widespread admiration for the poets’ craft and, from the discerning reader, appreciation of their religious and contemplative ideals.

50 See his Commentary on Mishnah Sanhedrin, Introduction to Chapter 10 (“ eleq”) in Mishnah im peirush rabbenu moshe ben maimon, 4:204–205 and MT, Teshuvah 8:2.

CHAPTER SIX

MEDITATION ON THE SOUL AS A PRELUDE TO PRAYER: ABRAHAM IBN EZRA’S “IMRAT YE IDAH LE-YA ID YA ATAH” With his enduring contributions to the ﬁelds of biblical exegesis, poetry, Hebrew grammar, philosophy, and science, Abraham Ibn Ezra (1089/92–1164/67) greatly enriched the intellectual legacy of Hispano-Jewry. Ironically, his proliﬁc and multi-faceted career coincided with the darkest period in the political fortunes of the Jews of Islamic Spain. Born in Tudela not long after the Christian reconquest of Toledo and the Almoravid incursion into Spain, Ibn Ezra left his native land less than a decade before the destruction of the Jewish community of al-Andalus at the hands of the fanatical Almohade invaders. The remaining twenty-ﬁve or so years of his life were spent in peregrinations through Italy, Provence, the Angevin Kingdom of Northern France and England. As an itinerant scholar, he devoted himself to the transmission of Andalusian Jewish learning to his coreligionists in Western Europe.1 Ibn Ezra has been described as an adherent of “philosophical mysticism.”2 In his writings he returns time and again to the notion that devequt, or cleaving to God, is the supreme goal and ultimate purpose of human existence. This blissful state may be achieved during the rare individual’s lifetime, but otherwise awaits the righteous in olam ha-ba. The vehicle for attaining it is man’s rational soul, for “the reward of the world to come depends on the soul . . . whose 1 For an overview of Ibn Ezra’s life and work see Schirmann, HPCS, 13–92. For additional bibliography see Singerman, “Abraham Ibn Ezra Scholarship, 1970–1990”; for recent scholarly collections see: Díaz Esteban ed., Abraham Ibn Ezra and His Age; Levin ed., Studies in the Works of Abraham Ibn Ezra (Te uda 8); and Twersky and Harris ed., Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra: Studies in the Writings of a Twelfth-Century Jewish Polymath. Weinberger’s Twilight of a Golden Age should be used with caution; see the review by Susan Einbinder. 2 See Levin, “A Synoptical Evaluation of the Work of Abraham Ibn Ezra,” 194 and Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,’ ” p. 24, n. 43. On the importance of Ibn Ezra’s theory of divine visions and prophetic experience for thirteenthcentury mystics, see Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, 125–87 passim.

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divine service consists of contemplating God’s works, which are the ladder by which one ascends to knowledge of God, and this is of fundamental importance.”3 Ibn Ezra’s extraordinary preoccupation with psychology is evident in the references to the origin, nature and destiny of the soul which permeate the most diverse genres of his writing. He addresses “the mystery of the soul” (sod ha-nefesh) in his Bible commentaries and even in Yesod Mora, a work devoted to the rationale for the biblical commandments (ta amei ha-mi vot). Penetrating this mystery is the culmination of all the propaedeutic sciences and an indispensable preparation for knowing God.4 Ibn Ezra’s philosophical allegory on the odyssey of the soul, ay Ben Meqi , is a patently didactic work based on Ibn S n ’s ayy Ibn Yaq n. Told by a ﬁrst person narrator (the soul), it recounts a cosmic journey guided by ay Ben Meqi (the Active Intellect) in pursuit of metaphysical wisdom and knowledge of God.5 Written in rhymed prose and a heavily allusive biblical Hebrew, the tale is reminiscent of the Arabic maq ma genre, which would soon become popular in Hebrew letters. In his devotional poems Ibn Ezra celebrates the human soul’s sublimity and explores its yearnings. The prevalence of these motifs in his exegetical works yields rich comparative material for the study of his piyyutim. Although not restricted to any single genre, psychological themes are particularly pronounced in reshuyot and mu arrak t, such as “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah.”6 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 148‒49.] A ﬁne exemplar of the mu arrak genre, “Imrat ye idah” both contemplates the soul and examines the meaning of prayer.7 The poem’s leading verse, or madrikh, speaks of the soul’s praise for God, recalling the opening phrase of Nishmat, “The soul of every living creature shall bless Your name, O Lord.” From the outset, “Imrat ye idah” reads Nishmat through a philosophical lens, evoking a soul that originates in the divine realm, resides temporarily in man, and—

3 See his comments on Deut. 32:39 (quoted here), Ps. 1:3, Ps. 16:8–11, Ps. 49:16–21; Yesod Mora 7:12 (Levin, Reader, 332–33) and 10:2 (Levin, 337). 4 See his Commentary on Ex. 31:18 and Yesod Mora, Introduction; 1:9; and 12:4. 5 See above, pp. 43 and 143. 6 The Hebrew text of “Imrat ye idah” is found in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:88–89. 7 Note that Levin does not indicate the poem’s genre, but its classiﬁcation as a mu arrak is conﬁrmed by Fleischer in his review of Levin’s edition; see p. 669.

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Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah Abraham Ibn Ezra The unique soul’s praise beﬁts the only One; My soul is spent with longing for her Rock.

5

That acts depend upon her power Is proof of her existence. Immortal, Permanent, she is not an accident. The body’s frame may stay or fade; Her source is life, her home is truth. The body’s many images Blend in her, are uniﬁed. Radiant as the cloudless sun, She builds herself a palace; For from her ﬂesh she beholds her Creator’s splendor.

10

15

Her mind sees all, outside of time: Potential thoughts, before she’s formed, Afterwards are actualized. She animates, yet seems contained; Until the God to Whom she turns exalts her in His mercy. Lord, through You do I exist; My foes do no harm while You are my Home. I set my soul as a place for You— Should she cease her prayer, she will die; When she speaks Your praise, she revives.

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≥ht;l]K; μg"w“ hp;s]k]nI / Hr:Wxl] yvip]n" // èht;a}y: dyjiy:l] hd:yjiy“ tr"m]ai Hn:/a j'koB] μyli[;P] dmo[]B' Hè n:v]y< hY:j'w“ èHt;/yh‘ l[' t/a ≥Hn:ya´ hr
5

t/bK;r“nI wgEB] t/nWmT] t/Br" ≥t/bv; HB;r“qIB] t/brE[} èdj'y" èt/b[; sp,a,B] vm,v,K] Hn:y[e ≥ht…z“j; Hl;l]/jm] d/h / Hr:c;B]mi yKi // èht;n“B; HT;b]vil] ra…tom] lk;yhe èha;/r Hl;k]ciB] t[e yliB] ha;x;m]nI yhiT] Hj;koB] ≥ha;x;y: l['pol] rj'a'w“ ≥ht;n“P; wym;j}r"l] la´/Hr:ydIa}y" d[' // èht;m]d: ha;WcN“k' ayhiw“ —

lKoh' 10 μr
èytim;yqi hn:K]t]nI ÚB] èˆ/[m… èytim;/j T]a'w“ yb'yrIy“ ˆyIa' 15 ≥ytim;v]nI Úl] μ/qm;l] tyvia… ≥ht;y“j; /bW Úr“k]zI / Hr:y[iy“ ˆkea… // èht;me — Ël… aroQ]mi vyrIj}T' μai

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in its quest to return to its Source—is sustained by prayer. Inspired by the Neoplatonic myth of the soul’s descent, Ibn Ezra redeﬁnes prayer as the vehicle of the soul’s return. His meditation is far removed from the collective consciousness of Nishmat, which idealizes universal gloriﬁcation of God and expresses gratitude for past instances of national redemption.8 “Imrat ye idah” imagines a highly individualized deliverance, whose drama unfolds outside of time. Its intensely inward gaze gives no hint of its public liturgical function. The poem’s simplicity of presentation suggests an aversion to ﬂorid rhetoric and excessive speculation about the nature of God. In contrast with Nishmat, Andalusian reshuyot often reveal an awareness of the inadequacy of human language to express God’s inﬁnite grandeur.9 Although this theme ﬁgures in the section of Nishmat beginning with the words ilu ﬁnu, it actually serves there as a rhetorical pretext for expansive praise. Where the text of the prayer indulges in a rich account of God’s attributes, the philosopher-poets are cautious in their attempts to describe an unknowable Deity.10 The plain language of Ibn Ezra’s piyyut also sets in stark relief its abstract, technical content. Many of its seemingly simple words belong to the vocabulary of philosophical discourse: ot (v. 3) is a proof and miqreh (v. 4) is an accident, while be-koah . . . le-fo al (vv. 11–12) are the paired states of in potentia and in actu.11 These technical terms occur in the remarkably theoretical discussion of psychology that extends over the

8 Stressing the universalism of Nishmat, Scheindlin questions the authenticity of the prayer’s reference to the exodus from Egypt, and refers the reader to Goldschmidt’s reconstruction of the “original” text in his Passover Haggadah, p. 68; see The Gazelle, 145–46 and p. 255, n. 11. Heinemann, however, takes issue with the notion of a single original text; see Prayer in the Talmud, 37–69, esp. p. 46, n. 17, and p. 241, n. 56, where he refers to his review of Goldschmidt’s Haggadah, and Goldschmidt’s rejoinder in his Ma zor la-yamim ha-nora im, vol. 1, Introduction, p. 22 and n. 23. Either way, the issue is moot, for as Scheindlin notes, the redemption is mentioned in the text Saadya had (Saadya, Siddur, p. 119), and so was likely part of the text used by the Andalusians. 9 The paradox of human prayer, which is insuﬃcient, yet desired by God, is a central theme of Ibn Gabirol’s reshut, “Sha ar avaqqeshekha”; see Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:79 (= Schirmann, HPSP 1:238) and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 170–75. 10 On the stylistic sophistication of Nishmat, see Heinemann, Prayer in the Talmud, 241–42. Already in the Talmud there is an awareness of the inherent limitations of human praise for God; see the well-known passage in bBer. 33b, cited by Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 179. On the reluctance of the Neoplatonic philosophers to predicate positive attributes of God, see above, p. 60, n. 11. 11 Some of the other philosophical terms are pe alim (“acts,” v. 2; cf. Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 3:198–99); yesod (“foundation” or “principle,” v. 4; cf. Klatzkin 2:40, s.v. yesod [a]) and qimah (“existence,” v. 14; cf. Klatzkin 3:281–82, s.v. qimah [a]).

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ﬁrst three stanzas of “Imrat ye idah.” By including a philosophical appraisal of the soul in his introduction to Nishmat, Ibn Ezra signals his conviction that a ﬁrm grasp of okhmat ha-nefesh is essential to proper, enlightened worship of God. Throughout “Imrat ye idah” Ibn Ezra maintains a delicate balance between a detached scientiﬁc conception of the soul and a sympathetic, personiﬁed portrait. Initially he calls her ye idah, a name that highlights her abstract nature. In his comments on Psalm 22:21–22 Ibn Ezra links this epithet to the separable quality of the human soul, which parts from the Universal Soul to sojourn with the body, and ultimately quits the body to rejoin the Universal Soul. Yet the juxtaposition of the etymologically related ye idah and ya id implies an intimacy growing out of the inherent similarity between the soul and God. Here the poet echoes the midrashic idea that the soul’s praise is ﬁtting because she is analogous to God: she is unique ( ye idah) in the body, just as He is peerless ( ya id) in His world.12 The midrashic allusion thus serves as a bridge between the scientiﬁc sense of ye idah and the more personal nafshi which occurs in the second hemistich. The soul’s yearnings for her Source are evoked in the second half of the madrikh with an allusion to Psalm 84:3, “My soul longs, indeed it faints for the courts of the Lord. . . .” As in Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha,” the biblical object of the soul’s desire is replaced. By substituting her divine “Rock” for “the courts of the Lord,” Ibn Ezra provides a parallel to the soul-God pair in the ﬁrst hemistich and even hints at a craving to go beyond the outer limits of the celestial sanctuary to God Himself, the ur, or source of all being. To be sure, his exegesis often hints at a mystical correspondence between the components of the sanctuary and the three worlds of his cosmic hierarchy, drawing parallels between their most elevated portions, which share a heightened receptivity to the divine glory.13 Formally, the two hemistichs of the madrikh are linked by their matching rhythm and internal rhyme. Their juxtaposition intimates that prayer, construed as pure worship rather than supplication, is an 12 See Lev. Rab. 4:8. For an explicit interpretation of ye idah as “unique,” see Gen. Rab. 14:9. The ye idah—ya id motif is found already in Yannai’s payyetanic elaboration on Lev. 4:1, which is discussed in Chapter 1. 13 See his comments on Ex. 25:22 and 25:40 and his Shorter Commentary on Ex. 25:7. Note, however, that he does not interpret ha rot adonai allegorically in his exegesis of Ps. 84:3. For such an interpretation see his comments on Ps. 27:4 and Maimonides, MT, Teshuvah, 8:4. On ur as the emanationist source of all being, see above, pp. 69–70.

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integral part of the soul’s eﬀorts to return to her Source. With its emanationist resonances, the pair nafshi— urah transforms the relationship between ye idah and ya id from one of analogy to one of essential aﬃnity. Praise is thus in order precisely because she derives from Him. The soul’s prayer is impelled by her longings for her Source; by focusing her whole being on God through the act of worship, she draws closer to Him.14 Having introduced these themes, Ibn Ezra turns to a rigorously philosophical description of the soul. His shift in focus is marked formally by a transition to the short, monorhymed verses of the ﬁrst stanza. This correspondence between form and content is maintained throughout the ﬁrst three stanzas: each of the short verses considers a technical attribute of the soul in terse, almost cryptic fashion, while the longer ﬁnal verses, which match the madrikh in meter and rhyme, speak of the soul’s relationship with God. Only the ﬁnal stanza, which addresses God directly, diverges from this pattern. Contemplating the soul’s wonders, the poet marvels at her capacity to animate, and points to the motion (literally: “acts”) of the body as proof of her existence (vv. 2–3).15 He aﬃrms that she is ayyah (v. 3), underscoring not only her vitality, but also her imperishability. These two traits are linked in his comment on Genesis 1:26, that “the loftiest of man’s souls [i.e., the rational soul], which is not mortal, bears comparison to God on account of its vitality.”16 Clearly informed by Neoplatonic psychology, his choice of words recalls the rabbinic analogies between the soul and God, as well as a tradition in Genesis Rabbah that lists ayyah as one of ﬁve names for the soul.17 Ibn Ezra reinforces the idea of her permanence by stressing her fundamental steadfastness (omen), and by denying the proposition that the soul is an accident (miqreh) of the body (v. 4). According to the medieval philosophical conception of beings and their attributes, accidents are the properties which reside in a thing. They have no independent existence, and are impermanent and subject to change,

14 On the connection between the soul’s praise of and longing for God see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 143–44. 15 On motion as proof of the soul’s existence in the writings of Aristotle, Ibn S n and Ibn Rushd, see Jospe, Torah and Sophia, p. 195 and n. 44. Medieval philosophers also saw motion as proof of God’s existence; see Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God, 237–80 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 119–25. 16 Cf. “She i la- el,” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:80, v. 3. 17 See Gen. Rab. 14:9.

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unlike the substances to which they attach.18 As if to clinch the argument, the poet uses the same crisp rhyme, rhythm and syntax for the phrases ve- ayyah yeshnah and u-miqreh einah, so that the similarity of their sounds conﬁrms the unity of their claims. A contrast between soul and body is implicit in verses 2–4 which, in their laconic fashion, signal that the soul has an existence independent of the body. “Whether the body’s structure endures or withers,” the soul remains unaﬀected (v. 5).19 Ibn Ezra conveys this antithesis with terms connoting stability ( amod, amedah, omen) on the one hand, and transience (miqreh, baletah) on the other. But even as he develops this Neoplatonic dualism, he harks back to the analogy between the soul and God in Leviticus Rabbah. There the verb signifying that the soul outlasts the body is mevallah, the pi el form of the verb meaning “withers” or “fades” found in v. 5 of our poem.20 The soul is ayyah, or exempt from the mortality which aﬀects the body because her source is ayyim, Life itself. Though inverted, the phrase ayyim meqorah clearly alludes to the fons vitae which, in his comments on Psalm 36:10, Ibn Ezra identiﬁes with the immortal celestial soul. Elsewhere he refers to God Himself as the wellspring of the soul’s life, meqor ayyehah.21 Parallel to the Fount of Life is the neve emet, the Abode of Truth. As an epithet for the heavenly site of the soul’s origin, this phrase adumbrates the motif of God as a dwelling place, which features prominently in the ﬁnal stanza. The soul’s processes of perception and apprehension are the subject of the second and third stanzas. Stanza II is dominated by the rhyming syllable -ot, the only one of the poem’s ﬁve rhymes signifying a grammatical plural. The recurring -tah rhyme of the madrikh and the rhymes speciﬁc to stanzas I and III are all feminine singular endings which draw attention to the individual soul. This dichotomy

18 See Ibn Ezra on Ex. 25:40 and Ecc. 12:7 and cf. Yesod Mora 7:5 (Levin, Reader, 330), where he aﬃrms the rational soul’s immunity to the changes which aﬀect the body. Various medieval thinkers refute the claim—often attributed to the Mu tazilites— that the soul is an accident of the body. Ecc. 12:7 is generally cited as a prooftext; see Saadya, Am n t, 6:1; Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 110–11; Moses Ibn Ezra, ad qa, 85–86; Ibn addiq, Ha- olam ha-qatan, pp. 34–36; and Goldziher, Ma n al-nafs, p. 4. See also Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 173–74. 19 For tekhunah as “arrangement” or “structure” see Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 4:194, s.v. tekhunah [c]. Ibn Ezra also speaks of the body’s matkonet; see, e.g., his comments on Ex. 25:40. 20 Lev. Rab. 4:8. 21 See Yesod Mora, 7:5 (Levin, Reader, p. 330).

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gains speciﬁcity in verses 6 and 7, which align plurality with the body and unity with the soul. Israel Levin’s annotation to these somewhat obscure verses suggests that the body’s multiplicity does not vitiate the soul’s unicity.22 But it is possible to read these verses in another way, in view of the emphasis on the soul’s cognitive activity in stanzas II and III. Rabbot temunot be-gev nirkavot (lit.: “Many images in the body conjoin”) could refer to the multitude of sense impressions received via the body. Ya ad arevot be-qirbah shavot would then reﬂect the process of abstraction from this sensory information undertaken by the rational soul. In a mu arrak that begins with the words ame ah lekha el gam bekha ravetah nafshi, Ibn Ezra uses similar language in praise of the soul’s unlimited capacity to absorb and process information: rabbu temunot lah ve-lo nimle ah.23 Unlike the senses, which are weakened by the constant inﬂux of sensory data, the mind never tires of thinking.24 Following verses 6–7, Ibn Ezra shifts his focus from the soul’s distillation of sense perceptions to her acqusition of metaphysical knowledge. Referring to her illumination, he compares her appearance ( einah) to the radiance of unobscured sunlight (v. 8).25 Describing her construction of a magniﬁcent palace (v. 9a), he conjures up the supernal resting place attained through the wisdom she acquires.26 And

22 In the spirit of Lev. Rab. 4:8, he draws an analogy with God’s unity and simplicity which are unaﬀected by the multiplicity and composite nature of the created world. 23 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:117–119. This poem bears an uncanny resemblance to “Imrat ye idah.” 24 This contrast goes back to Aristotle; see Harvey, The Inward Wits, 34. 25 The primary meaning of ayin is, of course, “eye,” and the construct of “the inner eye,” or “the eye of the soul” recurs throughout Ibn Ezra’s philosophical piyyut. See Levin’s annotation to v. 8 and note the cluster of visual metaphors in vv. 9–10. But Ibn Ezra’s analogy between the soul and the sun precludes this translation, since the sun does not see. There are sound scriptural precedents for glossing ayin as “appearance” or “view”; see, e.g., Lev. 13:55, Num. 11:7 and 22:5. See also Klatzkin, Thesaurus, 3:130, s.v. ayin (b). 26 Levin glosses heikhal as the body. (His reference to Ibn Ezra’s commentary should read Num. 16:30, not Lev. 16:30.) It is true that Ibn Ezra often refers to the body as the soul’s palace; see, e.g.: Yesod Mora, 10:2; the tokhe ah “Yeshenei lev mah lakhem,” and the mu arrak, “Odeh le-sam be- appi neshamah,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:462–64 and 90–91, vv. 6–7. But it does not make sense to speak of the soul building the body. I have preferred to read heikhal as the supernal palace of wisdom, which the soul attains through contemplative activity. For this usage see, e.g., KM canto 27, lines 265–68 and Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Me-ha-yom ha-ba,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, p. 83, vv. 13–16 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:406–7), and cf. v. 9 of “ ame ah lekha el,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems,

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alluding to the philosophical interpretation of Job 19:26 (v. 9b), he invokes the idea that self-contemplation leads to knowledge of God.27 Like his predecessors in the Andalusian school, Ibn Ezra uses metaphors of vision to evoke the soul’s apprehension of intellectual truths. He faithfully reproduces the verb of vision used in Job 19:26 ( azah), and refers to the “sight” of the intellect (v. 10), observing that the preexistent soul has a potential grasp of all things.28 Verses 10–12 thus echo the Platonic myth that the preexistent soul already knows everything, so that during one’s lifetime one acquires knowledge through a process of recollection or anamnesis.29 The transition to the longer, closing verse of stanza III marks a change in emphasis. Still focusing on the soul, but no longer concerned with the technicalities of her intellectual functions, the poet remarks that she animates the body while seemingly contained by it.30 At ﬁrst this statement appears to be syntactically self-suﬃcient, but it actually spills over into the second hemistich, where the clause beginning “until . . .” injects a crucial note of optimism into the otherwise sobering thought that the soul, despite its vitality, is locked within the body. The second half of the verse introduces the idea of God as Redeemer, assuring us that the soul remains lodged in the body only until God exalts her, restoring her to her heavenly home. Foreshadowing the altered form of address and content of stanza IV, Ibn Ezra depicts the soul turning to God’s mercy.

1:118. Alternately, banetah could refer to comprehension (from the root b.y.n.), as in Ps. 139:2, banetah le-re i me-ra oq. Then it would be possible to understand heikhal as “body,” and both hemistichs would refer to the soul’s contemplation of the body as a means of attaining knowledge of God. 27 On the use of Job 19:26 as a locus for the philosophical idea that self-knowledge leads to knowledge of God, see Chapter 7. 28 I have assumed an ellipsis in v. 11: terem (beri atah) be-kho ah etc. Levin reads these lines in light of a phrase from “Imru benei elohim” (“va-tikhseﬁ elei po al”), which he takes to mean that the soul’s potential is actualized only with her descent into the body; see his “ ‘He a ezi Be sullam okhma,’ ” 50–51. 29 This notion has aggadic echoes as well; see b Nidd. 30b and Kellner, Maimonides On Judaism and the Jewish People, 1–4; 108, n. 3; and 110, n. 14. 30 This idea and its paradoxical formulation recall two strands of the analogy in Lev. Rab. 4:8: the soul bears the body ( just as God bears the world), and the soul sees but is itself not seen ( just as God sees all but is not visible).

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After three stanzas of a detached, third-person discussion of the soul, the fourth and ﬁnal quatrain addresses God directly and intimately. It is this worshipful stance which above all identiﬁes our piyyut as a composition written for use in prayer, and which resumes the theme of praise introduced in the madrikh. The intervening philosophical meditation seems momentarily to fade as the soul’s yearnings for God are recalled and the individual’s relationship with his Maker is explored. Invoking a traditional theme, the speaker acknowledges his dependence on God for sustenance and protection. The use of the ﬁrst person singular lends his words a personal tone, and the alternation of second-person pronominal forms with a rhyming syllable meaning “my” creates a sense of closeness. Only the ﬁnal verse reverts to a third-person reference to the soul, but it is colored by the intimacy of the preceding lines. Using the terms “living” and “dead” metaphorically, the speaker concludes his meditation by reﬂecting upon the meaning of pure worship. Turning away from glorifying God deadens the soul, for abstinence from prayer cuts her oﬀ from her sustaining Source. (Note the rhyming syllable, -mati of verses 14–16!).31 Only the resumption of praise can reestablish that vital link and revive the spirit. The devotion that reanimates the soul is both memory and mention (zekher); it is memory of her divine origins and mention of God’s name.32 “My soul is spent with longing for the Lord; I’ll speak His name and she’ll revive,” begins Ibn Ezra’s piyyut, “El elohim kaletah nafshi.”33 By ascribing prayer a revitalizing role, the poet inverts Psalm 119:175, “Let me live (te i nafshi ), that I might laud You.” In another poem, “Efes emet biltekha,” Ibn Ezra introduces additional verbs of praise and worship (ahallel, etpallelah), but it is still the combination of naming and calling God to mind that restores the soul (ki ve-zikhrekha e eyeh): 31 The ﬁgurative interpretation of death as the cutting oﬀ (al-inqi ) of the soul from its divine source also occurs in a thirteenth-century mystical treatise from the Jewish suﬁ circle in Egypt; see Fenton, “A Mystical Treatise From the Jewish S f Circle,” 324. 32 This use of zekher recalls the Suﬁ dhikr, a form of prayer in which one constantly reminds oneself of, and mentions God. It is unlikely, however, that Ibn Ezra’s zekher entails endless repetition of a litany, as does the Suﬁ practice; see Gardet, “Dhikr.” 33 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:64–66, v. 1. See also the opening verse of “ ame ah lekha el,” ibid., 1:118–19.

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Your name I’ll laud, and I will pray— Your praise is balm for a weary heart. Why then, O Lord, should I expire? By calling You to mind I’ll live!34

God as Refuge The ﬁnal stanza of “Imrat ye idah” is set apart not only by its direct address to God, but also by the rhythmic pattern of its opening verse (v. 14). A pronounced caesura follows the initial word, ma on, drawing our attention to this unusual epithet for God. The biblical term for God’s dwelling place, ma on is here a metonymy for God Himself.35 In his comments on Deuteronomy 33:27, Ibn Ezra explains that ma on, like sukkah, connotes protection, so that the phrase me onah elohei qedem means “the eternal God is your refuge.” Verse 15 of “Imrat ye idah” sustains the motif of divine protection, describing God metaphorically as a sheltering “wall.” In context, these images support a Neoplatonic interpretation: God is man’s dwelling place in the sense that He is the Source and ﬁnal Abode of man’s soul. Read in this light, the declaration “Lord, through You do I exist” alludes to the soul’s emanation from, and ultimate return to, the realm of the Divine, and the “foes” of verse 15—which recall the second half of Deuteronomy 33:27 (“He drove out the enemy before you by his command: Destroy!”)—become the interiorized enemies of the soul. A Place for God Within the Soul God is often depicted as the soul’s abode in Andalusian philosophical piyyutim. We have encountered the image in Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha” and Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi.”36 34

Ibid., 1:111–13, vv. 17–19. For the paradoxical formulation that distance from God entails a living death, while cleaving to Him brings life, even in death, see “Adonai negdekha khol ta avati” in Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 1:78, v. 4. 35 For this usage, see also: “Shikhe i yegonekh,” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 1:291, v. 26; “Me- az me on ha- ahavah hayyita,” in Judah Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 3:778; and “Imru benei elohim,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:244–47, v. 18. On other uses of the term ma on, see above, p. 130. 36 See also “Lekha nafshi tesapper,” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 2:528, v. 6, which plays with Gen. Rab. 68:11 (cited below).

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What distinguishes the motif in “Imrat ye idah” is its juxtaposition with the remarkable idea that there is a place for God within man’s soul.37 Ibn Ezra highlights this paradox through the paronomastic coupling of ma on (v. 14) with its near-homophone, maqom (v. 16). This pair recalls his exegetical remark that the biblical use of ma on parallels the rabbinic use of maqom (“the Omnipresent”) as an epithet for God, although it would be incorrect to project the rabbinic sense of the word back onto biblical Hebrew.38 The two terms are treated as parallels in a midrashic passage that says, “The Holy One, blessed be He, is the place (maqom) of His world, but the world is not His place.”39 In our poem, it is not even the world, but the soul that contains God, and although maqom simply means “place,” its rabbinic resonances heighten our awareness that He is, paradoxically, both transcendent and immanent. The notion that God resides within man’s soul is a bold, and quintessentially medieval, transformation of the idea of divine immanence. Classical Jewish sources aﬃrm that God is close to His creatures, or that His Divine Presence (shekhinah) dwells with Israel, but the thought that God is found within man’s heart or mind could only have occurred to a medieval sensitive to the need for individual spiritual fulﬁllment.40 More than a metaphor for the supernal origin of the soul, it implies that the soul is a veritable “part” of the Divine within man. Like the self-knowledge topos, it aﬀords a rationale for looking inward and contemplating one’s soul in order to ﬁnd God. Thus, Moses Ibn Ezra can say in a poem of philosophical contemplation: “With my intellect I behold the Almighty/and I

37 This idea lies at the heart of Ibn Ezra’s mu arrak, “El ay be-qirbi”; see Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:69–71. See also “Efes emet biltekha,” ibid., 1:112, v. 3: “I seek You; within me is Your throne.” Cf. the closing verse of Ibn Gabirol’s stirring meditation on the limitations of prayer, “Sesoni rav bekha”: “As Your name is a pledge within my heart, may my soul be my pledge in Your hand”; see Scheindlin, “Contrasting Religious Experience,” 153 and Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry, 2:472, v. 8. 38 See his comments on Gen. 28:11, s.v. va-yifga ba-maqom and the introduction to his commentary on the book of Esther. 39 See Gen. Rab. 68:11, commenting on Gen. 28:11. For additional rabbinic expressions of this seeming contradiction, see the sources cited in Septimus, “On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,” p. 611, n. 31. 40 On this development see Septimus, ibid., p. 612 and n. 34. The idea that God (or His throne) has a place within man’s heart appears in Suﬁ literature; see Septimus, ibid., p. 614, n. 46; Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 185–87; and Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 180.

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understand that within me is the Lord.”41 The juxtaposition of the two ﬁnal verses of “Imrat ye idah” suggests that the discovery of the divine within oneself compels one to pray. For Abraham Ibn Ezra and his colleagues, this was the meaning of Nishmat kol ay tevarekh et shimekha.

41 See “Heqi oti tenumat ra ayonay,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems, 1:148 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:399), v. 5.

CHAPTER SEVEN

THE MOTIF OF SELF-KNOWLEDGE: “FROM MY FLESH I BEHOLD GOD”

The idea that self-knowledge leads to knowledge of God recurs throughout medieval Islamic and Jewish speculative writings.1 It occurs in aphoristic form in the ad th literature (“He who knows himself knows his Lord”), and is then cited and expounded by the Ikhw n al- af , Ibn S n , al-Ghaz l and Ibn Rushd. The idea made its way into Jewish works composed in an Islamic milieu between the tenth and twelfth centuries, and remained inﬂuential even after the focal point of Jewish intellectual life had shifted beyond the Arabic cultural sphere.2 In Islamic sources, the principle often appears in a hortatory form: “Know yourself, O man, and you will know your Lord” (i rif nafsaka, y ins n, ta rif rabbaka).3 Attributed by Ibn S n to “the writings of the Ancients,” this extended version of the famous Delphic admonition, “Know yourself,” apparently derived from a late Hellenistic text. Since the Arabic nafs means “soul” as well as “self,” the phrase “Know yourself ” could also mean “Know your soul.” According to the philosophers, the soul is the essence of man, so understanding one’s soul was the highest form of self-knowledge. The earliest Jewish thinkers to predicate knowledge of God on self-contemplation were the Karaites Ya q b al-Qirqis n (d. after 938) and Y suf al-Ba r (d. ca. 1040). Rather than the expanded Delphic maxim, they adduced Job 19:26, “From my ﬂesh I behold God” (mi-besari e ezeh eloha), which they interpreted according to the kal m principle that God’s existence may be inferred from His creation.4 Rabbanite thinkers also adopted Job 19:26 as their standard 1

The following survey of prose works draws on Alexander Altmann’s magisterial study, “The Delphic Maxim in Medieval Islam and Judaism.” 2 On the thirteenth- and fourteenth-century thinkers who subscribe to this idea see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 198–99 and 221–22; for variations on the theme in kabbalistic works see 208–13. On the idea of self-knowledge as a path to God in medieval Christian literature, see Morris, The Discovery of the Individual, 64–66. 3 Two additional formulae, phrased in the conditional rather than the imperative, occur in the ad th literature; see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 196–97. 4 Ibid., 198. On kal m proofs from creation and from design see also Davidson, Proofs for Eternity, Creation and the Existence of God, 154–64 and 213–36.

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prooftext for the need for introspection, but were less intent upon proving God’s existence than on discerning traces of His wisdom in His handiwork.5 Despite its literal reference to “ﬂesh,” the Job verse was understood by medieval Jewish philosophers as a mandate to contemplate the totality of body and soul. They invoked the related, ancient idea that man is a microcosm, a miniature replica of the universe, whose harmoniously ordered body corresponds to the physical world and whose lofty soul mirrors the spiritual realm.6 By knowing oneself as a microcosm, one could arrive at a more profound understanding of the macrocosm and its Creator.7 In the second treatise of his Hid ya, Ba ya Ibn Paquda recommends reﬂection on creation (al-i tib r bi’l-makhl q n) as a stimulus for acknowledging God’s bounties. He lists seven objects of contemplation, from minerals and plants to the human species, which reveal traces of divine wisdom (ath r al- ikma) in their construction and purposefulness. All are obligatory, but it is best to meditate on man as a microcosm, whose resemblance to the macrocosm can reveal many of the world’s mysteries. This is why philosophy is deﬁned as man’s knowledge of himself, for study of oneself leads to knowledge of the Creator, as it is said ( Job 19:26): “From my ﬂesh I behold God.”8 Moses Ibn Ezra takes up these themes in the introduction to his ad qa: “According to the wise, everything in the supernal and lower worlds is found in man . . . There is no sphere, star, constellation, animal, plant or mineral . . . which does not have an analogue in man . . . (Man) resembles minerals in his spatial dimension, . . . plants in his growth, . . . animals in his . . . appetite, anger, and fear . . . and he resembles the angels in his intellect. . . . On account of the composition of his body and his spiritual dispositions . . . he is called a microcosm. . . . The microcosm resembles the macrocosm in composition and structure . . . for man’s body corresponds to the universal 5

See Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 217–20. See Altmann, ibid., 213–22; al-Muqammi , Ishr n Maq la, p. 158, n. 24; and Levy, “Macrocosm and Microcosm.” For midrashic treatments of the microcosm motif see the sources cited in Ginzberg, Legends 5:64–65, n. 4. 7 Altmann notes that despite Isaac Israeli’s reticence, other medieval Jewish philosophers extended the goal of self-knowledge beyond the macrocosm to include knowledge of God Himself. On the role of the microcosm idea in Ibn Gabirol’s thought see Schlanger, La Philosophie de Salomon Ibn Gabirol, 313–16. 8 Hid ya, 94–126, esp. 106–124 (Mansoor, Duties, 150–75, esp. 160–73); for the Job prooftext see pp. 106–107 (Mansoor, Duties, 160–61). Altmann notes that the deﬁnition of philosophy as self-knowledge derives from the Ikhw n al- af and, possibly, Isaac Israeli; see “The Delphic Maxim,” 216–18. 6

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body, and the spiritual substances that move him correspond to the universal substances that move the universal body. . . .” Knowledge of one’s body and soul is prerequisite to knowledge of God. Ibn Ezra also cites the deﬁnition of philosophy as self-knowledge, through which “one ascends gradually to the knowledge of his Creator and draws near to Him, as one of the pious said: ‘From my ﬂesh I behold God.’ . . . And the soul that is ignorant of its own essence is even more ignorant of its Creator. Until it apprehends its essence, it cannot discern the traces (ath r) of the Creator in it.”9 The microcosm idea is the focal point of Joseph Ibn addiq’s only extant speculative work, Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan. Ibn addiq writes that through self-knowledge man knows “everything” (ha-kol ), by which he means the totality of the physical and metaphysical realms. He explains that man is called a microcosm because his body and soul mirror all that is in the universe. Like Ba ya and Moses Ibn Ezra, he adduces the deﬁnition of philosophy as self-knowledge and cites Job 19:26 in support of the claim that self-knowledge leads to knowledge of the Creator.10 The theme of self-knowledge also ﬁgures in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s comments on Exodus 31:18: “one cannot be perfect if he doesn’t know God’s works in the celestial and lower worlds, and does not know His ways . . . and one cannot know God without [ﬁrst] knowing his own soul and body.”11 Elsewhere, Ibn Ezra invokes the microcosm topos. Explaining what is meant by “Let us make man in our image” (Genesis 1:26), he points to the kinship of the immortal and incorporeal human soul with God, and notes that man’s body is like a miniature world.12 He links the two ideas in a philosophical excursus to his comments on Exodus 25:40, although he does not cite the

9 ad qa, pp. 16–21: see also pp. 81–85 and Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 71–83 and 170–73. Ibn Ezra refers to the microcosm-macrocosm ideas brieﬂy in his poetic preface to the ad qa, “Be-shem el asher amar”; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Secular Poems 1:237–44, vv. 82 and 119. See also v. 12. 10 See Joseph Ibn addiq, Ha- olam ha-qatan, pp. 2 and 21, and Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 216–17. See also Vajda, “La Philosophie et la théologie de Joseph Ibn Çaddiq.” 11 See Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 220. The self-knowledge motif also occurs in Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on Ecclesiastes, Introduction; Yesod Mora 1:9 and 12:3–4 (Levin, Reader, 320 and 342); and ay Ben Meqitz, Ch. 28 (pp. 85–86). On the latter, see Greive, Studien zum jüdischen Neuplatonismus, 108–114. 12 See Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 199–213 and “Homo Imago Dei in Jewish and Christian Theology.”

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Job prooftext: “he who knows the mystery of his soul’s divine origin (sod nishmato) and the arrangement of his body (matkonet gufo) is able to know the things of the supernal world, for man is in the image of a microcosm (ki-dmut olam qatan).”13 The Motif of Self-Knowledge in Poetry If the philosophical interpretation of Job 19:26 is absent from Ibn Ezra’s glosses, it is present in his piyyut, as well as in the devotional poetry of the other Andalusians. Yet, the piyyutim that allude to the verse do not all read it in the same way.14 Poems like Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “Yeshenei lev mah lakhem” read mi-besari as “from myself,” taking a balanced view of man as a composite of body and soul. This inclusive reading allows them to accommodate the extended Delphic maxim (“Know yourself and you will know your Lord”), and to view the contemplative process with optimism. Poems like Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Ha- el ha-toleh al belimah tevel” read mi-besari literally as “from my ﬂesh,” limiting self-examination to contemplation of the body. This elicits a painful acknowledgement of man’s lowliness, which invites contrast with God. The speaker invokes Job 19:26 but “sees” God only by ﬂeeing upwards from his base ﬂesh. Inevitably, such poems dwell on God’s transcendence, and are acutely pessimistic about penetrating the mysteries of the Creator. They do not enjoin reﬂection on the soul, and their dark view of the body is the product of ascetic currents of thought as well as of the Neoplatonic view of the corporeal as evil matter. Their agnosticism conﬂicts with the very ideal of knowing God which is embodied in the philosophical reading of the Job verse.15 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 164‒65.]

13

Translated after Altmann; see “The Delphic Maxim,” 219. For a survey of poems which incorporate the philosophical exegesis of Job 19:26 see Mirsky, From Duties of the Heart to Songs of the Heart, 96–144. Mirsky is to be credited with calling attention to this motif, but his discussion stops short of considering each instance of the Job prooftext in context. As noted earlier, his tendency to see Ba ya as the source of all the philosophical themes in Andalusian poetry is problematic. 15 The following Hebrew text of “Ha- el ha-toleh al belimah tevel” is taken from Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 240. For an existing English translation see Moses Ibn Ezra, Selected Poems, 115–16. 14

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Ha- el ha-toleh al belimah tevel Moses Ibn Ezra

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The God who suspends earth over the void And hoists it, without cords, like a cluster of grapes— Which will rot away, while His strength endures— He knows and reveals the innermost thoughts Of wicked and pure, But the schemes of men are futile. From my ﬂesh—without eye—I behold my Lord Then I know I am lowly, and will end as naught. My mind is weak, my evil urge is armed— I shed bloody tears like a ﬂowing spring And stumble, in His view, drunk, but not with wine, Racked with pain and anguish, full of grief and woe. My bones are not whole, because of my guilt; My ﬂesh is not sound, because of my plight. So I mix drops of blood with my tears. What shall I do when called to account On the Day my sins come forth to meet me? To whom shall I ﬂee while they testify That I have pursued vain things in this world? Oh God, revive Your love for your gazelle, Mauled by lion’s fangs and lioness’ claws. The foe’s mouth gapes to drink the captive’s blood. I grieve to see the fruitful vine laid waste! In the stormy sea of exile the ship is harshly tossed Oarless, ropeless, and the captain’s gone— And the schemes of men are futile.

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“Ha- el ha-toleh” is a penitential piyyut in strophic form.16 Like other poems of contrition by Moses Ibn Ezra, it moves through a succession of rhetorical modes. A preponderance of allusions to the book of Job combines with zuhd themes and a sober refrain to give the poem a melancholy tone.17 Testifying to divine omnipotence, the opening verses depict God eﬀortlessly creating and suspending the earth without ropes or supports.18 The speaker compares the world to a cluster of grapes, suggesting that its pleasures are luscious, sensual, and potentially intoxicating, though ultimately subject to decay.19 The contrast between the transience of the corporeal world and God’s eternity is stark, as is the vast discrepancy between man and God. Alluding to Psalm 94:11, the speaker remarks on God’s omniscience, and the futility of man’s thoughts (vv. 4–5).20 This allusion recurs in the poem’s closing verse, but shorn of its reference to God, it is transformed there from a pious sentiment into a dark reﬂection on human existence. The echoes of the ﬁnal word of this refrain—hevel (“vanity”)—at the end of the second and third stanzas compound the poem’s sense of bleakness. Switching to the ﬁrst person singular, the second stanza opens with a paraphrase of Job 19:26. The substitution of yo ri for Job’s eloha sustains the poem’s initial emphasis on God as Creator—the 16 Following Ma zor Tripoli, Bernstein lists the poem as a pizmon, which is a strophic seli ah with a refrain; see Schirmann, HPSP 4:714 and idem, HPCS, 696. 17 The opening verse alludes to Job 26:7; verse 3 conﬂates Job 13:28 and Is. 51:6; verse 6 paraphrases Job 19:26; verse 15 echoes Job 31:14; and verse 21a recalls Job 16:10 and 29:23. 18 The medieval model of the universe placed the stationary earth at the center of the rotating, concentric celestial spheres. Its wondrous, unsupported buoyancy was viewed as proof of the Creator; see Fenton, Philosophie et exégèse, 130. In another pizmon, Ibn Ezra describes the earth’s suspension by the cords of God’s love; see “Ye iruni se ipay la- azotekha,” in Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 8–9, vv. 8–9; (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:412–13), and Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 120–25 and p. 253, n. 10. 19 The poets often portray the earth suspended like a cluster of grapes: see, e.g., “Shokhen ad me- az nisgav levado” in Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:10, v. 16b and the parallels Jarden cites in the notes; see also “Ve- ere ikkaf ” in Ibn Ghiyath, Poems, p. 8, lines 38–40. Taken literally, Ibn Ezra’s image of the cluster’s decay suggests that the world will cease to exist at the eschaton. This view is in keeping with midrashic and popular ascetic ideas, but would not necessarily have been acceptable to the philosophers. They maintained that individual components of the corporeal world are subject to corruption, but they would likely have been uneasy with the idea that the world itself would cease to exist; see, e.g., Maimonides, Guide 2:29. 20 In this context, ma shavot would seem to refer to worldly thoughts; cf., e.g., Maimonides, MT, Teshuvah 3:4.

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aspect of the Deity most immediately germane to the self-knowledge motif.21 Evoking the vision of the mind’s eye, the phrase beli ayin conﬁrms that the verb e ezeh is to be understood as a contemplative process. The speaker’s reﬂection on his corporeal nature spurs him to meditate on the Creator, but his awed acknowledgement of God’s omnipotence and omniscience is prompted by the realization that his own ﬂesh is contemptible. This response to self-examination is much closer to the original intent of the Delphic exhortation than to its philosophical elaboration: “Know yourself ” was initially conceived as a warning against hubris.22 His glimpse of the Divine compels the speaker to dwell further on his own insigniﬁcance, and he devotes the remainder of the second and third stanzas to an extended confession. In a series of verses whose end-rhyme reverberates with the sound of ayin—“nothingness”—the speaker bewails his deﬁciencies (vv. 6–10). He returns to the unwholesome nature of his body, attributing it to his sinfulness. With rhetorical questions presumably meant to elicit compassion, he reﬂects apprehensively on the fate that will befall him on Judgment Day (vv. 15–18). The willfulness he now regrets (verse 18) is underscored by the constant repetition, in the third stanza, of the ﬁrst person singular pronominal suﬃx meaning, “my . . . my . . . me.” Shifting focus for the third time, the poem closes with a supplication addressed to God. The speaker now metamorphoses into a precentor who cries out for help on behalf of his oppressed people, subordinating his individual needs to those of the community. He depicts Israel as a gazelle who was formerly the beneﬁciary of divine love, but is now at the mercy of wild, bloodthirsty beasts. He is so intent upon stating his case forcefully before God that he introduces two more metaphors for Israel’s anguish: she is a fruitful vine laid waste, and a rudderless, captainless ship tossed about in the stormy sea of exile.23 Where the phrase beli evel originally stressed a wonder of God’s cosmos (v. 2), it now evokes a nation that has lost its way (v. 24). At the same time, this concluding prayer may be a plea for the restoration of the supplicant’s soul. We have encountered other poems 21 Altmann notes that in Hebrew prose texts, bor ekha and yo rekha are regular substitutions for the Arabic rabbaka of the extended Delphic exhortation; see “The Delphic Maxim,” 199. 22 Ibid. 23 For Israel as a vine, see Ps. 80:9–17 and Lev. Rab. 36:2.

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in which Ibn Ezra uses the gazelle and the lion as symbols of the soul and the corporeal passions that threaten to ensnare her.24 Perhaps it is because he perceives his soul to have fallen victim to the sensual world that the speaker feels constrained to meditate on his body alone. Yet, with his soul excluded from consideration, he can think of no noble function that his body might fulﬁll. His dismay at the utter baseness of his ﬂesh gives rise to a pervasive pessimism. Despite his allusion to the philosophical reading of Job 19:26, he despairs of ever achieving redemption by means of contemplative activity. Instead, he resigns himself to passivity, managing only to entreat God to deliver His “gazelle.” A similar response to contemplation of the body is reﬂected in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s seli ah, “Efta sefatay bi-nginotay.” Despite its conﬁdent opening, “Efta sefatay” quickly becomes a testimony to human frailties once the Job verse has been invoked. The refrain— also from Job (7:20)—entreats God to be merciful but also underscores His transcendent imperviousness to human folly: I part my lips in song, my God, within Your holy house, For from my ﬂesh, my Lord and Rock, I view Your mighty deeds. Exalted God, in Your majesty You work wondrous acts. But what is man? “If I have sinned, Watcher of men, what have I done to You?” ... Behold base man: how like a ﬂy that turns myrrh’s perfume fetid. Forgets his end, though in his ﬂesh maggots will then banquet. Copious tears I shed, for I am worm and not man. Oh shameful man! “If I have sinned, Watcher of men, what have I done to You?”25

Here too, despondency and dismay result from an exclusive focus on the body. A corrective to this pessimism may be found in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s tokhe ah, “Yeshenei lev, mah lakhem.”26 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 170‒71.] 24 See the discussion of “Anshei emunah niqdashu” in Chapter 4. Note also that there is a longstanding philosophical analogy between the soul in the body and a captain steering a vessel; see Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 464–65. 25 Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:400–402, stanzas I and III. Moses Ibn Ezra’s ofan, “Hit oraru temehim,” also ﬁts this pattern; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Liturgical Poetry, 152–53. 26 The Hebrew text of “Yeshenei lev, mah lakhem” is found in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:462–64. For a descriptive treatment see Itzhaki, Man—the Vine; Death—the Reaper, 45–53.

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“Yeshenei lev” forcefully endorses self-contemplation as a means of attaining metaphysical knowledge. Punctuated by internal rhyme, the poem’s compressed lines are marked by a buoyant rhythm which suits their generally optimistic content. The expression of abstract notions in relatively simple language lends many of these verses an aphoristic quality, just as their plural phrasing suggests universal truths. Adopting a topos of Islamic and Jewish ethical literature, the speaker directs his opening rebuke to those who are spiritually asleep.27 The rhetorical question “Mah lakhem?” suggests a behavioral impropriety and echoes Jonah 1:6, where the question “Mah lekha” is addressed to a sleeper whose slumber is morally symbolic.28 Combining philosophical concerns with an exhortation to repentance, he charges his listeners with neglecting to turn inwards, to inquire into their origins and ultimate fate. The poem opens with admonitions to recognize God by means of self-examination. Verses 3–4 explicitly link knowing oneself with knowing God: “Consider ﬁrst your soul and then you’ll come to know the identity of your Creator—you’ll view Him from your ﬂesh!” The ﬁrst part of this directive (verses 3–4a) closely paraphrases the extended Delphic maxim found in Islamic sources, and the second part clearly alludes to Job 19:26, the medieval Jewish equivalent of that exhortation. Unlike “Ha- el ha-toleh,” therefore, “Yeshenei lev” enjoins reﬂection on the totality of soul and body.29 The next two verses (5–6) couple the microcosm motif with an acknowledgement of man’s immortal soul, lending further weight to the ideal of meditation on the corporeal together with the spiritual. Despite the inclusiveness of this approach, Ibn Ezra grants primacy to the soul and its contemplation. In an extended simile, verses 7–20 compare the soul in the body to a king in his palace and the

27 Cf., e.g., the quote from the Epistles of the Ikhw n al- af in Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 186, and Ba ya, Hid ya 7:10, p. 327 (Mansoor, Duties, 350). Vajda notes that in hortatory contexts these authors often use the Arabic nabbaha (to warn or caution) and its verbal noun tanb h (exhortation), whose root literally means “to awaken”; see “Le dialogue de l’âme et de la raison,” p. 101 and n. 23. 28 Similar rhetorical questions, which demand an explanation for unacceptable behavior, are posed by the spurned lover to his hard-hearted beloved in secular poems; cf., e.g., “Mah la- avigayil” in Ibn Gabirol, Secular Poetry 1:368 (= Schirmann, HPSP 1:213). 29 By linking the Job prooftext with the saying, “Know your soul and you will know your Lord,” Ibn Ezra anticipates Isaac Albalag, who ﬁrst made the connection in a prose work more than a century later; see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 198.

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Yeshenei lev, mah lakhem Abraham Ibn Ezra Oh you whose hearts sleep, what is wrong that you do not inspect yourselves? Learn what was your origin; see, then, what will be your end. Consider ﬁrst your soul, and then— You’ll know Who made you; you’ll view Him from your ﬂesh. 5 The structure of the world’s reﬂected in your frame And in His hand’s your soul, the life within your heart. Its home’s within your head, its palace—in your brain; The soul within your ﬂesh is like an earthly king With eyes for scouts and ears for guards, 10 Servant hands and courier legs; Your nostrils sniﬀ, your tongue forms words, You’ve lips to taste and teeth to grind. Intellect’s your minister—but deceit lurks deep inside. While the liver helps digest, kidneys whet your appetites. 15 This is the entire structure, for your welfare and inspection. But beware of inner quarrels; bodily functions locked in struggle. Note that when your heart’s warmth wanes, your king will ﬂee, your liege escape. The upper rooms will then collapse, other chambers, too, will fall. Desolate the body lies; in the carcass worms appear. 20 Once the king has left his home, nevermore will he return. Live a spiritual life, my friends, for if you don’t realize this Tantamount to beasts you’ll be—it would be better to be dead. Remember that, and be wise, and upon these questions muse: Who endows you with your soul? Who takes it back when life is done? 25 Use your tools of thought and see how purposeful creation is. Recognize the Creator! For, whose teaching can compare?

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.μk≤B; Wnn“/Bt]ti alø / μk,L; hm' èble ynEvey“ ?μk,t]yrIj}a' hy
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organs of the body to the sovereign’s retinue of attendants and servants.30 The staﬀ ’s busy activity is conveyed by a rapid succession of plural nouns and verbs linked through alliteration, assonance, consonance and end-rhyme: oﬁm, sho arim, mesharetim, ne arim; meri ot, o amot, to anot. The speaker expresses a sense of wonder at the structure and orderly functioning of the body in its pursuit of the soul’s needs. Yet, dignity attaches to the body only so long as it serves the noble purpose for which it was created. Once the soul departs, the whole ediﬁce collapses and decays. Many of the metaphors in these verses closely parallel the depiction of the body’s decay in the ﬁnal chapter of Ecclesiastes and reﬂect Ibn Ezra’s exegesis of that passage, which ends with Ecclesiastes 12:7, “And the dust returns to the ground as it was, and the lifebreath (soul) returns to God who bestowed it.”31 The arresting summons in verse 17 (“See! . . .”) urges the audience to note well what happens when the king takes his leave.32 Anyone who would focus exclusively on the body is shown to be severely misguided. Verses 21–22 warn explicitly: “If you don’t realize this and give precedence to your spiritual life, you’ll be like beasts, and you’d be better oﬀ dead.” Echoing the ﬁrst four verses of the poem, Ibn Ezra concludes his tokhe ah with admonitions to investigate the origins and destiny of the soul; to employ the bodily instruments of the soul in contemplation of the purposefulness of creation; and, ﬁnally, to acknowledge the Creator and supreme Teacher.33 Ultimately, what distinguishes “Yeshenei lev” from “Ha- el hatoleh” is its more nuanced view of man as a composite of body and soul. There is an element of the typical Neoplatonic disdain for the

30 See Malter, “Personiﬁcations of Soul and Body,” 459–63, who notes that the simile was popularized by the Ikhw n al- af . Ba ya counsels reﬂection on the advantages of every member of the body and uses the palace metaphor; see Hid ya 2:5 and 3:9, pp. 110–15 and 174–81 (Mansoor, Duties, 163–67 and 213–18). Cf. also the seli ah, “Et hef i male,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems 1:381, vv. 5–8. In Enn. V, 3, 3ﬀ., Plotinus describes the intellect as king and sense perception as its “scout”; see Altmann, “The Delphic Maxim,” 222. 31 It is instructive to compare the detailed glosses of Isaac Ibn Ghiyath, who reads Ecc. 12:2–5 as an extended metaphor for the inﬁrmities of old age which obscure the light of the rational soul. See Ibn Ghiyath, Kit b al-zuhd, pp. 286–92; Vajda, “Quelques Observations,” and “Ecclésiaste XII, 2–7”; and the appendix to Pines, “Four Extracts.” 32 In Chapter 3 a similar rhetorical pattern is identiﬁed in Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” and “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi.” 33 The poem’s ﬁnal hemistich is a verbatim quote from Job 36:22, which Ibn Ezra also cites at the end of Yesod Mora 1:9, asserting that man must know his body and his soul before he can seek to know loftier things.

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corporeal in “Yeshenei lev,” but it is balanced by ascribing the body a crucial role in the service of the soul during an individual’s lifetime. The unmitigated pessimism of “Ha- el ha-toleh” results from its preoccupation with man’s physical aspect, and illustrates the limitations of adducing Job 19:26 in support of the idea that selfknowledge leads to knowledge of God. If “Yeshenei lev” is more successful in its integration of this prooftext, it is because it enjoins contemplation of the soul as well as the body.34 The contrasting tendencies of the two poems should not lead us to infer that Moses and Abraham Ibn Ezra diﬀered in their philosophical beliefs or religious attitudes. In their conception of man as a composite of body and soul and their approach to metaphysical inquiry, the two thinkers were very much alike. As we have seen, the treatment of Job 19:26 in “Ha- el ha-toleh” has remarkable parallels in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s seli ah, “Efta sefatay bi-nginotay,” while in his Maq lat al- ad qa, Moses Ibn Ezra conﬁdently cites the Job prooftext as evidence that introspection fosters knowledge of the Creator.35 The distinctive outlooks of the two poems should rather be seen as a reﬂection of the rich diversity of ideas that informed Andalusian piyyut. In its advocacy of self-examination, “Yeshenei lev” proposes a philosophical solution to the essentially religious quest for spirituality. The impact of Neoplatonic thought is evident in the poem’s portrayal of the body as an instrument of the soul, in its depiction of death as the soul’s release, and in its emphasis on the merits of philosophical speculation. “Ha- el ha-toleh” is a far less philosophical poem. It combines a more classically rabbinic view of death and man’s ultimate judgment with ascetic currents of thought deriving from the Islamic zuhd tradition. Each addresses the philosophical interpretation of Job 19:26 in its own way, illustrating the complex interplay of speculative and traditional themes in Andalusian piyyut. That it was natural to explore the self-knowledge motif in devotional poetry says much about the poets’ remarkably profound conception of prayer. 34 Poems that focus exclusively on the wonders of the soul allude to the Job verse with complete conﬁdence in self-contemplation as a means to apprehension of the Divine. See, e.g., Judah Halevi’s mu arrak, “Shem elohim odeh be-si ay” in Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 2:329–30 and Abraham Ibn Ezra’s “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah,” in Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:88–89 and above, Chapter 6. 35 On the ad qa extract (cited at the beginning of this chapter) see Stern, “Isaac Israeli and Moses Ibn Ezra,” 86–87. Much of this passage derives from Isaac Israeli, but the addition of the Job prooftext is Ibn Ezra’s.

CHAPTER EIGHT

ANTI-RATIONALISM OR METAPHYSICAL SKEPTICISM? JUDAH HALEVI’S “SHUVI NAFSHI LI-MNU AYKHI”

For generations, the biography of Judah Halevi (ca. 1075–1141) has captured the imagination of scholars and laymen alike. The dramatic appeal of Halevi’s story lies in his renunciation, towards the end of his life, of fame and good fortune in favor of pilgrimage to the Holy Land.1 An unusually talented poet, Halevi gained his entrée into Andalusian literary society as a young man and rapidly earned the friendship and admiration of Moses Ibn Ezra.2 As an adult, he devoted his professional energies to medicine, yet found time to serve as a communal leader and engage in scholarship. In all these endeavors he was greatly esteemed. Yet the mature Halevi became alienated from the social and intellectual elite of Jewish Andalusia, and resolved to “leave behind all the good things of Spain” for the spiritual regeneration promised by “the dust of the ruined Shrine.”3 Reﬂexes of this decision are found in his poetry, correspondence, and major work of religious thought, the Kit b al-khazar .4 1 For a biographical sketch based on literary and documentary sources, which includes translations of Halevi’s holograph letters see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:448–68. See also Goodman, “Judah Halevi”; Schirmann, HPMS, 421–80; and Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda Ha-Levi and His Circle, 174–257. 2 See Abramson, “A Letter of Rabbi Judah ha-Levi to Rabbi Moses Ibn Ezra.” 3 The quotations are from Halevi’s Zionide poem, “Libbi ve-mizra ” (“My Heart is in the East”), in the translation of Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 347. For a stimulating discussion of “Libbi ve-mizra ” in light of its intertextual relationship with another of Halevi’s poems see Brann, “ ‘How Can My Heart Be In the East?’ ” 4 For additional poems, see: “ iyon ha-lo tish ali,” in Schirmann, HPSP 2:485–89; “Yefeh nof mesos tevel,” ibid., 489; “Devarekha be-mor over requ im,” ibid., 492–94; “Ha-tirdof na arut a ar amishim,” ibid., 494–97; “Ha-yukhelu fegarim,” ibid., 497–500. For the correspondence see, e.g., Abramson, “R. Judah Ha-Levi’s Letter on His Emigration to the Land of Israel,” 140. For the relevant Khazar passages, see especially the conclusion of the work, 5:23–28. Among the numerous editions and translations of the Khazar the following have been consulted here: Baneth and Ben-Shammai ed., Kit b al-radd wa-’l-dal l f ’l-d n al-dhal l (Al-kit b al-khazar ) [Arabic original]; Zifroni ed., Sefer ha-kuzari [ Judah Ibn Tibbon’s translation]; Even Shmuel trans., The Kosari of R. Yehuda Haleví [modern Hebrew translation]; Qaﬁh ed. and trans., Sefer ha-kuzari [Arabic original with mod-

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There has been a tendency to correlate Halevi’s estrangement from aristocratic life with passages in his prose and poetry which appear to repudiate Hispano-Jewish learning.5 But it is overly simplistic to conclude that he utterly rejected the curriculum of his youth. A more nuanced view emphasizes the complexity of Halevi’s attitudes towards the literary and philosophical ideals of the Andalusian Jewish intelligentsia. In The Compunctious Poet, Ross Brann examines Halevi’s ambivalence towards the composition of Arabic-style Hebrew poetry. Apparently, what disturbed Halevi about such verse—even more than its associations with the materialism of courtier society or its often frivolous content—was the violence its Arabicizing quantitative meters did to the Hebrew language. Nevertheless, the poet continued to use quantitative prosody down to the end of his career. Despite some experimentation with syllabic meters in non-liturgical poetry, Halevi composed a d w n’s worth of Andalusian-style poems during his nine-month stay in Egypt following his departure from Spain. Even on board the ship that would take him from Egypt to his ﬁnal destination, Halevi engaged in this quintessentially Andalusian pursuit.6 In an essay entitled “Lights in the Heart of the Sea,” Andras Hamori traces the spiritual journey embedded in “Ha-tirdof na arut a ar amishim,” one of Halevi’s mature sea poems, linking its Neoplatonic imagery and symbolism to views set forth in Kit b alkhazar . Hamori’s elegant explication de texte conﬁrms Halevi’s profound, if ambivalent, immersion in the intellectual life of the day. Halevi’s stance on the study of Greco-Arabic philosophy is equally complex. At the heart of his Khazar lies a critique of rationalism, but for a Jewish author it is unusual, even unprecedented, in that it is philosophically informed. His anti-rationalism has been described as a response from within the philosophical tradition to the challenges

ern Hebrew translation]; Hirschfeld trans., Judah Hallevi’s Kitab al Khazari [complete English translation]; Heinemann trans., Kuzari: The Book of Proof and Argument [partial English translation with annotation]; Touati trans., Le Kuzari: Apologie de la religion méprisée [complete French translation]. Note that Halevi himself uses the title Al-kit b al-khazar in a letter mentioning an early recension of the work; see Goitein, “Autographs of Yehuda Hallevi,” 409 and the English translation in A Mediterranean Society 5:465; see also Gil and Fleischer, Yehuda Ha-Levi and His Circle, 324–26. 5 On this tendency, see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 62, and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 87–89. 6 See Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 84–118; Yahalom, “Poetry and Society in Egypt,” and “The Leningrad Treasures and the Study of the Poetry and Life of Yehuda Halevi”; and Saperstein, “Halevi’s West Wind.”

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posed by the newly-ascendant Spanish Aristotelianism, or falsafa.7 Indeed, he is the ﬁrst Andalusian Jewish thinker seriously to acknowledge and react to Ibn B jja (c. 1070–1138), the greatest Spanish Aristotelian of the age.8 Completed in the last decade of his life and subtitled The Book of Refutation and Proof in Defense of the Despised Faith, the Khazar favorably contrasts Judaism with the Philosophers’ Creed.9 Halevi exposes the philosophers’ negation of divine volition and their detached, impersonal conception of God, which together result in a denial of creation, a purely utilitarian approach to ethics, and religious relativism. These highly problematic opinions are already evident in the Philosopher’s opening address to the Khazar king: There is no favor or dislike in God, because He is above desire and intention. For an intention intimates a want in the one who intends, and not until it is satisﬁed does he become complete. As long as it remains unfulﬁlled, he lacks completion. In a similar way God is, in the opinion of the philosophers, above the knowledge of individuals, because they change with the times, while there is no change in God’s knowledge. He therefore, does not know you, much less your intentions and actions, nor does He hear your prayers, or see your movements. If philosophers say that He created you, they only use a metaphor, because He is the Cause of causes in the creation of all creatures, but not because this was His intention from the beginning. He never created man, for the world is without beginning, and men have never ceased to be engendered by those who came into existence before them. . . . Everything goes back to the Prime Cause; not to any

7 See Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 62 and p. 148, n. 11. See also Strauss, “The Law of Reason in the Kuzari.” In Between Mysticism and Philosophy: Suﬁ Language of Religious Experience in Judah Ha-Levi’s Kuzar , Diana Lobel shows how Halevi responds to Suﬁsm as well as falsafa, adapting and transforming Islamic mystical and philosophical ideas of communion with the divine to articulate an original and uniquely Jewish view. 8 In his ﬁne review of Paul Fenton’s Philosophie et exégèse, Steven Harvey speculates that the works of Al-Far b , Ibn S n and Ibn B jja, with their methodical readings of Aristotle, may have been beyond the ken of most Andalusian Jewish belletristic authors. If so, he asks, who were the Jews who had fallen under their sway, compelling Halevi to pen his defense of Judaism? 9 On the dating of the ﬁnal recension of the Khazar , see Baneth, “Some Remarks on the Autographs of Yehudah Hallevi,” esp. p. 300. Evidence that Halevi revised the work over time is furnished by the autograph letter in which he explains the initial stimulus for composing it; see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:456 and 464–65. In an eﬀort to explain inconsistencies in the work, some scholars have speculated that it is a composite whose diﬀerent layers reﬂect a gradual evolution in Halevi’s thought; see most recently Silman, Philosopher and Prophet. For a critique of Silman’s theory, see the review by Daniel J. Lasker.

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design that might be ascribed to it, but to an emanation, from which emanated a second, a third, and a fourth cause. . . . Be not concerned about the forms of your Law, nor of your religion, nor of your worship; nor about which words, language, or actions you employ. You may even fashion your own religion . . . according to the rational laws drawn up by the philosophers, as long as you strive after purity of soul.10

Halevi rejects such antinomian universalism in favor of the particularistic practices which the Torah requires of Jews, individually and communally. The Jewish view that God is intimate with man and aware of human deeds makes religious observance and ethical behavior obligatory.11 Halevi repeatedly ridicules the philosophers’ metaphysical constructs, pointing to the ﬂimsiness of their speculative foundations.12 Yet, by criticizing Aristotelian doctrines for their lack of rigorous logical proofs, he admits the possibility of a scientiﬁcally sound metaphysics.13 He sees no contradiction between Judaism and reason, but unlike the philosophers, he does not view intellectualism as the height of human perfection.14 The preeminence of religious experience over knowledge gained through speculation is a leitmotif of the Khazar . For Halevi, the paragon of direct religious experience is the prophet. 10 Khazar 1:1, after Hirschfeld (pp. 36–38), with modiﬁcations based on the Arabic (Baneth and Ben-Shammai ed., pp. 3–5) and Touati (pp. 1–4). Shlomo Pines has identiﬁed the doctrines set forth here as those of Ibn B jja, and the philosophical views set forth in 5:2–12 as those of Ibn S n ; see “Shi ite Terms,” 210–17. It is instructive to compare this passage with Khazar 1:62–67, where the aver concedes that the philosophical position on the eternity of the world and the Jewish belief in creation are both diﬃcult doctrines to prove. Nevertheless, he lends greater credence to the theory of creation because it is supported by trustworthy prophetic traditions, whereas the philosophers’ speculations are not supported by any reliable, inherited tradition. 11 Khazar 4:17–19. On Halevi’s rejection of the philosophers’ “generic intellectualism” which favors “intention” over “action,” see Goodman, “Judah Halevi,” 196–212, who also sees in this contrast an implicit critique of Jewish pietists who lend disproportionate weight to intentions in the delicate balance between spirituality and ritual actions. Y. Tzvi Langermann has proposed that Halevi was alarmed by the trend among thinkers like Abraham Ibn Ezra “towards naturalistic explanation, by means of astrological theory, of the diﬀerences among the various faiths.” See his “Astrological Themes in Ibn Ezra,” 65–74. Maimonides, too, was alive to the dangers of philosophical antinomianism; see Twersky, Introduction to the Code of Maimonides, 392–93. 12 See, e.g., Khazar 4:25 and 5:14. 13 Cf. Baneth’s remark concerning al-Ghaz l in “Judah Halevi and al-Ghazali,” 185. 14 Khazar 1:67, 89.

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Endowed with a selectively hereditary, supra-rational capacity to receive communications from the immanent aspect of the divine called al-amr al-il h (ha- inyan ha- elohi), the prophet is privy to a more immediate and penetrating knowledge of God than can ever be acquired through philosophical reasoning.15 Halevi’s censure of the philosophers has elicited comparison with the anti-philosophical polemics of his older Muslim contemporary, Ab am d al-Ghaz l (1058–1111).16 One of the foremost religious thinkers of the Islamic Middle Ages, al-Ghaz l authored a landmark study of the falsafa tradition, entitled Maq id al-fal sifa (The Intentions of the Philosophers). In his companion volume, Tah fut al-fal sifa (The Incoherence of the Philosophers), he refutes twenty philosophical positions incompatible with scriptural religion. On seventeen of these he charges the philosophers with “error,” but pronounces them heretics for their denial of three central doctrines: corporeal resurrection, divine providence, and creation ex nihilo.17 As noted, Halevi also attacks the Aristotelians for their lack of belief in creation and providence. In a late, Zionide poem he warns: Do not let not Greek wisdom lure you— it bears no fruit, only ﬂowers. Such is its fruit: that the earth was never spread out, nor heaven’s tents ever stretched taut; That creation had no beginning, and the passing of months has no end. Hear how the words of its wise are perplexed, built on false groundwork, then whitewashed. Your heart will end vacant and emptied, your mouth full of dross and vain breath.18

15 See, e.g., Khazar 1:4 (beginning), 47, 95; 4:15–16. On the various senses in which Halevi uses the term al-amr al-il h see: Wolfson, “Hallevi and Maimonides on Prophecy”; Efros, “Some Aspects of Yehudah Halevi’s Mysticism,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 141–54; “Pines, “Shi ite Terms,” 172–92; and Goodman, “Judah Halevi,” p. 224, n. 46. 16 See Kaufmann, Me qarim, 184–85 and especially Baneth, “Judah Halevi and al-Ghazali.” 17 See Van Den Bergh, Averroes’ Tahafut al-Tahafut (which preserves Ghaz l ’s arguments) and McCarthy, Freedom and Fulﬁllment, 76–77, secs. 46–47. For a complete list of all twenty contested issues, see McCarthy, ibid., pp. 128–29, n. 103. 18 Schirmann, HPSP 2:492–94, vv. 27–31. For a partial translation, see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:451; for a discussion, see Heinemann, “Ha-pilosof hameshorer” 215–26. For the rabbinic prohibition against teaching one’s son “Greek wisdom” ( okhmat yevanit), see bB.Q. 82b. Not all medievals identiﬁed this forbidden

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A few verses earlier, Halevi concludes his praises of the Holy Land with a celebration of its unique eschatological role: They say that specters will rise there, those who lie locked underground will emerge; Corpses will rejoice there, and souls to deceased will return.19

In the Khazar , however, he is conspicuously silent on the philosophers’ rejection of bodily resurrection. Indeed, while criticizing their contrived proofs for the soul’s survival after death, he allows that the far more reliable Jewish Tradition suspends judgment on whether the future life will be spiritual or corporeal.20 Halevi is less concerned with the rewards of the world to come than with living piously, so as to draw blessedly near to God in this world. Responding to a polemical charge, he explains that the sacred texts of Judaism do not dwell on promises of ultimate recompense, for Jews attain communion with the divine in this world, through the observance of the mi vot: “We attribute the most complete excellence to those who are near to God in life, and relate their rank with Him after death to what it was during their lifetimes” (1:111).21 Where he does discuss the summum bonum, he reveals a sympathy for the view that identiﬁes the world to come with the immortality of the disembodied soul. course of study with philosophy; see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 85–86. Halevi refers disparagingly to Greek wisdom in certain correspondences as well; see Ratzaby, “Iggeret mi-rabbi yehudah ha-levi le-rabbi aviv,” 270 and Abramson, “Ha-Levi’s Letter on His Emigration,” 140. See also Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 86–90. 19 “Devarekha be-mor over requ im,” vv. 24–25. 20 See Khazar 5:14. This question would erupt into controversy around the year 1200, following the arrival of Maimonides’ Mishneh Torah in northern Spain and Provence. Maimonides’ purely spiritual interpretation of olam ha-ba struck many as a repudiation of physical resurrection, and its inclusion in his legal code seemed to grant it authoritative status. More than a decade earlier, similar criticisms had been leveled in the East, spurring the Sage of Fus to clarify his eschatological position in his Judeo-Arabic Treatise on Resurrection. Here Maimonides aﬃrmed corporeal resurrection, but held that it was followed by a second death, after which only the soul remained. On the Resurrection Controversy see: Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 39–60; Silver, Maimonidean Criticism and the Maimonidean Controversy, 109–135; Dienstag, Eschatology in Maimonidean Thought, esp. 226–41; and Finkel, “Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection: A Comparative Study.” On the earlier segment of the controversy, see Stroumsa, The Beginnings of the Maimonidean Controversy in the East. For an English translation and discussion of the Treatise on Resurrection, see Halkin and Hartman, Crisis and Leadership: Epistles of Maimonides, 209–92. 21 See Khazar 1:103–115 and 3:20–21.

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Noting the link between the powerful spiritual transformation undergone by one who encounters a prophet and the reward of the future world (thaw b al- khira; gemul ha- olam ha-ba), he writes: For the desired outcome [of such an experience] is that the human soul become divine, that it withdraw from its senses and observe the supernal world, delighting in viewing the angelic light and in hearing the divine speech. Such a soul will be preserved from death when its bodily organs perish. If you, then, ﬁnd a Law whose teachings and prescribed observances enable you to attain this [spiritual] degree . . ., this is without doubt the Law which insures the survival of the soul after the body passes away.22

The Law, then, is the divinely ordained path to spiritual growth and fulﬁllment in this world and the next. Bestowed upon the community of Israel, the Law provides for both individual and collective closeness with the divine. For Halevi, the collective and the historical are of paramount importance. The redemption worked by the God of history, the revelation to the multitudes at Sinai, community worship—these are the essentials of Judaism.23 Still, Israel’s public, documented covenant with God is paralleled by the private communion (itti l; devequt) sought by individual devotees.24 Their spiritual quest and its rewards are described in terms not dissimilar to those used by other Andalusian Jewish thinkers. Yet, in contrast to Ibn Gabirol’s Meqor ayyim, Halevi’s Khazar reﬂects a profound dissatisfaction with the idea that eternal life is attained through the detached exercise of the rational faculties. Where Ibn Gabirol prescribes philosophical speculation as the means to elevating one’s soul to the divine realm, Halevi speaks of approaching God through prayer and pious deeds.25 Prayer nourishes the soul, just as food fortiﬁes the body. Properly performed, prayer cleanses the soul of worldly contamination and prepares it for the future.26 22 Khazar 1:103, translated from the Arabic (Baneth and Ben-Shammai ed., p. 35), with reference to Touati (p. 34) and Hirschfeld (p. 74). See also Khazar 1:109 and 3:53 (end). Despite his condemnation of the philosophers, Ghaz l too was apparently more concerned with spiritual immortality than corporeal resurrection; see Goodman, Ibn Tufayl’s ayy Ibn Yaq n, 101 and p. 182, nn. 47–50. 23 See, e.g., the Rabbi’s epitome of Judaism in Khazar 1:11. On the Sinaitic revelation, see 1:81–91, and on the advantages of communal over individual prayer, see 3:18–19. 24 See Lobel, Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 30–44. 25 Compare, e.g., MH 5:43 with Khazar 1:103 and 3:1–20. See also Baneth, “Judah Halevi and al-Ghazali,” 195–96. 26 Khazar 3:5.

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The Neoplatonic drama of the soul ﬁgures prominently in Halevi’s poetic corpus. Deftly crafted, his poems on the soul feature the full range of motifs which, by his time, had come to be associated with the genre. Occasionally, though, it is possible to detect an omission or slight alteration of emphasis which implies a reluctance to endorse a purely philosophical eschatology. Halevi’s elegant mu arrak, “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” is a prime example of a poem that evokes the soul’s return, but which also seems to downplay the idea of salvation through philosophical contemplation.27 [hebrew text and english translation follow on pages 182‒83.] Like other Andalusian piyyutim on the soul, “Shuvi nafshi” uses the language of classical Jewish sources while expressing a decidedly Neoplatonic outlook. Halevi’s skillfulness is evident from the outset: his madrikh is a biblical verse (Psalm 116:7) which not only ﬁts his theme, but also scans to suit the poem’s syllabic meter. In its original context, the verse encourages a return to calm following a period of exposure to peril: “Be at rest once again, my soul. . . .” But in its new, poetic context it becomes an exhortation to the soul to return to her celestial resting place from the lower, illusory world. The germ of this interpretation is found in the Targum to the verse, which urges, “Return, my soul, to your restful home” (le-veit menu aykhi ), although Halevi’s vision of the soul’s eternal repose is clearly closer to Ibn Gabirol’s.28 The construct of a separable soul enables the speaker to adopt the ﬁction of an “I” who is distinct from his own soul, even though his advice is ultimately—like that of the Psalmist— self-directed.29 Together with the recurring rhyme in the archaic feminine suﬃx, -aykhi (thee; thy), the feminine imperatives in every stanza stress the centrality of the soul, and lend the poem its gently persuasive tone. There is a mounting sense of urgency as the speaker reiterates that time is running out and that the way is long (verses 5–6, 9–10, 17–18).

27 The following Hebrew text of “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” is taken from Schirmann, HPSP 2:514–15; the poem is also found in Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 2:372–73. “Shuvi nafshi” is translated and discussed in Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:412–15; see also idem, “Shi ur be-shirat yemei ha-beinayim”; Septimus, “On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,” 612–14; and Ratzaby, “Notes to ‘On the Use of Talmudic Literature in Spanish Hebrew Poetry,’ ” 142–44. 28 See KM canto 27. 29 See vv. 7–10.

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Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi Judah Halevi “Return, my soul, to your repose, for God has favored you with grace.”

5

10

Glorious one, from your Maker’s Glory drawn, Rise up, for here is not your rest. The way is long—take provisions: The time has come to do God’s will. I sojourn here, like my forebears; Like a passing shadow are my years. If not now, tell me: when Will you redeem yourself from this pit? If you seek the One who formed you And cleanse yourself of your deﬁlement, Then approach! Do not fear! Your deeds will bring you near Him.

15

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Look, bold one, behold your world! Do not rely on your false dreams. Your day is short, your Home is far— Prepare your plea for Judgment Day! Do you thirst to see His beauty? And to serve Him always? Then— Return, return O Shulammite To your Father’s house, as in your youth.

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ykiy“j;Wnm]li èyvip]n" èybiWv !ykiy“l;[; lm'G: y:y“ yKi èhj;Wql] ËrEx]/y rq;ymi !hj;WnM]h' tazO alø yKi —hj…rUa} Ël; yjiq] èbr" !ykiy“c;/[ ≈p,je t/c[}l'

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5

10

tv,r
15

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The poem’s lines are short and compact, and its unaﬀected diction is almost deceptively simple. For an attuned reader, however, Halevi’s masterful choice of words carrying rich associations vividly summons up the Neoplatonic odyssey of the soul. A series of internal echoes reinforces these impressions: “Rise up, for here is not your rest” (verse 4) harks back to the opening couplet, conﬁrming that the corporeal world is a place of iniquity (as suggested by the allusion to Micah 2:10), and is not the soul’s true resting place. The reprise of shuvi with qumi implies that to return, the soul must rouse herself from the spiritual torpor of this world and ascend.30 Similarly, “Your day is short, your Home is far” (verse 17) recalls verses 5–6. The antithesis in verse 17 between the great distance that must be traversed and the limited time available in which to do so adds urgency to the admonitions in the earlier verses, which also feature a spatial-temporal link. Within these individual lines, echoes are formed by juxtaposing two words from the same root. The close proximity of the pairs ora /aru ah and la asot/ osaykhi stresses the soul’s need to equip herself with good deeds for the long journey back to her Maker. The play on yeqarah (Precious one) and yeqar (glory) in verse 3 points up the derivation of the human soul from the divine kavod (which the Targumim regularly translate as yeqar), and intimates that the soul is precious precisely because it originates in the divine.31 While the verse reveals an emanationist view, Halevi balances its naturalism by calling God the soul’s Maker, or yo er, a term associated with the volitional Creator of traditional sources.32 This emphasis is reinforced by osaykhi in verse 6, and by the recurrence of yo rekh in verse 11. Throughout, Halevi colors the soul’s ascent to her source with a personal hue. She is encouraged to approach God and not to be overcome with fear (verse 13), although she must know what to say when called before Him in judgment (verse 18). As the poem reaches its climax, their relationship becomes one of intense warmth

30 Note that Jarden’s edition has rumi (ascend), rather than qumi. Verse 7 uses Ps. 39:13 as a prooftext for the idea that man is a wanderer in the lower world; this exegesis is found already in Isaac Israeli; see Altmann and Stern, Isaac Israeli, 113–14. 31 For Halevi’s several interpretations of the divine kavod see Wolfson, “Hallevi and Maimonides on Prophecy,” 53–58. 32 Cf. Ibn Gabirol’s mi- ur ha- ur nigzerah (KM canto 29, lines 280–81), whose signiﬁcance is discussed in Chapter 2.

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and intimacy. The speaker addresses his soul with language drawn from the Song of Songs, suggesting that she is God’s beloved (“Return, return, O Shulammite”; Canticles 7:1). Blending biblical images of romantic and ﬁlial love, he then alludes to Leviticus 22:13, which provides for the return of a formerly estranged daughter to her father’s house. With their echoes of the opening couplet, these lines bring the poem full circle, leaving us with a heartening image of the soul’s welcome back into God’s embrace.33 “Shuvi nafshi” stands ﬁrmly within the tradition of Andalusian piyyutim that reinterpret classical eschatological ideas. Like Ibn Gabirol in “Shabbe i nafshi” and Moses Ibn Ezra in “Nafshi ivvitikha,” Halevi implicitly identiﬁes olam ha-ba with the immortality of the individual soul. In the speaker’s admonitions to his soul there are deliberate echoes of rabbinic dicta which urge preparation for the world to come, and the equation is implied by the use of the word olam in the exhortation, re i olamekh, “Behold your (true) world!” (verse 15).34 Through a slight, but signiﬁcant modiﬁcation of Psalm 103:4 (“He redeems your life from the pit”) in verse 10, Halevi even intimates that the soul’s salvation is a self-initiated process, rather than one set in motion by God. In evoking the soul’s longing “to gaze upon the beauty of the Lord” (verse 19), he recalls his predecessors’ use of visual metaphors to describe man’s ultimate reward. But where they speak of “the eye of the intellect” apprehending the divine, Halevi seems to downplay the contemplative thrust of the metaphor, aligning the soul’s “thirst” to see God with the desire to serve Him eternally. It has been observed that in “Shuvi nafshi” Halevi tempers the classical Neoplatonic emphasis on contemplative activity by stressing the redemptive role of deeds.35 Echoing Psalm 119:126, the speaker 33 Lev. 22:13 allows a priest’s daughter, who has married out of the priestly clan, but is now widowed or divorced, to return to her father’s house and eat of his sanctiﬁed food. For the soul as a priest’s daughter bearing special responsibility for sin, see the parable in Lev. Rab. 4:5, ed. Margulies, pp. 90–91 and Urbach, The Sages, 241–42. On the signiﬁcance of applying imagery from the Song of Songs to the soul, see above, pp. 102–104 and Septimus, “Talmudic Literature in Hebrew Poetry,” 612–13. For another portrayal of the soul as both a beloved and a daughter, see the ﬁnal stanza of Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha,” discussed in Chapter 4. 34 See v. 17, which alludes to the saying of Rabbi Tarfon in Avot 2:19 (“The day is short, and the work is great . . .”), and v. 9 which alludes to Avot 1:14. On the implicit reinterpretation of a dictum from bBer. 17a in v. 15, see Septimus, “Talmudic Literature in Hebrew Poetry,” 613–14. 35 See Septimus, “Talmudic Literature in Hebrew Poetry,” p. 613 and n. 38.

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bids his soul “to do God’s will” (verse 6), and assures her that “Your deeds will bring you near Him” (verse 14).36 He urges her to purify herself, implying that sin is a deﬁlement which makes one unﬁt to enter the realm of the sacred. Now, Ibn Gabirol’s poems also prescribe prayer and pious exercises as part of a regimen designed to bring one closer to God.37 But where he ascribes a salvational role to intellectual self-perfection, Halevi tends to advocate immersion in the Torah and adherence to its particularistic precepts. In Halevi’s “Ye idah ya adi na el emunah,” a reshut to Nishmat, the speaker advises his soul that meditation on God’s Law (hagot dato) will lead her to appreciate properly the acquisition of wisdom (qenot okhmah u-vinah).38 In Ibn Gabirol’s poetry okhmah connotes philosophical knowledge, but here it is wisdom derived from reﬂection on Scripture. Still, there is a strong Neoplatonic cast to the poem: in a delightful variation on the usual apostrophe form, the soul responds that if she seems confused or distracted, it is because she has strayed from the heavens, and is locked in a mortal body. She prays that God will soon grant her rest so that she may be bound up in eternal life, erurah tokh eror ayyim, in the fellowship of saintly souls.39 A similar link between observance of the Law and the soul’s ultimate reward is highlighted through clever word-play in “Yeqarah shakhenah gevyah.” Comparing the “precious one lodged in the body” to “light in deep darkness,” the poem describes the soul’s desire to leave the body and return to her former grandeur. On her parting day ( yom peridatah) she shall enjoy “the fruit of her Law” (peri datah), sweet as Eden’s honey. A beatiﬁc vision of “the ways of her Maker” will cause her to forget her earthly suﬀering.40 The redemptive role of religious deeds is closely interwoven with explicitly Neoplatonic themes in Halevi’s penitential poem, “Barekhi a ulah me-rua ha-qodesh,” which is modeled on Saadya Gaon’s 36 Septimus notes that Halevi is reinterpreting a mishnaic phrase, perhaps following a precedent in Midrash Canticles Rabbah, where it is applied to Rabbi Akiva’s mystical ascent to the merkavah. 37 See, e.g., his “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh,” discussed in Chapter 3. 38 Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 3:708–709. 39 On the dialogue form in Halevi’s poetry, see Hazan, The Poetics of the Sephardi Piyut, 308–14. On eror ha- ayyim as a symbol for the immortality of the soul, see above, pp. 74–75. 40 See Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 3:711, and Selected Poems, 108. In context, the biblical phrases ending in edyah (vv. 2 and 4) may be read as metaphors for the soul’s illumination; see Chapter 5.

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“Barekhi abberet ve- amme et.”41 Where Saadya’s rahi tentatively probes the body-soul dualism, Halevi’s mustaj b unhesitatingly asserts that the luminous soul emanates from the Divine, is temporarily imprisoned in a dark body, and ultimately returns to the supernal realms.42 The soul is described as “the intellectual form” ( urat sekhel, v. 52) in man and as the God-given source of human reason: μd:a; ynEB] t/Bli μKej'l] hd:W[w“ ykir“B; μd:w: rc;B; ty"j]mil] Ëjel]/Vh' qytiw: μve ta, μd:/syli Wbv;w“ Ëjeq]L;hiB] μr:yDIq]M'h'w“ yy jr"z“yI ËyIl'[;w“ You whose fate is to make men wise—Bless The name of the Venerable One who sends you to sustain ﬂesh and blood And who snuﬀs out their light by taking you back. They return to their dust, but on you the Lord will shine.43

At the same time, God is called the One “who grants men insight so they might know His gracious acts” (v. 12) and “who honors those who honor the Torah” (v. 24), and the soul is the one “who attends her King to do His bidding” (v. 40), and “who strives to do good deeds, following her Lord” (v. 58). The superiority of the religious and the ethical to the contemplative is perhaps nowhere clearer than in the middle stanza, which evokes the yearning of the noble, captive soul, but counsels pursuit of kindness, justice, and equity: hq;Wvj} Ël,m≤ tB' hd:WbK] ykir“B; hq:/jr“ aløw“ talep]nI alø hw:x]mi ËrE/m d/bK] μve ta, hq:d:x]W fP;v]mi ds,j, yci[}t' hKo yy μWan“ yTix]p'j; hL,aeb] yKi

41 Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 1:67–73. On “Barekhi abberet,” see above, pp. 45–50. There is a brief comparison of the two poems in Zulay, The Liturgical Poetry of Sa adya Gaon and His School, 102–104. On Halevi’s poem, see Ratzaby, Migginz Shirat Hakk dem, 332–36. 42 The poem was certainly understood to reﬂect a Neoplatonic conception of the soul by the thirteenth-century Moses b. Na man; see Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love,’ ” p. 27, n. 58. In Khazar 2:4 and 4:25 the rua ha-qodesh is identiﬁed as a spiritual substance which is the source of spiritual beings. In this context, it would appear to be similar to the divine kavod as conceived by Ibn Gabirol and Ibn Ezra. Cf. Wolfson, “Hallevi and Maimonides on Prophecy,” 49–58 and Wolfson, Through a Speculum That Shines, 173. 43 Vv. 16–18. In its original context, the closing allusion (Is. 60:2) ﬁgures as part of a collective eschatological vision. Here it refers to the illumination of the immortal soul.

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chapter eight Glorious princess, full of longing—Bless The glorious name of Him whose teachings are not beyond reach. So shall you act with kindness, justice and righteousness, For in these I delight, says the Lord.44

Elsewhere Halevi shies away from the conﬁdent intellectualism that pervades much of Ibn Gabirol’s poetry by giving voice to a selective metaphysical agnosticism. In these piyyutim he does not discard the Neoplatonic view of the soul, nor does he deny the importance of meditating on the soul’s mysteries, for it is one of God’s most wondrous creations. He does, however, warn against the audacity of attempting to know God intellectually. The speaker in his seli ah, “Yashen, al teradam” (“Sleeper, do not slumber”), exhorts his listeners to rouse themselves from their spiritual lethargy, abandon the worldly ways of men and turn towards God.45 He advises contemplating the remarkable workings of the heavens, not as a spur to philosophical inquiry, but in order to learn humility (vv. 5–9). He then counsels following in the footsteps of the pious, who spend their nights in prayer and their days in fasting, cultivating an inner religious experience.46 As the poem gains in emotional intensity, he attacks the presumption of those who believe they can come to know God through philosophical speculation: ˆyIa…me hm;k]j;h' μd:/sy“ rp;[; μyLiD" ˆyIa; hm;heB]h' ˆmi μd:a…h; rt'/mW ˆyI[' tWar“ alø ble tWar“ μd:/bK] rWx t/ar“li qr" ˆyIY:mi μybi/Fh' μd:/s ynEy“[]m' ax;/mW Úyh≤løa‘ ta≤ ax;m]Ti ìμd:w: rc;B; ìˆke yKi l[;p; /xp]j, lK; rv,a} l['Y:w" l/av] dyrI/m l['m;W dr<m, bzO[}w"

hy
44 Vv. 31–33. On the associations evoked by the epithet kevudah bat melekh, and the anti-rationalist thrust of this stanza, see Septimus, “Talmudic Literature in Hebrew Poetry,” p. 608 and n. 9. It might be instructive to compare the closing allusion to Jer. 9:23 with Maimonides’ use of the verse in Guide 3:54; see Altmann, “Maimonides’s ‘Four Perfections,’ ” and Kellner, Maimonides on Human Perfection, 34–39. 45 See Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 2:614–16 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:517–19). For a brief treatment, see Hazan and Bar-Tikva, Poetry and Halakha, 19–26. 46 Yehuda Ratzaby notes that “their nights in prayer/their days in fasting” translates an Arabic proverb connected with the Islamic zuhd tradition; see Migginz Shirat Hakk dem, 383–84.

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hm'W hYEa'w“ ytæm… rmoale hy
Puny man, made of dust—whence is his wisdom? “Over beast man has no superiority”— Save that he can come to see his glory’s Source With his heart, not with his eye And can ﬁnd his mystery’s fount, sweeter than wine. Only thus, O ﬂesh and blood, will you ﬁnd your God. Lord, I Am that I Am, who does as He wills, Who deals death and gives life, casts down into Sheol and raises up— Submit to His judgment and live! Abandon the rebellion Of saying: “When and where? What is below and what above?” Rather, be wholehearted with the Lord your God.47

Halevi points up the hubris of these metaphysical aspirations by recalling man’s lowly origin and citing Ecclesiastes 3:19, as if to say that there is no diﬀerence between man and beast.48 This condemnation is so extreme, though, that he quickly qualiﬁes it with an enjambment, signaling that man’s distinctiveness lies in his capacity to perceive the divine within him. He can see ur kevodam, the Source of his glorious soul, and can ﬁnd ma yenei sodam, the wellspring of his spirit, which is sweeter than wine (Canticles 1:2). Halevi’s language seems deliberately to echo Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut, where the soul, which derives from the divine kavod or glory, is described as “hewn from the rock of the Rock” (mi- ur ha- ur nigzerah). Yet, his allusion to the Song of Songs modiﬁes Ibn Gabirol’s emanative image, intimating that the soul is a work of divine love. So too, in Keter Malkhut, sod (Mystery) and yesod (Foundation) are the enigmatic names given to the abstract principles of Universal Form and Matter which undergird the supernal world.49 But Halevi applies the paronomastic pair to body ( afar yesodam) and soul (ma yenei sodam), as though responding to Ibn Gabirol’s speculations about the divine world: How can lowly man, whose body comes from the dust, dare to claim

47 See vv. 15–24 (= vv. 20–29 in Schirmann, HPSP, due to the inclusion of a stanza of dubious authenticity). 48 Compare the ﬁrst verse with v. 19 of Halevi’s ofan, “Yah, ana em a akha,” Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 1:215–17 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:524–25): u-mah ya shov kol oshev / asher be- afar yesodam. On this poem, see Heinemann, “Ha-pilosof ha-meshorer,” 176–91 and Septimus, “Talmudic Literature in Hebrew Poetry,” 611–612. 49 See above, pp. 66–67.

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metaphysical knowledge? Only through introspection, only by contemplating the mystery of his soul will he ﬁnd his God. The perception which sets man apart from beast is internal—“the vision of the heart”—and does not involve physical sight. The poet’s phrase re ut lev lo re ut ayin recalls, and likely alludes to the gaon Hananel b. Hushiel’s exegetical statement that visions of God are seen through the mind (re iyyat ha-lev) and not the eye (re iyyat haayin).50 But where Hananel’s primary concern was to eliminate any hint of anthropomorphism, Halevi stresses the inwardness of the encounter with the divine. In two earlier verses (13–14) he speaks admiringly of the pious, who have paths to God in their hearts, and whose way of fasting and prayer is a “ladder of ascent” to the Lord. Here too, there seems to be an implicit response to Ibn Gabirol, who interpreted Jacob’s ladder (Genesis 28:12) as a symbol of man’s ascent to God, but in purely intellectual terms: the ladder was man’s rational soul, and the angels going up and down were man’s “thoughts of wisdom.”51 Ibn Gabirol and the poets following him use “the sight of the heart” and “the sight of the mind” interchangeably as metaphors for intellectual apprehension of the divine. According to Elliot Wolfson, Halevi uses the same metaphors, but his “vision of the heart” is a product of the imagination, rather than the intellect, and represents an experiential mode of knowing God, akin to prophetic vision.52 In the Khazar Halevi argues that direct gnosis of God is superior to rationally derived knowledge, distinguishing between the God of Abraham, for whom one years passionately, and the God of Aristotle, about whom one speculates in detachment. He stresses the immediacy of the Abrahamic approach by comparing it to the sensory experiences of tasting and seeing, citing Psalm 34:9 (“Taste and see that the Lord is good”) as prooftext.53 As Diana Lobel has recently

50 See above, pp. 77–78 and Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, 144–48 and 167–72. The idea that God is revealed to the heart but not to the eye is also expressed in “Ye alu fenei el ay asidav,” “Mi-yadekha hayetah le-libbi,” and “Mi khamokha amuqot goleh”; see Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 2:326, v. 3; 3:719, vv. 1–6 and 3:723–24, vv. 2–3 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:525–26, vv. 3–4). 51 Ibn Gabirol’s comments are preserved in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentary ad loc. See Kaufmann, Me qarim, 126–35, and Altmann, “The Ladder of Ascension.” 52 See Through a Speculum that Shines, 160–81. 53 Cf. Khazar 4:3, 15–17. For a poetic usage of Ps. 34:9, see “Barekhi a ulah me-rua ha-qodesh,” v. 27.

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shown, Halevi appropriates the Suﬁ terms dhawq (taste) and mush hada (witnessing) to convey his ideal of unmediated, ﬁrst-hand knowledge of God.54 This is the direct insight of the prophet, of which the whole people partook when they witnessed the theophany at Sinai. Thus, in a reshut for Barekhu composed for Shavuot, “Ye iruni veshimekha ra ayonay,” Halevi equates the individual’s inward vision of God with the collective experience of revelation par excellence: My heart saw You and believed in You, as if it had been at Sinai.55

The distastefulness of reckless speculation is driven home in the ﬁnal stanza of “Yashen al teradam.” Halevi invokes two divine names, which signify direct involvement with a personal God whose essence is, however, beyond human ken. Yah (Lord) is identiﬁed in the Khazar with the Tetragrammaton, which is a proper name, used only by those who have heard the word of God and who believe that He is concerned with human aﬀairs. Ehyeh asher ehyeh (I Am That I Am) conﬁrms that God exists for those who seek Him, but its circumlocution is intended to discourage ill advised attempts to apprehend the Divine Essence through logical demonstration.56 Unreliable as well as insolent, such intellectual “rebelliousness” fails to recognize the limitations of the human mind. Clearly, this is the thrust of Halevi’s closing allusion to Mishnah agigah 2:1, a passage that invited varying interpretations in the Middle Ages: “Whosoever speculates on four things should better not have been created: on what is above and what is below, what was in the beginning, and what will be in the end.”57 The primacy of the direct encounter with God and the arrogance 54 See her Between Mysticism and Philosophy, 89–120, and Efros, “Some Aspects of Yehudah Halevi’s Mysticism,” in Studies in Medieval Jewish Philosophy, 147–48. 55 This vision, which occurs in a dream, is sparked by meditation on the soul, and it rouses the speaker to bless God’s glorious name. See Halevi, Liturgical Poetry, 2:417 (= Schirmann, HPSP 2:516); Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 164–69; and Wolfson, Through a Speculum that Shines, 174–75. 56 Khazar 4:3. 57 The original warning was apparently directed against Gnostic speculation among Jews; see Altmann, Saadya Gaon: Book of Doctrines and Beliefs, p. 44, n. 1. It became a locus classicus in the medieval controversy over rationalism; Saadya (Introduction to Am n t) understands it as a prohibition against philosophical speculation which is not checked against tradition, while Maimonides (Mishnah Commentary, ad loc.) sees it as a critique of speculation which does not have a proper grounding in philosophical premises.

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of rational inquiry into the Divine mystery are also central to “Yah shimekha,” a reshut for Qaddish: Lord, Your name I exalt; I do not hide Your goodness. I have heard and I believe; I neither probe nor question. For how can an earthen jug question the potter’s motives? I have sought Him, I have found Him a tower of strength, a refuge. ... Hone your mind, prepare yourself, reﬂect on your own secret. And observe what you are, and whence your foundation— Who formed you, Who gave you sense, Who animates your being. Look to God’s mighty acts, awaken your own glory; Inspect His deeds, but on Him do not lay a ﬁnger— Lest you probe the End and Start, the wondrous and the hidden.58

The poem’s concluding verses reveal a nuanced stance towards the role of the intellect in the service of God. Inquiry into one’s origins and meditation on God’s handiwork are desirable, for they engender humility. Proper reﬂection on the “secret” of the soul which animates us leads to reverence for its Creator and grateful acknowledgment of the Divine Glory within us. By all means, man should “inspect His deeds,” for they testify to His inﬁnite might and inspire praise, even though “His mighty acts are beyond telling, and who can recount His praises?” (verse 19). But man must not presume to probe God’s inscrutable Essence, which cannot be grasped through ratiocination.59 Halevi’s position on the limitations of human apprehension is not all that diﬀerent from the view of more ardent rationalists. All the members of the Andalusian school were alive to the agnostic aspect of the Neoplatonic scheme, whereby the transcendent One from whom all existence ﬂowed could not be known, or even described in positive language. What could be known were His works, the 58 Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 1:30–33, vv. 1–4, 25–30. For a complete translation see Halevi, Selected Poems, 127–29, and for a partial translation see Goitein, A Mediterranean Society, 5:451. The poem is discussed in Heinemann, “Ha-pilosof ha-meshorer,” 167–76; see also Wolfson, “Merkavah Traditions in Philosophical Garb,” 204–205. The ﬁnal verse alludes both to the agigah passage mentioned above and to the following dictum from Ben Sira cited in b agigah 13a: pela ot mimekha al tidrosh, umekhuseh mimekha al ta qor. See Heinemann, ibid., 175. 59 Cf. Khazar 5:21: “If we have reached this degree, we say, that there is surely an incorporeal being which guides all corporeal substances, but which our mind is inadequate to examine. We therefore dwell on His works, but refrain from describing His nature. For if we were able to grasp it, this were a defect in Him.” (Trans. Hirschfeld, p. 291.)

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traces of His wisdom in the world.60 The other poets too wrote piyyutim which stress the limits of rational investigation into the Divine, or which express despair or frustration at man’s inability to know God.61 Even Ibn Gabirol acknowledged that God in His essence is beyond reach.62 But more than the others, Halevi warned vociferously against presuming that God could be known through cold philosophical speculation. Of all the philosopher-poets, he was the only one to engage seriously with the new Aristotelianism. His pointed protestations may well have been due to a sense that its radical rationalism posed a greater threat to Judaism than the syncretistic Neoplatonism current until then. The impression that Halevi’s metaphysical skepticism sets him apart dovetails with Raymond Scheindlin’s ﬁndings of a distinctive religious mood in the poet’s reshuyot. In his “Contrasting Religious Experience in the Liturgical Poems of Ibn Gabirol and Judah Halevi,” Scheindlin compares the two poets’ use of language, imagery, and stylistic devices, and ﬁnds that Halevi’s reshuyot are, emotionally and spiritually, far more passive than Ibn Gabirol’s. Ibn Gabirol’s poetic prayers conﬁdently—at times, passionately—explore the divine soul in man, which furnishes the intellectual means for the human initiative to reach God. By contrast, the speaker in Halevi’s piyyutim tranquilly and trustingly abandons himself to God, who grants man the ability and even the inspiration to pray, and alone determines whether to reveal Himself to the supplicant. Scheindlin traces Halevi’s quietism and yearning for inner visions to his preoccupation with God’s transcendence and inaccessibility to the speculative striving of man’s mind. His attentive literary analysis draws out nuances of tone and attitude, even where the poets’ underlying metaphysical beliefs are the same. With their subtle complexities and creative tensions, Halevi’s poems on the soul aﬀord a fresh perspective on the genre as a whole. Harking back to Ibn Gabirol, and even to Saadya’s pioneering eﬀorts, they highlight the Andalusian poets’ shared fascination with the divine 60 Maimonides also expounds the view that God in His Essence cannot be known, and that all that can be known are His actions; see Guide 1:51–60. 61 See, e.g., Mirsky, From Duties of the Heart to Songs of the Heart, 55–60 and above, Chapter 7. See also Abraham Ibn Ezra on Deut. 18:11, where he objects to man’s exclusive reliance on his intellect in the pursuit of truth. This passage is discussed in Langermann, “Astrological Themes in Ibn Ezra,” 53. 62 See, e.g., KM canto 26, line 256 and cf. MH 5:35.

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soul lodged within the human body. In his devotional verse, Halevi too was drawn to the Neoplatonic myth of the soul as a key to man’s moral potentialities, prayerful outpourings, and ultimate happiness. He too was driven to probe man’s inner life and to gaze inward in his poetic quest for a glimpse of the divine. Like his fellow payyetanim, Halevi appropriated the familiar language and imagery of the collective and historical exile and redemption to voice regret for spiritual stumbling and hopes of personal deliverance. Yet, his picture of ultimate bliss diverges from Ibn Gabirol’s ideal of salvation through detached philosophical contemplation. Halevi’s poems express a thirst for visions of God which are attained not only through self-puriﬁcation and prayer but also through meditation on, and observance of, the Torah. Rather than relying on personal insight or an intellectualism that transcends particular practices, Halevi’s spirituality is grounded in authentic tradition and the actions it prescribes. Having adopted the drama of the soul’s odyssey, he retains its goals and aspirations but modiﬁes the means of their achievement, so that the spiritual journey he charts bears his distinctive devotional stamp.

CHAPTER NINE

AN INVENTIVE HEIR: JUDAH AL ARIZI AND HIS ANDALUSIAN MODELS

Halevi’s pilgrimage, towards the close of his life, marked the end of Andalusian poetic creativity on its native soil. His departure anticipated by only a few years the ﬂight of many prominent members of the community to Christian Europe in the wake of the cruel Almohade invasion. But his poems on the soul, along with those of the other members of the school, were preserved and emulated in other poetic circles. In this chapter and the next, we will investigate the reception of the genre. As we shall see, the Andalusian prototype had an extensive afterlife, yet one need not look far aﬁeld for fresh treatments. We begin with Judah Al arizi, whose adaptation and reshaping of the genre fascinates precisely because of his proximity and access to the Andalusian tradition. Born circa 1165 in Toledo, the capital of Christian Castile, Al arizi lived and worked until he was ﬁfty under Christian rule in Northern Spain and Provence. Yet, before the Reconquista, Toledo had been a center of JudeoArabic scholarship. With its eminent emigrés from the south helping to keep that learned tradition alive, late twelfth-century Jewish Toledo was still immersed in the cultural heritage of pre-Almohade Islamic Spain.1 Al arizi was molded intellectually by a broad JudeoArabic education, and he subscribed to the urbane adab ideals and polished poetics of the Jewish literati of the Golden Age.2 Through 1 Joseph Sadan reviews the scholarly speculations on Al arizi’s birthplace which, since the nineteenth century, has been variously identiﬁed as Toledo, Barcelona, and Granada. Al arizi’s sound Arabic education led some scholars to conclude that he must have been raised in Muslim Spain before migrating northwards. Sadan inclines towards Toledo, on the assumption that Al arizi’s Arabic biographer, who refers to him as a Toledan, would have been quite precise about such details. See Sadan, “Judah Al arizi as a Cultural Junction,” esp. pp. 25–27. On the political, social, and cultural accomplishments of the Toledan Jewish community in the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 1–25. Septimus discusses the favorable impressions of that “royal city” reﬂected in the 46th chapter of Al arizi’s Ta kemoni. See also Assis, “The Judeo-Arabic Tradition in Christian Spain.” 2 See, e.g., his evaluation and periodization of the Andalusian poetic school in

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his activities as itinerant poet, translator, and compiler, he served as cultural ambassador to the Jews of Christian Spain and Provence. Following 1215, he traveled extensively in the East, visiting Jewish communities in Egypt, the Land of Israel, Syria, and Iraq. Wherever he went, he seems to have measured his eastern coreligionists against the reﬁned and cultured standards of Jewish Andalusia. A recently discovered Muslim Arabic biography reveals that Al arizi never returned to Spain, and that during his journey he not only completed his book of Hebrew maq m t, but also composed elegant Arabic poetry for a receptive non-Jewish clientele.3 Not only wanderlust, but an ongoing search for patronage drove Al arizi’s frequent relocation. His dependence on the generosity of wealthy benefactors—which at times led to multiple dedications of the same work—ﬁts the classic proﬁle of the professional Hebrew poet lacking independent means.4 Indeed, his Arabic biographer notes that he was known for lavishing praise and then abruptly retracting it, presumably when support was no longer forthcoming.5 Al arizi’s Chs. 3 and 18 of the Ta kemoni. On these chapters see Fleischer in Schirmann, HPCS, 203–205. In addition, the Ta kemoni includes critiques of Eastern Hebrew poets, whose compositions Al arizi considers inferior. See also his scathing attack— in Arabic verse—on the poets of Damascus in Ratzaby, “New Fragments From a Maq ma by Al- ar z .” 3 The biography discovered by Sadan was written in Syria at the end of Al arizi’s life, and is unique in furnishing the poet’s precise date and place of death (1225, Aleppo). Sadan notes how rare it was for a Jewish poet to excel at the composition of classical Arabic poetry and to win the praise of Muslim connoisseurs; see “Judah Al arizi as a Cultural Junction,” esp. pp. 40–46. Generous citations of his Arabic poetry are included in the biography; see pp. 46–61. 4 On the professional poet’s dependence on benefactors, see Schirmann, “The Function of the Hebrew Poet in Medieval Spain.” Al arizi provided the Ta kemoni with four diﬀerent dedications to patrons in the East: Samuel ben al-Barqoli of W si ; Josiah ben Yishai of Damascus; Samuel ben Nissim of Aleppo; and Shemaryah ben David of Yemen; see Schirmann, HPCS, 186–88. The two to Samuel ben alBarqoli and Josiah ben Yishai are incorporated into the published versions of the work; see the Introduction, pp. 16–17 (= Reichert 1:41–43) and Ch. 1, pp. 24–28 (= Reichert 1:51–56). (All references to the Hebrew text are to the Toporowsky edition; corresponding page numbers refer to the English translation of V.E. Reichert. David S. Segal’s marvellous new rhyming translation only became available to me after this chapter was completed.) For the dedication to Samuel ben Nissim and a Judeo-Arabic dedication to Sad d al-Dawla Abd al-Q dir of Aleppo and his son, Abu Nasr, see Habermann, “Ha-haqdashot le-sefer ta kemoni.” Based on an earlier conjecture of Steinschneider, Fleischer suggests that Sad d al-Dawla Abd alQ dir may be the Arabic name of either Samuel ben Nissim or his brother, Azariah; see Schirmann, HPCS, p. 188, n. 178. 5 Sadan reasons that his biographer learned of this reputation from a Jewish informant; Al arizi would not have dared to lampoon a Muslim patron, lest he

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early moves were prompted by invitations to translate inﬂuential philosophical and exegetical works from Judeo-Arabic into Hebrew.6 By the 1190’s he was in Provence, working in Marseilles on a commissioned translation of Maimonides’ Mishnah Commentary.7 Also at the request of the Sages of Lunel, he translated Moses Ibn Ezra’s Maq lat al- ad qa which, as Arugat ha-bosem, became an important conduit of Neoplatonic thought.8 A fervent admirer of Maimonides, Al arizi was openly critical of Samuel Ibn Tibbon’s authorized translation of the Master’s Guide of the Perplexed.9 To correct Ibn Tibbon’s slavishly literal and often obscure language, he produced a freer, paraphrastic Hebrew version of the work, to which he prefaced a glossary of technical terms and an analytical table of contents.10 In

endanger the Jewish community hosting him. See “Judah Al arizi as a Cultural Junction,” 38. 6 On his translation activity see Schirmann, HPCS, 146–53. He also rendered a selection of Greco-Arabic philosophical and scientiﬁc works into Hebrew for the Provençal Jewish intelligentsia; see ibid., p. 151 and n. 20. 7 In the end, he managed to translate only Maimonides’ Introduction and commentary on Zera im. For Al arizi’s prefatory remarks and translation of the Introduction, see Moses b. Maimon, Haqdamot le-feirush ha-mishnah, ed. Rabinovitz, 3–105 (Hebrew numeration). Al arizi himself mentions that he was in Marseilles; see ibid., p. 3. For his dedicatory poem to Jonathan ha-Cohen of Lunel who commissioned the translation, see Ta kemoni Ch. 50, pp. 406–7 (= Reichert 2:385–6). 8 The impact of the Hebrew version on the ﬁrst Spanish kabbalists is discusssed in Fenton, Philosophie et éxegèse, 196–227 and idem, “Traces of M eh ibn Ezra’s Ar gat ha-B sem.” Ibn Ezra himself devised the Hebrew title Arugat ha-bosem in the Arabic original. Portions of the translation were published by L. Dukes in 1842; see Moses Ibn Ezra, Liqqu im mi-sefer arugat ha-bosem. On the story of the nineteenthcentury rediscovery of the Arabic original, which had fallen into oblivion after the medieval period, see Fenton, Philosophie et éxegèse, 36–40. Moshe Idel published a portion of the translator’s rhymed prose introduction, but ascribed it to Judah Ibn Tibbon; see his “Who Was the Translator of R. Moses ibn Ezra’s ‘ Arugat haBosem’?” In a note in response, Shraga Abramson identiﬁed Al arizi as the translator, pointing out that Idel’s text incorporates the poem, “Sefat yeter ha-tasig mahalal am,” which also appears in Ch. 50 of the Ta kemoni; see Abramson, “The Translator of R. Moses ibn Ezra’s ‘ Arugat ha-Bosem’ is R. Judah Al arizi,” and Ta kemoni, p. 406. See also Schirmann, HPCS, p. 148, n. 6. 9 Ibn Tibbon completed his Hebrew version just prior to Maimonides’ death in 1204, and managed to correspond with the Sage of Fus about various diﬃcult passages; see Schirmann, HPCS, p. 145, n. 1; Ibn Tibbon’s Translator’s Introduction to Sefer moreh ha-nevukhim; Maimonides’ letter to Ibn Tibbon in Moses b. Maimon, Letters and Essays 2:511–54; and Stern, “Maimonides’ Correspondence with the Scholars of Provence.” 10 The critique appears in his Translator’s Introduction, which is followed by his glossary; see Moses b. Maimon, Sefer moreh ha-nevukhim (trans. Judah Al arizi), pp. 19–31. For a comparison of the two approaches to translation see Shiﬀman, “The Diﬀerences Between the Translations of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed by Falaquera,

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a withering critique, Ibn Tibbon censured Al arizi’s glossary for its lack of precision, condemned his chapter summaries for revealing esoteric knowledge, and dismissed the entire enterprise as the work of a mere poet with no grasp of the (Aristotelian) philosophical issues at hand.11 Though his accusations contain a kernel of truth, his extreme indignation was likely also fueled by a sense that Al arizi was encroaching on his professional territory. Guided by the same esthetic preference for elegance over artless ﬁdelity to the original, Al arizi had executed a Hebrew version of Maimonides’ Treatise on Resurrection to rival Ibn Tibbon’s translation. The appearance of this crucial text in Hebrew clinched the Resurrection Controversy surrounding Maimonides’ eschatological beliefs, which rocked the Jewish communities of Northern Spain and Provence in the early thirteenth century.12 Al arizi is, however, best known for his Ta kemoni, a rhymed prose narrative of ﬁfty episodes, modeled on the Arabic maq ma. A belletristic genre showcasing linguistic virtuosity and rhetorical brilliance, the maq ma was introduced into Arabic letters by the eastern author, Bad al-Zam n (“Marvel of the Age”) al-Hamadh n (967–1007) and given its deﬁnitive form by Ab ’l- asan al-Q sim b. Al Ibn alar r of Basra (1054–1122).13 Taken by their artful and exuberant Ibn Tibbon and Al-hariz ” and Steinschneider, Die hebräischen Übersetzungen, pp. 428–32. 11 See the Introduction to his Perush ha-millot ha-zarot, completed in 1213 partially in response to Al arizi’s glossary, and appended to Moses b. Maimon, Sefer moreh ha-nevukhim, ed. Yehuda Ibn Shmuel, pp. 11–92 (Arabic numeration). Scholars have remarked that Al arizi’s philosophical glossary “is indeed a scandalous piece of work”; see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 145, n. 112. Even a cursory glance at Al arizi’s deﬁnitions reveals how scanty and superﬁcial they are: “A dut (unity) is the name of the faculty (or: power) through which the one is called one”; “Eikhut (quality) is a noun derived from the word eikh (how).” 12 On the Resurrection Controversy and Al arizi’s role in it, see Septimus, HispanoJewish Culture in Transition, 40–60. For Al arizi’s peculiar account of having translated not from Maimonides’ Arabic original—which was unavailable—but from an Arabic back-translation made on the basis of Ibn Tibbon’s Hebrew, see: Septimus, ibid., 53–54; Baneth, “Rabbi yehudah al arizi ve-shalshelet ha-tirgumim shel ma amar te iyyat ha-metim”; and Halkin, “Ma amar te iyyat ha-metim la-rambam be-tirgumo shel rabbi yehudah al arizi.” 13 A.F.L. Beeston suggests that al-Hamadh n called his collection of rhymed tales Maq m t, or “Standings,” to distinguish his ﬁctional, narrative use of saj , or rhymed prose, from the anecdotes in plain prose that had generally been told in maj lis or sessions “where both narrator and audience were seated.” See Beeston, “Al-Hamadh n , al- ar r , and the Maq m t Genre,” 127. On the maq ma genre and its reception into Arabic literature see also Drory, Models and Contacts: Arabic Literature and its Impact on Medieval Jewish Culture, 11–36.

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ﬂow of language, Al arizi initially translated al- ar r ’s Maq m t into a suitably elevated and clever Hebrew. This work has come to be known as Ma berot Iti el, after its narrator.14 But, as Al arizi relates in the introduction to his Ta kemoni, he was driven to produce an original Hebrew maq ma as well, in large measure to prove that the Holy Tongue was equal to the task.15 Like its Arabic model, the Ta kemoni is an anthology of independent chapters or maq m t (Hebrew: ma barot) in ornate rhymed prose, interspersed with metrical poems. These self-contained episodes do not form one consecutive plot, but are uniﬁed by the consistent presence of two main dramatis personae, the protagonist Heber the Kenite and the narrator Heman the Ezrahite. Most chapters have a more or less elaborate frame story: at the very least, they open with a meeting between the two characters and close with their temporary separation. The roguish Heber is a wandering poet and inveterate mischief-maker who turns up in a variety of locations and settings. Protean, he often appears in disguise, watched but not recognized by his friend Heman, to whom he reveals his true identity only at the end of the adventure. In the second chapter Heman embarks on a sea journey to hear a preacher famed for his ﬁre and brimstone sermons urging repentance and renunciation of worldly

14 Al arizi boasts that others had intended to translate al- ar r ’s book, but only he was equipped to do so; see Ta kemoni pp. 14–15 (= Reichert 1:39). Only slightly more than half of his translation has survived; see Judah Al arizi, Ma berot Iti el, pp. 4–5 (Hebrew numeration). The title does not appear anywhere in the extant manuscript; it was coined by the Oxford Arabist Thomas Chenery, who published the work in 1872. See Schirmann, HPCS, 177–84. On the ingenuity with which Al arizi found Hebrew equivalents for Arabic names and qur anic quotations, see Lavi, “The Rationale of al- ar z in Biblicizing the Maq m t of al- ar r .” 15 See Ta kemoni, pp. 8–16 and 19–30 (= Reichert 1:30–41 and 44–58). Al arizi’s generation was likely the last for whom the need to respond to the challenge of Arabic was a spur to Hebrew literary creativity; see Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 16. In thirteenth-century Christian Spain, the inﬂuence of Arabic culture was signiﬁcantly less than it had been in Andalusia, and the grip of Arabic esthetic ideals and standards on Jewish literati gradually loosened. Still, following Al arizi’s lead, several thirteenth-century Hispano-Jewish authors felt compelled to champion the cause of Hebraism. Al arizi decries the neglect of the Holy Tongue for Arabic and urges its rehabilitation in his Hebrew and Arabic introductions to the Ta kemoni; Ch. 1 of that work; and in the introduction to his translation of Maimonides’ Mishnah Commentary. Recent scholarship has speculated variously on his motivations, taking into account the cultural orbits in which he was active. See: Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 119–124; Drory, “The Hidden Context,” 15–27; idem, Models and Contacts, 215–32; and Schirmann, HPCS, 188–90 and 214–16 (Fleischer’s summary of the chapter).

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pleasures. The preacher turns out to be Heber. In the thirty-fourth chapter Heman encounters a distraught and sullen individual who tells him such an unbelievable tale of “hospitality” from a vulgar, nouveau riche merchant that Heman justiﬁably suspects he is Heber.16 At other times the irrepressible Heber appears as himself, relating a new escapade to Heman, who then retells the story to the reader.17 As Dan Pagis has observed so incisively, these two narrative frameworks set up diﬀerent truth claims: Heman is a reliable witness to Heber’s antics and duplicities, but because Heber can be an impostor and a knave, the exploits he recounts to Heman must often be taken with a healthy dose of skepticism.18 Deceptions of various kinds are central to Hebrew rhymed prose narratives, as recent scholarship has taken pains to show.19 The characters are given to guile and trickery; through cunning disguise they conceal their true identities, only to reveal them once their fellows have been duped. At the same time, the reader confronts narrative and stylistic ruses intended to give him pause: by implicitly calling into question the narrator’s credibility, and by embedding tales and poems in larger contexts or frame stories that may undercut their veracity, the author teases, diverts, and challenges his audience to make sense of his richly layered work. Moreover, the author himself often steps into the narrative, either as a participant—who thus blurs the boundaries between reality and fantasy—or to tell the reader that the entire work is ﬁctitious; its characters merely the products 16 On this satirical and entertaining maq ma, see Segal, “Of a Host Bombastic and a Feast Fantastic” and “Rhyme and Reason: The Thirty-Fourth Gate of Alharizi’s Tahkemoni,” included in revised form in idem, The Book of Ta kemoni. 17 See, e.g., the twenty-second chapter, “The Maq ma of the Astrologer.” For two ﬁne studies of this chapter’s portrayal of Muslims and Jews see Brann, “Power in the Portrayal” and Scheindlin, “Al- arizi’s Astrologer.” 18 See Pagis, “Variety in Medieval Rhymed Narratives” and Change and Tradition, 199–244. See also Segal, “Beginnings, Conclusions and Frameworks in the Book of Ta kemoni.” Pagis has shown that the typical Hebrew maq ma is not simply an exercise in linguistic virtuosity, but a striking combination of largely ﬁctional narrative and rhetorical showpiece. He has also demonstrated convincingly that, while the Ta kemoni is a typical maq ma, not all the works subsumed under this genre actually adhere to the standard maq ma pattern; many in fact boldly exploit contextuality, complex overall narrative structures, techniques of plot and characterization, and stylistic modes that set them apart from the episodic prototype. 19 See: Pagis, “Variety in Medieval Rhymed Narratives”; Brann, The Compunctious Poet, esp. 138–40; Scheindlin, “Fawns of the Palace and Fawns of the Field”; Fishman, “A Medieval Parody of Misogyny”; and Huss, “Ha-ta poset ba-maqama ha- ivrit bi-sfarad.”

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of his imagination. According to Dan Pagis, these devices, used deliberately, allow the author to “juggle the conventions of ﬁction” for the entertainment and ediﬁcation of his audience.20 These playful, relatively sophisticated literary techniques were without precedent in Hebrew letters. The emergence of Hebrew rhymed prose narratives was novel in many respects: the genre developed primarily in Christian Spain during the post-classical period of Hispano-Hebrew literature (mid-twelfth to ﬁfteenth centuries), amid new social circumstances and a diﬀerent cultural milieu.21 These belletristic works aimed at a broader, socially more diverse audience than Andalusian courtly poetry, which was intended for exclusive, aristocratic circles. The beauty of classical poetry lay in its elegant, at times recondite embellishment of a small pool of predetermined themes and stock motifs. But even when written with aristocratic patronage, the new works cast their nets widely, yielding a panorama of medieval society in an intriguing blend of ﬁction and realism: “the wars of heroes and annals of kings; the adventures of the road . . . the passion of lovers; gardens and hamlets; words of princes; the patter of children; the chase of hunters; the wiles of swindlers, and the folly of fools. . . .”22 The stated objectives of these imaginative narratives were also innovative and varied, ranging from didactic enlightenment to delightful entertainment. Parodies of conventional genres featured alongside biting satires of recognizable—and often elite—social types and professions. Al arizi claimed his Ta kemoni would answer the needs of an amusingly heterogeneous readership: the God-fearing would ﬁnd in it “reproofs and prayers,” while the impious would discover “the delights of the world”; fools would learn prudence from it while the wise would 20

Pagis, “Variety in Medieval Rhymed Narratives,” 95–98. The ﬁrst of these works, Ibn aqbel’s Ne um asher ben yehudah, was written before 1140, towards the close of the Andalusian period. But the genre came into its own in Christian Spain. For Ibn aqbel’s text see Schirmann, HPSP 2:554–65; for translations see Segal, “ ‘Ma beret Ne um Asher Ben Yehudah’ of Solomon ibn aqbel: A Study of Scriptural Citation Clusters” and Scheindlin, “Asher in the Harem”; see also idem, “Fawns of the Palace and Fawns of the Field.” 22 See Ta kemoni, p. 13 (= Reichert 1:37). Here and elsewhere in this chapter, I have modiﬁed Reichert’s translation slightly. Many episodes of the Ta kemoni are set in places Al arizi visited, and there is a temptation to read the work as a travel account reﬂecting historical facts and social and cultural realia. Yet, as Ross Brann warns, the work is so highly ﬁctionalized that to adopt such an approach—as does Judith Dishon in her “Medieval Panorama in the Book of Tahkemoni”—is to miss its essentially belletristic character; see “Power in the Portrayal,” p. 14, n. 2. 21

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gain more wisdom; it would improve the compositional skills of versiﬁers and the deﬁcient, stumbling Hebrew of Jews in the eastern “provinces.”23 No longer constrained by the ideal of strict biblical classicism, Al arizi and his fellow authors draw freely on biblical, rabbinic and medieval Hebrew in their quest for a supple and expressive linguistic medium.24 Rife with puns and humorous pastiches of scriptural verses lifted out of context, the text of the Ta kemoni presses forward in an artful cascade of internal rhymes.25 Al arizi’s technical virtuosity is staggering and his rhetorical agility is astounding. His range extends to a trilingual Hebrew-Arabic-Aramaic poem; palinodes (poems retracting something said in an earlier poem); and lipograms (poems avoiding the use of a speciﬁc letter of the alphabet), all executed with aplomb and, seemingly, without eﬀort.26 The thematics of the poems in the Ta kemoni are often determined by the subject matter of the narrative episodes in which they are inserted. They serve as a sort of lyrical reprise: rather than advancing the plot, the embedded poems recapitulate the chapter’s main motifs.27 Most, therefore, address worldly matters: ants and ﬂeas (#4); the months of the year (#5); jousting warriors (#7); poetic competitions (#16); lovesickness and its cure (#48). Due to the work’s broad compass, many of these are new topics, not found in the classical Andalusian repertoire. Where chapters feature time-honored secular or courtly motifs, their poems often resemble the Andalusian model, 23 Ta kemoni, pp. 13–14 (= Reichert 1:37–38). Al arizi’s insistence on the work’s power to enlighten is seen by Brann as an “apology” for its “secular nature”; see “Power in the Portrayal,” p. 5 and p. 16, n. 22 and The Compunctious Poet, 119–24. Drory, who notes that the traditional division of functions between Hebrew and Arabic broke down in Christian Spain, argues that Al arizi lists various literary forms to be included in his book as part of his crusade to prove that Hebrew writing can—and should—be expanded to include genres which until that point had been written exclusively in Arabic. See “The Hidden Context,” 22–23 and Models and Contacts, 224–27. 24 See Pagis, Change and Tradition, 182–85. 25 For an illustration of Al arizi’s ingenious use of scriptural verses plucked out of context, see the passage from Ta kemoni Ch. 4 analyzed in Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 27–28. 26 For the trilingual poem see Ch. 11, which also features a poem whose every word contains the letter Resh and another one that completely omits the letter Resh. For palinodes see Ch. 8, where a panegyric read in reverse becomes defamatory, and Ch. 27, where Heber praises and then denigrates wine using the same poetic form for both. 27 Note, however, that in some cases, such as the more rhetorical episodes, the poems may have inspired the frame narrative. See Pagis, Change and Tradition, pp. 204–212.

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adhering to the conventions of love or wine poetry.28 A few episodes are concerned with sermons or prayer and—at least on the surface— their poems voice spiritual or penitential themes familiar from contemplative or liturgical verse. The second chapter, in which Heber poses as a formidable preacher, is shot through with warnings to repent before it is too late, and ends with a hortatory poem reminiscent of the Andalusian tokhe ah.29 In the ﬁfteenth episode Heman is bereft after his ship has capsized and all his worldly goods are lost. Heber tries to console him by composing a prayer for him— addressed not to God, but to Moses, who is asked to intercede on high on Heman’s behalf. Theologically a bit unorthodox, the chapter nevertheless uses well-known petitionary modes and religious themes.30 A philosophical conception of the soul informs the book’s introductory maq ma, which borrows the language and cosmology of Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut.31 But only the thirteenth chapter is completely given over to poetic explorations of the dualism of body and soul. The Andalusian tradition of poems devoted to the soul undergoes extraordinary transformations in the thirteenth maq ma of Al arizi’s Ta kemoni.32 Endowed with a radically new literary context, intended function, and poetic form, his engaging “Dispute of the Soul with the Body and the Intellect” is quite unlike the earlier piyyutim. And yet, lines of continuity are still clearly visible, for Al arizi’s piece selectively appropriates and reworks recognizable genres and familiar themes. The most immediately noticeable innovations are formal: like the rest of the Ta kemoni, the “Dispute” is narrated in rhymed prose, interspersed with poems composed in classical Andalusian meters and rhyme schemes. And even though this episode is far

28

See, e.g., the love poems in Chapter 20. For two devotional, strophic tokhe ot by Al arizi see Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 286–91. Al arizi wrote relatively few piyyutim; some are preserved in Eastern ma zorim. See Schirmann, HPCS, 169–70. 30 Ezra Fleischer adduces this episode as an example of simple, “popular” religion in the Ta kemoni; see his summary of the chapter on Al arizi in Schirmann, HPCS, 214–16. 31 Aharon Mirsky notes that Al arizi reworks and adapts his borrowings from Keter Malkhut to suit his own needs, which have less to do with praising the Creator than with celebrating the role of wisdom as the author’s muse; see his “Le-haqdamat al arizi la-ta kemoni.” 32 See now Segal, The Book of Ta kemoni, 134–42 (translation) and 491–4 (analysis). My conclusions, reached independently, concur with Segal’s on a number of points. 29

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more cerebral than the work’s many tales of adventure, with their concealed identities and surprising dénouements, it too has a kind of frame story. The narrator, Heman relates that when he “had been wayward a long time, (his) soul longed to return to the path of repentance.”33 When his boon companion, Heber, informs him of his decision to return to his own land, Heman’s parting request is that the wise Heber expound the mystery of the body and the soul and clarify which of them—or whether both of them—will be sentenced to punishment on Judgment Day. Heber obliges, explaining that on Judgment Day, when the books are opened to examine the deeds of the wicked and the upright, . . . and transgressions and meritorious deeds are weighed, terror grips the sinners . . . who seek alibis and devise wicked schemes. Then body and soul will be summoned before God for judgment. . . . Each will state his claim, and the Judge will judge between them.34

Harking back to the heavenly trial depicted in bSanhedrin 91a–b and Leviticus Rabbah 4:5, Heber’s preface sets the scene for the mutual recriminations of soul and body, much as Joseph Ibn Abitur’s opening verses had two centuries earlier in his tokhe ah, “Ammi shokhen ere .”35 The remainder of the “Dispute” clearly draws on the earlier Andalusian tradition of tokhe ot by Ibn Abitur, Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul, Solomon Ibn Gabirol, and Ba ya Ibn Paquda, among others, which portray the posthumous judgment of body and soul. The heated exchanges that follow are familiar in substance: both parties disavow responsibility for their sins. The soul accuses the body of having deﬁled her inherent purity by indulging its carnal appetites, which are so alien to her own nature, while the body pleads innocence, contending that it was blind and inanimate until the soul came along and led it astray with the evil thoughts and schemes for which she alone is culpable. But the earlier model is in many ways simply a point of departure for Al arizi’s new venture. To begin with, the medium has changed: no longer cast in carefully measured tripartite lines of end-stopped verse, each with its own

33

Ta kemoni, p. 138 (= Reichert 1:201). Translated after Reichert 1:202. Cf. bRH 16b, where the righteous and the wicked are said to be inscribed in heavenly record books on Rosh Hashanah. 35 On the midrashic passages, see above, pp. 33–34. For the text of Ibn Abitur’s poem, see Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 154–55. For a discussion of the judgment of body and soul in early Spanish tokhe ot, see above, pp. 51–54. 34

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rhyme, the two rounds of charge and counter-charge are now couched in free-form blocks of elevated rhymed prose whose cadences modulate with a continuous variation in phrase length, as well as in the number and placement of rhymes. The Hebrew is still largely biblical and, like his predecessors, Al arizi adroitly manipulates a host of scriptural verse fragments, seamlessly weaving them into the fabric of his text. Yet, the language ﬂows more ﬂuidly and ﬂexibly without the formal constraints of acrostics or mandatory scriptural citations at the end of each line.36 In addition, the new literary context and function of the “Dispute” allow him to play with the forms of address. The defendants in the earlier tokhe ot addressed their pleas to God, indirectly leveling their accusations against each other. But in their new, non-liturgical and belletristic context, soul and body are free to attack each other head-on, happily thrusting and parrying, while the formerly omnipresent ﬁgure of the divine Judge—if not the idea of ultimate judgment—recedes into the background. Unprecedented, too, is the turn of events: following the body’s second rebuttal, the soul is confounded and can ﬁnd no words to refute the allegation that she is the guilty party. Into the breach steps the intellect (ha-sekhel), who urges the soul not to succumb to the machinations of the evil inclination, but to cleanse herself of the body’s deﬁlements and retrain her sights on her original home in the divine world. Structurally and substantively, the intercession of the intellect moves the piece beyond the traditional trial scene of the early Spanish tokhe ot and their underlying midrashic texts. Where their symmetrical exchange of grievances is concluded when God steps in to judge the two defendants jointly, the appearance here of the intellect initiates a new phase of the dispute. Ostensibly, the intellect intercedes on behalf of the soul, but rather than coming to her defense, he exhorts her to repentance, brieﬂy in rhymed prose and at length in verse. Addressed in the second person to a female

36 On the formal features of the earlier tokhe ot see Yahalom, Poetry and Society, 24–34. See too his instructive remarks on the antiquity of the three-fold poetic line and its particular suitability—due to its breaking the symmetry of binary oppositions—to the unfolding of an ongoing dispute. Al arizi’s two free-standing tokhe ot also diﬀer formally from the earlier models; see Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 286–91. According to Fleischer, they are in the Eastern style; see Schirmann, HPCS, p. 170, n. 94. Note the highly compressed version of the heavenly trial in the ﬁrst of these poems, “Yehemeh libbi.”

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interlocutor, his earnest appeals and well-intentioned reprimands resonate with motifs and language typical of eleventh- and twelfthcentury Andalusian poems admonishing the soul: “Your way is far; take provision . . . Your fellows rise (to pray) at midnight, but you sleep . . . Return, captive one, to your lord; do not delay. . . .” But where those reshuyot, mu arrak t, and tokhe ot were composed for devotional purposes, the intellect’s rebuke occurs in the larger context of a secular, belletristic work. Opening with the words, “Liveshi ye idah oz” (“Gird yourself, Only One, with strength”), the intellect’s versiﬁed sermon is cast in quantitative meter (al-k mil; ha-shalem) and monorhyme, the classical qa da form adapted from Arabic prosody, and commonly given to poems inserted into Hebrew maq m t. These formal features distinguish it from devotional poems on the same topic, which were generally composed in a less rigorous syllabic meter and a strophic conﬁguration, but are otherwise quite similar.37 As can be seen from the incipit, Al arizi freely uses the standard Andalusian epithets, or kinnuyim, for the soul. Many of his metaphors are also familiar from the Andalusian corpus, and reﬂect his predecessors’ compelling synthesis of Neoplatonic and classical rabbinic eschatology. The soul is described as a dove who once nested in God’s protective shade, and her strayings from the straight and narrow are portrayed as a descent into the deﬁling world of corporeality which can only be reversed by purifying acts of withdrawal, repentance, and prayer. While it focuses exclusively on the fate of the individual soul, the poem repeatedly invokes the ﬁgure of the divine Judge—previously elided from the trial scene—as the ultimate authority to whom the soul must be prepared to answer for her deeds. These recurrent references to Judgment Day forge a link with the opening portion of the “Dispute” and pave the way thematically for the poem’s closing sections, which contain two unexpected and implied, but undeclared, changes of speaker. More precisely, the words are still spoken by the intellect, but as part of his apostrophe he prescribes a ﬁrst-person confession for the soul. These expressions of contrition (“My Rock . . . how can I hide my iniquities from You . . .”?) conclude with a plea that God bear her glad tidings which is immediately followed by the desired

37 On syllabic meter and strophic form, see Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry, 349–55.

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words of consolation, again phrased in the ﬁrst person, as if uttered by God.38 Certainly, there are earlier poems, such as Judah Halevi’s “Ye idah ya adi na el emunah,” that take the form of a dialogue between the admonisher and his soul.39 But Al arizi’s device of embedding the additional speeches in the main speaker’s reproof has an air of novelty about it, and may mirror the narrative technique of embedding one story in another that is commonly deployed in the maq ma, requiring the sensitive reader to consider each plot contextually, rather than in isolation. In the larger narrative blocks of individual episodes or chapters, the use of this stratagem can radically alter the surface meaning of the implanted story or stories, but the similar usage in the intellect’s poem does not seem to aﬀect the sense of what is said, so much as to suggest an experimental fusion of old and new literary forms and rhetorical techniques. The two inset poems follow directly after a telling self-reference: as in Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” and “Nafshi de i mah tif ali,” the admonisher marks a turning point by advising the soul that her return to God’s encampment will beneﬁt him as well. In other words, Al arizi signals the less conventional poetic insertions with an established rhetorical device.40 38

Reichert’s English translation includes two lines that explicitly prescribe the soul’s confession: “Call unto your Rock and say to Him: ‘Lord of the Universe, I am greatly brought down, and lowly is my dwelling’ ”; see 1:206. These lines do not appear in the Hebrew texts of Toporowsky, De Lagarde, Kaminka, or the editio princeps (Constantinople, 1578). The discrepancy is undoubtedly due to the fact that there is still no properly critical edition of the Ta kemoni, which is preserved in numerous complete and fragmentary manuscripts. Al arizi himself may not even have produced a deﬁnitive ﬁnal version of the work; see Schirmann, New Hebrew Poems from the Genizah, 282–84; “Yehudah al arizi, ha-meshorer ve-ha-mesapper,” 356; and HPCS, 185–88. Reichert had apparently sought to prepare a critical edition, using De Lagarde as his base text and recording variant readings “from the unpublished Adler Ms. in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America”; see The Tahkemoni of Judah Al-Harizi, 1:12. (According to Kaminka, De Lagarde’s text is riddled with errors; see the appendix to his own edition, pp. 467–70, where he admits that his text is not rigorously critical either.) A survey of the various editions of the work and critical responses to them can be found in Habermann, “Sefer ‘Ta kemoni’ li-yhudah al arizi u-mahadurotav.” 39 Halevi, Liturgical Poetry 3:708–709. On the dialogue form in Halevi’s poetry, see Hazan, The Poetics of the Sephardi Piyut, 308–14. 40 For this usage in “Nafshi de i” and “Shabbe i nafshi” see Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 1:293, v. 25 and 2:537, v. 10. Since Al arizi also wrote Arabic poems in the classical qa da mold, his abrupt changes of speaker might equally have been inspired by the poetic device of iltif t (often glossed as brief, interpolated apostrophes), whereby the speaker suddenly shifts from the ﬁrst person to, e.g., address himself in the second person. See Van Gelder, “The Abstracted Self in Arabic Poetry.”

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Spurred by the intellect’s insistent counsel and entreaties, the soul responds in a few lines of rhymed prose, complaining that she is caught between the Scylla of the evil ye er and the Charybdis of the body; cruel and wicked captors from whose grip she cannot seem to free herself.41 She follows this lament with a long, metrical, monorhymed poem bewailing her forced separation from her Rock and ﬁrst love, and betrothal to an impure body. Here too, Al arizi interweaves familiar motifs and imagery with more unusual similes and points of view. Conceptual continuities with Andalusian poems on the soul are evident from the opening line of “Me-hekhalei galgal yeqar galiti,” where the soul recounts her exile from the “palaces” of the Sphere of the Intellect and descent into the “pit of darkness.” The cosmology of Keter Malkhut is clearly behind Al arizi’s location of the soul’s original, celestial home in galgal yeqar, for yeqar is the Aramaic equivalent of kavod, the luminous, spiritual substance of the supernal Intellect which, according to Ibn Gabirol, is the source of pure souls. When, in the closing line the soul voices the hope that God will restore her to apiryon yeqar, Al arizi is again drawing on the twenty-fourth canto of Keter Malkhut, where Ibn Gabirol situates the apiryon (canopy or chamber) of the divine Glory within the sphere of the Intellect.42 Typical too of the earlier, philosophically informed poems is the portrayal of the soul’s embodiment as a comedown, and her paradoxical, almost aphoristic assertion, “So long as I dwell in the body, I am considered dead, but were I to leave it, I would revive.”43 The soul’s wistful memories of her original, blissful union with her beloved make extensive use of language and imagery from the Song of Songs, implying an allegorical reading of that scriptural book as an account of the love between the individual soul and God. From Ibn Gabirol to Judah Halevi and Abraham Ibn Ezra, the Andalusian poets had intimated such an interpretation in piyyutim describing the soul’s return to God with biblical images of love and redemp-

41 Presumably for dramatic eﬀect, Al arizi personiﬁes the ye er ha-ra and the body separately, even though the earlier philosophical poems often identify the two, fusing the rabbinic evil inclination with the lower souls of the Neoplatonic triad. 42 See above, pp. 63–64. 43 See Ta kemoni, p. 144 (= Reichert 1:209) and Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, p. 143, n. 99. Philosophically colored poems often express the motif of death as the soul’s release into true life in a terse and paradoxical fashion; for examples see Levi Ibn al-Tabb n, Poems, 173–75.

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tion, but Maimonides was the ﬁrst to make this exegetical approach explicit. Emboldened by the Master’s declaration that “the entire Song of Songs is indeed an allegory of this love,” Al arizi builds on the earlier tradition with sustained borrowings from Canticles.44 In a pastiche of phrases from the books of Hosea, Genesis, and Lamentations, he develops the metaphor of the soul’s “arranged marriage” to the body: After I had been as a virgin, they betrothed me And I acquired an unclean body for a husband. He impregnated me with his impurity; Day and night I conceived his children of whoredom. Daily I bear upon his knees myriads of children whom I dandled, yes, and reared.45

Though the passage derives its conceits from perfectly respectable biblical sources, such frank, even coarse, sensuality is rarely found in Andalusian evocations of the soul’s straying due to embodiment. One thinks of Ibn Gabirol’s grand exhortation to the soul, “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi,” where the speaker conﬁnes himself to spiritual imagery, berating his soul for throwing oﬀ the divine yoke and unwisely spurning the dictates of reason.46 Al arizi’s departure may, again, be explained contextually: though the soul’s poem is declaimed in earnest, the Ta kemoni as a whole is a work of secular entertainment, aimed at a broad audience. Thus, while it draws on the conventions of sober contemplative and liturgical poetry, the “Dispute” subtly tests the limits of sobriety and propriety. Having bemoaned her separation from her true beloved, the aggrieved soul lashes out reproachfully against God: “Why has He rejected me as a woman who has whored while subject to her lord, though I have not done so?”47 Her outburst borders on irreverence—unless one denies that the soul’s embodiment is part of the divine plan. Yet, by the end

44 See Ta kemoni, pp. 143–45 (= Reichert 1:207–210) and Maimonides, MT, Teshuvah 10:3; cf. Sefer moreh ha-nevukhim 3:51. See also pp. 102–104 above. 45 See Ta kemoni, p. 143; translated after Reichert 1:208. 46 See Ibn Gabirol, Liturgical Poetry 2:543–46. Cf. also Al arizi’s Arabic philosophical “qa da . . . about the rational soul which is enamored of the virtues” in Stern, “Some Unpublished Poems by al-Harizi,” 348–52, and his Hebrew poem on the rational soul, “ onah ve-nisgeret be-vor gevyah.” The latter is included in Ch. 50 of the Ta kemoni, which is eﬀectively an appendix of well over a hundred unrelated poems; see Ta kemoni, pp. 409–410. 47 Ta kemoni, p. 144 (= Reichert 1:208); cf. Num. 5:19–20 and Hos. 4:12.

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of the poem, she has resigned herself to wait passively until God restores her to her celestial home and the shelter of His wings.48 Who should obtrude himself at this juncture, but the evil ye er— a force much warned of, but rarely heard from in Andalusian poems on the soul. Following the pattern established by the previous speakers, he opens his remarks in rhymed prose. If the intellect is the soul’s champion, then he is the body’s. In a cunning performance, he reminds the soul of the transience of her worldly pleasures, and urges her to enjoy these ﬂeeting delights while she can. These carpe diem motifs are familiar from Golden Age courtly verse, much of which advocates luxuriating in the good life while it is within reach.49 But, in putting these words into the mouth of the evil ye er, Al arizi also cleverly inverts the standard pious advice to the soul to look to the next world, precisely because the material satisfactions of this world are ephemeral. Intent on winning the soul over to his side, the ye er ha-ra —a true devil’s advocate!—tells her that she may as well indulge, “for after death there is no joy nor repose, nor sitting still, nor journeying.” Not simply a perverse denial of any kind of afterlife, these words, with their particular resonances, may be read as an ironic allusion to Maimonides’ purely spiritual interpretation of the rabbinic world to come. In his Mishneh Torah Maimonides had cited a well-known passage at bBerakhot 17a in support of his view that there are no bodies in the world to come, only the souls of the righteous who have attained knowledge of the divine.50 Echoes of his “ha- olam ha-ba ein bo guf u-gviyah . . . ein bo lo akhilah ve-lo shetiyah” can be heard in the phrasing of the evil ye er’s “a arei ha-mavet ein sim ah ve- ein marge ah, ve- ein yeshivah ve- ein nesi ah.” It is even possible that Al arizi’s choice of yeshivah was intended to remind the reader of Maimonides’ ﬁgurative interpretation, in the same discussion, of the talmudic statement that the righteous “sit” in olam ha-ba with

48 The introductory maq ma unquestionably portrays the soul’s embodiment as divinely ordained: an angel of God ﬁnds the soul at the supernal well of wisdom and commands her in evocative biblical language to leave her father’s house and serve her designated body as a handmaid. The soul waits dutifully until the body is created and then diﬀuses her warmth throughout him, bringing him to life. See Ta kemoni, p. 5 (= Reichert 1:25–26). 49 See Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death, 25–28; 39; 46–49; 54–59; 135 and Brann, The Compunctious Poet, 9–22 passim. 50 MT, Teshuvah 8:2; see also Haqdamot le-feirush ha-mishnah, p. 125 (Introduction to “Pereq eleq”).

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their crowns on their heads, enjoying the splendor of the Shekhinah. Since sitting is a physical act, but there are no bodies in the world to come, Maimonides had explained the phrase as a metaphor for the eﬀortless existence of the souls of the righteous after death, just as he had interpreted the “crowns on their heads” as a metaphor for the crowning knowledge of God, through which they merit eternal life.51 During the Resurrection Controversy of the early thirteenth century, Maimonides had been accused of shattering the simple faith of the philosophically unsophisticated in resurrection and ultimate reward.52 A staunch supporter of Maimonides and author of a translation of his Treatise on Resurrection, Al arizi penned a series of short poems defending the Mishneh Torah against its arrogant critics, and praising Maimonides as a larger-than-life “messenger of God,” comparable to the biblical Moses.53 He also lionized Maimonides and disparaged those who denounced the Mishneh Torah—a work that he hailed for its concision and clarity—in Chapter 46 of the Ta kemoni and a separate Arabic maq ma.54 These eulogies never speciﬁcally address doctrinal issues, but in his “Dispute” Al arizi apparently could not resist metamorphosing the Master’s putative repudiation of bodily resurrection into the evil ye er’s Sadducean denial of any sort of life after death. Whether conceived as an artful response to distasteful Maimonidean critics or as a private joke, Al arizi’s allusion seems to minimize the controversial nature of Maimonides’ stance by juxtaposing it with a far more nihilistic and eschatologically untenable position.55

51

MT, Teshuvah 8:2. See Septimus, Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition, 39–60. 53 See Ta kemoni, Ch. 50, pp. 388–90, 402, 404, 406, 417, and 425. On the emergence of Maimonides’ “heroic image,” which for Al arizi was “more important than a precise understanding of his philosophy,” see Septimus, ibid. and p. 145, n. 112. 54 See Ta kemoni, 348–49; Stern, “Rabbi yehuda al arizi be-shiv o shel harambam”; and idem, “An Unpublished Maqama by Al-Harizi.” See also Schirmann, HPCS, p. 157, n. 43. 55 Some of the polemical poetry that emerged from the Resurrection Controversy of the early thirteenth century and the Maimonidean Controversy of the 1230’s explicitly addressed eschatological issues; see: Dienstag, “Ha-moreh nevukhim bashirah u-va-mli ah”; Brody, “Mikhtamim al ha-rambam u-sfarav”; idem, “Poems and Letters of Me ir Hallevi Abulaﬁa”; idem, “Poems of Me ullam ben elomo da Piera”; Lehmann, “Polemic and Satire in the Poetry of the Maimonidean Controversy”; and Schirmann, HPCS, 279–329 passim. 52

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In the monorhymed poem that follows, the evil ye er reiterates his heretical views, negating the very possibility of corporeal resurrection: Can yesterday return after it has gone? So man after his death can never live again.

Having put paid to the notion of eschatological reward, he again urges the soul to rejoice and “do herself good” while still in the body. Provocative in the extreme, every piece of advice he gives her contradicts the intellect’s sage counsel. If the intellect’s poem typiﬁes the Andalusian homily to the soul, the evil ye er’s piece is a clever parody. Warnings to beware of Time and its snares are common in Hebrew aphoristic and contemplative poetry, where zeman, or the vicissitudes of time personiﬁed, is an arbitrary and often malign force that lures men into a false sense of security and well-being and then betrays them.56 Indeed, the intellect berates the soul for her credulous faith in “the bounties of that traitor, Time,” and for leaning on him, “though he is a broken reed.”57 Yet here the ye er ha-ra advises the soul to enjoy the portion of worldly goods Time has meted out to her. His plea that she not place her trust in empty and vain individuals echoes his captious opening, “Precious soul, how can you trust in your intellect?” and thus means the very opposite of what it would in a standard exhortation to piety. Where such poems regularly denigrate the body or the temporal world as the soul’s prison, he inverts the topos, asking rhetorically why she would want to shut up her “abode of joy and tranquillity” here below and open herself up to agony and distress. Instead of reproaching her for her captivity to the body’s appetites, he blames the intellect for imprisoning her, craftily reversing the sense of familiar phrases like, “If you ascend from the pit of your aﬄiction, you will be exalted; if you emerge from darkness, you will shine.”58 For readers schooled in Andalusian verse, the poem’s very incipit

56

On the motif of Time in Hebrew and Arabic poetry see Scheindlin, The Gazelle, 157–58 and Levin, “Zeman ve-tevel be-shirat ha- ol.” 57 See Ta kemoni, p. 142 (= Reichert 1:206). Reichert’s negative, “yet you did not lean upon it,” makes no sense in context, nor is it supported by the Hebrew versions of Toporowsky, Kaminka, or De Lagarde. 58 Ta kemoni, pp. 146–47 (= Reichert 1:210–12). For a more conventional use of similar phrases, see his poem on the rational soul, “ onah ve-nisgeret” in Ta kemoni, pp. 409–10 (= Reichert 2:393).

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would have signaled the subversion to come: its prototypical address, “Nefesh yeqarah,” raises expectations of a pious tokhe ah, but a conventional rebuke to the soul would never entertain the seditious rhetorical question, “How can you trust in your intellect?” Al arizi wrote a book of largely pietistic homonymic rhymes, Sefer ha- anaq, which contains a serious admonitory couplet beginning with the very same appellation: “Nefesh yeqarah a aritekh baqqeshi” (“Precious soul, look to your future fate”).59 His lampoon is, then, as much a piece of self-mockery as a good-natured takeoﬀ on what may have struck his readers as a somewhat archaic and humorless, albeit venerable, tradition of poetic moralizing to the soul. But there may be a serious subtext to his lighthearted spoof, for nefesh yeqarah is also the opening phrase of a gnomic couplet by Samuel Hanagid. Included in his collection entitled Ben Qohelet, which draws on the sober themes of the book of Ecclesiastes, this pithy maxim reﬂects on abstention and gluttony in a way that undercuts the evil ye er’s hedonistic advice: The noble soul grows fat on little wealth, the base man’s ﬂush with goods, yet hunts for more. The world is like an orchard: some are sated just to see its fruits; others eat but never have their ﬁll.60

The Nagid uses nefesh in the sense of an individual or a person, and his nefesh yeqarah is a third person description, rather than a second person address. Yet, the echoes of his aphorism at the outset of Al arizi’s poem are almost certainly intentional, as practically no other poet used that opening phrase in the intervening two centuries.61 By alluding, however faintly, to a couplet advocating mod-

59 Al arizi, Sefer ha- anaq, no. 177. The work is modeled on, and takes its name from, Moses Ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha- anaq (also known as Tarshish). Following Arabic literary critics, both poets treat homonyms as a variety of paronomasia (tajn s, jin s). In a tremendous technical feat, Al arizi refrained from using rhymes already exploited by Ibn Ezra. Still, his collection contains 257 aphoristic couplets, arranged according to the alphabetical order of their closing, homonymic rhymes. Schirmann notes that Al arizi was captivated by tajn s rhymes, to which he also devoted Chapter 33 of his Ta kemoni; see HPCS, 168–69. For additional collections of homonymic rhymes by Al arizi see Fleischer, “Qeva im shel shirei immudim me- et yehudah al arizi.” 60 Samuel Hanagid, Diwan 3:156. On the Nagid’s gnomic poetry see Schirmann, HPMS, 234–40. 61 See Davidson, Thesaurus vol. 3, p. 217. The Nagid’s gnomic poetry seems to have been part of this generation’s standard curriculum, judging from Judah Ibn Tibbon’s advice to his son Samuel; see Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, 51–92.

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eration and contentment with one’s lot in life, Al arizi subtly undermines the evil ye er’s ploy to corrupt the soul.62 So it is that the earlier symmetries are broken and the forces of right have the ﬁnal word: the intellect steps in once more, warning the soul not to be seduced by the ye er’s scandalous lies, and assuring her that God does indeed recompense the deserving, and will reward her after she leaves the body. She allays his fears, saying he has comforted and strengthened her, and has delivered her from the evil ye er’s grasp. She now knows that she can trust in God’s mercy to restore her to her splendid abode. The “Dispute” closes with a return to the frame story, with Heber the Kenite vaunting his ability to rouse sleeping souls with his pointed tokhe ot and to open the gates of repentance for the righteous, so that body and soul are delivered from the purgatorial ﬂames while the lusty ye er perishes like stubble or smoking ﬁre-brands.63 Despite its ostensible clarity, the identity of the speaker in this concluding poem of self-aggrandizement is curiously ambiguous. Though he opens with a resounding “I am Heber,” his claims to admonish torpid souls, coupled with the poem’s pious themes, suggest an identity between Heber and the intellect of the preceding dispute, and thus blur the lines between the frame narrative and its content, as Al arizi so often does.64 Abraham Ibn Ezra’s philosophical allegory, ay Ben Meqi , could have furnished a precedent for portraying the intellect as an itinerant enlightener of lost souls, although there the soul is guided on an ascent through the cosmos by the Active Intellect, the point of contact between the divine world and the human mind.65 (There is even a punning intimation of wandering in the name of the biblical locale, Elon a ananim, that Heber gives here as his birthplace.)66

62 The irony is compounded by the fact that the illustrious Samuel Hanagid was not known for his modesty or abstemiousness. 63 See Ta kemoni, pp. 147–48 (= Reichert 1:213). 64 The ambiguity obtains even though all the Hebrew texts other than Toporowsky preface Heber’s poem with a line spoken by the narrator, which clearly marks the transition back to the frame story; see Habermann, “Sefer ‘Ta kemoni’ li-yhudah al arizi u-mahadurotav,” 131. Note that the fourteenth maq ma concludes with a similar poem revealing Heber to be the chapter’s protagonist, who authors a philosophically informed prayer and petition to God; see Ta kemoni, 149–57. Brann adduces this chapter to illustrate the device of alerting the reader to a deception at the end of the text; see The Compunctious Poet, 138–40. 65 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, ay Ben Mekitz and Levin’s introduction. 66 The root . .n. denotes being uprooted from one’s place, migrating, being

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Admittedly, it is hard to imagine the roguish Heber of many of the work’s other episodes as the personiﬁcation of the staid intellect. Yet, by means of this incongruity, Al arizi may again be slyly undercutting the gravity of what has preceded and thus poking fun at the solemnity and earnestness of typical Andalusian poems on the soul. Al arizi’s indebtedness to older paradigms is evident throughout the “Dispute of the Soul with the Body and the Intellect.” His personiﬁcation of the intellect as the soul’s moral guide and adviser recalls not only Abraham Ibn Ezra’s rhymed prose allegory, ay Ben Meqi , but also the dialogue of soul and intellect in the third treatise of Ba ya Ibn Paquda’s Duties of the Heart.67 Yet, Ba ya’s model could also only have served as a partial inspiration. It is written in Judeo-Arabic prose rather than Hebrew verse; it examines at length a sequence of ethical and theological issues; and its tone is entirely solemn and stern. Occurring in the larger context of a chapter on man’s obedience to God ( at all h), the intellect’s admonition (tanb h) is intended to complement the precepts of religious law by fostering knowledge of God and the ability to discern traces of His wisdom in the world. The soul, debilitated by various vices, and extremely deferential, makes a series of requests for instruction in the proper way of serving God and acknowledging His bounties. In response, the intellect expounds on the soul’s obligations to abstain from blameworthy habits and shameful behavior; to appreciate God’s favors and to express thanks for them; to learn to know herself and her Benefactor; and to understand the purpose of her stay in this world. Much of the dialogue reﬂects the impact of Muslim ethical writings in its use of nafs to designate the lower soul, whose physical appetites must be restrained and regulated.68 Only towards the end, when the intellect has helped her to realize some of her spiritual potential, does the

nomadic, or wandering. The toponym, which is attested only twice in the Bible, occurs in a topical verse ( Jud. 4:11) that reads, “Now Heber the Kenite had separated from the other Kenites, . . . and had pitched his tent at Elon be- a ananim, which is near Qedesh.” Naturally, it also ﬁts the poem’s rhyme scheme. Cf. Lavi, “The Rationale of al- ar z ,” 284–87, who also notes that Al arizi’s choice of Heber the Kenite of Elon be- a ananim as the Hebrew counterpart of al- ar r ’s Ab Zayd was in large measure governed by the associations of that biblical ﬁgure with vagabondage. 67 See Hid ya 3:5–10; Vajda, “Le dialogue de l’âme et de la raison”; and idem, La théologie ascétique, 33–60. 68 Al-nafs al-amm ra bi ’l-s (the soul commanding to evil); cf. Qur n 12:53.

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term come to embrace the most noble aspect of the soul as well.69 By contrast, Al arizi’s nefesh seems throughout to be the rational soul of Neoplatonic psychology, whom the intellect counsels: “cleanse yourself from the ﬁlth of your body . . . and set your heart heavenward to the abode of glory (neveh ha-kavod ) . . . where your tent had been in the beginning.”70 Ba ya also personiﬁes the rabbinic ye er ha-ra in the ﬁfth treatise of his Duties of the Heart, where he warns that the temptations and wicked advice of the ye er (wasw s al-haw wa-ish r tuhu) spoil man’s sincere devotion to God. A crafty character, the evil inclination uses proofs and seemingly rational arguments (al- ujja wa’l-dal l ) to persuade his victim that his eﬀorts to devote himself to God are neither obligatory nor prudent. Rather, he should divert his energies to worldly matters.71 Man’s worst enemy is his evil instinct; it lies in wait for one’s vulnerable moments; deceitfully it insinuates itself into one’s aﬀections. It tries to prove that one’s soul has no existence apart from the body, that it perishes with the body and does not enjoy immortality—all in order to give one a pretext for pursuing ephemeral pleasures. But, says Ba ya, if you consult your intellect, it will disabuse you of this notion with clear arguments. Disheartened by its failure, the ye er will then try to confuse and confound you regarding a series of other cardinal beliefs. It will be persistent and imaginative in its tactics. Ba ya enlivens his exposition by putting subversive admonitions into the mouth of the wily ye er. But he also stresses that responding with reason is the surest way to expose the speciousness of the ye er’s arguments. His insistence on the ultimate triumph of the intellect and his view of man’s evil instinct as a reasoning sort of inner voice are typical of the Andalusian school of thinkers and poets.72 Poetic or belletristic precedents for the extensive scope of Al arizi’s debate between soul, intellect, and evil ye er are far less obvious. There is an embryonic dispute between the evil inclination and the intellect in four verses of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s virtuosic exhortation to the soul, “Okhia be-ﬁ ru i,” but it oﬀers no more than the

69 70 71 72

See Hid ya 3:9 (Qaﬁh, 176–81; Mansoor, 214–18). Translated after Reichert 1:204. Hid ya 5:4 (end). Hid ya 5:5.

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barest adumbration of the ramiﬁed themes and lively exchanges between interlocutors that Al arizi develops in such detail.73 His vigorous war of words, with its appeals to reason on the one hand, and eschatologically provocative views on the other, is clearly a synthesis of earlier, relatively compressed poetic dialogues with the substantial arguments of the intellect, soul, and evil ye er in Ba ya’s ethical work. Well versed in the cultural creativity and ideals of his Andalusian predecessors, Al arizi draws freely on the long-standing tradition of tokhe ot for Yom Kippur depicting the heavenly trial of body and soul. He also appropriates the philosophically informed themes and conventions of poetic exhortations to the soul that were widely cultivated in a variety of genres for synagogue use and penitential purposes. Initially, the reader is struck by the familiarity of the material: its protagonists, its setting, its stock phrases, its hortatory rhetoric addressed directly to the soul, its largely poetic medium. But closer scrutiny reveals subtle modiﬁcations that suggest more than a simple extension or revival of resilient and tenacious prototypes. A fusion of poetic and prose antecedents broadens the sweep of the dispute and extends the range of available rhetorical techniques. Artful parodies of recognizable models undercut the gravity of seemingly straightforward exhortations to the soul. Ironic intertextual allusions and sly inversions of meanings add clever new twists to what had become a fairly stylized debate between man’s nobler and baser instincts. The earlier materials are also transformed by their new literary context and function. By adapting the Andalusian tradition of poems on the soul to the formal requirements of a rhymed prose narrative, Al arizi naturalizes what was originally used liturgically—or devotionally, or contemplatively—in an emphatically belletristic work, expressly intended for entertainment or ediﬁcation through pleasurable diversion. Looking backward, not as an outsider, but as an intimate, Al arizi borrows selectively and with latitude, reworking and synthesizing recognizable antecedents to produce a fresh and distinctive literary strain.

73 See Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems, 1:392–400, esp. vv. 31–34. This unusual tokhe ah consists of ﬁve parts, each of which contains the opening words of the Torah lections from a diﬀerent book of the Pentateuch.

CHAPTER TEN

THE AFTERLIFE OF THE GENRE: THE RECEPTION AND TRANSFORMATION OF ANDALUSIAN POEMS ON THE SOUL With his characteristic ﬂair, Al arizi introduced his poems on the soul into a radically new, non-liturgical, rhymed prose medium, and thus forged a separate path in the history of the poems’ reception. Authors of rhymed prose narratives like Immanuel of Rome and Zechariah Al ahiri followed his lead, while many others continued to cultivate discrete poems, often for devotional purposes. In this ﬁnal chapter we survey the afterlife of the genre—how it was received, adopted, modiﬁed and, in some cases, completely transformed by Hebrew poets in disparate geographical centers and cultural environments, and at diﬀerent periods. From its Andalusian point of origin, the poem on the soul spread to neighboring Northern Spain and Provence; Italy; the Byzantine Empire; the Holy Land; and as far east as the Yemen. Many Sephardic and Eastern Jewish communities so esteemed the original Golden Age piyyutim that the poems entered into local ma zorim and became part of the liturgical rite. But the subtle transformations Halevi wrought on the genre— not to mention Al arizi’s more striking alterations—paved the way for further innovations. Countless imitations and adaptations were produced by gifted poets contemporary with and immediately following Halevi, as well as by poets, poetasters, and epigones all the way down to the nineteenth century. These authors worked in a remarkable variety of cultural milieux. Some of them brought new life to the Andalusian prototype by ﬁtting it to literary forms, or integrating themes, borrowed from the surrounding non-Jewish civilization. Others made changes as the outgrowth of organic, internal developments within Jewish religious and literary culture. The Yemenites were based squarely within the Islamic world; others, like Al arizi in his Toledan phase, lived under Christian rule, but could draw on a legacy of Judeo-Arabic scholarship; while yet others, like the Italians, plied their craft in a thoroughly Christian ambience. The ﬂowering of kabbalah in thirteenth-century Catalonia and sixteenth-century

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Safed prompted mystical reworkings of the older, philosophical poem on the soul. Authors immersed in Spanish and, later, Lurianic kabbalah appropriated the formal contours and Neoplatonic framework of the piyyutim, imbuing them with new theosophical content. On the other hand, Byzantine Karaites composed poems on the soul for use in their sectarian liturgy without altering the philosophical substance of their Andalusian models. Obviously, the classical exemplars held an enormous attraction for a richly diverse group of authors and readers. Our overview is neither purely chronological nor entirely geographical: we begin with Zerahiah Halevi in 12th-century Provence and Moses Na manides in 13th-century Catalonia; move to the 14thcentury Immanuel of Rome and his 16th- and 17th-century Italian successors; the Byzantine Karaites Aaron ben Joseph (13th century) and Aaron ben Elijah (14th century); the 16th-century Safed mystics Eleazar Azikri and Israel Najara; and the Yemenites Zechariah Al ahiri (16th century) and Shalem Shabbazi (17th century). It is ﬁtting to close with the Yemenites, whose aﬃnity for Andalusian Hebrew poetry is legend, and whose imitations—over three centuries—of a poem in Al arizi’s “Dispute of the Soul with the Body and the Intellect” highlight the longevity of our theme. The reception of the Andalusian poem devoted to the soul is already evident in the modest corpus of Zerahiah ben Isaac Halevi (c. 1115–1186) of Gerona, a major Catalan Jewish community poised at the geographic and cultural crossroads between Muslim Spain and Christian Europe.1 Zerahiah left his native Catalonia as a young man to study halakhah with the giants of the Provençal schools in Narbonne and Lunel. Acquitting himself brilliantly, he became a mainstay of Provençal halakhah, whose methods and innovations he brought back to Gerona when he returned home towards the end of his life.2 Though his reputation rests primarily on his outstanding achievements as a Talmudist, Zerahiah had clearly been trained in the Andalusian tradition of poetic composition and was an accomplished practitioner. Judah Ibn Tibbon, the renowned emigré translator, who had also settled in Lunel, mentions in his ethical will that Zerahiah used to consult him on stylistic matters before sending oﬀ 1 On the distinct cultural environment of Jewish Catalonia, see Septimus, HispanoJewish Culture in Transition, 26–38 passim. 2 See Ta-Shma, Rabbi zera yah ha-levi ba al ha-ma or u-vnei ugo and Septimus, ibid., pp. 35 and 136, n. 82.

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his poems, including those to his brother Berechiah.3 Berechiah was himself a payyetan, as was their father, Isaac ben Zerahiah, many of whose compositions are preserved in Provençal ma zorim.4 Though Zerahiah’s poems adhere closely to Andalusian poetics, they have not received wide attention, due—in part—to their postclassical status.5 A recent edition of his corpus by Isaac Meiseles includes upwards of thirty piyyutim, many of which draw extensively on rabbinic literature, as well as ﬁfteen poems that Zerahiah prefaced to his halakhic works.6 Familiar psychological themes occur in his seli ah, “Zo alim pequdot moredim,” and his mustaj b, “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah,” inspired by Moses Ibn Ezra’s rather more complex penitential poem by the same name.7 One of his best-known pieces, “Mah tehemi nafshi” (“Why do you moan, my soul?”), has been classiﬁed as a tokhe ah and consists of thirty-seven metered and monorhymed verses addressed to the soul.8 The ﬁrst twenty-ﬁve verses feature many of the ascetically and philosophically colored motifs and metaphors typical of Andalusian tokhe ot. The speaker asks his soul why she should descend to the accursed, benighted earth when she is hewn from the luminous, supernal kavod; he counsels her to turn to God in prayer, to purify herself from the taint of worldly pursuits, and to free herself from her bodily prison; he urges her to return to the divine throne and draw the waters of salvation from the source of life (meqor ayyim), thereby attaining her ultimate bliss. What is unusual is that this lengthy admonition leads directly into twelve verses of longing for the poet’s beloved brother. Zerahiah thus departs from his Andalusian model by prefacing his exhortation to the soul to a generically discrete poem of friendship and lovelorn yearning. Structurally, “Mah tehemi nafshi” resembles the polythematic qa da form borrowed from Arabic (and, ultimately, pre-Islamic) poetry. The qa da typically begins with an introduction and then makes a stylized 3

See Abrahams, Hebrew Ethical Wills, 1:72. See Schirmann, HPCS, p. 432 and n. 26. 5 For a recent treatment, see Schirmann, ibid., 431–40. 6 See Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi, Shirat ha-ma or. Meiseles’ edition comprises 56 poems, including ﬁve of doubtful ascription. Fleischer questions the attribution of additional poems in the volume; see his annotation to Schirmann, HPCS, pp. 435–36 and n. 36. 7 See Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi, Shirat ha-ma or, pp. 15–17 and 34–37. On Ibn Ezra’s poem see above, Chapter 4. 8 Ibid., pp. 131–33 and Schirmann, HPSP 3:8–10. 4

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transition to its main section, consisting of a poem on a completely diﬀerent theme. The classical Arabic qa da was a panegyric prefaced by a conventionalized amatory prelude (nas b), while the Hebrew version might open with a short wine, nature, or love poem.9 But in Andalusian poetry a contemplative tokhe ah-like piece was rarely, if ever, pressed into service as an introduction to a poem of friendship or worldly longing, however pure.10 Zerahiah’s usage suggests that the philosophically informed exhortation to the soul had, by the mid-twelfth century, become a set piece that could be slotted neatly into a composite poem, alongside thematically distinct material. At the same time, however, his adaptation and reorientation of this Andalusian favorite implies that the genre was still far from ossiﬁed.11 Other Provençal payyetanim, notably Isaac ben Zerahiah Halevi, altered generic boundaries by prefacing macabre descriptions of death and decay to their tokhe ot depicting the heavenly trial of body and soul.12 Earlier tokhe ot such as Ibn Gabirol’s “Shokhenei battei omer” invoked zuhd themes to convey the transience of human existence and the worthlessness of worldly pursuits. But gruesomely realistic evocations of death had generally been reserved for non-devotional poems such as Samuel Hanagid’s laments for his brother and aphoristic meditations on mortality.13 Like his poetics, Zerahiah’s philosophical conception of the soul has Andalusian antecedents, although even here he seems—inadvertently, perhaps—to have introduced a slight modiﬁcation. The declaration in “Mah tehemi nafshi” that the soul is hewn from the luminous supernal kavod (v. 6) harks back to Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut, where the kavod is the spiritual substance of the sphere of 9 See: Badawi, “ Abbasid Poetry and Its Antecedents”; Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death, pp. 27 and 79–80; and idem, “The Hebrew Qasida in Spain.” 10 Despite its classiﬁcation as a tokhe ah, the poem is not included in extant ma zorim, perhaps due to its generic indeterminacy. For manuscript and printed sources see Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi, Shirat ha-ma or, 131 and Davidson, Thesaurus 3:97, no. 625. 11 Fleischer identiﬁes Zerahiah as an important conduit for the Andalusian poetic tradition in Provence; see Schirmann, HPCS, 439–40. 12 See “Ye idah aqevekh karukh” in Schirmann, HPSP 3:286–90. Schirmann tentatively identiﬁes Isaac ben Zerahiah as Zerahiah’s son; see ibid., 285. Fleischer thinks he was Zerahiah’s father, making the innovation somewhat earlier; see Schirmann, HPCS, p. 433, n. 27. 13 Compare Isaac Ha-seniri’s early thirteenth-century tokhe ah, “Ye idah haa a ah” in Schirmann, HPSP 3:277–83 and see the discussion in Schirmann, HPCS, 455–57.

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the Intellect, the source of pure souls.14 But in his introduction to Sefer ha-ma or, his celebrated critique of Isaac Alfasi’s Halakhot, Zerahiah says that God imparts some of His grandeur to man by causing the soul to emanate from His Throne of Glory (kisse ha-kavod), which the philosophers have identiﬁed with the sphere of the Intellect.15 Although the Throne of Glory is clearly distinct from (and superior to) the sphere of the Intellect in Ibn Gabirol’s model of the universe, Zerahiah’s equation is likely due to the terminological similarity between kavod and kisse ha-kavod, which suggests that the kavod is a manifestation of the divine that sits on the throne. His imprecision may also be due to his intimate familiarity with the rabbinic dictum that righteous souls are stowed after death beneath the divine Throne.16 This eschatological view certainly underlies verse 8 of “Mah tehemi nafshi,” where the speaker urges his soul to ﬂy to the celestial realm until she succeeds in attaining the “royal throne,” the place of her eternal reward. Zerahiah’s derivation of the soul was roundly refuted by the eminent Catalan exegete, kabbalist, and communal ﬁgure, Moses Na manides (1194–1270). From Ramban’s kabbalistic point of view, the outermost celestial sphere of the Intellect belonged to the created realm and was therefore insuﬃciently sublime to be the source of the soul. The soul’s true origins lay far higher, in the numinous world of the divine seﬁrot, which is to say, within the Godhead itself.17 As Bernard Septimus has so elegantly shown, Na manides’ grand liturgical poem, “Me-rosh mi-qadmei olamim,” adapts the Andalusian piyyut on the soul by advancing this kabbalistic corrective to the philosophers’ psychology.18 Na manides’ interest in the Andalusian poetic tradition 14

See KM, cantos 24 and 29 in Schirmann, HPSP 1:271, 274. Sefer ha-ma or is found in standard editions of the Talmud. 16 Note that Abraham Ibn Ezra identiﬁes the kisse ha-kavod with the tenth sphere or heaven, which is the angelic realm of the kavod. See Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres Or Ten?” p. 306 and n. 57. 17 See Septimus, “ ‘Open Rebuke and Concealed Love’: Na manides and the Andalusian Tradition,” p. 28 and n. 65 and Vajda, Recherches sur la philosophie et la kabbale, 371–84. On the place of the sphere of the Intellect in medieval Jewish cosmologies see Tanenbaum, “Nine Spheres or Ten?” 18 Septimus, ibid., 27–29. For the text of the poem see Schirmann, HPSP 3:322–25 and Moses b. Na man, Kitvei Ramban 1:392–94; for a discussion see Schirmann, HPCS, 326–28. (The English translation in Chavel’s Ramban: His Life and Teachings, pp. 47–49, should be used with extreme caution.) There are few extant poems by Na manides; for the texts see Moses b. Na man, Kitvei Ramban 1:389–439; on his poetry see Fleischer, “The ‘Gerona School’ of Hebrew Poetry” and Schirmann, HPCS, 322–29. 15

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was both literary and substantive: he was schooled in the art of Hebrew poetry and exquisitely attuned to the eschatological implications of piyyutim that addressed the soul’s origins or immortality.19 The composition of “Me-rosh mi-qadmei olamim” marked the ﬁrst instance of infusing new kabbalistic concerns into this longstanding Andalusian genre. A stirring mustaj b for the Days of Awe, the poem shares the hallmarks of the older, philosophical piyyutim: in a tripartite sequence, it recounts the soul’s origin in the supernal realms, its exile to the corporeal world, and its ﬁnal return, after much longing, to its divine home. The section devoted to the soul’s earthly sojourn is interwoven with familiar penitential themes, an earnest confession of sins, and moving pleas for divine compassion. Yet, the kabbalistic symbolism of the opening and closing stanzas subtly revises the original Neoplatonic model to accommodate the new mystical doctrine of the soul’s emanation from, and ultimate return to, the world of the divine seﬁrot.20 Still other transformations were wrought as the Andalusian tradition spread to poetic centers beyond Catalonia and Provence. As we have noted, Italian Jewish literati, Byzantine Karaite scholars, Safed mystics, and Yemenite savants instinctively adjusted and refashioned the Andalusian template until it bore the distinctive stamp of their respective cultural milieux. Hebrew poetry in Italy fell under the exclusive sway of the Andalusian school from the middle of the twelfth to the end of the thirteenth century. But from circa 1300 on it fused the prosodic and thematic conventions of that school with forms, genres, motifs, and styles adapted from the Italian literature

19 In three diﬀerent works, Ramban cites a line from Judah Halevi’s “Barekhi a ulah me-rua ha-qodesh” in support of the pre-existence of the soul, while at the end of Sha ar ha-gemul he points out that “Maimonides’ controversial reinterpretation of the rabbinic olam ha-ba to mean individual immortality of the soul rather than the world after bodily resurrection” has an antecedent in Solomon Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut; see Septimus, ibid., p. 27 and nn. 58–59. For selections from Na manides’ discussions of psychology and eschatology with commentary see Novak, The Theology of Nahmanides Systematically Presented, 25–29 and 125–134. 20 On the poem’s kabbalistic symbolism see Scholem, Ha-qabbalah be-geronah, 319–21. As Septimus has shown, Na manides’ poem accommodates the traditional belief in bodily resurrection without compromising the kabbalistic idea of the soul’s spiritual return. Another major—albeit non-liturgical—poem that addresses individual salvation but also incorporates te iyyat ha-metim is Ramban’s Me ah Battim (“Li yiz aqu re ay”); for the text see Moses b. Na man, Kitvei Ramban, 1:397–402; for an overview see Schirmann, HPCS, 323–25; on its innovation vis-à-vis Andalusian secular poetry see Fleischer, “The ‘Gerona School’ of Hebrew Poetry,” 44–45.

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of the Renaissance and Baroque periods.21 Two or three generations after the emergence of the sonnet in Italian (and even before the ﬂowering of the form in other European languages), Immanuel of Rome (c. 1265–1335) composed the ﬁrst Hebrew sonnets. Of the thirty-eight included in his rhymed prose narrative, Ma berot Immanuel, many are highly erotic, but eight are of the sonetto morale type, urging repentance.22 One of these, “Oyah le-nafshi,” has recognizable roots in the Andalusian penitential poem devoted to the soul; indeed, it appears to draw on Abraham Ibn Ezra’s seli ah, “El beit ha-melekh lavo niqreiti.”23 Thematically similar, the two poems share an introductory ﬁrst person lament, a second person rebuke to the soul, and even speciﬁc lexical items. But where Ibn Ezra’s strophic poem of twenty-seven lines rhymes aaa bbbbba ccccca, etc., Immanuel’s fourteen-line sonnet divides neatly into octave and sestet, rhyming abba abba cdd cdd. The structural transition from octave to sestet corresponds precisely to the poem’s pivotal switch in mode of address: fearfully anticipating his fate on Judgment Day, the speaker turns to admonish his all-too-carefree soul. Yet the unity of the two sections is carefully maintained through the pairing of their opening exclamations, “Oyah le-nafshi” (“Woe to my soul!”) and “Oyah, ye idati” (“Alas, my only soul!”). The poem is one of several moralizing sonnets in Immanuel’s fourth ma beret which is entitled “Songs of the Pious and Laments on the Onset of Old Age.” As Dvora Bregman has observed, each of these pieces stands on its own, but gains additional poignancy as part of a chain of poems whose cumulative eﬀect is powerfully compelling.24 Borrowing selectively from the Christian sonetto morale and the Hebrew poem on the soul, Immanuel produced a fresh synthesis. Animated by the play of form and content, his deftly crafted Hebrew sonnet marks yet another creative stage in the reception and reshaping of the Andalusian model. Immanuel’s Ma barot circulated widely. By turns extravagant, witty, and audacious, they had a profound impact on Hebrew literature.25

21

See Pagis, Change and Tradition, 247–88. See Bregman, “The Emergence of the Hebrew Sonnet”; “Teﬁllah, hagut u-musar ba-sonnet ha- ivri ha-qadum”; and The Golden Way, 69. 23 For Immanuel’s poem see Bregman, A Bundle of Gold, p. 43, no. 13 and Immanuel Ha-romi, Ma barot, 84–85. Jarden notes the similarity with Ibn Ezra’s “El beit ha-melekh”; for the latter see Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poems 1:508–11. 24 Bregman, The Golden Way, 59. 25 See Bregman, “The Emergence of the Hebrew Sonnet.” 22

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Though the Hebrew sonnet went into decline almost immediately after Immanuel’s success, it underwent a revival at the beginning of the sixteenth century. One of the ﬁrst poets to cultivate the form following Immanuel was Joseph ben Samuel Zarfati (Giuseppe Gallo; d. 1527), a polymath physician attached to the court of Pope Leo X.26 His “Histakkeli nafshi ve-shuri po alekh” resurrects Immanuel’s inventive blend of Renaissance prosody and typically Andalusian themes: cast as a sonnet, the poem urges the soul to behold her Creator and bow to Him; to turn back from sin and “on wisdom’s wing ascend to realms of light.”27 The intimate tone, so reminiscent of the earlier poems from Spain, at times acquires an almost conversational informality: “But think that man not ﬁt to tie your shoe/ Who ﬁnds in earthly pleasures his delight.”28 Like Immanuel, Zarfati aligns the distinct rhyme scheme of the sestet with a turn in rhetorical mode, so that the imperatives clustered in the octave give way to declarative statements. He also exploits the individual rhyming pairs to full eﬀect: sha at/na at emphasizes the tranquillity awaiting the soul if she can only extricate herself from the pit, while bodedah/ nodedah points up her isolation as long as she wanders “this wicked world.” An intriguing reworking of the Andalusian prototype is found in the lesser-known verse of Nathan Jedediah Eliezer of Orvietto (b. 1607). His Barekhi Nafshi is a youthful translation of a collection of Italian penitential sonnets by his grandfather, Johanan Judah (Angelo) Alatrini (b. c. 1530).29 Called L’Angelica Tromba (in a pun on his Italian name), Alatrini’s work is itself an Italian terza rima adaptation of Ba ya Ibn Paquda’s famous tokhe ah, “Barekhi nafshi.”30 Nathan’s Hebrew version, which preserves the terza rima of the Italian, includes an introductory sonnet, followed by three poems of contrition evoking three stages of spiritual puriﬁcation.31 The ﬁrst, “Eli, eli, ra um, 26 On Joseph Zarfati see: Bregman, ibid. and A Bundle of Gold, 69; Cassuto, “The First Hebrew Comedy,” 121–23; and Roth, The Jews in the Renaissance, 217–18. 27 The citation is from Raymond Scheindlin’s translation; see his “Four Hebrew Sonnets from Italy,” 228. For the Hebrew text see also: Bregman, A Bundle of Gold, p. 70, no. 39 and Schirmann, Miv ar ha-shirah ha- ivrit be- italyah, 232. 28 See: Scheindlin, ibid.; Bregman, The Golden Way, 196. 29 See Bregman, A Bundle of Gold, 208–212, nos. 146–49. 30 See Bregman, A Bundle of Gold, 111 and JE 1:319–320. Alatrini also produced a terza rima version of the early Andalusian tokhe ah depicting the posthumous judgment of body and soul; see Schirmann, Miv ar, 256–58. 31 See Bregman, The Golden Way, 210.

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erekh appayim,” petitions God for deliverance from the evil impulses that lead one astray. The second, “Qatan ke-khaf yalud,” depicts desire, or the evil inclination, as a newborn child dwelling, uninvited, in the speaker’s house (i.e., heart). Apparently, this use of cupid imagery draws on the Petrarchist tradition of spiritual sonnets.32 The speaker urges his heart to slaughter the tiny interloper and oﬀer it as a sacriﬁce to God. In the last of the three poems, “An telekhi ro ah, ye idati?” the good inclination asks the soul where she is wandering, and why she does not turn aside to its realm to ﬁnd rest and divine forgiveness. Although Ba ya’s original is no longer recognizable in its seventeenth-century metamorphosis, its key themes can still be detected in their new and exotic Renaissance and Baroque garb. Andalusian motifs can also be ferreted out of the remarkably dense wordplay in “Nefesh te’av kislut,” a sonnet by Nathan of Orvietto’s far more famous contemporary, Moses Zacuto (c. 1610– 1697).33 Indeed, Italian Hebrew authors continued to cultivate poems devoted to the soul as part of their multi-faceted oeuvre into the eighteenth century.34 Boldly drawing on Christian sources of inspiration such as the sonetto morale (undisturbed by the potentially trinitarian symbolism of their sonnet threesomes and terza rima),35 they composed their works in a cultural matrix decidedly remote from the world of Ibn Gabirol, Halevi, and the Ibn Ezras. Yet, lines of continuity with the Andalusians’ poems on the soul can still be discerned in their strikingly Italian transformations of the genre. Transcending an equally formidable cultural divide, the Andalusian model entered the Byzantine Karaite poetic repertoire. Historically, the Karaites’ rejection of the rabbinic tradition in favor of their own interpretation of Scripture led to marked diﬀerences in ritual and doctrine. Yet, the two leading lights of Byzantine Karaism in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries made use of mainstream Andalusian works in their innovative literary and scholarly program. Aaron ben Joseph “the Elder” (c. 1250–1320) and Aaron ben Elijah “the Younger” (c. 1320–1369) undertook a far-reaching synthesis of earlier Karaite tradition with newly available Spanish Rabbanite writings. This un-

32

Bregman, ibid., 199. See Bregman, A Bundle of Gold, p. 279, no. 212. 34 See, e.g., the sonnet, “Nafshi sekhiyyat paz” by Eliezer in Schirmann, Miv ar, 398. 35 See Bregman, The Golden Way, 210. 33

efe (Elieser Gentili)

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precedented mining of Rabbanite scholarship is evident in Aaron ben Joseph’s commentaries on the Pentateuch and Prophets, respectively entitled Sefer Ha-miv ar and Miv ar Yesharim; his grammatical work called Kelil Yoﬁ; and his pioneering arrangement of the Karaite liturgy, as well as in Aaron ben Elijah’s pathbreaking trilogy, Keter Torah, Gan Eden, and E ayyim (his commentary on the Pentateuch, law code, and philosophical summa).36 The two Aarons’ exegetical works reveal a profound aﬃnity for Abraham Ibn Ezra’s commentaries, with their rationalistic orientation, philological approach to Scripture, and clear Hebrew style.37 Sefer E ayyim, Aaron ben Elijah’s inﬂuential treatise of religious philosophy, confronts older Karaite teachings with the Aristotelianism of Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed.38 Aaron ben Joseph’s arrangement of the Karaite liturgy, on analogy with the Rabbanite siddur, lent new shape to devotions that traditionally consisted exclusively of biblical passages.39 Into this order of prayers he introduced piyyutim—a major innovation, reﬂecting the outcome of an internal Karaite dispute over the permissibility of incorporating such compositions into the liturgy.40 Earlier, in the tenth century, there had been a Karaite dispensation to include ﬂorilegia of scriptural verses among the Psalms and other biblical passages used for prayer.41 But Aaron’s inclusion of actual liturgical poems was a novel departure, likely inspired by the already strong native Romaniote (i.e., indigenous Byzantine Jewish) tradition of piyyut.42 He integrated not only his own piyyutim, but also poems by Rabbanite authors, among them the masters of the Golden Age—

36

See: Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium, 139–46 and Frank, The Religious Philosophy of the Karaite Aaron ben Elijah, x–xv and xliii–xlix. I would like to thank Daniel Frank for his assistance with the Karaite materials cited in this chapter. 37 See Frank, “Ibn Ezra and the Karaite Exegetes Aaron ben Joseph and Aaron ben Elijah” and The Religious Philosophy of the Karaite Aaron ben Elijah, xxxv–xxxviii. 38 See: Husik, History, 362–87 and Frank, The Religious Philosophy of the Karaite Aaron ben Elijah, esp. xxxix–xlii. 39 For a useful overview of Karaite prayer, based primarily on Byzantine sources, see Goldberg, Karaite Liturgy and Its Relation to Synagogue Worship. 40 The solution adopted and codiﬁed by Aaron ben Elijah (1354) and Elijah Bashyachi (late 15th century) was to license piyyutim for non-statutory prayers. See Aaron ben Elijah, Gan Eden, “ Inyan teﬁllah,” Ch. 1, fol. 71, col. b and Elijah Bashyachi, Adderet Eliyahu, “ Inyan teﬁllah,” Ch. 5, fol. 97, cols. c–d. 41 The expression le- abber pesuqim is applied to the creation of ﬂorilegia or sequences of isolated verses; see, e.g., Gan Eden, fol. 72, col. b, line 21 and fol. 74, col. b, line 28. 42 See Weinberger, Jewish Hymnography, 193–298 passim and 408–31.

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Ibn Gabirol, Halevi, and Abraham Ibn Ezra.43 The linguistic purism of the renowned Spanish poetic school especially appealed to the Karaites’ scripturalistic tendencies, and, following Aaron’s lead, they adapted the language and genres of Andalusian verse to suit their particular needs.44 Both Aarons composed piyyutim for the Ten Days of Mercy, a penitential period leading up to Karaite Yom Kippur comparable to the Rabbanite Ten Days of Repentance. In his law code, Gan Eden, Aaron ben Elijah refers to the practice of rising at night to pray for forgiveness during this season of atonement: During the ten days from Rosh Ha-shanah to Yom Kippur, all Israel are accustomed to rise at night to pray with confessions and supplications, in search of forgiveness for their sins. And even though a man should repent at all times, during these days one especially scrutinizes his deeds, for it is impossible truly to repent while in a sinful state.45

While his larger context clearly reﬂects a sectarian understanding of Yom Teru ah (the biblical name for the ﬁrst of the month of Tishre), this description of penitential night vigils is not dissimilar to Maimonides’ observation that “. . . during these ten days, all (Israel) are accustomed to arise while it is still night, and pray in the synagogues until dawn, with fervent entreaties and supplications.”46 Elsewhere in Gan Eden Aaron outlines the order of prayer for the Ten Days of Mercy and identiﬁes the point in the service at which poems of contrition are recited, mentioning the diﬀerent genres by name: It is customary to order the piyyutim a anu, tokhe ah, vidduy, ta anun, and seli ah, each one according to its subject matter and given name.47

43 See: Zunz, Die Ritus des synagogalen Gottesdienstes, 161; Nemoy, Karaite Anthology, 273–74; Bowman, The Jews of Byzantium, 140–41; Weinberger, Jewish Hymnography, 410; and Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag ha-qara im. 44 On modiﬁcations of Rabbanite piyyutim due to political considerations, see Weinberger, “A Note on Karaite Adaptations of Rabbinic Prayers.” 45 Aaron ben Elijah, Gan Eden, “ Inyan yom teru ah,” fol. 58, col. d–fol. 59, col. a. 46 Moses ben Maimon, MT, Teshuvah 3:4; translated after Hyamson, Maimonides: The Book of Knowledge, p. 84a. See also Tanenbaum, “The Andalusian Seli ah and its Individualistic Conception of Penitence.” 47 Aaron ben Elijah, Gan Eden, “ Inyan yom teru ah,” fol. 77, col. d–fol. 78, col. a. The ﬁnal phrase, leﬁ . . . ha-shem ha-niqra alav, is ambiguous. While it probably refers to the name of the genre, it might refer to the acrostic with which each of these poems is signed.

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This chain of piyyutim reﬂects a distinctively Karaite hymnody, and cycles following this order can be found in the Karaite liturgy for each night of the Ten Days of Mercy.48 The cycle for the ﬁrst night features Aaron ben Joseph’s tokhe ah, “Omnam za alti va- alti ve-nivhalti.”49 Remarkably, this piyyut preserves intact the psychological theory and scientiﬁc commonplaces that inform Andalusian poems on the soul. Opening with two confessional stanzas, the speaker describes his trepidation when contemplating Judgment Day, in light of his straying heart and woeful misdeeds. In the third stanza he evokes the combination of the four elements that produced his body; a mixture that thrived due to its animation by the soul. His epithet for the soul, a ulah me- o em hakeruvim, “emanated from the might of the cherubs,” reﬂects the theory of the soul’s emanation from the cosmic realms (the cherubs bear the divine Throne of Glory), and is reminiscent of the opening of Abraham Ibn Ezra’s reshut, “A ulah mi-kevodo el bera ekh/ ve- al arba demut ayyot nesa ekh.”50 The speaker goes on to lament the ruination of the splendid soul by the appetitive spirit which drew her after vanity and delusion. Switching to a direct address, he urges his soul to distance herself from the ways of the body; rebuke the evil ye er; and turn towards God. The body/soul dualism enunciated here is typical of Aaron’s Andalusian models, as is the notion that intellectual pursuit is a means to the soul’s puriﬁcation (v. 27). Echoes of the language and metaphors of Ibn Gabirol’s Keter Malkhut can be heard in Aaron’s description of the soul as a resplendence (yif at ha-neshamah; v. 13); as hewn from a sacred place (v. 34); and as barred from approaching the sacred precincts of the sanctuary when deﬁled by worldly indulgence.51 Typical of the earlier poems too is Aaron’s predilection for hapax legomena (v. 11: afas ke- elev mizgam; cf. Psalm 119:70 and Canticles 7:3) and lush wordplay. Although the work’s eleven-stanza strophic form does not conform precisely to any

48

See Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag ha-qara im 3:198–294. For the text see: Weinberger, Rabbanite and Karaite Liturgical Poetry, pp. 519–20, no. 260, and Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag ha-qara im, 3:206–207. 50 See Weinberger’s note to v. 11 and Abraham Ibn Ezra, Religious Poetry, 1:53–55, no. 30. Note that Weinberger’s statement in Jewish Hymnography, p. 415 is incorrect: unlike Abraham Ibn Ezra, Solomon Ibn Gabirol does not “equate the Throne of Glory with (the tenth sphere of ) the Intellect” in Keter Malkhut. See above, Chapter 2. 51 Cf. Keter Malkhut, canto 29, lines 280–81 and canto 30, lines 295–96. 49

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of the available Andalusian precedents, its central themes and modes of address perpetuate the principal conventions of the Golden Age exhortation to the soul.52 The same is true of Aaron ben Elijah’s tokhe ah, “Ora ayyim le-ma alah.”53 Designated for the sixth night of the Ten Days of Mercy, this tokhe ah occupies the same position in the penitential piyyut cycle as Aaron ben Joseph’s “Omnam za alti.” Adopting a direct, second person address throughout, “Ora ayyim le-ma alah” divides almost symmetrically into an opening four-stanza paean to the soul; four stanzas of rebuke for having pursued worldly pleasures; and three stanzas of exhortation to praise and return to God. The weave of the Hebrew includes many biblical verse fragments; those phrased in the second person feminine are exploited to good eﬀect. Overall, the thrust and wording of the admonitions are strikingly familiar from the Andalusian repertoire, and reﬂect a Neoplatonic conception of the soul’s origin and destiny. The pure soul is sent from the highest heavens to dwell in the body, where she is invisible among the bodily powers and whence, ideally, she can ascend to the rank of the celestial soul, to cleave to the mystery of spiritual immortality, and to be free of any deﬁciency (stanzas 1–4). But she has allowed herself to be trapped in the snare of desire, and has sunk into the slimy deep. She has doﬀed the garb of the intellect and has clung to Time’s pleasures and delights (stanzas 5–8). She must therefore turn from the way of the body, repent, extol God, return to her heavenly abode, and unite with her intellect to cleave to the unique Name. Then the voice of her divine Beloved will sound, saying, “I will espouse you with faithfulness, and you shall know the Lord” (Hosea 2:22; stanzas 9–11). Within this conventional scheme, shaped by familiar metaphors, stock epithets, and customary images, it is possible to detect a few fresh touches. In a modest adjustment of the received genre, Aaron

52

The Andalusian tokhe ah was not necessarily rhymed or metrical—Ba ya’s famous “Barekhi nafshi” is in free verse—but it was most often strophic in form, with an internally consistent rhyme scheme and syllabic meter. Aaron’s “Omnam za alti,” while strophic, consists of eleven stanzas, rhyming aaaa, bbbb, cccc, etc., where every fourth verse is a verbatim biblical citation. Aaron ben Elijah’s “Ora ayyim le-ma alah” conforms to the same pattern. Possibly, this is an adaptation of a Rabbanite Romaniote form. 53 For the text see: Weinberger, Rabbanite and Karaite Liturgical Poetry, 561–62, no. 292 and Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag ha-qara im 3:278.

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has altered the structure slightly, and has introduced some less conventional metaphors and original epithets, which can be elucidated against the background of his own speculative writing. The sustained hymn to the soul at the beginning of his poem is not characteristic of most Andalusian tokhe ot.54 Its opening phrase, ora ayyim le-ma alah, is also used in a distinctive sense, for in Aaron’s E ayyim, “the upwards path of life” is closely associated—or even identical—with man’s God-given intellect.55 Read in this light, the poem’s ﬁrst verse becomes a declaration of the soul’s enduring bond to the intellect which is man’s means to attaining the eternal truths of the divine world, and the metonymic ora ayyim le-ma alah becomes a unique epithet for the intellect. (Of course, Aaron also uses the standard Golden Age epithets for the soul, neqiyyah u- ehorah, zakkah u-varah [v. 2], which ultimately derive from rabbinic sources.) Aaron’s religious philosophy also informs the poem’s view of the soul’s embodiment. Though he describes the body as the soul’s “four-fold prison” (v. 5), he also acknowledges that, while in contact with the corporeal powers, the soul ascends “the truth by degrees, to ﬁnd knowledge and skill” (v. 6; cf. Ecclesiastes 2:21). This moderate attitude towards the soul’s embodiment dovetails with Aaron’s stance in E ayyim. In expounding his psychology, Aaron asserts that the soul’s connection with the body stimulates such bodily powers as growth, vitality, and reason. The soul gradually perfects herself, attaining knowledge and understanding by degrees. Then, when she is separated from the body, the powers emerging from her association with the body pass away, while her intellectual attainments remain.56 Nevertheless, the very next stanza of Aaron’s tokhe ah castigates the soul for allowing those same bodily powers to corrupt her and lead her badly astray (stanza 5). While exalted, she had “pluck(ed) the fruit of the tree of life” (v. 11), but in her debased state she eats “the fruit of treachery” (v. 25; cf. Hosea 10:13). Here again, one can ﬁnd parallels in E ayyim, where Aaron says that the Tree of Life alludes to the immortality of olam ha-ba, while the Tree of Knowledge alludes to 54 I diﬀer from Weinberger in my reading of certain verses; he sees v. 9 as an accusation of haughtiness. 55 See E ayyim Ch. 95, p. 154: “. . . bir oto be-qiyyum min ha- enoshi ba- olam ha-shafel natan lo eleq me-ha- eleq ha- elyon le-qayyemo, hu sekhel ha- adam hamanhig et ha- adam . . . ve-hayah gam ken be- e em ze ha- eleq ha- elyon ora ayyim le-ma alah. . . .” 56 See Husik, History, 385 and Aaron ben Elijah, E ayyim Ch. 108, p. 193.

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man’s worldly existence. Aaron states that there was nothing wrong with Adam having partaken of both the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life in moderation; the diﬃculties arose when he indulged to excess in the Tree of Knowledge and mired himself in worldly pleasures.57 The tokhe ot by the two Aarons are by no means the only Karaite adaptations of the Andalusian poem devoted to the soul. There are many other such compositions, from Aaron ben Joseph’s “A ulah mi-maqom qadosh” and “Avvat nefesh ha-ye idah” to Elijah Bashyachi’s ﬁfteenth-century “Avi okhmah ve-ha-mezimah.”58 A cursory perusal of the Karaite siddur reveals a series of three eighteenthcentury piyyutim by Isaac bar Solomon with the incipits, “Ye idah ha-qedoshah ha-kelulah,” “Ye idah a ulah be-khavod kelulah,” and “Ye idah mi-meqor sekhel a ulah.”59 Varying, predictably, in literary quality, these poems nevertheless reﬂect the enduring impact of the two Aarons’ receptivity to Spanish Rabbanite literature. At the same time, they testify to the captivating nature and ubiquitous reach of the Andalusian poem on the soul. The Golden Age tradition of piyyut acquired new dimensions during the Jewish mystical revival in sixteenth-century Safed. In the wake of the expulsion from the Iberian peninsula at the end of the ﬁfteenth century, large numbers of exiles settled in the lands of the Ottoman Empire. Following the Ottoman conquest of Palestine in 1516–1517, former exiles and their descendants ﬂocked to the Holy Land. The Galilean city of Safed attracted a remarkable group of scholars and rabbis, many of whom were drawn to the study of kabbalah. Leading ﬁgures such as Solomon Alqabe (1505–c. 1576), Moses Cordovero (1522–1570), Eleazar Azikri (1533–1600), and Isaac Luria (1534–1572) founded pious confraternities given over to mystical speculation, repentance, and prayer. Central to their kabbalistic doctrine, which 57 See E ayyim Ch. 95, p. 154. Aaron says that God could not have prohibited Adam from eating from the Tree of Knowledge altogether, for then there would have been no purpose to its creation. 58 For the texts see: Weinberger, Rabbanite and Karaite Liturgical Poetry, p. 551, no. 282; pp. 516–17, no. 258; pp. 596–98, no. 321 and Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag haqara im 1:166 and 3:262–64. 59 See Siddur ha-teﬁllot ke-minhag ha-qara im 1:169–70. The spiritual leader of the Karaite community of Kalé in the Crimea, Isaac bar Solomon (1754–1826) wrote a work on calendar reform entitled Sefer or ha-levanah, and produced an edition of the Karaite siddur; see Schur, The Karaite Encyclopedia, 145–46 and Mann, Texts and Studies 2:338–40 and 468–74.

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assumed its most inﬂuential form in its Lurianic version, was the idea that human deeds have cosmic repercussions. A life of piety, therefore, could help to restore the original unity of the divine realm, which had been ruptured through human sin. The eschatological hope for redemption from earthly exile was now intimately linked with a desire to reunite the exiled Shekhinah with the highest of the divine seﬁrot, Tif eret. To this end, the Safed circles of masters and disciples produced a series of mystically informed ethical treatises and religious manuals (hanhagot) that mandated new rituals, such as midnight vigils (tiqqunei a ot) given over to study, prayer, repentance, lamenting the destruction of the Temple, and mourning the exile of the Shekhinah, which in turn created a need for new devotional texts and, particularly, poems. The kabbalists also introduced mystical meditations to ensure the proper intention during prayer (kavvanot), and the ceremony of going out to greet the Sabbath bride. These practices and additions to the prayerbook were rapidly disseminated throughout the wider Jewish community of Safed and beyond, inaugurating a potent popular spirituality.60 Like the earlier Spanish tradition of kabbalah and the Neoplatonic philosophy on which it drew, the kabbalah of Safed viewed the human soul as the pivotal link between the upper and lower realms. The height of spiritual attainment was described as devequt, or cleaving to the Divine with one’s God-given soul.61 To achieve devequt one had ﬁrst to purify one’s soul through ascetic withdrawal, penitence, and habituation to exacting moral standards. Solitary contemplation, particularly in the still of the night, was also essential to achieving communion with God. The goal of devequt was often described with metaphors of such intense yearning and passionate love that it took on an erotic cast. In his ethical treatise, Reshit okhmah, Elijah De Vidas (d. c. 1593) states that, “as a result of the feeling of longing for a woman, one learns to cultivate longing for God. . . . One also expresses this love for God by rising regularly at midnight out of his great desire.”62 Several of the Safed kabbalists 60 See Fine, Safed Spirituality, 1–80 passim; Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism, 244–286 passim; Werblowsky, “The Safed Revival and its Aftermath”; idem, “A Collection of Prayers and Devotional Compositions by Solomon Alkabets”; and Pachter, “Kabbalistic Ethical Literature in Sixteenth-Century Safed.” 61 On devequt see Fine, ibid., 18–21; Idel, Kabbalah, 35–58; and Werblowsky, “The Safed Revival and its Aftermath,” 17–29. 62 Quoted from Fine, Safed Spirituality, p. 144; see also p. 21.

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expressed their fervid love of God in devotional poetry. Eleazar Azikri notes in his manual of discipline that, “It is the custom of passionate lovers to sing, and since the love of our Creator is wonderful, passing the love of women, . . . he who loves Him with all his heart should sing before Him.”63 Azikri’s “Yedid nefesh” (“Beloved of My Soul”) is indeed a loveintoxicated song. Suﬀused with intense emotion and ardent yearning for God, “Yedid nefesh” sings of the soul’s desire to be drawn into the divine presence. The language of tender intimacy and love pervades each of the poem’s four stanzas: God is addressed as “beloved of my soul”; “my heart’s delight”; “my dearest”; and “my love.”64 Referring to himself in the third person, the speaker exclaims that, “Your love is sweeter to him than honey from the comb, than any pleasing savor.” He appeals to his Desired One with a telling allusion to the Song of Songs, “my soul is faint with love for You.”65 To convey his unswerving devotion he portrays himself as a slave in complete submission to his master: “Beloved of my soul . . . draw Your servant after You to do Your will. He would run, swift as a deer, to kneel before Your majesty. . . .” If God grants his soul’s fervent wish, “then she will be healed and grow strong and be Your slave forever.”66 At the same time, God is described in numinous terms: “Glorious, beautiful, Light of the world.” The poem’s very acrostic points to its heightened spiritual sensitivities: rather than the poet’s name, it is signed with the Tetragrammaton. The speaker implores God to heal his lovesick soul “by letting her gaze upon Your splendor.” In the third and fourth stanzas additional pleas that God reveal Himself are couched in language that fuses individual yearnings for the divine presence with national longings for deliverance.67 Yet the overwhelmingly personal tone of this “prayerful request (baqqashah) for union ( yi ud) and love’s desire ( esheq ha- ahavah),” as 63 Quoted from Werblowsky, “The Safed Revival and Its Aftermath,” 17. On Azikri’s worldview see Pachter, “Kabbalistic Ethical Literature,” 171–72 and “The Life and Personality of R. Elazar Azikri According to his Mystical Diary.” 64 Citations of “Yedid nefesh” are from T. Carmi’s English translation; see The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, pp. 471–72. For a discussion of the poem’s language and allusions to classical texts see Hazan, Piyyu im ve-qi ei teﬁllah min ha-siddur, 33–37. 65 Cf. Cant. 2:5 and 5:8. 66 For a traditional reading of these metaphors see Hazan, Piyyu im ve-qi ei teﬁllah min ha-siddur, 36. 67 Hazan reads the ﬁrst two stanzas as the individual’s expression of yearning for God, and the last two as the nation’s; see ibid., 36–37.

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Azikri styles it, makes “Yedid nefesh” ﬁrst and foremost a song of the impassioned mystic in quest of devequt. That it made its way into the prayerbook, and is to this day recited by many congregations before Qabbalat Shabbat, attests to its enduring power and poignancy. “Yedid nefesh” clearly draws on Andalusian precedents that highlight the soul’s yearnings for God. As in Moses Ibn Ezra’s “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah,” the speaker compellingly conveys his soul’s anguished longings, setting himself apart from her for rhetorical, rather than philosophical purposes. In the earlier poems the desired goal is almost always cast as a reunion of the soul with her divine Source; a rehabilitation and repatriation following her trying exile in the material world. The soul’s odyssey does not ﬁgure explicitly in “Yedid nefesh,” yet the pain of separation and thirst for redemption are recurrent leitmotifs, heightened through Azikri’s skillfull manipulation of intertextual allusion.68 Shorn of the journey motif, ascetic themes, and admonitions typical of the older reshuyot and seli ot, “Yedid nefesh” voices a bold and stirring request for mystical communion, using expressions of romantic love far more freely than most Andalusian devotional verse. In “Nafshi ivvitikha” Ibn Ezra evokes the soul’s redemption with the language of love, but not until the eighteenth and ﬁnal stanza, and only rather subtly, by means of allusion to the book of Ruth and the Song of Songs. Immersed in the world of Safed kabbalah, with its celebration of the Sabbath as a mystical marriage and theosophical ideal of reuniting the feminine and masculine aspects of the Godhead, Azikri unhesitatingly turns to God with tender terms of endearment. The consistent intimacy of his tone is only slightly tempered by the more ﬁlially reverential epithet, “merciful Father,” in the opening line. Even the depiction of the soul as God’s servant, found in Andalusian poems such as Ibn Gabirol’s “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh,” takes on a new, amatory signiﬁcance in the context of “Yedid nefesh.” The ﬁgure might simply be read as a profession of worshipful deference, familiar from the liturgy. But Yosef Yahalom has persuasively argued that Azikri’s metaphorical use of the slave-master relationship is borrowed from popular Turkish love songs where it signiﬁed the humble lover’s tireless and unconditional devotion to his beloved.69 Like his proliﬁc 68

On some of the poem’s more signiﬁcant allusions see Hazan, ibid., 37. See Yahalom, “Tensions Between Sephardic Traditions and Ottoman Inﬂuences in Jewish Literary Activity,” esp. 212–213; Yahalom notes that later generations 69

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poetic colleague, Israel Najara, Azikri was immersed in classical Jewish sources and imbued with kabbalistic ideals, yet he was alive to the Ottoman poetic and musical inﬂuences penetrating the synagogue.70 Strikingly accomplished, colorful, and creative, Israel Najara (1555?– 1625?) produced the most extensive corpus of poetry associated with the Safed revival. In his wanderings throughout the Near East and the eastern Mediterranean, Najara acquired an ear for Turkish, Greek, and Arabic folk songs, as well as the Judeo-Spanish romances of the Sephardi diaspora.71 Schooled in the Andalusian poetic tradition, Najara was in many respects a latter-day adherent of its prosody and themes.72 But he was also an innovator, who set his devotional poems to popular melodies and drew on kabbalistic lore. His prosodic inventiveness lay in crafting each poem to ﬁt a speciﬁc foreign tune, adapting the Hebrew to the syllabic structure of the borrowed song. In the manuscripts of his d w n, each poem is prefaced by a note, “To the tune of . . .,” followed by the opening line of the popular song to which it is set.73 Much of Najara’s sacred verse is erotically charged, fusing the language of the Song of Songs with kabbalistic symbolism and the sensual imagery of secular love songs to depict the relationship between God and Israel. Pleas for national redemption are addressed by an inﬂamed female lover (Israel) to her distant beloved (God): My thoughts yearn for You, and for You my soul pines You have wandered far, my Love, and have shackled my loins

emended the word shif ah (handmaiden) to sim ah (happiness), and thus obscured the slave metaphor. 70 Azikri’s legacy includes talmudic commentaries; homiletical exegeses of the Pentateuch; ethical writings; and mystical diaries; see Pachter, “The Life and Personality of R. Elazar Azikri.” 71 See: Yahalom, “Tensions” and “R. Israel Najarah and the Revival of Hebrew Poetry in the East After the Expulsion from Spain”; and Seroussi, “Rabbi yisra el najarah me a ev zimrat ha-qodesh a arei gerush sefarad.” For a detailed, if somewhat uncritical biography see Benayahu, “Rabbi yisra el najarah.” 72 See Beeri, “The Spanish Elements in the Poetry of Rabbi Israel Najara” and “ Olat odesh le-rabbi yisra el najarah—nos im u-tkhanim.” 73 Najara was not the ﬁrst Hebrew poet to specify Turkish tunes for his poetry, but he went beyond his predecessors in adapting his prosody accordingly; see Yahalom, “Tensions” and “R. Israel Najarah and the Revival of Hebrew Poetry.” Seroussi argues that Najara’s real innovation was in grouping his poems according to the Turkish maq m, or musical mode, to which they were to be sung; see “Rabbi yisra el najarah me a ev zimrat ha-qodesh.” Note that the Vries-Horeb edition of Najara’s Zemirot Yisra el omits these musical cues.

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Tell me, Light of my eyes, how you can forget one so desired Pity the girl who knocks at Your gate, clinging to You.74

Najara’s ketubbah for the festival of Shavuot recounts the marriage of God to Israel, depicting the revelation of the Torah as the brideprice paid by the groom to the bride on their wedding day. As her dowry, the bride brings her readiness to observe the Law. Using the age-old formulae of the marriage contract, the groom pledges to sustain and protect his beloved.75 But before he evokes the covenantal relationship between God and Israel with his splendid imitation of the ketubbah, Najara portrays the pair’s courtship with highly sensual biblical language: My beloved has gone down to his garden, to his beds of spices To delight in the daughter of nobles, and to spread over her his canopy of peace ... He left seraﬁm and ofanim, his horsemen and chariot To rest between the breasts of the loving doe On his wedding day, on his day of bliss.76

It is perhaps not surprising that Najara’s daring drew criticism from more staid contemporaries.77 In an exceedingly suggestive poem, he uses both female and male metaphors for God: If I were an infant and you were my nurse, I would suckle your beautiful breasts, and quench my thirst. If I were a tent and you dwelt in me, we would delight ourselves with love and clothe ourselves with joy.78

Some of Najara’s sacred love lyrics are spoken by God to an unnamed female ﬁgure. With no overtly national references, these poems might as easily be addressed to the individual soul as to Israel. “Yeshenah be- eiq ta avah” builds on Judah Halevi’s reshut to Nishmat, “Yeshenah “Yish afun lekha ra ayonay,” in Israel Najara, Zemirot Yisrael, p. 21, ﬁrst stanza. See Najara, ibid., pp. 464–69; on the poem see Yahalom, “R. Israel Najarah and the Revival of Hebrew Poetry,” 124 and Davidson, Parody in Jewish Literature, 35–36. 76 Cf. Cant. 3:11, 6:2, 7:2 and Prov. 5:19, 7:18. 77 On the criticisms leveled by the poet Menahem de Lonzano see Yahalom, “Tensions,” and Benayahu, “Rabbi yisra el najarah,” 223–25. 78 Quoted in the translation of T. Carmi, see The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 477; on this poem see Yahalom, “Tensions,” 212–13. 74 75

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be- eiq yaldut,” which exhorts the soul to rouse herself from the moral complacency of her youth.79 As Yosef Yahalom has noted, Najara’s poem focuses on redemption, rather than on spurning worldly temptations. The speaker rouses his addressee from her reverie about deliverance, and calls her—echoing Halevi’s renowned Zionide ode— a “prisoner of hope” (asirat tiqvah). With its language redolent of the Song of Songs, the poem certainly invites a national reading. But in the absence of any explicit historical references, its images of exile and redemption can also sustain a spiritualized interpretation.80 A similar ambiguity characterizes “Adonay, ye erav lakh shir hagigi,” a reshut for Qaddish in which a male speaker asks God to accept his songs of praise.81 In the space of ﬁve short couplets, Najara invokes his soul, thoughts, and meditations, much as the Andalusian poets do in their philosophically colored reshuyot. Two lines in particular lend themselves to a double reading: “Lord, my soul longs for Your Shekhinah’s sanctuary and holy abode,” and “Lord, . . . show favor to the captive who calls to You.” Read on the collective plane, these verses express yearning for restoration of the Temple and relief from the oppressions of exile, while on the individual plane they voice the soul’s longing for the divine realms and redemption from her earthly captivity. The poem’s openness to both interpretations reﬂects Najara’s studied intimacy with his Andalusian models. Yet certain thematic and prosodic innovations signal his independence from earlier conventions. The speaker’s soul longs not merely for the sanctuary, but the Shekhinah’s sanctuary, reﬂecting, perhaps, the Safed mystics’ preoccupation with delivering that seﬁrah from its exile. Formally, too, the poem is no longer identical with Andalusian reshuyot, having moved away from monorhyme and quantitative meter to a more song-like format of individually rhymed couplets in a syllabic meter,

79 For “Yeshenah be- eiq yaldut” see Schirmann, HPSP 2:513 and Judah Halevi, The Liturgical Poetry 1:25; for “Yeshenah be- eiq ta avah” see Israel Najara, Zemirot Yisra el, p. 140. 80 With the exception of one or two phrases that suggest national redemption, the same is true of “Yirta ka-sir libbi”; see Najara, ibid., p. 141. Most scholarly treatments have emphasized the centrality of national redemption to Najara’s verse, focusing on poems that unmistakably allude to the ingathering of the exiles or the advent of the messiah. See, e.g.: Bar-Tikva, “ I uv nose ha-ge ulah be-shirat rabbi yisra el najarah”; Beeri, “ Olat odesh le-rabbi yisra el najarah,” 320–24; and Mirsky, “Shirim adashim me-she erit yisra el le-rabbi yisra el najarah,” 89–90. 81 See Israel Najara, Zemirot Yisra el, p. 459.

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prefaced and followed by the incantatory one-word refrain, Adonay, and inscribed with a four-fold acrostic.82 The kabbalistic link between the soul and the Shekhinah is also evident in Najara’s tokhe ah, “Shuvu na, shuvu, a im ve-re im,” which is arranged as an alphabetic acrostic. Inspired by a passage in the Zohar, the poem urges repentance before death so as to avoid horriﬁc posthumous punishments ( ibbu ha-qever) for sins committed during one’s lifetime.83 In the stanza beginning with the letter nun, Najara writes that the soul, after it has doﬀed the body, will not be set free until it has beheld the Shekhinah in her splendor. If it is pure, the soul may draw close to that luminous vision without fear, but if tainted, it must plunge into the netherworld.84 The demonic drama of ibbu ha-qever derives from a folk belief that one is judged through torture during one’s ﬁrst three days in the grave; a belief that was developed in the literature of Lurianic kabbalah, and thus sets this composition apart from the Andalusian tradition of tokhe ot.85 But Najara’s other tokhe ot are very much in the rationalist mode of the earlier poems, whose stock motifs they adopt. Pious exhortations to the soul, “Ye idah be- ohar ra ayon,” “ Al ma ali nafshi bekhi,” “ Urah kevodi,” “Nafshi qumi,” and “Yonah ye idah im le-malkekh tikhseﬁ,” betray no trace of kabbalistic theosophical doctrines or daringly sensual imagery. Yet prosodically they are diﬀerent: with their lightly tripping rhythms and shortened lines, enjambments, repetitions, and refrains, these penitential poems reﬂect the musical adaptation that was Najara’s hallmark.86 The creative tension between tradition and innovation in Najara’s oeuvre ensured that his Andalusian models were still recognizable, but not unchanged. Like Azikri, he reﬁned, adjusted, and reworked the received inventory of themes and forms to suit his mystical sensibilities and esthetic preferences. Yemenite Jewish authors enthusiastically embraced and immortal82 See Vries-Horeb’s note on p. 648 elucidating the reference to the four-fold acrostic in Najara’s cryptic superscription. 83 See Israel Najara, Zemirot Yisra el, pp. 499–503. 84 Ibid., pp. 501–502. Cf. Tishby, The Wisdom of the Zohar 2:851 (Zohar III, 88a–88b): “No man dies before he sees the Shekhinah, and because of its deep yearning for the Shekhinah the soul departs in order to greet her.” 85 On ibbu ha-qever see Werblowsky and Wigoder, The Oxford Dictionary of the Jewish Religion, 321. 86 See Israel Najara, Zemirot Yisra el, pp. 497–98; 506–507; 513–14; 544–45 and Mirsky, “New Poems of R. Israel Nagara,” 271–72. Najara’s penitential poems are concentrated in “ Olat odesh,” the third section of Zemirot Yisra el; see Mirsky, ibid., 270 and Beeri, “ Olat odesh le-rabbi yisra el najarah.”

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ized the Andalusian poem on the soul. Immersed in biblical, midrashic, and aggadic study, these scholars were highly receptive to a literary form so anchored in classical Jewish sources. With the arrival of the works of Maimonides, they also developed a passion for philosophical investigation. Drawing on a broad range of speculative sources, they evinced a particular sympathy for Neoplatonism.87 Golden Age Hebrew poetry reached the Yemen from Spain not long after its composition and was copied and collected by local devotees. Large numbers of Andalusian piyyutim entered Yemenite ma zorim, and non-liturgical poems circulated in specially compiled d w ns. Original works began to appear in the fourteenth century. Initially an oﬀshoot of the Andalusian school, Yemenite Hebrew poetry gradually modiﬁed the conventions it had borrowed wholesale, and came into its own with the extensive creativity of Zechariah Al ahiri (c. 1519– c. 1589) and Shalem Shabbazi (ﬂ. 17th century). While Al ahiri hewed closely to Andalusian models, he helped to promote the Zohar and other kabbalistic works in the Yemen, following a visit to Safed. Via the verse of the Safed mystics, the themes and imagery of Lurianic and earlier kabbalah penetrated Yemenite poetry from the sixteenth century on. Andalusian poetic inﬂuence waned and secular motifs fell away, or were read allegorically. Yet, ever adaptable, the poem on the soul retained its appeal for Shabbazi’s seventeenthcentury circle.88 Like its Andalusian prototype, Shabbazi’s “Dabberi shir ye idah, dabberi” exhorts the soul to praise God, free herself of worldly desires, pursue her ultimate reward, and return to the supernal world, where a place has been reserved for her in paradise.89 But these familiar motifs are ﬁltered through a kabbalistic prism. The soul is assured that, if she earns her place in the celestial realm, she will ﬁnd herself under the patronage of Metatron, ﬁrst in rank of the angelic hosts (v. 10).90 In language suggestive of emanation, the speaker tells her she will also draw down (tehe mishtalshelah) grace ( en) and goodness ( ovah) if she ﬁnds favor among 87

See Langermann, Yemenite Midrash, xvii–xxix. For this periodization see Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, 7–48, and Shirat Tem n Ha ivr t, 11–45. 89 See Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, 61–62. 90 On the angel Metatron see Scholem, Kabbalah, 377–81. Citing Midrash ha-ne elam on Genesis, Ratzaby notes that, according to kabbalistic tradition, Metatron is appointed over the soul, and his hosts provide her daily with light from the divine throne; see Yalku shir tem n p. 61, n. 10. 88

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the fellowship of the righteous in paradise (v. 6). The diction and style of this poem also reveal post-classical tendencies: Shabbazi is not bound by the ideal of biblical purism, nor does he cultivate the paronomastic ornamentation so typical of Andalusian poetry. The unadorned language, lilting meter, and strophic form lend the piece a songlike quality, suggesting that, like many Yemenite poems, it was intended to be sung.91 A remarkable series of Yemenite admonitions to the soul was sparked by Zechariah Al ahiri’s imitation of a poem by Judah Al arizi, that creative heir to the Andalusian legacy. Spanning the sixteenth to nineteenth centuries, these pieces adopt the rhyme scheme, meter, and hortatory opening of Al arizi’s “Nefesh yeqarah, eikh be-sikhlekh tivte i,” (“Precious soul, how can you trust in your intellect?”) found in the thirteenth chapter of the Ta kemoni.92 The practice of producing a new poem whose formal features match those of an existing model was known in classical Arabic poetics as mu ra a, or contrefaction, and among Yemenite Jewish poets was called jaw b, or response, for the deliberate imitation often signaled a response to the content of the earlier poem.93 Al ahiri’s “Nefesh yeqarah eikh be-tokh guf tishkeni” (“Precious soul, how can you dwell in a body?”) occurs in a chapter on the soul and its faculties in his Sefer ha-musar, a colorful belletristic work conceived in the tradition of the Ta kemoni and Immanuel of Rome’s Ma barot.94 Echoing the moralizing of Andalusian tokhe ot, the monorhymed poem asks rhetorically how the soul can dwell in a body when she is inherently pure and hewn from the divine splendor. It urges her to abandon sin and prepare for Judgment Day, and warns that she cannot rest until she returns to her celestial abode. Most of the later poems open with a similarly rhetorical question. Shabbazi’s “Nefesh ye idah eikh le-sod el ti peni” asks, “Singular soul, how can you hide from God’s mystery?” Kabbalistically colored, it enjoins the soul to draw down the divine eﬄuence (shefa ) from the heavenly heights to the lower realms

91

See Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, 25–30 and Shirat Tem n Ha ivr t, 32–34. The poems are enumerated in Tobi, “Shirim ‘al ha-nefesh be-shirat teman.” 93 See Pagis, Secular Poetry and Poetic Theory, 103 and 286; Rosen-Moked, The Hebrew Girdle Poem, esp. 65–79; Einbinder, “Mu ra a as a Key to the Literary Unity of the Muwashsha ”; Tobi, “Shirim al ha-nefesh be-shirat teman”; Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, p. 14 and Shirat Tem n Ha ivr t, 31–32. 94 For the text see Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, p. 58 and Zechariah Al- hir , Sefer ha-musar, 122–123. 92

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(v. 4), to acquire theosophical wisdom ( okhmat benei da at; v. 7), and to ﬁnd rest among the angelic hosts who sing songs of praise to the Creator (vv. 8–10).95 Solomon ben Shalem’s “Nefesh ashuqah eikh be-hevel tahbeli” (“Beloved soul, how can you pursue vanity?”) alternates hemistichs in Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic, while Moses ben Saadya’s “Nefesh ashuqah eikh be-tokh guf timshekhi” (“Beloved soul, how can you remain in a body?) alternates Hebrew and Arabic verses.96 The similarity of these two incipits suggests that some of the later poems may not have been inspired directly by Al arizi, but rather by a jaw b to Al ahiri. The chain extends into the nineteenth century with Saadya ben Solomon aw l’s “Nefesh ye idah na lea mekh ahari” (“Singular soul, purify yourself !”), which imagines with some vividness the punishments of the unrepentant soul, and urges the returning soul to doﬀ her bodily matter and don angelic garb (v. 12).97 Thus, some six hundred years after the genre’s inception, the Hebrew philosophical prototype accommodated kabbalistic ideas and a Judeo-Arabic idiom. Over a period of three centuries the Yemenite jaw b pieces inevitably shifted from the masterful to the epigonic. Yet one constant remained: these poems are uniformly pious admonitions to the soul. It is all the more striking, therefore, that their original model, Al arizi’s poem, is an insolent provocation to sin addressed by the evil inclination to the soul. Perhaps, in the true spirit of contrefaction, Al ahiri and his successors strove to correct and reﬁne the unseemly and subversive content of the earlier work, in keeping with the devout inclination of late medieval Yemenite Jewish society.98 Whether or not these Yemenite poets consciously overlooked Al arizi’s artful parody, they lavished much care on the poetic tradition reaching back to Ibn Gabirol. Mystical reworkings notwithstanding, they preserved intact the underlying theoretical assumptions of 95

See Ratzaby, Yalku shir tem n, 62–63. The dates of these poets are uncertain. Tobi published the text of Solomon ben Shalem’s poem in the second installment of his “Shirim al ha-nefesh be-shirat teman,” but the format there is somewhat unclear. For a more intuitive layout see Maswari-Caspi, Nehar Dinur, 118–121. For Moses ben Saadya’s poem see ibid., 133–35. Maswari-Caspi has the poems arranged in couplets, but it is more likely that they follow Al arizi and Al ahiri’s non-strophic, monorhymed format. 97 For the text see Ratzaby, Shirat Tem n Ha ivr t, 51 (where the opening word is nafshi, rather than nefesh). 98 Ratzaby highlights the piety of this society in his introduction to Yalku shir tem n; see pp. 11–46. Apparently, Al ahiri’s compatriots considered his Sefer ha-musar too frivolous, due to its anomalous form and subject matter; see ibid., 12 and 41–42. 96

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the genre: the body is a temporary residence for the immortal soul, whose true home is in the supernal world; unrestrained bodily desires lead the soul into sin, but rejection of worldly temptations and adherence to the dictates of reason allow man to realize his fullest spiritual potential and earn his place in paradise. By odd coincidence, Shalem Shabbazi and his circle were active at the same time as the English metaphysical poets with whom we began this study. Though the two groups could not have been futher apart geographically, religiously, or culturally, they shared a fascination with the soul and its destiny. We end, then, with Andrew Marvell, an exact contemporary of Shabbazi, who evoked the struggle between man’s baser and nobler instincts in “A Dialogue between The Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure,” a poem broadly analogous in conception to Al arizi’s “Dispute of the Soul with the Body”: ... PLEASURE On these downy Pillows lye, Whose soft Plumes will thither ﬂy: On these Roses strow’d so plain Lest one Leaf thy Side should strain. SOUL My gentler Rest is on a Thought, Conscious of doing what I ought. ... PLEASURE Where so e’re thy Foot shall go The minted Gold shall lie; Till thou purchase all below, And want new Worlds to buy. SOUL Wer’t not a price who’ld value Gold? And that’s worth nought that can be sold. ... CHORUS Triumph, triumph, victorious Soul; The World has not one Pleasure more: The rest does lie beyond the Pole, And is thine everlasting Store.99 99

Gardner, The Metaphysical Poets, 237–40.

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BIBLIOGRAPHICAL ABBREVIATIONS

b Cant. Rab. Deut. Rab. Ecc. Rab. Ex. Rab. EJ Gen. Rab. HPCS HPD HPMS HPSP HUCA JE JJS JQR JSAI JSS Judah Halevi, Al-khazar KM KS Lev. Rab. Maimonides, Guide Maimonides, MT MGWJ MH Num. Rab. PAAJR REJ Saadya, Am n t SI Sifrei Deut. Sifrei Num. ZGAIW

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INDEX OF POEMS

Hebrew Aaron ben Elijah “Ora

ayyim le-ma alah”

Dunash ben Labra 230–232

“Ve- omer al tishan”

Aaron ben Joseph

Eleazar Azikri

“A ulah mi-maqom qadosh” 232 “Avvat nefesh ha-ye idah” 232 “Omnam za alti va- alti ve-nivhalti” 229–230

“Yedid nefesh”

Abraham Ibn Ezra “Anushah anushah” 130 n. 64 “A ulah le-fanim” 134 n. 8 “A ulah mi-kevodo el bera ekh” 64 n. 28; 229 “A ulah mi-meqor ayyim me irah” 64 n. 28; 101 “Efes emet biltekha” 156, 158 n. 37 “Efta sefatay bi-nginotay” 168, 173 “El beit ha-melekh lavo niqreiti” 224 “El elohim kaletah nafshi” 156 “El ay be-qirbi” 158 n. 37 “Et ef i male” 144, n. 46, 172 n. 30 “Imrat ye idah le-ya id ya atah” 93 n. 25; 146–159, 173 n. 34 “Imru benei elohim” 155 n. 28, 157 n. 35 “Odeh le-sam be- appi neshamah” 154 n. 26 “Okhia be-ﬁ ru i” 216–217 “Raneni bat ha-betulah” 133 n. 3 “ ame ah lekha el” 154, n. 26, 156 n. 33 “Yeshenei lev mah lakhem” 68 n. 48, 154 n. 26; 163, 168–173

55 n. 233

234–236

Eleazar ha-Qallir “Eikhah yashevah ava elet ha-sharon” 133 n. 2 Eliezer

efe

“Nafshi sekhiyyat paz”

226 n. 34

Elijah Bashyachi “Avi okhmah ve-ha-mezimah” 232 Immanuel of Rome “Oyah le-nafshi”

224

Isaac bar Solomon “Ye idah a ulah be-khavod kelulah” 232 “Ye idah ha-qedoshah ha-kelulah” 232 “Ye idah mi-meqor sekhel a ulah” 232 Isaac ben Zerahiah Halevi “Ye idah aqavekh karukh” n. 12

221,

Ba ya Ibn Paquda “Barekhi nafshi” 107–108, n. 10; 225, 230 n. 52 “Be-yom le-mishpa eqare” 54

Isaac Ha-seniri “Ye idah ha- a a ah”

221, n. 13

index of poems

276 Isaac Ibn Ghiyath

“El elohim ni i” 107, n. 6 “Ve- ere ikkaf ” 107, n. 5, 166 n. 19 “Yeda tikha be-shem” 107 n. 6 Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul “Ha-kol yif adu ve-yirhu”

53

Israel Najara “Adonai ye erav lakh shir hagigi” 238–239 “ ‘Al ma ali nafshi bekhi” 239 “Nafshi qumi” 239 “Shuvu na shuvu a im ve-re im” 239 “ ‘Urah kevodi” 239 “Ye idah be- ohar ra ayon” 239 “Yeshenah be- eiq ta avah” 237 “Yirta ka-sir libbi” 238 n. 80 “Yish’afun lekha ra ayonay” 236–237, n. 74 “Yonah ye idah im le-malkekh tikhseﬁ” 239

Joseph Ibn Abitur “Ammi shokhen ere ” 52, 204 “Oy lakh basar va-dam” 20 n. 67 Joseph Ibn addiq “Yafetah almat en”

76 n. 75

Joseph Zarfati “Histakkeli nafshi ve-shuri po alekh” 225 Judah Al arizi “ onah ve-nisgeret be-vor gevyah” 141–143, 209 n. 46, 212 n. 58 “Liveshi ye idah oz” 206–207 “Me-hekhalei galgal yeqar galiti” 208–210 “Nefesh yeqarah a aritekh baqqeshi” 213 “Nefesh yeqarah eikh be-sikhlekh tiv e i” 212–213, 241–242

“Sefat yeter ha-tasig mahalal am” 197 n. 8 “Yehemeh libbi” 205 n. 36 Judah Halevi “Adonai negdekha khol ta avati” 96 n. 32, 157 n. 34 “Barekhi a ulah me-rua ha-qodesh” 186, 190 n. 53, 223 n. 19 “Devarekha be-mor over requ im” 174 n. 4 “Ha-tirdof na arut a ar amishim” 174 n. 4; 175 “Ha-yukhelu fegarim” 174 n. 4 “Libbi ve-mizra ” 174, n. 3 “Me- az me on ha- ahavah hayyita” 157 n. 35 “Mi khamokha amuqot goleh” 190 n. 50 “Mi-yadekha hayetah le-libbi” 190 n. 50 “Shem elohim odeh be-si ay” 173 n. 34 “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” 90 n. 12, 123 n. 44, 131 n. 72, 181–194 “ iyon ha-lo tish ali” 174 n. 4 “Ya alat en mi-me onah ra aqah” 127 n. 54 “Ya alat en, ra emi levav” 14 n. 51 “Yah ana em a akha” 189 n. 48 “Yah shimekha” 144 n. 46; 192 “Yashen al teradam” 144 n. 46; 188, 191 “Yefeh nof mesos tevel” 174 n. 4 “Ye alu fenei el ay asidav” 190 n. 50 “Ye idah ya adi na el emunah” 186, 207 “Ye iruni ve-shimekha ra ayonay” 191 “Yeqarah shakhenah gevyah” 186 “Yeshenah be- eiq yaldut” 237–238 “Yonah nesatah al kanfei nesharim” 130 n. 64 Moses ben Saadya “Nefesh ashuqah eikh be-tokh guf timshekhi” 242

index of poems Moses Ibn Ezra “A irah shenat eini” 64 n. 28 “Anshei emunah niqdashu” 109 n. 17; 126–127, 168 n. 24 “Be-leili al mishkavi” 118 n. 24 “Be-shem el asher amar” 59 n. 6; 110, 125 n. 49, 144 n. 48, 162 n. 9 “Be-yom a aqi” 121 n. 35 “Direshu shemi hamonay” 127 n. 54 “Ein be-ﬁ millah” 109 n. 17 “Elohei tehillati, me- ayin bera tani” 127 n. 55 “Elohim el nora me od ve- ayom” 109 n. 17, 125 n. 49 “Ha- el ha-toleh al belimah tevel” 163-168, 172–173 “ aradah laveshah tevel” 109 n. 16 “Hayitapeq enosh” 109 n. 16 “Heqi oti tenumat ra ayonay” 64 n. 28, 159 n. 41 “Hitbonenu ve-neda ah” 121 n. 35, 126 n. 52 “Hit‘oraru temehim” 168 n. 25 “Maddei erut u-vigdei ofesh” 126 “Mah niﬂeta” 64 n. 28 “Maharu na elei me onei ahuvim” 127 n. 54 “Ma iv adamah ve-khol gevulehah” 133 n. 3 “Me-ha-yom ha-ba” 123, 154 n. 26 “Mevasser le- am shafal ve-nivzeh” 129 n. 62 “Middei yamay ve-shanay” 109 n. 17; 130, n. 67 “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” 79 n. 92; 106–131, 132, 151, 157, 185, n. 33; 220, 235 “Qumi bat u-lekhi” 109 n. 17 “Ruah sesoni ve- en man amav” 133 n. 3 “Shavti ve-taltalei zeman lo shavu” 109 n. 16 “Shoreru yaledei emunay” 109 n. 17, 127 n. 54 “Tevel teni libbekh” 124 n. 47 “Tinnaten li vi-sh elati” 125, n. 50, 140, n. 31 “Ye iruni se ipay la- azotekha” 166 n. 18 “Yenu amu yeru amu” 109 n. 17

277

“Yonat elem re oqim” 109 n. 17, 133 n. 3 “Zeman hevli” 121 n. 35 Moses Na manides “Li yiz aqu re ay” (Me ah Battim) n. 20 “Me-rosh mi-qadmei olamim” 222–223

223

Moses Zacuto “Nefesh te av kislut”

226

Nathan Jedediah Eliezer of Orvietto “An telekhi ro ah ye idati” 226 “Eli eli ra um erekh appayim” 225–226 “Qatan ke-khaf yalud” 226 Saadya Gaon “Barekhi abberet ve- amme et” 45–51, 90, 186–187 “Barekhi nafshi” cycle 46 “Im leﬁ bo orkha” 50–51 Saadya ben Solomon

aw l

“Nefesh ye idah na le- a mekh ahari” 242 Samuel Hanagid “Ha-kha-yamim be artem ba-meradim” 56 n. 238 “Ha-nim a be-re ay mar levavo le-marotay” 56, nn. 236–238 “Shemuel qaddemah yoshev qeruvim” 55 n. 235 Shalem Shabbazi “Dabberi shir ye idah dabberi” 240–241 “Nefesh ye idah eikh le-sod el ti peni” 241–242 Solomon ben Shalem “Nefesh ashuqah eikh be-hevel tahbeli” 242

278

index of poems

Solomon Ibn Gabirol “A i tevel” 74 n. 69 “Be-shuri ha- aliyyah” 74 n. 69, 141 n. 32 “Bimei yequti el asher nigmaru” 82 n. 102 Keter Malkhut 41, 57–83, 84, 93, 94, 99, 102, 104, 105, 110, 120 n. 34, 121 n. 35; 122, 123, n. 40; 189, 203, 208, 221, 223 n. 19; 229 “Lekha el ay tikhsof ye idati” 103–104, 144 n. 45 “Lekha nafshi tesapper” 68 n. 47, 157 n. 36 “Lekha re i” 64 “Lekha shadday” 64 “Mah la- avigayil” 169 n. 28 “Nafshi de i mah tif ali” 92, 102 n. 59; 141, 207 “Nefesh asher alu she oneha” 140 n. 32 “Ni ar be-qor i geroni” 140 n. 32 “Se i ayin ye idati le- urekh” 76 n. 75, 102 n. 59 “Sesoni rav bekha” 158 n. 37 “Shabbe i nafshi le- urekh” 25 n. 87, 68 n. 46, 76 n. 75, 79 n. 92; 84–105, 157, 185, 207, 235 “Sha ar avaqeshkha” 150 n. 9 “She arim eqre ah urah kevodi” 103 “She artikha be-khol sha ri ve-nishpi” 95 n. 31

“She i la- el ye idah ha- akhamah” 68 n. 46, 88 n. 7, 93 n. 23, 152 n. 16 “Shekhura akhurah” 133 n. 3 “She ar alay be- edim ve-qinyan” 54, 82 “Shikhe i yegonekh nefesh homiyyah” 76 n. 75, 102 n. 59; 104, 157 n. 35 “Shokhen ad me- az nisgav levado” 166 n. 19 “Shokhenei battei omer” 24 n. 81; 221 “Shomron qol titten” 133 n. 3 “Shuvi nafshi li-mnu aykhi” 89, 90, 93 n. 23, 100 n. 51; 209 Yannai Qerovah on Leviticus 4:1–2 151 n. 12

44–45,

Zechariah Al ahiri “Nefesh yeqarah eikh be-tokh guf tishkeni” 241 Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi “Mah tehemi nafshi” 220–222 “Nafshi ivvitikha ba-laylah” 220 “Zo alim pequdot moredim” 220

English Andrew Marvell

Sir Thomas Overbury

“A Dialogue between the Soul and Body” 1 “A Dialogue between The Resolved Soul, and Created Pleasure” 243

“Epitaph on Himself ” 1

INDEX OF SOURCES

Biblical Verses Cited Genesis 1:1 62 n. 17, 71 n. 61, 72 1:20–21 24 n. 82 1:24 24 n. 82 1:26–27 33, 152, 162 1:30 24 n. 83 2:7 24, n. 79 3:21 102 n. 61 12:13 25 n. 87, 92 n. 21 24:21 123 n. 41 25:8 65 n. 33, 104 n. 71 25:30 129 n. 59 28:11 158 n. 38 28:12 190 28:17 143 33:4 128 36:1, 8, 19 129 n. 59 49:6 64 n. 29, 123 n. 44 Exodus 3:5 3:15 12:22 16:10 23:20 24:11 24:17 25:7 25:22 25:40 31:18 33:4–6 33:18 33:20 34:3

143 62 n. 17, 64 n. 27 93 n. 24 63 n. 22, 123 n. 44 62 n. 17, 65 n. 33 79 63 n. 22 151 n. 13 151 n. 13 151 n. 13, 153 n. 18, 162–163 147 n. 4; 162 132, 133 nn. 3, 6; 134, n. 8; 141, 143 n. 44, 144 n. 49 63 n. 20 77 n. 79 67 n. 43

13:55 16:1 17:11 22:13

154 n. 25 46 n. 190 24, n. 84 185, n. 33

Numbers 5:8 5:19–20 11:4 11:7 11:17 11:25 16:30 22:5 27:16

131 n. 68 209 n. 47 99 n. 43 154 n. 25 71 n. 60, 154 n. 25 71 n. 60 154 n. 26 154 n. 25 74 n. 70

Deuteronomy 6:4 6:5 10:12 10:20 12:23 18:11 28:58 32:39 30:15 32:4 33:3 33:7 33:27

95 27, 95 96, 97 97 24 n. 84 193 n. 61 97 147 n. 3 65 n. 30 70 n. 56 74 n. 70 98 n. 41 102 n. 60, 157

Judges 2:18 4:11 5:21

98 n. 41 215 n. 66 90 n. 11

I Samuel Leviticus 4:1–2 12:4

44 80

1:15 2:2 25:29

27 70 n. 58 25, 42, 51, 74, 75 n. 71

index of sources

280 Isaiah 6:1 3:18–24 12:3 26:9 42:5 43:7 49:18 49:21 51:1 51:6 54:8 57:17 60:2 61:10

Zechariah 77 n. 79 133 n. 6 104 118 24 n. 80 93 n. 24 133 n. 5 80 70, nn. 57, 59 166 n. 17 80 24 n. 80 187 n. 43 133, n. 5

Jeremiah 4:30 9:23

133 n. 5 188 n. 44

Ezekiel 16:7 16:11–13 18:4 23:26 37:14

133 n. 5, 134 133 n. 5, 134, 144 n. 49 45 n. 182 133 n. 6 24 n. 80

Hosea 2:15 2:22 4:12 10:13

133 n. 5 230 209 n. 47 231

Obadiah 3

129 n. 60

Jonah 1:6

169

Micah 2:10

184

Malachi 3:15, 19

129 n. 60

3:3–5 12:1

133 n. 6, 138 24 n. 80

Psalms 1:3 8:5–6

147 n. 3 25, 26, 62 n. 17, 144, n. 48 16:8–11 64 n. 29, 147 n. 3 19:2 124 19:3 123 22:21–22 25 nn. 89, 92; 88 n. 7, 151 24:9 123 n. 44 27:4 122, 151 n. 13 30:13 64 n. 29, 65 n. 31, 123 n. 44 34:9 190, n. 53 35:17 25 n. 89 36:10 35, n. 131; 49, 101, 153 39:13 184 n. 30 42:2–3 27 42:6 90 n. 11 42:12 90 n. 11 43:5 90 n. 11 45:11 89 n. 9 49:16–21 147 n. 3 50:4 51, n. 215 63:2 27 71:20 82 73:26 70 n. 56 76:5 64 n. 26 80:9–17 167 n. 23 82:6–7 30, 62 n. 17 84:3 27, 121, 151, n. 13 91:16 65 n. 30 94:11 166 103:1 29, 65 n. 32, 90, n. 11; 96, n. 33 103:2 29, 90 n. 11 103:4 185 103:5 65 n. 32, 134 n. 7 103:22 29, 90 n. 11 104:1 29, 46, 90, n. 11 104:35 29, 90 n. 11 108:1–2 65 n. 31, 123 n. 44 116:7 90, n. 11; 181 119:25 85 n. 5 119:70 229 119:126 185 119:175 156 137:7 129

index of sources 139:2 143:3 146:1 146:4 150:6

155 n. 26 25 90, n. 11 25 n. 85 28, n. 102

237 n. 76 237 n. 76 53 99 n. 43 99 n. 43 99 n. 43 26 99 n. 43 141, n. 33

Job 1:6 3:17 4:19 7:20 12:10 13:28 16:10 19:26 26:7 29:23 31:14 32:8 33:20 33:30 36:22

47 n. 196 75 n. 73 24, n. 81 168 24 n. 80 166 n. 17 166 n. 17 155, n. 27; 160–173 166 n. 17 166 n. 17 166 n. 17 27 26 49 n. 206 172 n. 33

Canticles 1:2 1:4 1:10 2:5 3:9 3:11 4:9 5:8 6:2 6:4 7:1

138, 237 n. 76 229 130

Ruth 3:12–13 4:4

Proverbs 5:19 7:18 7:23 13:12 13:19 18:1 20:27 21:26 25:20

7:2 7:3 8:2

281

130, n. 64 130 n. 64

Lamentations 1:2 2:10 5:16

127–128, 132 n. 1, 133 n. 3 132 132

Ecclesiastes 2:21 3:18 3:19 3:20 3:21 5:1 7:9 8:8 9:14–16 12:2–5 12:7

231 27 n. 97, 106 27, n. 97; 106, 189 27, n. 97 27, n. 97; 106 45 n. 186 27 25 99 172 n. 31 25 nn. 85–86; 137 n. 19, 153 n. 18, 172

Esther 3:10 7:3

125 125

Daniel 189 103 135 n. 10, 138 104 63 237 n. 76 138 n. 24 104 102–103, 237 n. 76 104 130, 185

2:11 8:7

62 n. 17 53 n. 229

Nehemiah 9:20

27

I Chronicles 29:11–13

46 n. 190

index of sources

282

Rabbinic Sources Cited Mishnah

31a 32b

75 n. 72 129 n. 63

Yoma 3:8 4:2

97 n. 39 97 n. 39

Ta anit 4a 31a

131 n. 69 77 n. 81, 104 n. 69

agigah 2:1

191

Megillah 24b

78

Avot 1:14 2:19 4:23

185 n. 34 185 n. 34 124 n. 47

Tosefta Yoma 2:5

93 n. 24

Babylonian Talmud Berakhot 5a 6a 10a 17a 31a–b 32b 33b 57b Shabbat 30a–b 88a 105b 152b

100 n. 50 77 n. 80 28 n. 104, 29, n. 105; 48, 70 n. 58 78, 104 n. 69; 144, 185 n. 34 28 n. 100 131 n. 69 150 n. 10 75 n. 72 26 n. 94 134 n. 7 125 n. 49 32 n. 121, 66 n. 37, 74 n. 70, 137 n. 19

Mo ed Qa an 9b 32 n. 117 agigah 12b 13a 16a

31 n. 111, 66 n. 35 192 n. 58 30 n. 110

Yevamot 49b 62a 63b

77 31 n. 113 31 nn. 113–114

Nedarim 32b

99 n. 45

Bava Qamma 82b 178 n. 18 Bava Me i a 58b 81 n. 99 Bava Batra 15b 99 n. 44 16a 125 n. 49 Sanhedrin 91a–b 106b 108a

33, 34, n. 126; 51, 204 33 n. 125 48 n. 203

Yoma 38a 69b

93 n. 24 127 n. 55

Avodah Zarah 5a 31 nn. 113–114

Sukkah 52a

99, n. 44

Tamid 32a

32, n. 118

Rosh ha-shanah 16b–17a 81 n. 99, 204 n. 34; 210

Niddah 13b 30b

31 nn. 113–114 33 n. 125, 155 n. 29

index of sources 4:8

Midrash Avot de Rabbi Natan (ed. Schechter) Version I Ch. 16, p. 63 100 n. 48 Mekhilta (ed. Lauterbach) “Shirata” 34 n. 126 Sifrei Numbers sec. 139

32 n. 120, 74 n. 70

Sifrei Deuteronomy (ed. Finkelstein) sec. 306 30 n. 107 sec. 344 32 n. 120, 74 n. 70

34:3 36:2

283 25 n. 90, 29, n. 104; 44, 88 n. 7, 151 n. 12, 153 n. 20, 154 n. 22, 155 n. 30 31 n. 117, 33, n. 123 167 n. 23

Numbers Rabbah 11:1 129 n. 61 Deuteronomy Rabbah 2:37 28 n. 104 Canticles Rabbah 3:1 119 n. 29

Genesis Rabbah (ed. Theodor-Albeck) 2:5 119 n. 29 8:11 30 nn. 107, 110 9:7 75 n. 73 12:8 24 n. 79 14:3 30 n. 110, 32 n. 118 14:9 25 n. 90, 151 n. 12, 152 n. 17 24:4 31 n. 113 31:13 31 n. 114 54:1 99 n. 44 68:11 157 n. 36, 158 n. 39 78:9 128 n. 58

Ecclesiastes Rabbah on Ecc. 1:6 31 n. 113 on Ecc. 6:7 31 n. 115, 131 n. 70 on Ecc. 12:7 33 n. 125

Exodus Rabbah 17:1 45:2 51:8

Midrash Tehillim 103:4 29 n. 104 103:8 134 n. 7

93 n. 24 144 n. 49 134 n. 7

Leviticus Rabbah (ed. Margulies) 1:14 77 4:5 34 n. 126, 51, n. 215, 52 n. 221, 185 n. 33; 204

Tan uma “Pequdei” 3 31 n. 112 “Vayyiqra” 11 33 n. 124 “Vayyiqra” 12 34 n. 126 Pesiqta Rabbati 10:6

134 n. 7

Pirqei de Rabbi Eliezer Ch. 34 28 n. 104 Ch. 47 134 n. 7 Midrash Hagadol on Ex. 33:5 134 n. 7

GENERAL INDEX

Aaron ben Elijah “the Younger” 219, 226–232 E ayyim 227, 231–232 Gan Eden 227–228 Keter Torah 227 Aaron ben Joseph “the Elder” 219, 226–230, 232 Abraham Ibn Daud 10 Sefer ha-Qabbalah 10 n. 31; 110 Abraham Ibn Ezra 5 n. 13; 6, 82, 94 n. 27, 107 n. 8; 135, 177 n. 11 Bible commentaries 8–9, n. 29; 15, 22, 25, nn. 86, 92; 27, n. 97, 28 n. 102; 64, 65, 71 n. 61; 72, 88 n. 7; 96, 101, n. 54, 102, n. 61; 103, 104 n. 71, 122, n. 40; 124, 134, 162, 227 critique of Qallir’s piyyut 12, n. 41; 14, 45 ay ben Meqi 43, 103 n. 64, 135 n. 11; 143, 147, 214–215 poems 15, 58, 146–159, 160–173, 208 Yesod Mora 73 n. 64; 147 Abu ’l- At hiya 91, n. 14 adab 108, 195 Adornment, symbolism of in Bible 133–134 in piyyut 132–145 in philosophical works 135–140 ahavah 17, 133 n. 3 ajal 47, n. 194 Almohades 146, 195 Almoravids 108–109, 146 Amalek, allegorical interpretations of 125 n. 51 Ambiguity, poetic 111, 126–130, 214, 238 amidah 15–17, 19 n. 65; 129 Amram Gaon Seder rav amram ga on 19 n. 66, 51 n. 217 Angels comparison with souls 30, 62, n. 17, 64, n. 27, 144 n. 47 Anthropomorphism 110, n. 19; 190

Arabic as conduit of Greek learning 2–3, 36 challenge of 7–8, 11, 199, n. 15, 202 n. 23 poetics and prosody adapted for Hebrew verse 7, 10–11, 14 spoken and written by Jews. See also Judeo-Arabic. 2, 8 Aristotelianism 2, n. 5; 26, 36, 38, 43, n. 173, 139 n. 28, 152 n. 15, 154 n. 24; 176–178, 193, 198, 227 Asceticism 32, 91, 94, 106, 124, 135, 163, 166, 173, 233 manuals of 22, n. 73 poems of 6 n. 19; 90–91, 220–221 ashmurot 19, 51 n. 217, 118, n. 24 avodah 97 n. 39 Ba ya Ibn Paquda 53–54, 204 Kit b al-hid ya il far i al-qul b 5, 22, n. 73, 60 n. 8, 78 n. 86, 88 n. 8, 91 n. 17, 92 n. 18, 94, n. 27, 95, n. 30, 97, n. 35, 99 n. 46; 107–108, 123 n. 45; 137, 161, 169 n. 27; 215–216 baqqashah 45 n. 186, 59 n. 7, 60 n. 8; 107 Bible 6, 23–28, 133–134 as esthetic model 9–10, 109–110 exegesis of 15, 110 n. 19; 134, 147, 226 Body duality with soul 1, 24, 29, 30, 47, 69, 96, 100, 153, 187, 203 ephemeral nature of 68 n. 48 as instrument of soul 38, 68 n. 48; 172–173 negative view of 38, 68, 88, 100, 163, 168 positive approach to 38, 68–69, 209 as prison 1, 38, 68, 212, 231

general index Celestial storehouse for souls 30–31, 45, 74–75 Cosmos medieval philosophers’ model 61, 166 upper and lower worlds 1, 39, 61–62, 120, 143, 144, 162, 233 Creation 72–73, 144, 178 and emanation 70–71, 107 in Keter Malkhut 70–71 meditation on 160–173 Darkness, metaphor of 119, n. 30, 139, n. 26, 172 n. 31 David al-F s 141 n. 33 D w d al-Muqamma (al-Muqammi ) Ishr n Maq la 3 n. 11, 161 n. 6 Death poetic meditations on 56, 90–91, 221 as soul’s release 32, 56, 85 n. 5; 92, 100, 173, 208, n. 43 Devequt 146, 180, 233, 235 Divine Throne 65–68, 220 in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s cosmic hierarchy 65 n. 34 in Ibn Gabirol’s cosmic hierarchy 64 n. 24; 65–68, 144 n. 46 in cosmology of Ikhw n al- af 66, n. 36 in introduction to Sefer ha-Ma or 65 n. 34 in rabbinic literature 66, n. 35 marking limits of human apprehension 67–68 philosophical symbolism of 66, n. 39, 74 souls of righteous stored beneath 32, 66, 222 within man’s heart 158 n. 40 Dunash ben Labra 10–13, 51, 55 Eleazar Azikri 219, 232 Eleazar ha-Qallir 12, 14, 133 n. 2 Elijah Bashyachi 232 Emanation 60 n. 9; 69–71, 93, 94, 107, n. 5; 152, 222–223, 240 analogy with sun’s radiation 69, n. 51 in descriptions of soul’s origin 69, 184, 187, 229 evoked with light imagery 54, 69 as naturalistic process 71, n. 61

285

subordinated to God’s will 41, 71, n. 62 Esau, as symbol 128–129 Eschatological concepts. See also Resurrection, World to come. rabbinic 45, 49 n. 208; 56, 81, 104, 124 n. 47 reinterpretations of 21, 25 n. 88; 34, 40–41, 54, 58, 73–76, 93, 104, 121 n. 36; 123, 185 Eye, inner 77–79, 105, 123, 143, 154 n. 25; 155, 167, 185, 190 al-F r b

42, 62 n. 15

Gazelle, as symbol 126–127, 167–168 ge ulah 17, 133 n. 3 al-Ghaz l (Ghazz l ) 160, 178 I y ul m al-d n 78 n. 86 Maq id al-fal sifa 178 Tah fut al-fal sifa 178 Glory, divine. See Kavod. God attributes, negative 60, n. 11, 110 n. 19, 150 n. 10 as creator 61, 95, 107, 110, 160–173, 184 eternity of 60, 166 human knowledge of limitations of 67, 144 n. 46; 191–192 through contemplating creation 122 n. 37; 123–124, 147, 160–173 through metaphysical study 21, 122 n. 38 through religious experience 188–191 through self-knowledge 123 n. 45 immanence of 157–159 intimacy with 121, 129, 151, 177, 185, 234 as judge 49, 52, 205–206 love and fear of 27, 85, 88, n. 8; 93–98 as ma on 102 n. 60; 157 names of 97, n. 39, 123 n. 45; 191, 234 omniscience of 166–167 transcendence of 60, 121 n. 34; 158, 163, 168, 193 unity doctrine of 95, 154 n. 22

286

general index

proclamation of 95, 100 unknowable 60 n. 11; 150, 192–193 visions of 76–79, 105 metaphorical 105, 122–123 through internal pictorial images 77–78 through purely intellectual apprehension 77–78 volitional 71, 101, 184 within man’s soul 157–159 ad th literature 160 Hai Gaon 77, n. 82 al-Hamadh n 198 Hananel b. Hushiel 77, 190 aq qa 110 al- ar r 198 asdai Ibn Shapru 10 Heart 88 n. 8; 137, 190, 226 Duties of 22, 94–95, 97 Hebrew biblical purism in poetry 8, 11, n. 36; 14, 28, 59, 72, 202, 228, 241 as literary language 2 neglect of 7, n. 23, 199, n. 15 philology as a prerequisite for poetry 7 revival of 7 Ibn Ab ’l-Duny 124 n. 47 Ibn B jja 78 n. 86, 122 n. 39; 176, 177 n. 10 Ibn asday’s Neoplatonist 81 n. 98 Ibn azm 7 n. 20 Ibn Masarra 66 n. 39 Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 152 n. 15; 160 Ibn S n (Avicenna) 42–43, 152 n. 15; 160, 177 n. 10 ayy ibn Yaq n 43, 135 n. 11; 143, 147 Kit b al-ish r t wa’l-tanb h t 42, 78 n. 86, 136 n. 14 Ris la f ’l-nafs al-n iqa 135–136 i j z al-qur n 7, n. 21 Ikhw n al- af (Sincere Brethren) Ras il (Epistles) 35, 39–41, 140, 142, 160, 169 n. 27 al- ilm wa’l- amal 92 n. 20, 124, n. 46, 135, n. 10; 138 iltif t 91 n. 16 Imitatio dei 85 n. 4; 139 Immanuel of Rome 218, 219

Ma berot Immanuel 224, 241 Intellect 205–217 hypostasis of 39 sphere of 61–63, 64 n. 24; 74, 93, 107, 208, 222 superior to soul 38–39 Isaac ben Zerahiah 220, 221, n. 12 Isaac Ibn Ghiyath 14, 27 n. 97, 46 n. 187; 58, 106, n. 3, 108 n. 12 Kit b al-zuhd 106, n. 1, 172 n. 31 Isaac Ibn Kapron 13 Isaac Ibn Mar Shaul 51–53, 54, 204 Isaac Israeli 3, 25 n. 86, 26 n. 94, 28 n. 102; 35, 41–42, 78 n. 87; 80, 140, 153 n. 18, 184 n. 30 Israel Najara 219, 236–239 jaw b 241 Jonah Ibn Jana 8, n. 25, 141 n. 33 Joseph Ibn Abitur 14, 46 n. 187; 51–52, 54, 89 n. 10; 204 Joseph Ibn Aqnin Inkish f al-asr r wa- uh r al-anw r 103 n. 63, 135 n. 10; 138 Joseph Ibn addiq 58, 107 n. 8 Sefer ha- olam ha-qatan 64 n. 28, 75 n. 71, 78 n. 87, 100 n. 47, 135 n. 10; 137, 138 n. 22, 139 n. 26, 153 n. 18; 162 Judah Al arizi 218 Ma berot Iti el 199 Sefer ha- anaq 213, n. 59 Ta kemoni 7 n. 23, 127 n. 55; 141–142, 195–217, 241, 243 Judah Halevi 107 n. 8; 135, 174–194, 195, 218 Kit b al-Khazar 97, n. 37, 135 nn. 10–11; 174–180 poems 5, n. 14, 6, n. 19; 58, 79 n. 92, 125 n. 51; 181–194, 207–208 Judah ayyuj 8 Judah Ibn Tibbon 8 n. 26, 88 n. 8, 197 n. 8, 213 n. 61; 219 Judeo-Arabic 8, n. 27; 197, 215 Judgment of body and soul in midrash 33–34 in piyyut 51–54, 82, 204–205, 217, 221, 225 n. 30 Kabbalah 197 n. 8; 218–219, 222–223, 232–239, 240–242 Kal m 47 n. 194, 60 n. 11, 110, n. 19; 137, 153 n. 18; 160

general index Karaites 9, 137, 160, 219, 226–232 Kavod 63–65, 77, 93, 105 n. 71; 110, 122, 123, n. 44; 184, 189 as incorporeal light 64 as substance of supernal Intellect 64, 122, 208, 221–222 as synonym for soul 25–26, 64, n. 29, 65, n. 31 Kisse ha-kavod. See Divine Throne. Kit b ma n al-nafs 135 n. 10; 137, 139 n. 26, 153 n. 18 Kit b mu dhalat al-nafs 91, n. 17 Levi Ibn Altabban 58, 107, n. 8 Light imagery in descriptions of emanation 54, 69 in descriptions of kavod 61 n. 11 Literary theory, Arabic 4, 109–110, n. 19, 213 n. 59 Liturgy 15–19, 20, 52, 59, 72, 84, 89, 96 n. 33, 97 n. 39; 107, 125 n. 50; 129, 218, 227, 235 Love cosmic 41 imagery of 6, 41, 89 n. 9 intellectual 95–97 ma amad 16, 106 madrikh 85, n. 2; 89, 147, 181 Maimonides 14 n. 51, 74 n. 68; 138, 177 n. 11; 209, 240 Commentary on the Mishnah 197 Introduction to “ eleq” 79 n. 88, 104 n. 70; 145 Mishneh Torah 19, n. 66, 62 n. 17, 70 n. 59, 75 n. 71, 76 n. 74, 79 n. 88; 97, 103, 121 n. 36, 122, n. 40; 145, 151 n. 13, 166 n. 20, 179 n. 20; 210, 228 Sefer moreh ha-nevukhim (Guide of the Perplexed) 70 n. 59, 166 n. 19, 193 n. 60; 197, 227 Treatise on Resurrection 82, 179 n. 20, 198, n. 12; 210 maj z 110 Man as a composite of body and soul 1, 58 as a microcosm 39, 40, 161–163 as a rational being 21, 92 Ma on God as 102 n. 60; 157 God’s abode as 120, 130 Land of Israel as 130

287

and qa da imagery 130 Temple as 130 maq ma 59, 141, 147, 196–217 Marvell, Andrew 1, 243 Mena em Ibn Saruq 13, 51 me orah 17 Merkavah motifs, reinterpreted philosophically 76, 143 n. 40 Metaphysical skepticism 144 n. 46; 174–194 Microcosm motif in poetry 160–173 in prose works 39, 40, 161–163 Moses Ibn Ezra 4, 6, 12 n. 41; 37, 40, 108–131, 132–140, 174 Kit b al-mu ara wa’l-mudh kara 9, 10 n. 30, 55 n. 235; 57, 106 n. 3, 107 n. 8; 109 Maq lat al- ad qa f ma na ’l-maj z wa’l- aq qa 9, 10 n. 30; 26–27, 35–36, 42, 68 n. 45, 75 n. 71; 109–110, 118, 121 n. 34, 123, n. 45, 135 n. 10, 139, nn. 26–27; 142, 153 n. 18; 161, 173, 197 poems 58, 108–131, 158 Sefer ha- anaq 108, n. 13 Moses b. Maimon. See Maimonides. Moses b. Na man. See Na manides. mu ra a 241 mu arrak 18–19, 89, 107, 125, 133 n. 3; 140, 147, 154 al-Mu sib 22, n. 73 mustaj b (var.: mustaj b) 118, n. 25, 126 n. 53; 220, 223 muwashsha 13, n. 47, 14, n. 51; 18, 89, 118 Na manides 71 n. 60, 74 n. 68, 82 n. 101; 219, 222–223 Nishmat prayer 17–19, 89, n. 10; 94, 96 n. 33, 125 n. 50; 147–151, 159 ofan 17, 168 n. 25 Olam ha-ba. See also World to come. 144 spiritualized interpretation of 62 n. 17; 73–74, 79 n. 88, 120 n. 34; 122, 123 n. 40; 146, 179 n. 20; 185, 223 n. 19 Overbury, Sir Thomas 1 Paradise 41, 102, 143 n. 40; 240–241 Parody 201, 212, 217, 242

288

general index

Penitential themes 19–20, 50, 58, 61, 106, 107 n. 7; 111, 118, n. 24; 119, 126, 166, 203, 223 pesuqei de-zimra 18 Philosophical ideas Greco-Arabic 6, 21, 39–41, 73 n. 64; 79, 95, 175 translated into familiar idiom in poetry 4, 60, 70, 72–74, 84, 85 n. 5; 145, 181, 194 Pietistic literature Islamic 22, 91 Piyyut Andalusian 6, 14–20 classical 10, n. 32; 11–13, 15, n. 53; 16–18, 21, 45, 57, 90, 132–133 formal innovations in 14 generic transformations 15–20, 220–221 individual as focus of 18, 21–23, 58, 90, 98, 108, 119 new genres 17–19 philosophically informed 4, 6, 18–19, 20, 57, 84–105, 106–107, 132–145, 147–159, 163–173, 220 Plato 2, n. 5; 26, 31 n. 117, 32, n. 119; 37–38, 80 n. 97, 81 n. 99; 136, 140, 143 Plotinus 2, n. 5; 35, 37–39 Enneads 2, 36–39, 60 n. 11, 69 n. 51, 80 n. 97, 92 nn. 19–20; 136 Poetry Liturgical. See Piyyut. Secular/Courtly 4, 10, 23, 55, 57, 108, 119 n. 32; 175, 201–203, 210 Prayer interiorized conception of 94–98 private 18 n. 62; 19, 58–59, 60 n. 8; 61, 107–108 as pure worship 93, 151 as vehicle of soul’s return 150, 156–157, 159 vigils, pre-dawn 19, 51 n. 217; 111, 118, 228 Psychology 4, 21, 26, 28 n. 103; 84 theories of in Kit b al-am n t 47 in Maq lat al- ad qa 26 n. 95; 36, 108, 110 in Meqor ayyim 36, 39

in Ras il ikhw n al- af 40–41 in Theology of Aristotle 36–39 in works of Abraham Ibn Ezra 27, 146–159 in works of Ibn S n (Avicenna) 42–43 Purgatory philosophical conception of 41–42, 79–81, 101 Qallir. See Eleazar ha-Qallir. qa da 13, 43, 88 n. 6, 91, n. 16, 130, n. 66; 206, 207 n. 40; 220–221 qedushta 16, 46 qerovah 15–16, 44–45 Qur n 66, 91 n. 18, 110 n. 19 inimitability. See i j z al-qur n. rahi 14 n. 50; 46 Reason 9, 22, 30, n. 109; 38, 68–69, 79, 95, 106, 135, 177–178, 187, 209, 216–217, 231, 243 Redemption 75 n. 72; 98–104 as expression of divine love 103, 121, 130–131, 208 national vs. individual 6, 98–101, 103, 119–120, 125, 133 n. 3; 150, 167, 180, 234, 238 religious observance and 92 n. 20; 185–186 through contemplation 122–124, 168, 181 reshut 17–18, 89, 91 n. 15; 95, 101, 150, 193 Resurrection 49, 54, 56, 73, 81–82, 179, n. 20; 211–212, 223 n. 20 Saadya Gaon 10, 45–51, 62 n. 17; 110 baqqashot 45 n. 186, 60 n. 8 “Barekhi abberet ve- amme et” 45–51, 90, 186–187 Egron 7 Kit b al-am n t 3, 24 n. 84, 27, n. 96; 47, 49–50, 63 n. 22, 79 n. 89, 95 n. 30, 124 n. 47, 153 n. 18, 191 n. 57 poetic innovations 11 n. 35 revival of biblical Hebrew 7 Sefer ye irah ha-shalem 63 n. 22 Siddur 18 n. 63, 19 n. 66, 45 n. 186, 60 n. 8, 89 n. 10, 150 n. 8

general index Tafs r 63 n. 22, 65, n. 31, 99 n. 43, 110, n. 19 tokhe ah (“Im leﬁ bo orkha”) 50, 75 n. 71 Samuel Hanagid 54–56, 57, 221 Ben Mishlei 55 Ben Qohelet 55, 213 Samuel Ibn Tibbon 197–198 Scientiﬁc data in poetry 60, 107 Self-knowledge 89 as deﬁnition of philosophy 161–162 leading to knowledge of God 37, 155, 160–173 seli ah 19–20, 51 n. 217; 107, 111, 118, 123, 144 n. 46, 166 n. 16; 168, 220 eror ha- ayyim 25, 51, 75, 186 Shalem Shabbazi 219, 240–241, 243 Shem Tov Falaquera 35 n. 131, 37 n. 143, 66 n. 38 Shema 16–17, 95, 96, 97, 100 shiv ata 16, n. 57 Solomon Alqabe 232 Solomon Ibn Gabirol 20, 28 n. 102; 37, 39 n. 157; 41, 42 nn. 167, 170, 46 n. 187; 49, 50, 56, 135, 136, 190 Keter Malkhut 41, 57–83, 84, 93, 94, 99, 102, 104, 105, 110, 120 n. 34, 121 n. 35; 122, 123, n. 40; 189, 203, 208, 221, 223 n. 19; 229 Kit b isl al-akhl q 34, 57 n. 1; 91, 95, n. 29, 99 n. 46 Ma beret ha- anaq 7 n. 23 Meqor ayyim (Fons Vitae) 34–36, 39, 60, n. 9, 62 n. 15, 66, n. 39, 67, n. 40, 68, n. 45, 71 n. 62; 102, 110, 139 n. 26; 142, 180 poems 5, n. 15, 6, n. 19; 22, 53–54, 111, 124, 193, 204, 207–208 Solomon Ibn aqbel Ne um asher ben yehudah 201 n. 21 Song of Songs 185, 234, 236, 238 exegesis of 102–104, 130, 138, 208–209 Soul adornment of 132–145 beatiﬁc vision of 76–79, 106, 186 captivity in the body 20, 38, 48, 68, n. 45; 89, 100, 109, 124, 127, 133, 155, 186–187, 208, 220

289

contemplation of as means to knowledge of God 22, 158, 160–173 createdness of 47, 48 nn. 199, 200; 49, n. 207 as a daughter 31, 120, 129, 131 direct address to 6, 84, 90–93, 95, 111, 134 n. 7; 181, 205–206, 229, 230 divine origin of 20–21, 24, 39, 89, 102, 110, 131, 147, 152, 156, 184 enemy of 98–101, 125, 157 exile of 6, 68, 81, 109, 119, 126–130, 132, 208, 223, 235 as God’s beloved 6, 41, 89 n. 9; 103, 130–131, 185, 208, 230 as ayyah 25, 44, 48 n. 203; 152–153 illumination of 40–41, 74, 78, 119, 136, 138, 141–143, 154, 187 immortality of 1, 25, 29, 39, 49, 58, 69, 74–75, 104, 152, 162, 169 incorporeality of 1, 162 literary sources on 23–56 Earlier piyyutim 44–56 Philosophical sources 34–43 Rabbinic literature 28–34 Scripture 23–28 lower aspects of 26, 92 n. 18; 99–100, 106, 215 meditation on as prelude to prayer 18–19, 89, 146–159 not an accident of the body 137, n. 21; 152–153 piyyutim addressed to 6, 20, 84–105 as a polished mirror 78, n. 86 prayer and the 18–19, 21, 27, 29, 44, 48, 58, 93–98, 103, 121, 125, 147–159, 180, 220 preexistence of 30–31, 47, 155, 223 n. 19 puriﬁcation of 40–41, 80, 101, 143, 185, 220, 229 purpose of its embodiment 38, 61, 68 rational 21, 34, 68–69, 79, 92 n. 20; 100, 102, 106, 118, 134, 138, 144 n. 48; 146, 152–154, 172 n. 31, 190, 209 n. 46, 216 redemption of 6, 98–104, 130–131, 138

290

general index

return to Source 21, 27, 34–35, 41, 43, 49, 51, 73–74, 80, 84, 85, 101–104, 106, 129–131, 187, 223, 235 self and 91–93, 160 separation from body 25, 37, 50, 100, 141 stowed after death 32, 45, 74 superiority over body 38, 48, 169 tripartite conception of 26, n. 95; 100 ultimate reward of 21, 73–74, 88, 101, 104–105, 135, 222 union with body 38, 88 n. 7; 139 withdrawal from mundane aﬀairs 37, 85, 91, 93, 124, 141, 206 yearning for Source 20, 21, 104, 109, 111, 118, 120–122, 132, 152 as ye idah 25, 44, 88, n. 7; 93, 151, n. 12; 152, 224 Soul/body duality 1, 24, 29, 30, 47, 69, 100, 153, 229 Suﬁsm 5 n. 15, 6 n. 19; 22, 44, 176 n. 7; 191 ur ha- ur 69–71, 88, 93–94, 184 n. 32; 189 tajn s 108, n. 13; 213 Te iyyat ha-metim. See Resurrection. Theology of Aristotle 2 n. 6; 35–40, 76 n. 76; 79, 92 n. 19; 136, 142 tokhe ah 19–20, 41, 50, n. 211; 51–54, 68 n. 48, 75 n. 71; 82, 92, 104, 108, n. 10; 141, 143, 168, 203, n. 29, 205 n. 36; 214, 220–221

Traditional terminology as pedagogic device 67, 70–72 to shield unsophisticated reader 72–73 Ultimate felicity 179–180 enjoyment of spiritual rewards 21–22, 41, 78–79, 122, 145, 211 Universal form and matter 66–67, 189 Wisdom 139, 140, n. 32; 143, 147, 154, 186, 210 n. 48; 225 World to come. See also Olam ha-ba. 49 as immortality of individual soul 73–79, 179, 210 as repose from toil 74–76 Yannai 15, 44–45 introduction of rhyme 13 qerovah on Leviticus 4:1–2 15 n. 54; 44, 151 n. 12 Ye er ha-ra 210–217, 226 as an adversary 98–100, 125 n. 49 fused with Neoplatonic concupiscent soul 99–100, 124–125 as a lion 127, n. 55 yo er 16–17 Zechariah Al ahiri 218, 219, 240 Sefer ha-musar 241–242 Zerahiah Halevi Gerondi 219 Sefer ha-Ma or 65 n. 34; 222 Zuhd. See Asceticism. zuhdiyy t 22, 90–91 zulat 17

ÉTUDES SUR LE JUDAÏSME MÉDIÉVAL ISSN 0169-815X

1. SIRAT, C. Les théories des visions surnaturelles dans la pensée juive du moyen-âge. 1969. ISBN 90 04 02990 7 2. METZGER, M. La Haggada enluminée, 1. Étude iconographique et stylistique des manuscrits enluminés et décorés de la Haggada du XIIIe au XVIe siècle. Préface par R. Crozet. 1973. ISBN 90 04 03714 4 3. SCHLANGER, J. La philosophie de Salomon ibn Gabirol. Étude d’un neoplatonisme. 1968. ISBN 90 04 00566 8 4. VAJDA, G. Deux commentaires karaïtes sur l’Ecclésiaste. 1971. ISBN 90 04 02658 4 5. Azriel de Gérone. Commentaire sur la liturgie quotidienne. Introduction, traduction annotée et glossaire des termes techniques par G. Sed-Rajna. 1974. ISBN 90 04 03822 1 6. The Commentary of R. º¨ﬂer b. Shel¨m¨ to the Thirteen Principles of Maimonides. Edited, translated and annotated by D.R. Blumenthal. With a foreword by S.D. Goitein. 1974. ISBN 90 04 03909 0 7. SHAMIR, Y. Rabbi Moses ha-Kohen of Tordesillas and his Book æEzer ha-Emunah. A Chapter in the History of the Judeo-Christian Controversy. 1975. ISBN 90 04 04254 7 8. MESCH, B. Studies in Joseph ibn Caspi, Fourteenth-century Philosopher and Exegete. 1975. ISBN 90 04 04221 0 9. GELLES, B.J. Peshat and Derash in the Exegesis of Rashi. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06259 9 10. MARCUS, I.G. Piety and Society. The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06345 5 11. The Philosophic Questions and Answers of º¨ﬂer b. Shel¨m¨. Edited, translated, and annotated by D.R. Blumenthal. With a supplementary essay by Y. Tobi. 1981. ISBN 90 04 06541 5 12. VAJDA, G. Al-Kit®b al-MuΩtaw¬ de Y‚suf al-Bas¬r.Texte, traduction et commentaire. Edité par D.R. Blumenthal. 1985. ISBN 90 04 07302 7 13. D®w‚d ibn Marw®n al Muqammi◊’s Twenty Chapters (ÆIshrun Maq®la). Edited, translated and annotated by S. Stroumsa. 1989. ISBN 90 04 09216 1 14. HARY, B.H. Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic. With an edition, translation and grammatical study of the Cairene Purim Scroll. 1992. ISBN 90 04 09694 9 15. YEROUSHALMI, D. The Judeo-Persian Poet ÆEmr®n¬ and his Book of Treasure. ÆEmr®n¬’s Ganj-n®me, a versified Commentary on the Mishnaic Tractate Abot. Edited, translated and annotated together with a critical study. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10301 5

16. FRANK, D. (ed.). The Jews of Medieval Islam. Community, Society, and Identity. 1995. ISBN 90 04 10404 6 17. POLLIACK, M.R. The Karaite Tradition of Arabic Bible Translation. A Linguistic and Exegetical Study of Karaite Translations of the Pentateuch from the Tenth to the Eleventh Centuries C.E. In Preparation. 18. SKLARE, D.E. Samuel ben ºofni Gaon and his Cultural World. Texts and Studies. 1996. ISBN 90 04 10302 3 19. FENTON, P.B. Philosophie et exégèse dans le Jardin de la métaphore de Moïse Ibn ÆEzra, philosophe et poète andalou du XIIe siècle. 1997. ISBN 90 04 10598 0 20. OLSZOWY-SCHLANGER, J. Karaite Marriage Documents from the Cairo Geniza. Legal Tradition and Community Life in Mediaeval Egypt and Palestine. 1998. ISBN 90 04 10886 6 21. TOBI, J. The Jews of Yemen. Studies in Their History and Culture. 1999. ISBN 90 04 11265 0 22. FENTON, P.B. & R. GOETSCHEL. Expérience et écriture mystiques dans les religions du Livre. Actes d’un colloque international tenu par le Centre d’études juives Université de Paris IV – Sorbonne 1994. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11913 2 23. WEINBERGER, L.J. Jewish poet in Muslim Egypt. Moses Dar‘¬’s Hebrew collection: critical edition with introduction and commentary. 2000. ISBN 90 04 11931 0 24. FREUDENTHAL, G. & S. KOTTEK. Mélanges d’histoire de la médecine hébraïque. Études choisies de la Revue d’histoire de la médecine de la hébraïque (1948-1984). 2002. ISBN 90 04 12522 1 25. TANENBAUM, A. The Contemplative Soul. Hebrew Poetry and Philosophical Theory in Medieval Spain. 2002. ISBN 90 04 12091 2

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