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 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 ........................................................................................

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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' vdhl;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; 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