Iberian Jewish Literature: Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe

321 Pages·2007·2.4 MB·English

by  Jonathan P. Decter

Judaica
Literature
Decter
Jonathan P. Decter is Assistant Professor This stimulating and graceful book
I
and the Edmond J. Safra Professor of b explores Iberian Jewish attitudes to-
Sephardic Studies in the Department ward cultural transition during the
e
“Contextualizing Jewish-Hebrew culture in the Iberian
of Near Eastern and Judaic Studies at twelfth and thirteenth centuries, when
r
(Islamo-Arabic and Christian-Latin-Romance) en-
Brandeis University. growing intolerance of Jews in Islamic
vironment, Decter explores issues such as homeland i al-Andalus and the southward expan-
Published with the generous support of and exile, identity, estrangement, nostalgia, cultural a sion of the Christian Reconquista led
the Koret Foundation boundaries, hybridity. These issues maintain a vital di- n to their relocation from Islamic to
alogue with contemporary literary criticism and cul- Christian domains. By engaging literary

topics such as imagery, structure, voice,
tural studies.” —Tova Rosen, Tel Aviv University J
e landscape, and geography, Jonathan P.
Decter traces attitudes that range from
w
“[A] most welcome and unique contribution to medi-
tenacious longing for the Islamic past to
eval Hebrew literary studies. Its scholarship is sound,
i comfort in the new Christian environ-
it offers excellent translations of many primary texts, s ment. Through comparison with Arabic
and its prose is well written.” h and European vernacular literatures,
—Ross Brann, Cornell University Decter elucidates a medieval Hebrew

L poetics of estrangement and nostalgia,
poetic responses to catastrophe, and the
“[Decter] brings to bear a vast array of scholarship i
t refraction of social issues in fictional
from the Arabic and Romance fields, as well as medi-
narratives. This book brings to life the
eval Hebrew literature.” e
voices of Jewish writers of the period
—Suzanne Pinckney Stetkevych, Indiana University r
as they negotiate their identities be-
a tween the Islamic and Christian worlds.
Decter’s clear and engaging treatment
t Iberian Jewish
of the interplay among Islamic, Jewish,
INDIANA
u
and Christian cultures in medieval
University Press al-Andalus is an important reminder
r Liter ature
of how these worlds were once inter-
Bloomington & Indianapolis
e
twined.
http://iupress.indiana.edu
1-800-842-6796
INDIANA Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe
Jonat h a n P. Dec t e r
Jacket illustration from the Cervera Bible, c. 1300,
by permission of the National Library, Lisbon
Iberian Jewish Literature

IBERIAN
JEW ISH
LITERATURE
Between al-Andalus and Christian Europe
Jonathan P. Decter
Indiana University Press
Bloomington and Indianapolis
Publication of this book is made possible in part by generous
support from the Koret Foundation.
This book is a publication of
Indiana University Press
601 North Morton Street
Bloomington, IN 47404-3797 USA
http://iupress.indiana.edu
Telephone orders 800-842-6796
Fax orders 812-855-7931
Orders by e-mail [email protected]
© 2007 by Jonathan P. Decter
All rights reserved
Chapter 1 of this book is reproduced with permission of Prooftexts, where it appeared
in slightly modi¤ed form; part of chapter 7 is a modi¤ed excerpt from an article that
appeared in Jewish Studies Quarterly.
No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized in any form or by any means,
electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any
information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the
publisher. The Association of American University Presses’ Resolution on Permissions
constitutes the only exception to this prohibition.
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences—Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Manufactured in the United States of America
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Decter, Jonathan P., date
Iberian Jewish literature : between al-Andalus and Christian Europe /
Jonathan P. Decter.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-253-34913-2 (cloth)
1. Hebrew poetry, Medieval—Spain—Andalusia—History and criticism. 2. Hebrew
poetry, Medieval—Spain—History and criticism. 3. Jewish religious poetry,
Hebrew—Spain—Andalusia—History and criticism. 4. Jewish religious poetry,
Hebrew—Spain—History and criticism. 5. Jews—Spain—Andalusia—Intellectual
life. 6. Jews—Spain—Intellectual life. 7. Andalusia (Spain)—In literature.
8. Spain—In literature. I. Title.
PJ5023.D43 2007
892.4′1209384—dc22
2006038451
1 2 3 4 5 12 11 10 09 08 07
In loving memory of Lawrence K. Horberg

CONTENTS
PREFACE ix
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS xiii
Introduction 1
PART I. POETRY
1. Space: Landscape and Transition 19
2. Form: Varieties of Lamentation and Estrangement 39
3. Imagery: The Protean Garden 72
PART II. NARR ATIVE
4. Context: Imagining Hebrew Fiction between Arabic and
European Sources 99
5. Structure: Literature in Transition 125
6. Voice: Maqama and Morality 157
7. Space: Landscape, Geography, and Transition 175
Conclusion: Out of the Garden 207
NOTES 215
BIBLIOGRAPHY 275
INDEX 297

Preface
I ¤rst had the idea for writing this book while I was traveling by train from
Boston to New York. I was fortunate enough to have two books as my trav-
eling companions: Bernard Septimus’s Hispano-Jewish Culture in Transition
and Jacob Ben El"azar’s Sefer ha-meshalim (The Book of Stories). Septimus’s
book, which detailed the intellectual pro¤le of Rabbi Meir Abula¤a between
the Jewish intellectual trends of al-Andalus (Islamic Iberia) and northern
France, brought to life remarkable transformations in Iberian Jewish culture
during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, as Andalusian Jewry fell into
decline and Jews relocated to Christian Iberia. Because Christian Iberia
stood at the crossroads, both physically and culturally, between the Islamic
and Christian worlds, Jews in cities such as Toledo and Barcelona were
touched by competing intellectual trends internal to Judaism and also by
Islamic and Christian culture more generally. At some point (I like to imag-
ine somewhere along the scenic shore of Connecticut), I put down Septimus
and picked up Ben El"azar, a thirteenth-century Toledan author of Hebrew
rhymed prose ¤ction, and re®ected upon the place of the Hebrew author
within the culture of transition.
I soon recognized the need for a study of medieval Hebrew literature that
used cultural transition as a point of departure and as an interpretive lens.
Rather than marking the decline of Andalusian Jewry as the dividing line
between two periods, I made it the center of my study in order to high-
light literary topoi and thematic concerns that persist from the late eleventh
century, when Jews began to migrate out of al-Andalus, through the mid-
thirteenth century, the late days of the Reconquista, by which time all of
Iberian Jewry was living in Christian domains. I found that Jewish authors
who migrated out of al-Andalus and those born on Christian soil who were
heir to the Andalusian tradition shared a discourse about the signi¤cance of
cultural transition and the Andalusian past. Centuries after Jews stopped
living under Islamic rule in Iberia, al-Andalus and Andalusian social values
remained central topics of concern in Hebrew literature.
The subject of this book is twofold: the literary discourse that sur-
rounds the topic of Jewish cultural transition between Islamic and Chris-
tian Iberia in medieval Hebrew literature; and the transformations that took
place in Hebrew literary production between the late eleventh and the mid-
thirteenth century. Regarding the ¤rst topic, Hebrew authors memorialize,
romanticize, and repudiate the cultural model of the Andalusian past and
ix