Abstract
Until recently, scholars rarely asked what language resounded in medieval places of Jewish prayer. The great liturgical and customary compendium known as the Maḥzor Vitry emphasized the Hebrew prayer practices of a literate (and male) community of users.2 The chance survival of liturgical hymns, or fragments of hymns, composed in the vernacular, did little to unsettle the assumption that the formal worship experience of medieval European Jews was dominated by Hebrew. A Judeo-French lament for thirteen v ictims of an auto da fé in Troyes in 1288, a snippet of a drink ing song scrawled in a Passover haggadah, or even a bilingual wedding song preserved in the Maḥzor Vitry could be associated with paraliturgical activity.3 Thus, they seemed to confirm the belief that the vernacular made few, if any, inroads into the Jewish house of prayer. Neither the growing trend toward affective devotion in the larger culture, nor the rise of Romance prose was seen as a factor that might have created an opening for vernacular prayer.4
This essay originated in a paper, “Exegesis and Romance: Revisiting an Old French Translation of Kallir,” delivered at Rühr University in Bochum, Germany, in September 2011. My thanks to this volume’s editors for the invitation to include a revised version, and to them and their anonymous reader for their helpful suggestions.
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Notes
Kirsten Fudeman, Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities (Philadelphia, 2010).
The affective piety of the thirteenth century has been widely treated; see André Vauchez, Sainthood in the Later Middle Ages (Cambridge, 1997).
For Romance (French) hagiography, see, for example, Brigette Cazelles, The Lady as Saint (Berkeley, 1991).
On Jewish familiarity with Romance texts, see Ivan Marcus, “Why is this Knight Different: A Jewish Self-Representation in Medieval Europe,” in Tov Elem: Memory, Community and Gender in Medieval and Early Modern Jewish Societies: Essays in honor of Robert Bonfil (Jerusalem, 2011), 139–152.
Hiram Peri (Pflaum), “Deux Hymnes Judéo-Français du Moyen Âge,” Romania 59 (1933): 389–422; Idem., “Piyyutim me-ha-maḥzor be-tsarfattit ‘attika,” Tarbitz 25 (1956): 154–186.
Ephraim Kanarfogel, The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit, 2012).
Elisabeth Hollender, “Narrative Exegesis in Ashkenas and Zarfat: The case of Piyyut-Commentary,” in Jewish Studies at the Turn of the Twentieth Century (proceedings of the 6th EAJS Congress, Toledo 1998), ed. Judit Targarona Borrás and Angel Sáenz-Badillos (Brill, 1999): 429–435.
Yosef Yahalom, “Ats kotses”: gishot ve-‘emdot bi-she’elot signon ha-piyyut u-leshono,” Meḥkeré yerushalayim be-sifrut ‘ivrit 1 (1980): 167–182.
Abraham Grossman, Ḥakhmé tsarfat ha-rishonim (Jerusalem, 1994), 339, re Kara; Idem., “Shivḥé R. El‘azar beribbi Kallir be-ferush ha-piyyutim shel R.Y. Kara,” in Keneset Ezra: Literature and Life in the Synagogue, ed. Shulamit Elizur, M. D. Herr, Gershon Shaked and Avigdor Shinan (Jerusalem, 1994), 293–308.
Ibid., citing Maḥzor Vitry, 364. The story is also cited in Ephraim Kanarfogel, Peering through the Lattices: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000), 168–169,
and in E. Landshuth, ‘Ammudé ha-‘avodah (Berlin, 1857), 103. Landshuth refers also to the “unnatural” legends surrounding the life of Kallir, E. Landshuth, 103.
See also Ruth Langer, “Kalir was a Tanna,” Hebrew Union College Annual 67 (1996): 95–106.
The literature is huge. See, for example, Avraham Grossman, Rashi (Jerusalem, 2006);
Robert A. Harris, “Structure and Composition in Isaiah 1–12: a Twelfth-Century Northern French Perspective,” in “As Those Who are Taught”: The Interpretation of Isaiah from the LXX to the SBL, ed. Claire Matthews McGinnis and Patricia K. Tull (Boston and Leiden, 2006), 171–187;
Robert A. Harris, “Twelfth-Century Biblical Exegetes and the Invention of Literature,” in The Multiple Meanings of Scripture: The Role of Exegesis in Early Christian and Medieval Culture, ed. Ineke van’t Spijker (Boston and Leiden, 2009), 311–330;
Sarah Japhet, “Major Trends in the Study of Medieval Jewish Exegesis in Northern France,” Trumah 9 (2000): 43–61;
Sarah Japhet, “Rashi’s Commentary on the Song of Songs: The Revolution of the Peshat and its Aftermath,” in Mein Haus wird ein Bethaus für alle Völker gennant warden (Jes 56, 7), ed. Julia Mannchen (Neukirchen-Vluyn, 2007), 199–219;
Hanna Liss, Creating Fictional Worlds: Peshat-exegesis and Narrativity in Rashbam’s Commentary on the Torah (Boston and Leiden, 2011);
Michael A. Signer, “‘Peshat,’ ‘Sensus litteralis’ and Sequential Narrative: Jewish Exegesis and the School of St Victor in the Twelfth Century,” in The Frank Talmage Memorial Volume, ed. Barry Walfish (Haifa and Lebanon, NH, 1993), 1:203–216; “Rashi as Narrator,” Rashi et la culture juive, ed. Gilbert Dahan et al. (Paris, 1997), 103–110.
Abraham Grossman, R. Netan’el mi-Kinon, mi-gedolé ba‘alé ha-tosafot be-Tsarfat be-me’ah ha-yud-gimel,” in Meḥkeré talmud: kovets meḥkarim be-talmud u-vi-teḥumim govlim, mukdash le-zikhro shel Prof. Efrayim E. Urbach, ed. Yaakov Zussman and David Rosenthal (Jerusalem, 1990), 1: 174–189, especially 187.
Michael A. Signer, “King/Messiah: Rashi’s Exegesis of Psalm 2,” Prooftexts 3 (1983): 273–78;
Robert A. Harris, “Rashi and the Messianic Psalms,” in Birkat Shalom: Studies in the Bible, Ancient Near Eastern Literature and Postbiblical Judaism presented to Shalom M. Paul…” ed. Chaim Cohen et al. (Winona Lake, 2008), 845–862.
Susan L. Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton, 2002), chapter 5.
Daniel Goldschmidt, ed., Maḥzor la-yamim ha-nora’im — le-fi minhagé bené Ashkenaz le-khol ‘anfehem, 2 vols. (Jerusalem: 1970). Our piyyut, “Ansikha Malki,” is found in the “additional” (musaf) service for the first day Rosh Hashanah, 233–237.
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© 2015 Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinsky
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Einbinder, S.L., Rosenberg, S.N. (2015). Exegesis and Romance: Revisiting the Old French Translation of Kallir. In: Baumgarten, E., Galinsky, J.D. (eds) Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France. The New Middle Ages. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137317582_16
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