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Oren Roman*
Early Ashkenazic Poems about the Binding of Isaac
DOI 10.1515/naha-2016-0014
Abstract: This article reviews a corpus of poems retelling the Binding of Isaac composed by Ashkenazic Jews (mainly from the German territories) during the Middle Ages and early modern era. The poems, written in both languages of the Ashkenazim – the vernacular Yiddish and the literary Hebrew – are: Akeda Piyyutim, some 40 liturgical penitentiary poems written in Hebrew, and Yudisher Shtam, an epic poem written in Yiddish, of which an unusually extensive number of copies survived. These Hebrew poems and the Yiddish poem have been – independently from one another – the subject of thorough research. However, no comparison of the two corpora has ever been done. The present paper offers such a comparison, thus illuminating key cultural-historical aspects of pre-modern Ashkenazic society, including cultural transfer between coterritorial Jews and Christians; Hebrew versus Yiddish texts; ritual versus belletristic literature; written versus oral transmission; elite (educated) versus lay audiences; male versus female audiences; and the private versus the public sphere. The article identifies similarities in both form and content between the poems in the two languages. For example, they both employ a similar stanzaic form; they both describe the exemplary behavior of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah in a sentimental tone; and they both make contemporary references within the classic narrative to Christianity as a persecuting religion. The differences between the two corpora relate also to both form and content. For instance, the Hebrew poems are much shorter than the Yiddish poem, and they reflect a deeper familiarity with classical Jewish sources and are more stylistically refined, while the Yiddish poem is more belletristic and conveys the influence of the medieval German epic. Also, whereas the Hebrew Piyyutim were contained in Ma.zorim used in the synagogue, there is no certainty as to the intended purpose of Yudisher Shtam. By identifying the differences and similarities between the two corpora, as well as their possible meanings and implications,
*Corresponding author: Oren Roman, Abt. f.r Jiddische Kultur, Sprache und Literatur, Institut f.r J.dische Studien, Heinrich-Heine-Universit.t D.sseldorf, 40204 D.sseldorf, Germany, E-mail: oren.roman@mail.huji.ac.il
the article sheds light on an interesting case in the history of the Jews in the German territories involving cultural exchange, cultural identity, and literary tradition.
Keywords: Binding of Isaac, Piyyut, Yiddish, Sacrifice of Isaac, Ashkenaz
In loving memory of Prof. Shlomo Berger z”l
The theme
The biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, Akedat Yi..ak (Genesis 22:1–19), has had a central role in Jewish culture since Antiquity; it can be considered part of the foundation myth of the Jewish people as well as a document of deep faith in God and His covenant with the Children of Israel. The story depicts an episode in the life of the first Jewish family, Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac, during which the family is almost annihilated following God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son. The story is unexpectedly inverted, however, through God’s salvation of Isaac. God then makes a promise to Abraham to bless his future descendants:
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said: “By Myself I swear, the Lord declares: Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your favored one, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.” (Genesis 22:15–18)1
This religious model of trial and, ultimately, divine deliverance, became for Jews in years to come a way of coping with the hardships they faced. God’s promise to Abraham was seen as a source of protection, a concept known in Jewish thought as zekhut avot – the merit of the ancestors.2
Akedat Yi..ak is mentioned in daily Jewish prayer, as the text from Genesis appears in the preliminary morning service (birkot hasha.ar). It is also one of the central themes in the services of the High Holy Days, and Rosh Hashanah
1 English translation according to Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the
New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
2 Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971), “Akeda,” vol. 2, 480–487;
“Zekhut Avot,” vol. 16, 976–978.
especially, e. g., the biblical passage is ceremonially read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and the blowing of the shofar is said to symbolize the ram that was slaughtered instead of Isaac.3
Additionally, this story has been retold by generation after generation of Jews, both orally and in writing.4 While the 19-verse text in the Book of Genesis, chapter 22, leaves many details untold, later retellings of the story have tried to fill in those lacunae – often projecting the thoughts and feelings of current readers onto the ancient text. For example, the Talmud relates that it was Satan who urged God to test Abraham’s faith with the request to sacrifice his son,5 and Midrash Tan.uma describes Sarah’s suffering and sudden death when she learns of her son’s fate.6
In medieval Jewish Ashkenazic culture two new layers of meaning were attached to the ancient narrative, reflecting historical and cultural aspects of Jewish existence at the time. The first of these is the reclaiming of the story in reaction to the Christian appropriation of “the Sacrifice of Isaac” as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion of Jesus. According to this retelling, a parallel is drawn between Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac and God the Father sacrificing his beloved Son Jesus (cf. Hebrews 11:17–19), as well as between Isaac, who carried the wood on which he was to be killed and burned, and Jesus, who carried the wooden cross through the streets of Jerusalem.7 The Jewish reclaiming of the story should thus be seen in the wider context of medieval Christian-Jewish polemics, and the effort to convert Jews to Christianity.8
3 Dov Noy, “Rosh Hashana ve’akedat Yi..ak,” Ma.anayim 49 (1961), 40–47 [Hebrew]. 4 See for example Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg (ed.), translated from the German manuscript by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), vol. 1, 224–237; In Queen Esther’s Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature, translated and with an introduction and notes by Vera Basch Moreen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 218–222; Miriam Guez-Avigal, Po.sie de Proph.tes: Le chant sacr. des Juives de l’.le de Djerba en Tunisie (Lod: Orot Yahadout Hamaghreb, 2009), 159–166 [Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew]; Ruth Kartun-Blum, The Sword of the Word: The Binding of Isaac in Israeli Poetry (Tel Aviv: Hakibbu. Hame’u.ad, 2013) [Hebrew]. 5 TB, Sanhedrin, 89b. 6 Midrash Tan.uma, Vayera, 23. 7 See Fritz Reckling, Immolatio Isaac: Die theologische und exemplarische Interpretation in den Abraham-Isaak-Dramen der deutschen Literatur insbesonderen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (M.nster: [n.p.], 1962), 20–28; Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 8 Daniel Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1965), 10, 12–13 [Hebrew].
The second added meaning comes from the time of the First Crusade, where the story became associated with the venerated narrative of Kiddush Hashem – that is, the willingness to give up one’s own life to sanctify God’s Name in the face of religious persecution.9 Chronicles and Kinot (lamentations) relating the persecution of Jews by Christians during the Middle Ages in today’s Germany and France often mention the Binding of Isaac and portray the martyred Jews as the ‘Isaac’ figure.10 Some of these texts even tell – in a manner that corresponds to the biblical narrative – how, at the time, some Jewish parents killed their own children in order to prevent them from being forced to convert to Christianity, thus viewing the parents as the ‘Abraham’ figure.
Research conducted by Piyyut expert Shalom Spiegel has revealed that an ancient version of the story claiming that Isaac was in fact killed by Abraham and later miraculously revived circulated in medieval Ashkenazic Jewry.11 It seems that the popularity of this version in the Middle Ages may be attributed to both of the above-mentioned historical and cultural influences.
It should be noted that parallels between Abraham and Isaac’s model behavior and other sacrifices made by post-Bible individuals were already being drawn hundreds of years before 1096.12 Still, the recurring appearance of Isaac’s story in the above-mentioned chronicles and Kinot leaves no doubt that the trauma of medieval European violence against Ashkenazic Jews fostered an identification with the moral dilemmas and the suffering of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah. Likewise, the poems studied in this article are empiric evidence of the central role that the Binding of Isaac was awarded in Ashkenazic culture throughout the centuries.
9 See for example Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying God’s Name: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Yom Tov Assis (ed.), Facing the Cross: The Persecution of the Jews in The First Crusade (1096) in History and Historiography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000) [Hebrew]; Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1996). 10 Abraham Meir Haberman (ed.), Sefer gezeirot Ashkenaz ve.arfat: Divrei zikhronot mibenei hadorot shebitkufat mas’ei ha.elav umiv.ar piyuteihem (Jerusalem: Ofir Books, 1971) [Hebrew]; Ivan Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of 1096 Crusade Riots,” Prooftexts 2.1 (1982), 40–52. 11 Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah; translated from the Hebrew, with an introduction by Judah Goldin (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967). 12 See for example the story about the woman with seven sons (2 Maccabees 8; TB Gittin 57b; Eicha Rabba [Vilna] A,50).
The two languages of Ashkenazic Jews
It is assumed that since they first settled in the German-speaking area on a continuous basis, Jews have spoken their own language, known today as Yiddish. This language, written in the Hebrew alphabet from its beginning, originated in southern Germany in the tenth century and was a synthesis of medieval urban German dialects with influences of Hebrew and Aramaic, and, to a lesser degree, of the Romance languages previously spoken by the Jews. From the thirteenth century onward, a process of Jewish migration from the German territories eastward across Europe took place. The Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe (e. g., in contemporary Poland and Ukraine) continued to use Yiddish, but it was influenced lexically and otherwise by co-territorial Slavic languages. Thus, a distinction between the dialect groups of Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish came about. However, as a medium for written communications, and especially in printed books, the western style of Yiddish was adopted across Europe, in order to allow for the existence of a broad, pan-Ashkenazic readership.13
In this context, it should also be mentioned that beginning in the fifteenth century there was a migration of Jews from the German territories to northern Italy, who continued to speak Yiddish there and to write and print Yiddish books until the beginning of the seventeenth century.14
Within traditional Jewish society, the ancient and revered ‘Holy Tongue’ of Hebrew (and also Aramaic) predominated over Yiddish. Hebrew was used in religious studies, prayer, and ritual reading of the sacred texts, as well as many – but not all – forms of writing.15 This traditional model of diglossia dictated that Yiddish serve as the everyday vernacular, while Hebrew was reserved for (most) literary functions as well as some prestigious spoken uses (e. g., prayer, ritual blessings, and proverbs).
Among the Jews living in the German-speaking area, this diglossia was intact until the end of the eighteenth century, when they underwent a language
13 Dovid Katz, “Language: Yiddish,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 979–987.
14 Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, with the collaboration of Claudia Rosenzweig, Yiddish in
Italia: Yiddish Manuscripts and Printed Books from the 15th to the 17th Century (Milano:
Associazione italiana amici dell’Universit. di Gerusalemme, 2003).
15 Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, edited by Paul Glasser and translated by
Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008), vol. 1, 247–314; Lewis Glinert, “Language: Hebrew,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in
Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 977.
shift. The newly established Standard German – Hochdeutsch – replaced Yiddish as the vernacular, and Hebrew as the written language (to some extent).16 In Eastern Europe, however, Yiddish continued to be the vernacular of most Jews up until the Holocaust, and, following the collapse of Yiddish in Germany, the written standard of the language assumed an Eastern Yiddish character.17
Though often neglected, it is hard to overestimate the value that Yiddish texts hold for the study of German-Jewish culture and history preceding the language shift. While Hebrew texts were often written by, and for, men of the rabbinical elite, the vernacular provided a means of expression also for other voices, who were unable to read or write in the Holy Tongue. The common folk, lay men and women, also wanted to know the classic narratives and had their own stories to tell; these were usually related in Yiddish and in most cases were never written down. Still, despite this diglossia,someYiddish texts were recorded and there exists an entire range of genres in pre-modern Yiddish literature (i. e., pre-dating 1800, commonly referred to as Old Yiddish), spanning religious and moralistic works, ego-documents, epics, plays, and more.18 Yiddish texts likewise had the potential to reach a much larger audience than contemporary Hebrew writing, since mostJews could notunderstand Hebrew.
It is also worth noting that Yiddish texts were more heavily influenced by German culture and literature than were their Hebrew counterparts. This is due to the linguistic similarities between the two languages as well as the similar functions they served, as vernacular and often oral literatures. For example, there exist in the canon of Old Yiddish literature texts that are written to the melodies of German songs (e. g., Herzog Ernst, Der Graf von Rom), and mechanical transcriptions of German works in Hebrew characters (e. g., Her Ditraykh [= Dietrich von Bern], (J.ngeres) Hildebrandslied).19 In some cases, German literary forms and themes were even used by Jews to retell traditional Jewish
16 Jakob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of the Jewish Emancipation 1770–1870
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 81.
17 Khone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of Its History (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press,
1978), 176–180 [Hebrew].
18 Modern Yiddish literature, however, developed mainly in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth
century. See Chava Turniansky, “Yiddish Literature: Yiddish Literature before 1800,” and
Mikhail Krutikov, “Yiddish Literature: Yiddish Literature after 1800,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of
Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 2059–2084.
19 Jean Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, edited and translated by Jerold C.
Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 69; Jerold Frakes, Early Yiddish Epic (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), xxix–xxxi; Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature,29–35, 60–61.
narratives, such as epic biblical scenes.20 This teaches us that while the Latin script acted as a cultural barrier for most Jews, the acoustic transmission of German literature (be it in public performance events or through the mediation of a German reader) made it popular among Jews living in the German territories. Such German literary influences on Yiddish works testify to a greater cultural transfer between co-territorial Jews and Christians than is usually assumed.
The corpus under study
This article will review a corpus of poems retelling the Binding of Isaac, composed by Ashkenazic Jews in the Middle Ages and the early modern era: Akeda Piyyutim, liturgical poems in Hebrew, and Yudisher Shtam, an epic poem in Yiddish. These texts were composed, and later disseminated in Western Ashkenazic territories, namely today’s Germany, northern France, and northern Italy.21 Interestingly, although Akeda Piyyutim appear in Ma.zorim from Eastern Europe, there is no known version or even mention of Yudisher Shtam from Eastern Europe.
While the Hebrew poems and the Yiddish poem have both – independently of one another – been the subject of thorough research,22 a comparison of the Yiddish poem to the Hebrew Piyyutim is completely lacking. Such a comparison provides a good case for studying the use of Hebrew and Yiddish within premodern Ashkenazic society, which may shed light on various aspects such as
20 See Chava Turniansky, “On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics,” International Folklore Review 8 (1991), 26–33; Frakes, Early Yiddish Epic. 21 See Wulf-Otto Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak: ein altjiddisches Gedicht .ber die Opferung Isaaks (Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1971), 62–68; Daniel Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et Francogallicis conscriptae, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Meki.e Nirdamim, 1993), xxi–xxiii [Hebrew]. 22 On Yudisher Shtam see Percy Matenko and Samuel Sloan, “The Aqedath Ji..aq: A Sixteenth Century Yiddish Epic with Introduction and Notes,” in: Two Studies in Yiddish Culture, Percy Matenko (ed.) (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 1–70; Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak. See also Frakes’ listing of smaller researches in Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts: 1100–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 317. On Akeda Piyyutim see Leopold Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), 136–139; Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2007), 470 [Hebrew]; Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael, 9 [Hebrew]; Shulamit Elitzur, “Akedat Yi..ak: Bivkhi o besim.a? Hashpa’at mas’ei ha.elav al hasipur hamika’i bapiyyutim,” E. Hada’at 1 (1996), 15–35 [Hebrew]. At present, Dr. Peter Lehnardt of Ben-Gurion University (Israel) is researching the Akeda Piyyutim in a broader comparative context. Dr. Lehnardt kindly helped me in my preliminary research.
male versus female audiences; elite (educated) versus lay audiences; written versus oral transmission; private versus public sphere; and ritual versus belletristic literature. Most importantly, a study of this kind can shed new light on the meaning that lay people attributed to this core Jewish cultural narrative in premodern Ashkenaz, as it was actually told in Yiddish and reflecting the inner-Jewish reality of the time.
In the following pages, the literary corpora in Yiddish and in Hebrew will be reviewed and compared to each other in light of the above-mentioned cultural aspects. This article will try to understand the specific convergence of literary tradition, cultural identity, and contemporary reality that occurred in the retelling of Isaac’s story in pre-modern Ashkenaz.
Akeda Piyyutim are liturgical poems that were recited in the synagogue as part of the Seli.ot (penitential) prayers before and during the High Holy Days.23 Most of these Piyyutim were composed in Germany and France between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and are written for the most part in a four-line stanzaic form with a rhyming pattern of aaaa, bbbb, etc.24 It is believed that they were sung to a special melody known as Niggun Akeda (Akeda melody). Some of these poems, however, are written in rhyming couplets, a form that was common to earlier Piyyutim composed in the Early Middle Ages in Palestine and parts of the Mediterranean Basin. The authors of these Piyyutim are unknown and, based on the archaic form of the poems, it is assumed that they were added to the corpus of Akeda Piyyutim because they mention the Binding of Isaac. For singing purposes, every two couplets could be considered a quatrain.
Akeda Piyyutim, like the entire genre of Piyyutim, exhibit a highly embellished poetic style and make use of sophisticated textual references, biblical quotations and allusions to Midrashic traditions. This often makes them hard to understand, even by well-educated people who are proficient in Hebrew.25
It should be mentioned that while the liturgical rites of other Jewish communities also have Piyyutim concerning the Binding of Isaac,26 Ashkenazic
23 In general, Seli.ot are said from between four and nine days before Rosh Hashanah (depending which day in the week Rosh Hashanah falls on) until the end of Yom Kippur, with the exclusion of Rosh Hashanah and Saturdays (see: Shlomo Ganzfried, Ki.ur Shul.an Arukh 128:5). However, it is customary to say Akeda Piyyutim within these Seli.ot prayers starting only from the morning of Rosh Hashanah Eve. 24 Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages; Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael,9. 25 Susan L. Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 71. 26 See for example the Piyyut of twelfth century poet Yehuda ben Shmuel Ibn Abbas: Et sha’arei ra.on lehipatea’. (When the Gates of Merci do open). This Piyyut is sung in oriental
liturgy is unique in that it has a special thematic category of Piyyutim relating the story of Isaac’s Binding in set places within the liturgy of the Seli.ot service.27 To date, a compilation of all such Akeda Piyyutim does not exist, and they must be collected from various Ma.zorim and anthologies. For the purpose of this article, all Akeda Piyyutim found in the monumental editions of Daniel Goldschmidt (which span the entire range of Ashkenazic rite) were examined, totaling some forty poems.28
Yudisher Shtam (‘The Jewish Tribe’) is a Yiddish poem that relates the story of the Binding of Isaac. It has enjoyed immense popularity over several centuries, as evinced by the relatively large number of its extant versions. It is in fact the most documented poem in pre-modern Yiddish literature, with four manuscripts and four different known printed editions.29 The extant copies hail from the German-speaking territories and northern Italy. They span a period from the early sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, but philological research suggests that the poem itself was composed in the fifteenth century, or perhaps even earlier.30
Stylistically, the poem is written in monorhymed quatrains, similar to the stanzas of the Hebrew Akeda Piyyutim. There is modest variation between the poem’s different versions, which range from sixty to eighty stanzas. Unlike the Hebrew liturgical poems, the Yiddish poem is considered to be part of a belletristic genre: epic poems on biblical themes. This genre, which stood at the center
Jewish communities during Rosh Hashana services before the blowing of the shofar at the end of the morning service, and some communities sing it at the Ne’ila (concluding) service of Yom Kippur. 27 Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages. 28 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael; Id. (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Lita ukehilot haprushim be‘Ere. Yisrael (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1965) [Hebrew]; Id. (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et Francogallicis conscriptae; Id. (ed.), Ma.zor layamim hanora’im: Lefi minhag bnei Ashkenaz lekhol anfeihem kolel minhag Ashkenaz (hama’aravi) minhag Polin uminhag .arfat leshe’avar,
I–II (Jerusalem: Koren, 1970). 29 Manuscripts: Jerusalem, The National Library of Israel (fragment, Heb. 8° 3182), first half of the sixteenth century, Scribe: Moses b. Gerson? from Germany; New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Mic 4425), ca. 1570, various unknown scribes; Hamburg, Staats-und Universit.tsbibliothek (Cod. Hebr. 250), 1574, Scribe: Abraham bar Mose H.ckscher
?;Paris,Biblioth.queNationale(Ms.H.br.589),1579,בירשו ל
HammerschlagfromSaxonyand
Scribe: Anschel Levi from Germany and Italy. Printed editions: [place unknown] seventeenth century; Prague, seventeenth century; Berlin 1717; Altona 1728. The first three prints are found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The latter has been preserved in the collection of Hebraist G.
O. Tyschen, and is found today at the Universit.tsbibliothek Rostock.
30 Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak: ein altjiddisches Gedicht .ber die Opferung Isaaks,9–31.
of pre-modern Yiddish literature for decades or perhaps centuries, consists of poems that relate episodes as well as entire Books of the Hebrew Bible (including Midrashic elaborations) in poetic form. It also exhibits strong influences of the German epic, especially in the depiction of battle scenes and scenes set in the royal court. Among the most popular works of this genre (except for Yudisher Shtam) are adaptations of the biblical Books of Samuel (Shmuel-bukh) and Kings (Melokhim-bukh), which are of a belletristic nature, and various adaptations of the Book of Esther, which are associated with the holiday of Purim.31
The text of Yudisher Shtam cited in this article is taken from Wulf-Otto Dree.en’s scientific edition, which is based on a 1574 manuscript found in Hamburg.32
Literature and prayer in pre-modern Ashkenaz
The above-mentioned poems, in both Hebrew and Yiddish, were composed in a time pre-dating the printing press. As such, they were often transmitted acoustically, either by reading aloud or recital by heart.33 The following review of knowledge transmission and prayer practices in pre-modern Ashkenazic society aims to shed light on the context in which the poems discussed here were composed and transmitted, and the possible functions they were meant to fulfill.
The practice of public reading (regardless of genre) was common in the Middle Ages, even in the relatively literate Jewish Ashkenazic society, because not everyone could read and not every literate person owned books.34 During such public readings, the reader might have added meta-verbal and rhetorical
31 See footnote 21. 32 Dree.en’s edition lacks the Altona 1728 edition which was unknown at the time. He transcribed the text into Latin characters, but I kept the original Hebrew alphabet (based on the Hamburg manuscript where possible). The English translations cited are taken (where possible) from Jerold Frakes’ translation of the Paris manuscript; see Early Yiddish Epic, edited and translated by Jerold C. Frakes, 149–155. 33 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 31–39; Dennis Howard Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3–54. 34 Max Weinreich, Bilder fun der yidisher literaturgeshikhte: Fun di onheybn biz Mendele Moykher-sforim (Vilne: Tomor, 1928), 58, fn. 1; Mira Spiegel, Cantillation of Sacred Liturgical Post Biblical Texts – The Graphic Symbols of the Accents and Their Musical Performance (PhD Thesis: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), vol. 1, 12–13 [Hebrew].
aspects to the written text, thus rendering each reading-event unique: omitting or repeating certain parts, using various voice intonations and gestures of body language, elaborating certain scenes, offering commentary, moralizing, etc.35 When reading Hebrew texts, the reader may have also translated them (either entirely or selected words) into the vernacular Yiddish. To this we may add the audience’s responses: attentive listening, laughter, crying, repeating the reader’s words, or even answering him. Hence, there exists a gap between the written texts that reached us, and the actual manner in which they were performed in pre-modern times.36
Likewise, there was a strong oral character to Ashkenazic prayer in the Middle Ages, in which the individual worshipper did not read texts, but rather recited them by heart, and listened to the precentor (Shelia..ibbur).37 Jewish liturgy expert Daniel Goldschmidt stresses that, unlike other canonical Jewish texts, which were systematically copied out in writing before the advent of print, Jewish prayer-texts were primarily transmitted orally and were rarely written down. Thus, prayer-texts could constantly change as precentors and worshippers pleased, leading to variations which, at times, have prevented the philological establishment of an Urtext.38
In lieu of prayer books that are read by all worshippers, as is common in contemporary Ashkenazic practice, in early Ashkenazic prayer services the precentor (Shelia..ibbur) played a very central and active role. He was responsible for leading the prayers, especially during special liturgical occasions when the usual routine was altered. He was also responsible for the quality of the prayer of all worshippers, who often knew little beyond their short replies.39 Specifically, Piyyutim were originally recited by the prayer leader only, while the congregation listened silently or offered short, set replies. The precentor decided which Piyyut should be recited and when, and he was often among the few who understood their meaning, which was often masked by their elaborate poetic style.40
35 Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France, 19; Albert Bates
Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 31, 37, 43; Yoel
Yosef Rivlin (ed.), Shirat yehudei hatargum: Pirkei alila ugvura befi yehudei Kurdistan (Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1959), 65 [Hebrew].
36 Galit Hasan-Rokem, Proverbs in Israeli Folk Narratives: A Structural Semantic Analysis
(Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1982), 11.
37 Israel M. Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 2003), 29–32 [Hebrew].
38 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere.Yisrael, 19 [Hebrew].
39 Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects, 32 [Hebrew].
40 Ibid., 33; Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere.Yisrael,
9–10 [Hebrew].
נו ןוועל ןמי רדע ןשט ןלאש ןשטאן
/אונ
' וועל ןזינג ןב
ֿ ו ןאברה םאונ
' יצח קמי ן
The possible use of Yiddish texts in pre-modern Ashkenazic liturgy has been the subject of much research.41 Although the halachic permissibility of prayer in the vernacular, let alone the recitation of Piyyutim, seems to be undisputed – the purpose of early modern Yiddish translations of prayer-texts has been greatly debated. Specifically, the intended form of transmission of Yudisher Shtam remains at this point unclear: Yiddish literature expert Khone Shmeruk suggests that Yudisher Shtam may have been used in the synagogue on the High Holy Days,42 while Dree.en posits that ‘public’ readings of it for women were held at home.43
The text of Yudisher Shtam contains a strongly present narrator, who directly addresses his audience. For example, this narrator explains what the characters think and feel, and in other cases he shifts scenes in the story:
(We will now leave the devil, and sing more about Abraham and Isaac) (34, 1–2).
In the study of Yiddish literature, it has been suggested that such a figure of a lively narrator is fictitious,44 but in light of the oral character of early Ashkenazic prayer and the central role the precentor played, perhaps in the case of Yudisher Shtam such depictions could be given some credibility.
The practice by non-Ashkenazic Jewish communities of translating Piyyutim into the vernacular during synagogue services should be taken into consideration here – not as unequivocal proof of Ashkenazic culture, but as an indication that the phenomenon of a vernacular language accompanying Hebrew within Jewish liturgy is possible. To this day, it is common in some Sephardic synagogues to sing Ladino versions of Piyyutim during prayer, and even Piyyutim about the Binding of Isaac.45 Additionally, scholar Hiram Peri points to thirteenth and
41 Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 260–266; Solomon Bennett Freehof, “Devotional Literature in the Vernacular: Judeo-German prior to the Reform Movement,” Yearbook of the Central Conference of American Rabbis 33 (1923), 375–424; Dovid-Eliyohu Fishman, “Mikoyekh davnen af yidish: A bintl metodologishe bamerkungen un naye mekoyrim,” Yivo bleter (naye serye), 1 (1991), 69–92; Siegfried Stein, “Liebliche Tefilloh: A Judeo-German Prayer-Book Printed in 1709,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 15 (1970), 41–72. 42 Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature, 119. 43 Dree.en, Ak.dass Jiz.ak, 61. 44 Shmeruk, “Can the Cambridge manuscript support the ‘Spielmann’ theory in Yiddish literature?” in: Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore, C. Turniansky (ed.) (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1986), 1–36. 45 See Isaac L.vy, Antolog.a de liturgia judeo-espa.ola (Jerusalem: Instituto de Estudios del Cante Judeo-Espa.ol, 1980) vol. 1, xxi, xxviii; vol. 2, n. 150 (“Si.uLe’imi – Havlad a mi madre que su gozo perdi.”), 181–183.
fourteenth century Judeo-French translations of Piyyutim, arguing that they were ritually sung in the synagogue.46 He points out that some of them are written in a Ma.zor, and that they retain the poetical texture, prosody, and rhyming patterns of the Hebrew originals. Peri also quotes the Takkanot (regulations) of the synagogue in Avignon from 1558, which clearly state that one of the Darshan’s (Preacher) duties is the translation in rhymes of Piyyutim (“les verses”) said on Shabbat and holidays.
Comparison of the Hebrew and Yiddish poems
Despite the fact that Yudisher Shtam and the Hebrew Piyyutim retell the same story with similar theological commentary and exhibit the same contemporary influences, there are fundamental differences between the two – much more so than among the various Hebrew Piyyutim.
As stated above, all poems discussed here were composed within Western Ashkenazic culture, but whereas, in most cases, the authors of the Hebrew texts are known to us by their names and even their biographies,47 the Yiddish poem’s author is unknown. Likewise, the time of composition of the Hebrew Piyyutim can be determined by biographical or literary criteria with relative precision, whereas Yudisher Shtam’s time of composition must be estimated through the use of philological tools.
Another important difference relates to the purpose of the texts: the Hebrew Piyyutim have come to us set within Ma.zorim, but the Yiddish poem has reached us in composite manuscripts containing various Yiddish texts,48 or as printed booklets without any liturgical instructions. As a result, we cannot be certain of what the intended place and context for the reading of Yudisher Shtam was.
From a formal point of view, although the poems in both languages make use of the same stanzaic form and melody, they are different in scope. The Hebrew Piyyutim are more compact than the Yiddish poem; they are typically ten
46 .iram Peri, “Hatefila vehapiyyut bileshon la’az biymei habeinayim,” Tarbi. 24 (1955),
426–440 (especially 426–427, 438) [Hebrew]; Id., “Piyyutim mehama.zor be.arfatit atika,”
Tarbi. 25 (1956), 154–182 (especially 174–175) [Hebrew]. I thank Dr. Micha Perry for drawing
my attention to these articles.
47 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael,18–19
[Hebrew].
48 For example Minhagim (customs), prayers, prose exempla, Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the
Fathers), and songs (some of them profane). See Dree.en, Ak.dass Jiz.ak, 10, 13, 19, 25.
to twenty stanzas in Hebrew (rarely more, peaking at forty-five stanzas), compared to sixty to eighty stanzas in Yiddish. Additionally, the language register of the Piyyutim is much higher than that of Yudisher Shtam. An accurate comparison of the language registers requires proficiency in both Yiddish and Hebrew, but generally speaking it appears that an average speaker of Old Yiddish could understand the entire text of Yudisher Shtam, while the Piyyutim seemed encrypted and, at times, not fully understood by even the most learned Hebrew speaker. As a humble illustration of this, here is the first stanza of Yudisher Shtam:
Jewish tribe of the worthy kindThat was born of our father Abraham
יודיש רשטא םדי אווערד יארט
. ד רבו ןאברה םאבינ וגיבור ןווארד
.
And of Sarah, our dear mother, .
אונ
' בו ןשר הדי אמוט רצאר ט
די אזי ךאי ןגוט שדינש טאל יביי דני טהאב ןגישפארט
:NeitherofwhomstintedintheirservicetoGod.
And here is the first stanza of an Akeda Piyyut by Ephraim son of Isaac of Regensburg:49
ן
,Thoughthepigeonofferinghasceased,
א
ִם־א
ָפ
ֵ ס רב
ַֹ עה
ַק
ֵּ
Though the tent in which he (the Lord) dwelt is now empty, ,
א
ֹה
ֶ לש
ִׁ כ
ֵּ ןא
ִ ם־ר
ִ ק
ֵּ ן
Nevertheless, let us not abandon hope,
ן
,
For we possess an aged patriarch (Abraham). .
א
ַ ל־נ
ָ אנ
ֹאב
ְ ד
ָ הע
ַ ל־כ
ֵּ
י
ֶש
ׁ ־ל
ָ נו
ּ א
ָ בז
ָק
ֵ ן
In terms of content, all poems describe the exemplary behavior of Abraham (who obeyed God and nearly sacrificed his son) and of Isaac (who obeyed God and agreed to be sacrificed) in a sentimental tone, though some Piyyutim (especially the ones written in couplets) tend to focus mainly on Abraham. While Yudisher Shtam recounts in detail the entire story of Isaac’s Binding, the Hebrew poems are more inclined to concentrate on certain emotional or theological aspects of it. Consequently, it appears that the Piyyutim targeted an elite audience of learned men, since, except for their difficult Hebrew, they assume previous knowledge of the story and all of its Midrashic elaborations.
The Yiddish poem, as well as a significant number of Hebrew Piyyutim, relate Sarah’s role in the story, despite her absence from the biblical text. These elaborations may indicate female readership or authorship, but as almost all of
49 The name of the Piyyut derives from its first words: Im afes rova haken. Hebrew text according to Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael, 190 [Hebrew]. English translation by Abraham Rosenfeld, taken from A. Rosenfeld (ed.), The Authorised Selichot for the Whole Year (London: Judaica Press, 1969, 4th edition), 204.
these elaborations are already found in Midrashic literature, their exact function in the poems needs to be studied further.
Two aspects, which are closely related to one another, strongly distinguish Yudisher Shtam from the Hebrew Piyyutim: the use of humor and the influence of the medieval German epic.50 Both aspects can be attributed to Yudisher Shtam’s own literary genre: epic poetry on biblical themes. This genre, as mentioned above, was strongly influenced by German works and is belletristic in nature.
Humoristic elements, which suggest a context of entertainment and social gathering, appear in Yudisher Shtam mainly in the description of Satan’s attempts to prevent the Binding from taking place.51 Humor is completely absent from the Piyyutim and, to the best of my knowledge, does not exist in any other relevant Hebrew sources. The best example of humor is when Satan turns himself into a river in front of Abraham and Isaac. Midrash Tan.uma (Vayera, 22) relates that Abraham jumped fearlessly into the water and nearly drowned, then God reprimanded Satan and the river dried up immediately. However, in Yudisher Shtam (32–33) Satan is also mocked:
God, blessed be He, screamed at Satan with a terrifying roar
That he had to drink all the water.
He drank so that his belly swelled up –
His belly was round and full.
He was quite distressed by that,
As well as by the fact that he could accomplish nothing more with his deceptions.
He ran around, back and forth, because of his discomfort
And roared like a bear in his great wrath.
Such humoristic elements belong, in my opinion, to the performative aspects of the public reading of texts, though their specific functions have yet to be studied. Yudisher Shtam provides an intriguing example of the use of humor, which should not be overlooked in the study of pre-modern Ashkenazic culture.
The German cultural influence seen in Yudisher Shtam accounts for the use of specific terms common to German epic when describing characters in the
ווא לגיבור ן
)and ”distinguished“,auserkoren (German אוי שע רקורן
e.g., poem,
(German wohlgeboren, “well-born”); the repetitive use of specific verbal formulae
(e. g.,
39,2 –“He/she was so overwhelmed that the power of sight left his/her eyes”); and
50 Felix Falk, “Die deutschen Vorbilder,”in: Das Schemuelbuch des Mosche Esrim Wearba: Ein biblisches Epos aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, Einleitung und textkritischer Apparat von Felix Falk, aus dem Nachlass hrsg. von L. Fuks, vol. 2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961), 114–115. 51 Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature by Jean Baumgarten, edited and translated by
J. C. Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 138–139.
דא רדע רשרא קע רד שאי םו רגינ גזיי ןגיזיכ
ֿ ט
,22,3 זי אדא רשרא קד שאי רו רגינ גד שגיזיכ
ֿ ט
the presence of an intrusive narrator, who speaks in the first person. It should be noted that the narrator of the Hebrew Piyyutim remains hidden, with the exception of the standard request at the end of the Piyyutim for God to redeem the Jewish people.52
These German literary influences serve as evidence of the familiarity of Jews with their Christian neighbors’ culture. Such ties are not reflected in the Hebrew poems, once again proving the value of Yiddish literature for the documentation of Ashkenazic cultural history.
Finally, one important feature common to both corpora is the Ashkenazic Jews’ reading of their own ‘bindings’ and trials into the story of Isaac’s Binding. This is seen in references within the classic narrative to Christianity as a persecuting religion, or in professions of the Jewish position in Jewish-Christian polemics. For instance, anti-Christian sayings like:
]כנס תישראל
[ דבוק הב ךא לח יול אבמת
(The Jewish people adhere to You, O living God, and not to the dead god [i. e., Jesus])53
or:
הקב
'' ה
]…[ זו ל
]…[ ד רלוז ןישרא לזיי ןאירשט יקינ ד
(May God redeem Israel, His first child)54
Persecutions are implied, for example, in the following passage:
אי רליב הליי טטו טא ןדי אעקיד הגידענקן
. פ
ֿ ו ןגאט שוועג ןזא למ ןזי ךלאז ןברענ ןאונ
' הענק ן
(Dear people, remember the Akeda! You should agree to be burned and hung for God’s sake!)55 or in Yuda bar Kalonimus of Mainz’s Piyyut:
בגלויו תנסתבכנ ו
]…[ כ להיו םנחשבנ וכצא ןטבח ה
(We are entangled in numerous exiles […] we are constantly slaughtered like sheep)56
These echoes of contemporary reality clearly situate the poems in Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern era. Indeed, all of the differences and similarities discussed here unequivocally show the Piyyutim as well as Yudisher Shtam to be the cultural product of Ashkenazic Jewish society.
52 Matenko, Two Studies in Yiddish Culture,20–21; Falk, “Die deutschen Vorbilder,” 114–115.
53 Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et
Francogallicis conscriptae, 104 [Hebrew].
54 Yudisher Shtam, 79, 3.
55 Ibid., 76, 1–2.
56 Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et
Francogallicis conscriptae, 221 [Hebrew].
Conclusion
This article compares for the first time two central corpora in pre-modern Jewish Ashkenazic culture on the Binding of Isaac. Despite the fact that these Hebrew and Yiddish poems circulated side by side in Ashkenazic society for centuries, such a comparison has, surprisingly, never been conducted.
My comparison identifies the similar Ashkenazic character of the poems in Hebrew and in Yiddish. It notes the central cultural and religious role that Isaac’s story was given in both corpora, on the one hand, and the resonance of historical aspects of Jewish existence in Christian corpora, on the other. It also points to the different audiences that Hebrew and Yiddish served in pre-modern Ashkenazic society, proving once again that Hebrew had the upper hand in traditional Jewish society: the Hebrew Piyyutim reflect a deeper familiarity with classical Jewish sources and more stylistic refinement and, unlike the single Yiddish poem, they were set in Ma.zorim, and their large number constitutes a poetic school. Still, the unusually extensive documentation of Yudisher Shtam teaches us that we do not know everything – Jewish Ashkenazic culture also thrived in Yiddish, not only in Hebrew, and there may have been more Yiddish epic poems on other themes of which we are not aware.
Additionally, by pointing out the significant performative role of the precentor in the medieval Ashkenazic synagogue, and by highlighting the fact that some aspects of this oral tradition were not recorded, this article raises the possibility that synagogue services included some Yiddish texts in the past. This hypothesis still awaits further research.
As mentioned above, Hiram Peri writes extensively about the possibility of public Jewish prayer in the vernacular, and uses examples from various Jewish communities. He does not, however, discuss Yudisher Shtam, and it appears that he was unaware of it. It is my hope that this article will promote research into this intriguing question.
Another question that remains to be answered is what was the reason for the decline in popularity of the poems discussed here. Today, Hebrew Akeda Piyyutim are rarely recited in full in Ashkenazic synagogues, and they have even been completely omitted from some Ma.zorim.57 The decline of the Yiddish poem occurred decades before the language shift of German Jews, and no editions of Yudisher Shtam are known to have been printed after 1728. This means that the decline of Yudisher Shtam cannot be linked to the general collapse of Yiddish in Germany, and may have to do with changing literary
57 See for example Rinat Yisrael edition.
favor or other factors. Another mystery that remains to be solved is the lack of documentation about Yudisher Shtam in Eastern Europe. Perhaps this is purely coincidental, but perhaps there was a reason for it, pertaining to the differences between Eastern and Western Ashkenazic rite. In light of all of this, we can conclude without doubt that further research in this field is necessary.
Acknowledgments: Work on this paper was conducted during my year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and with support from the Israeli Science Foundation, under grant 1492/13. I wish to thank Prof. Yfaat Weiss and Dr. Aya Elyada for their supervision and support.
Figure 1: Title page of the Yiddish epic poem “Yudisher shtam” (Altona, 1728). Source: Sammlung Tychsen, online-edition, Harald Fischer Verlag.
Figure 2: A page from the Yiddish epic poem “Yudisher shtam” (Altona, 1728). Source: Sammlung Tychsen, online-edition, Harald Fischer Verlag.
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Oren Roman*
Early Ashkenazic Poems about the Binding of Isaac
DOI 10.1515/naha-2016-0014
Abstract: This article reviews a corpus of poems retelling the Binding of Isaac composed by Ashkenazic Jews (mainly from the German territories) during the Middle Ages and early modern era. The poems, written in both languages of the Ashkenazim – the vernacular Yiddish and the literary Hebrew – are: Akeda Piyyutim, some 40 liturgical penitentiary poems written in Hebrew, and Yudisher Shtam, an epic poem written in Yiddish, of which an unusually extensive number of copies survived. These Hebrew poems and the Yiddish poem have been – independently from one another – the subject of thorough research. However, no comparison of the two corpora has ever been done. The present paper offers such a comparison, thus illuminating key cultural-historical aspects of pre-modern Ashkenazic society, including cultural transfer between coterritorial Jews and Christians; Hebrew versus Yiddish texts; ritual versus belletristic literature; written versus oral transmission; elite (educated) versus lay audiences; male versus female audiences; and the private versus the public sphere. The article identifies similarities in both form and content between the poems in the two languages. For example, they both employ a similar stanzaic form; they both describe the exemplary behavior of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah in a sentimental tone; and they both make contemporary references within the classic narrative to Christianity as a persecuting religion. The differences between the two corpora relate also to both form and content. For instance, the Hebrew poems are much shorter than the Yiddish poem, and they reflect a deeper familiarity with classical Jewish sources and are more stylistically refined, while the Yiddish poem is more belletristic and conveys the influence of the medieval German epic. Also, whereas the Hebrew Piyyutim were contained in Ma.zorim used in the synagogue, there is no certainty as to the intended purpose of Yudisher Shtam. By identifying the differences and similarities between the two corpora, as well as their possible meanings and implications,
*Corresponding author: Oren Roman, Abt. f.r Jiddische Kultur, Sprache und Literatur, Institut f.r J.dische Studien, Heinrich-Heine-Universit.t D.sseldorf, 40204 D.sseldorf, Germany, E-mail: oren.roman@mail.huji.ac.il
the article sheds light on an interesting case in the history of the Jews in the German territories involving cultural exchange, cultural identity, and literary tradition.
Keywords: Binding of Isaac, Piyyut, Yiddish, Sacrifice of Isaac, Ashkenaz
In loving memory of Prof. Shlomo Berger z”l
The theme
The biblical story of the Binding of Isaac, Akedat Yi..ak (Genesis 22:1–19), has had a central role in Jewish culture since Antiquity; it can be considered part of the foundation myth of the Jewish people as well as a document of deep faith in God and His covenant with the Children of Israel. The story depicts an episode in the life of the first Jewish family, Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac, during which the family is almost annihilated following God’s command to Abraham to sacrifice his son. The story is unexpectedly inverted, however, through God’s salvation of Isaac. God then makes a promise to Abraham to bless his future descendants:
The angel of the Lord called to Abraham a second time from heaven, and said: “By Myself I swear, the Lord declares: Because you have done this and have not withheld your son, your favored one, I will bestow My blessing upon you and make your descendants as numerous as the stars of heaven and the sands on the seashore; and your descendants shall seize the gates of their foes. All the nations of the earth shall bless themselves by your descendants, because you have obeyed My command.” (Genesis 22:15–18)1
This religious model of trial and, ultimately, divine deliverance, became for Jews in years to come a way of coping with the hardships they faced. God’s promise to Abraham was seen as a source of protection, a concept known in Jewish thought as zekhut avot – the merit of the ancestors.2
Akedat Yi..ak is mentioned in daily Jewish prayer, as the text from Genesis appears in the preliminary morning service (birkot hasha.ar). It is also one of the central themes in the services of the High Holy Days, and Rosh Hashanah
1 English translation according to Hebrew-English Tanakh: The Traditional Hebrew Text and the
New JPS Translation (Philadelphia: The Jewish Publication Society, 1999).
2 Encyclopedia Judaica (Jerusalem: Encyclopedia Judaica, 1971), “Akeda,” vol. 2, 480–487;
“Zekhut Avot,” vol. 16, 976–978.
especially, e. g., the biblical passage is ceremonially read on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, and the blowing of the shofar is said to symbolize the ram that was slaughtered instead of Isaac.3
Additionally, this story has been retold by generation after generation of Jews, both orally and in writing.4 While the 19-verse text in the Book of Genesis, chapter 22, leaves many details untold, later retellings of the story have tried to fill in those lacunae – often projecting the thoughts and feelings of current readers onto the ancient text. For example, the Talmud relates that it was Satan who urged God to test Abraham’s faith with the request to sacrifice his son,5 and Midrash Tan.uma describes Sarah’s suffering and sudden death when she learns of her son’s fate.6
In medieval Jewish Ashkenazic culture two new layers of meaning were attached to the ancient narrative, reflecting historical and cultural aspects of Jewish existence at the time. The first of these is the reclaiming of the story in reaction to the Christian appropriation of “the Sacrifice of Isaac” as a prefiguration of the Crucifixion of Jesus. According to this retelling, a parallel is drawn between Abraham’s near sacrifice of his beloved son Isaac and God the Father sacrificing his beloved Son Jesus (cf. Hebrews 11:17–19), as well as between Isaac, who carried the wood on which he was to be killed and burned, and Jesus, who carried the wooden cross through the streets of Jerusalem.7 The Jewish reclaiming of the story should thus be seen in the wider context of medieval Christian-Jewish polemics, and the effort to convert Jews to Christianity.8
3 Dov Noy, “Rosh Hashana ve’akedat Yi..ak,” Ma.anayim 49 (1961), 40–47 [Hebrew]. 4 See for example Legends of the Jews, Louis Ginzberg (ed.), translated from the German manuscript by Henrietta Szold and Paul Radin (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 2003), vol. 1, 224–237; In Queen Esther’s Garden: An Anthology of Judeo-Persian Literature, translated and with an introduction and notes by Vera Basch Moreen (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000), 218–222; Miriam Guez-Avigal, Po.sie de Proph.tes: Le chant sacr. des Juives de l’.le de Djerba en Tunisie (Lod: Orot Yahadout Hamaghreb, 2009), 159–166 [Judeo-Arabic and Hebrew]; Ruth Kartun-Blum, The Sword of the Word: The Binding of Isaac in Israeli Poetry (Tel Aviv: Hakibbu. Hame’u.ad, 2013) [Hebrew]. 5 TB, Sanhedrin, 89b. 6 Midrash Tan.uma, Vayera, 23. 7 See Fritz Reckling, Immolatio Isaac: Die theologische und exemplarische Interpretation in den Abraham-Isaak-Dramen der deutschen Literatur insbesonderen des 16. und 17. Jahrhunderts (M.nster: [n.p.], 1962), 20–28; Edward Kessler, Bound by the Bible: Jews, Christians and the Sacrifice of Isaac (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 8 Daniel Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1965), 10, 12–13 [Hebrew].
The second added meaning comes from the time of the First Crusade, where the story became associated with the venerated narrative of Kiddush Hashem – that is, the willingness to give up one’s own life to sanctify God’s Name in the face of religious persecution.9 Chronicles and Kinot (lamentations) relating the persecution of Jews by Christians during the Middle Ages in today’s Germany and France often mention the Binding of Isaac and portray the martyred Jews as the ‘Isaac’ figure.10 Some of these texts even tell – in a manner that corresponds to the biblical narrative – how, at the time, some Jewish parents killed their own children in order to prevent them from being forced to convert to Christianity, thus viewing the parents as the ‘Abraham’ figure.
Research conducted by Piyyut expert Shalom Spiegel has revealed that an ancient version of the story claiming that Isaac was in fact killed by Abraham and later miraculously revived circulated in medieval Ashkenazic Jewry.11 It seems that the popularity of this version in the Middle Ages may be attributed to both of the above-mentioned historical and cultural influences.
It should be noted that parallels between Abraham and Isaac’s model behavior and other sacrifices made by post-Bible individuals were already being drawn hundreds of years before 1096.12 Still, the recurring appearance of Isaac’s story in the above-mentioned chronicles and Kinot leaves no doubt that the trauma of medieval European violence against Ashkenazic Jews fostered an identification with the moral dilemmas and the suffering of Abraham, Isaac, and Sarah. Likewise, the poems studied in this article are empiric evidence of the central role that the Binding of Isaac was awarded in Ashkenazic culture throughout the centuries.
9 See for example Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying God’s Name: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Yom Tov Assis (ed.), Facing the Cross: The Persecution of the Jews in The First Crusade (1096) in History and Historiography (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2000) [Hebrew]; Robert Chazan, In the Year 1096: The First Crusade and the Jews (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society, 1996). 10 Abraham Meir Haberman (ed.), Sefer gezeirot Ashkenaz ve.arfat: Divrei zikhronot mibenei hadorot shebitkufat mas’ei ha.elav umiv.ar piyuteihem (Jerusalem: Ofir Books, 1971) [Hebrew]; Ivan Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of 1096 Crusade Riots,” Prooftexts 2.1 (1982), 40–52. 11 Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah; translated from the Hebrew, with an introduction by Judah Goldin (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1967). 12 See for example the story about the woman with seven sons (2 Maccabees 8; TB Gittin 57b; Eicha Rabba [Vilna] A,50).
The two languages of Ashkenazic Jews
It is assumed that since they first settled in the German-speaking area on a continuous basis, Jews have spoken their own language, known today as Yiddish. This language, written in the Hebrew alphabet from its beginning, originated in southern Germany in the tenth century and was a synthesis of medieval urban German dialects with influences of Hebrew and Aramaic, and, to a lesser degree, of the Romance languages previously spoken by the Jews. From the thirteenth century onward, a process of Jewish migration from the German territories eastward across Europe took place. The Ashkenazic Jews in Eastern Europe (e. g., in contemporary Poland and Ukraine) continued to use Yiddish, but it was influenced lexically and otherwise by co-territorial Slavic languages. Thus, a distinction between the dialect groups of Western Yiddish and Eastern Yiddish came about. However, as a medium for written communications, and especially in printed books, the western style of Yiddish was adopted across Europe, in order to allow for the existence of a broad, pan-Ashkenazic readership.13
In this context, it should also be mentioned that beginning in the fifteenth century there was a migration of Jews from the German territories to northern Italy, who continued to speak Yiddish there and to write and print Yiddish books until the beginning of the seventeenth century.14
Within traditional Jewish society, the ancient and revered ‘Holy Tongue’ of Hebrew (and also Aramaic) predominated over Yiddish. Hebrew was used in religious studies, prayer, and ritual reading of the sacred texts, as well as many – but not all – forms of writing.15 This traditional model of diglossia dictated that Yiddish serve as the everyday vernacular, while Hebrew was reserved for (most) literary functions as well as some prestigious spoken uses (e. g., prayer, ritual blessings, and proverbs).
Among the Jews living in the German-speaking area, this diglossia was intact until the end of the eighteenth century, when they underwent a language
13 Dovid Katz, “Language: Yiddish,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 1
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 979–987.
14 Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, with the collaboration of Claudia Rosenzweig, Yiddish in
Italia: Yiddish Manuscripts and Printed Books from the 15th to the 17th Century (Milano:
Associazione italiana amici dell’Universit. di Gerusalemme, 2003).
15 Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, edited by Paul Glasser and translated by
Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman (New Haven: Yale University Press,
2008), vol. 1, 247–314; Lewis Glinert, “Language: Hebrew,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of Jews in
Eastern Europe, vol. 1, 977.
shift. The newly established Standard German – Hochdeutsch – replaced Yiddish as the vernacular, and Hebrew as the written language (to some extent).16 In Eastern Europe, however, Yiddish continued to be the vernacular of most Jews up until the Holocaust, and, following the collapse of Yiddish in Germany, the written standard of the language assumed an Eastern Yiddish character.17
Though often neglected, it is hard to overestimate the value that Yiddish texts hold for the study of German-Jewish culture and history preceding the language shift. While Hebrew texts were often written by, and for, men of the rabbinical elite, the vernacular provided a means of expression also for other voices, who were unable to read or write in the Holy Tongue. The common folk, lay men and women, also wanted to know the classic narratives and had their own stories to tell; these were usually related in Yiddish and in most cases were never written down. Still, despite this diglossia,someYiddish texts were recorded and there exists an entire range of genres in pre-modern Yiddish literature (i. e., pre-dating 1800, commonly referred to as Old Yiddish), spanning religious and moralistic works, ego-documents, epics, plays, and more.18 Yiddish texts likewise had the potential to reach a much larger audience than contemporary Hebrew writing, since mostJews could notunderstand Hebrew.
It is also worth noting that Yiddish texts were more heavily influenced by German culture and literature than were their Hebrew counterparts. This is due to the linguistic similarities between the two languages as well as the similar functions they served, as vernacular and often oral literatures. For example, there exist in the canon of Old Yiddish literature texts that are written to the melodies of German songs (e. g., Herzog Ernst, Der Graf von Rom), and mechanical transcriptions of German works in Hebrew characters (e. g., Her Ditraykh [= Dietrich von Bern], (J.ngeres) Hildebrandslied).19 In some cases, German literary forms and themes were even used by Jews to retell traditional Jewish
16 Jakob Katz, Out of the Ghetto: The Social Background of the Jewish Emancipation 1770–1870
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1973), 81.
17 Khone Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature: Aspects of Its History (Tel Aviv: Tel Aviv University Press,
1978), 176–180 [Hebrew].
18 Modern Yiddish literature, however, developed mainly in Eastern Europe in the nineteenth
century. See Chava Turniansky, “Yiddish Literature: Yiddish Literature before 1800,” and
Mikhail Krutikov, “Yiddish Literature: Yiddish Literature after 1800,” in: YIVO Encyclopedia of
Jews in Eastern Europe, vol. 2 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008), 2059–2084.
19 Jean Baumgarten, Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature, edited and translated by Jerold C.
Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 69; Jerold Frakes, Early Yiddish Epic (Syracuse,
NY: Syracuse University Press, 2014), xxix–xxxi; Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature,29–35, 60–61.
narratives, such as epic biblical scenes.20 This teaches us that while the Latin script acted as a cultural barrier for most Jews, the acoustic transmission of German literature (be it in public performance events or through the mediation of a German reader) made it popular among Jews living in the German territories. Such German literary influences on Yiddish works testify to a greater cultural transfer between co-territorial Jews and Christians than is usually assumed.
The corpus under study
This article will review a corpus of poems retelling the Binding of Isaac, composed by Ashkenazic Jews in the Middle Ages and the early modern era: Akeda Piyyutim, liturgical poems in Hebrew, and Yudisher Shtam, an epic poem in Yiddish. These texts were composed, and later disseminated in Western Ashkenazic territories, namely today’s Germany, northern France, and northern Italy.21 Interestingly, although Akeda Piyyutim appear in Ma.zorim from Eastern Europe, there is no known version or even mention of Yudisher Shtam from Eastern Europe.
While the Hebrew poems and the Yiddish poem have both – independently of one another – been the subject of thorough research,22 a comparison of the Yiddish poem to the Hebrew Piyyutim is completely lacking. Such a comparison provides a good case for studying the use of Hebrew and Yiddish within premodern Ashkenazic society, which may shed light on various aspects such as
20 See Chava Turniansky, “On Old-Yiddish Biblical Epics,” International Folklore Review 8 (1991), 26–33; Frakes, Early Yiddish Epic. 21 See Wulf-Otto Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak: ein altjiddisches Gedicht .ber die Opferung Isaaks (Hamburg: Leibniz-Verlag, 1971), 62–68; Daniel Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et Francogallicis conscriptae, vol. 1 (Jerusalem: Meki.e Nirdamim, 1993), xxi–xxiii [Hebrew]. 22 On Yudisher Shtam see Percy Matenko and Samuel Sloan, “The Aqedath Ji..aq: A Sixteenth Century Yiddish Epic with Introduction and Notes,” in: Two Studies in Yiddish Culture, Percy Matenko (ed.) (Leiden: Brill, 1968), 1–70; Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak. See also Frakes’ listing of smaller researches in Frakes, Early Yiddish Texts: 1100–1750 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), 317. On Akeda Piyyutim see Leopold Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, vol. 1 (Hildesheim: Georg Olms, 1967), 136–139; Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2007), 470 [Hebrew]; Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael, 9 [Hebrew]; Shulamit Elitzur, “Akedat Yi..ak: Bivkhi o besim.a? Hashpa’at mas’ei ha.elav al hasipur hamika’i bapiyyutim,” E. Hada’at 1 (1996), 15–35 [Hebrew]. At present, Dr. Peter Lehnardt of Ben-Gurion University (Israel) is researching the Akeda Piyyutim in a broader comparative context. Dr. Lehnardt kindly helped me in my preliminary research.
male versus female audiences; elite (educated) versus lay audiences; written versus oral transmission; private versus public sphere; and ritual versus belletristic literature. Most importantly, a study of this kind can shed new light on the meaning that lay people attributed to this core Jewish cultural narrative in premodern Ashkenaz, as it was actually told in Yiddish and reflecting the inner-Jewish reality of the time.
In the following pages, the literary corpora in Yiddish and in Hebrew will be reviewed and compared to each other in light of the above-mentioned cultural aspects. This article will try to understand the specific convergence of literary tradition, cultural identity, and contemporary reality that occurred in the retelling of Isaac’s story in pre-modern Ashkenaz.
Akeda Piyyutim are liturgical poems that were recited in the synagogue as part of the Seli.ot (penitential) prayers before and during the High Holy Days.23 Most of these Piyyutim were composed in Germany and France between the eleventh and thirteenth centuries and are written for the most part in a four-line stanzaic form with a rhyming pattern of aaaa, bbbb, etc.24 It is believed that they were sung to a special melody known as Niggun Akeda (Akeda melody). Some of these poems, however, are written in rhyming couplets, a form that was common to earlier Piyyutim composed in the Early Middle Ages in Palestine and parts of the Mediterranean Basin. The authors of these Piyyutim are unknown and, based on the archaic form of the poems, it is assumed that they were added to the corpus of Akeda Piyyutim because they mention the Binding of Isaac. For singing purposes, every two couplets could be considered a quatrain.
Akeda Piyyutim, like the entire genre of Piyyutim, exhibit a highly embellished poetic style and make use of sophisticated textual references, biblical quotations and allusions to Midrashic traditions. This often makes them hard to understand, even by well-educated people who are proficient in Hebrew.25
It should be mentioned that while the liturgical rites of other Jewish communities also have Piyyutim concerning the Binding of Isaac,26 Ashkenazic
23 In general, Seli.ot are said from between four and nine days before Rosh Hashanah (depending which day in the week Rosh Hashanah falls on) until the end of Yom Kippur, with the exclusion of Rosh Hashanah and Saturdays (see: Shlomo Ganzfried, Ki.ur Shul.an Arukh 128:5). However, it is customary to say Akeda Piyyutim within these Seli.ot prayers starting only from the morning of Rosh Hashanah Eve. 24 Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages; Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael,9. 25 Susan L. Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2002), 71. 26 See for example the Piyyut of twelfth century poet Yehuda ben Shmuel Ibn Abbas: Et sha’arei ra.on lehipatea’. (When the Gates of Merci do open). This Piyyut is sung in oriental
liturgy is unique in that it has a special thematic category of Piyyutim relating the story of Isaac’s Binding in set places within the liturgy of the Seli.ot service.27 To date, a compilation of all such Akeda Piyyutim does not exist, and they must be collected from various Ma.zorim and anthologies. For the purpose of this article, all Akeda Piyyutim found in the monumental editions of Daniel Goldschmidt (which span the entire range of Ashkenazic rite) were examined, totaling some forty poems.28
Yudisher Shtam (‘The Jewish Tribe’) is a Yiddish poem that relates the story of the Binding of Isaac. It has enjoyed immense popularity over several centuries, as evinced by the relatively large number of its extant versions. It is in fact the most documented poem in pre-modern Yiddish literature, with four manuscripts and four different known printed editions.29 The extant copies hail from the German-speaking territories and northern Italy. They span a period from the early sixteenth to the early eighteenth century, but philological research suggests that the poem itself was composed in the fifteenth century, or perhaps even earlier.30
Stylistically, the poem is written in monorhymed quatrains, similar to the stanzas of the Hebrew Akeda Piyyutim. There is modest variation between the poem’s different versions, which range from sixty to eighty stanzas. Unlike the Hebrew liturgical poems, the Yiddish poem is considered to be part of a belletristic genre: epic poems on biblical themes. This genre, which stood at the center
Jewish communities during Rosh Hashana services before the blowing of the shofar at the end of the morning service, and some communities sing it at the Ne’ila (concluding) service of Yom Kippur. 27 Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages. 28 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael; Id. (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Lita ukehilot haprushim be‘Ere. Yisrael (Jerusalem: Mossad haRav Kook, 1965) [Hebrew]; Id. (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et Francogallicis conscriptae; Id. (ed.), Ma.zor layamim hanora’im: Lefi minhag bnei Ashkenaz lekhol anfeihem kolel minhag Ashkenaz (hama’aravi) minhag Polin uminhag .arfat leshe’avar,
I–II (Jerusalem: Koren, 1970). 29 Manuscripts: Jerusalem, The National Library of Israel (fragment, Heb. 8° 3182), first half of the sixteenth century, Scribe: Moses b. Gerson? from Germany; New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America (Mic 4425), ca. 1570, various unknown scribes; Hamburg, Staats-und Universit.tsbibliothek (Cod. Hebr. 250), 1574, Scribe: Abraham bar Mose H.ckscher
?;Paris,Biblioth.queNationale(Ms.H.br.589),1579,בירשו ל
HammerschlagfromSaxonyand
Scribe: Anschel Levi from Germany and Italy. Printed editions: [place unknown] seventeenth century; Prague, seventeenth century; Berlin 1717; Altona 1728. The first three prints are found at the Bodleian Library in Oxford. The latter has been preserved in the collection of Hebraist G.
O. Tyschen, and is found today at the Universit.tsbibliothek Rostock.
30 Dree.en (ed.), Ak.dass Jiz.ak: ein altjiddisches Gedicht .ber die Opferung Isaaks,9–31.
of pre-modern Yiddish literature for decades or perhaps centuries, consists of poems that relate episodes as well as entire Books of the Hebrew Bible (including Midrashic elaborations) in poetic form. It also exhibits strong influences of the German epic, especially in the depiction of battle scenes and scenes set in the royal court. Among the most popular works of this genre (except for Yudisher Shtam) are adaptations of the biblical Books of Samuel (Shmuel-bukh) and Kings (Melokhim-bukh), which are of a belletristic nature, and various adaptations of the Book of Esther, which are associated with the holiday of Purim.31
The text of Yudisher Shtam cited in this article is taken from Wulf-Otto Dree.en’s scientific edition, which is based on a 1574 manuscript found in Hamburg.32
Literature and prayer in pre-modern Ashkenaz
The above-mentioned poems, in both Hebrew and Yiddish, were composed in a time pre-dating the printing press. As such, they were often transmitted acoustically, either by reading aloud or recital by heart.33 The following review of knowledge transmission and prayer practices in pre-modern Ashkenazic society aims to shed light on the context in which the poems discussed here were composed and transmitted, and the possible functions they were meant to fulfill.
The practice of public reading (regardless of genre) was common in the Middle Ages, even in the relatively literate Jewish Ashkenazic society, because not everyone could read and not every literate person owned books.34 During such public readings, the reader might have added meta-verbal and rhetorical
31 See footnote 21. 32 Dree.en’s edition lacks the Altona 1728 edition which was unknown at the time. He transcribed the text into Latin characters, but I kept the original Hebrew alphabet (based on the Hamburg manuscript where possible). The English translations cited are taken (where possible) from Jerold Frakes’ translation of the Paris manuscript; see Early Yiddish Epic, edited and translated by Jerold C. Frakes, 149–155. 33 William A. Graham, Beyond the Written Word: Oral Aspects of Scripture in the History of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987), 31–39; Dennis Howard Green, Medieval Listening and Reading: The Primary Reception of German Literature, 800–1300 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 3–54. 34 Max Weinreich, Bilder fun der yidisher literaturgeshikhte: Fun di onheybn biz Mendele Moykher-sforim (Vilne: Tomor, 1928), 58, fn. 1; Mira Spiegel, Cantillation of Sacred Liturgical Post Biblical Texts – The Graphic Symbols of the Accents and Their Musical Performance (PhD Thesis: The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 1997), vol. 1, 12–13 [Hebrew].
aspects to the written text, thus rendering each reading-event unique: omitting or repeating certain parts, using various voice intonations and gestures of body language, elaborating certain scenes, offering commentary, moralizing, etc.35 When reading Hebrew texts, the reader may have also translated them (either entirely or selected words) into the vernacular Yiddish. To this we may add the audience’s responses: attentive listening, laughter, crying, repeating the reader’s words, or even answering him. Hence, there exists a gap between the written texts that reached us, and the actual manner in which they were performed in pre-modern times.36
Likewise, there was a strong oral character to Ashkenazic prayer in the Middle Ages, in which the individual worshipper did not read texts, but rather recited them by heart, and listened to the precentor (Shelia..ibbur).37 Jewish liturgy expert Daniel Goldschmidt stresses that, unlike other canonical Jewish texts, which were systematically copied out in writing before the advent of print, Jewish prayer-texts were primarily transmitted orally and were rarely written down. Thus, prayer-texts could constantly change as precentors and worshippers pleased, leading to variations which, at times, have prevented the philological establishment of an Urtext.38
In lieu of prayer books that are read by all worshippers, as is common in contemporary Ashkenazic practice, in early Ashkenazic prayer services the precentor (Shelia..ibbur) played a very central and active role. He was responsible for leading the prayers, especially during special liturgical occasions when the usual routine was altered. He was also responsible for the quality of the prayer of all worshippers, who often knew little beyond their short replies.39 Specifically, Piyyutim were originally recited by the prayer leader only, while the congregation listened silently or offered short, set replies. The precentor decided which Piyyut should be recited and when, and he was often among the few who understood their meaning, which was often masked by their elaborate poetic style.40
35 Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France, 19; Albert Bates
Lord, The Singer of Tales (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1960), 31, 37, 43; Yoel
Yosef Rivlin (ed.), Shirat yehudei hatargum: Pirkei alila ugvura befi yehudei Kurdistan (Jerusalem:
Mossad Bialik, 1959), 65 [Hebrew].
36 Galit Hasan-Rokem, Proverbs in Israeli Folk Narratives: A Structural Semantic Analysis
(Helsinki: Academia Scientiarum Fennica, 1982), 11.
37 Israel M. Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects (Jerusalem:
Magnes Press, 2003), 29–32 [Hebrew].
38 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere.Yisrael, 19 [Hebrew].
39 Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer: Literary and Historical Aspects, 32 [Hebrew].
40 Ibid., 33; Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere.Yisrael,
9–10 [Hebrew].
נו ןוועל ןמי רדע ןשט ןלאש ןשטאן
/אונ
' וועל ןזינג ןב
ֿ ו ןאברה םאונ
' יצח קמי ן
The possible use of Yiddish texts in pre-modern Ashkenazic liturgy has been the subject of much research.41 Although the halachic permissibility of prayer in the vernacular, let alone the recitation of Piyyutim, seems to be undisputed – the purpose of early modern Yiddish translations of prayer-texts has been greatly debated. Specifically, the intended form of transmission of Yudisher Shtam remains at this point unclear: Yiddish literature expert Khone Shmeruk suggests that Yudisher Shtam may have been used in the synagogue on the High Holy Days,42 while Dree.en posits that ‘public’ readings of it for women were held at home.43
The text of Yudisher Shtam contains a strongly present narrator, who directly addresses his audience. For example, this narrator explains what the characters think and feel, and in other cases he shifts scenes in the story:
(We will now leave the devil, and sing more about Abraham and Isaac) (34, 1–2).
In the study of Yiddish literature, it has been suggested that such a figure of a lively narrator is fictitious,44 but in light of the oral character of early Ashkenazic prayer and the central role the precentor played, perhaps in the case of Yudisher Shtam such depictions could be given some credibility.
The practice by non-Ashkenazic Jewish communities of translating Piyyutim into the vernacular during synagogue services should be taken into consideration here – not as unequivocal proof of Ashkenazic culture, but as an indication that the phenomenon of a vernacular language accompanying Hebrew within Jewish liturgy is possible. To this day, it is common in some Sephardic synagogues to sing Ladino versions of Piyyutim during prayer, and even Piyyutim about the Binding of Isaac.45 Additionally, scholar Hiram Peri points to thirteenth and
41 Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 260–266; Solomon Bennett Freehof, “Devotional Literature in the Vernacular: Judeo-German prior to the Reform Movement,” Yearbook of the Central Conference of American Rabbis 33 (1923), 375–424; Dovid-Eliyohu Fishman, “Mikoyekh davnen af yidish: A bintl metodologishe bamerkungen un naye mekoyrim,” Yivo bleter (naye serye), 1 (1991), 69–92; Siegfried Stein, “Liebliche Tefilloh: A Judeo-German Prayer-Book Printed in 1709,” Leo Baeck Institute Year Book 15 (1970), 41–72. 42 Shmeruk, Yiddish Literature, 119. 43 Dree.en, Ak.dass Jiz.ak, 61. 44 Shmeruk, “Can the Cambridge manuscript support the ‘Spielmann’ theory in Yiddish literature?” in: Studies in Yiddish Literature and Folklore, C. Turniansky (ed.) (Jerusalem: The Hebrew University, 1986), 1–36. 45 See Isaac L.vy, Antolog.a de liturgia judeo-espa.ola (Jerusalem: Instituto de Estudios del Cante Judeo-Espa.ol, 1980) vol. 1, xxi, xxviii; vol. 2, n. 150 (“Si.uLe’imi – Havlad a mi madre que su gozo perdi.”), 181–183.
fourteenth century Judeo-French translations of Piyyutim, arguing that they were ritually sung in the synagogue.46 He points out that some of them are written in a Ma.zor, and that they retain the poetical texture, prosody, and rhyming patterns of the Hebrew originals. Peri also quotes the Takkanot (regulations) of the synagogue in Avignon from 1558, which clearly state that one of the Darshan’s (Preacher) duties is the translation in rhymes of Piyyutim (“les verses”) said on Shabbat and holidays.
Comparison of the Hebrew and Yiddish poems
Despite the fact that Yudisher Shtam and the Hebrew Piyyutim retell the same story with similar theological commentary and exhibit the same contemporary influences, there are fundamental differences between the two – much more so than among the various Hebrew Piyyutim.
As stated above, all poems discussed here were composed within Western Ashkenazic culture, but whereas, in most cases, the authors of the Hebrew texts are known to us by their names and even their biographies,47 the Yiddish poem’s author is unknown. Likewise, the time of composition of the Hebrew Piyyutim can be determined by biographical or literary criteria with relative precision, whereas Yudisher Shtam’s time of composition must be estimated through the use of philological tools.
Another important difference relates to the purpose of the texts: the Hebrew Piyyutim have come to us set within Ma.zorim, but the Yiddish poem has reached us in composite manuscripts containing various Yiddish texts,48 or as printed booklets without any liturgical instructions. As a result, we cannot be certain of what the intended place and context for the reading of Yudisher Shtam was.
From a formal point of view, although the poems in both languages make use of the same stanzaic form and melody, they are different in scope. The Hebrew Piyyutim are more compact than the Yiddish poem; they are typically ten
46 .iram Peri, “Hatefila vehapiyyut bileshon la’az biymei habeinayim,” Tarbi. 24 (1955),
426–440 (especially 426–427, 438) [Hebrew]; Id., “Piyyutim mehama.zor be.arfatit atika,”
Tarbi. 25 (1956), 154–182 (especially 174–175) [Hebrew]. I thank Dr. Micha Perry for drawing
my attention to these articles.
47 Goldschmidt, Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael,18–19
[Hebrew].
48 For example Minhagim (customs), prayers, prose exempla, Pirkei Avot (Chapters of the
Fathers), and songs (some of them profane). See Dree.en, Ak.dass Jiz.ak, 10, 13, 19, 25.
to twenty stanzas in Hebrew (rarely more, peaking at forty-five stanzas), compared to sixty to eighty stanzas in Yiddish. Additionally, the language register of the Piyyutim is much higher than that of Yudisher Shtam. An accurate comparison of the language registers requires proficiency in both Yiddish and Hebrew, but generally speaking it appears that an average speaker of Old Yiddish could understand the entire text of Yudisher Shtam, while the Piyyutim seemed encrypted and, at times, not fully understood by even the most learned Hebrew speaker. As a humble illustration of this, here is the first stanza of Yudisher Shtam:
Jewish tribe of the worthy kindThat was born of our father Abraham
יודיש רשטא םדי אווערד יארט
. ד רבו ןאברה םאבינ וגיבור ןווארד
.
And of Sarah, our dear mother, .
אונ
' בו ןשר הדי אמוט רצאר ט
די אזי ךאי ןגוט שדינש טאל יביי דני טהאב ןגישפארט
:NeitherofwhomstintedintheirservicetoGod.
And here is the first stanza of an Akeda Piyyut by Ephraim son of Isaac of Regensburg:49
ן
,Thoughthepigeonofferinghasceased,
א
ִם־א
ָפ
ֵ ס רב
ַֹ עה
ַק
ֵּ
Though the tent in which he (the Lord) dwelt is now empty, ,
א
ֹה
ֶ לש
ִׁ כ
ֵּ ןא
ִ ם־ר
ִ ק
ֵּ ן
Nevertheless, let us not abandon hope,
ן
,
For we possess an aged patriarch (Abraham). .
א
ַ ל־נ
ָ אנ
ֹאב
ְ ד
ָ הע
ַ ל־כ
ֵּ
י
ֶש
ׁ ־ל
ָ נו
ּ א
ָ בז
ָק
ֵ ן
In terms of content, all poems describe the exemplary behavior of Abraham (who obeyed God and nearly sacrificed his son) and of Isaac (who obeyed God and agreed to be sacrificed) in a sentimental tone, though some Piyyutim (especially the ones written in couplets) tend to focus mainly on Abraham. While Yudisher Shtam recounts in detail the entire story of Isaac’s Binding, the Hebrew poems are more inclined to concentrate on certain emotional or theological aspects of it. Consequently, it appears that the Piyyutim targeted an elite audience of learned men, since, except for their difficult Hebrew, they assume previous knowledge of the story and all of its Midrashic elaborations.
The Yiddish poem, as well as a significant number of Hebrew Piyyutim, relate Sarah’s role in the story, despite her absence from the biblical text. These elaborations may indicate female readership or authorship, but as almost all of
49 The name of the Piyyut derives from its first words: Im afes rova haken. Hebrew text according to Goldschmidt (ed.), Seder Haseli.ot: Keminhag Polin verov hakehilot be‘Ere. Yisrael, 190 [Hebrew]. English translation by Abraham Rosenfeld, taken from A. Rosenfeld (ed.), The Authorised Selichot for the Whole Year (London: Judaica Press, 1969, 4th edition), 204.
these elaborations are already found in Midrashic literature, their exact function in the poems needs to be studied further.
Two aspects, which are closely related to one another, strongly distinguish Yudisher Shtam from the Hebrew Piyyutim: the use of humor and the influence of the medieval German epic.50 Both aspects can be attributed to Yudisher Shtam’s own literary genre: epic poetry on biblical themes. This genre, as mentioned above, was strongly influenced by German works and is belletristic in nature.
Humoristic elements, which suggest a context of entertainment and social gathering, appear in Yudisher Shtam mainly in the description of Satan’s attempts to prevent the Binding from taking place.51 Humor is completely absent from the Piyyutim and, to the best of my knowledge, does not exist in any other relevant Hebrew sources. The best example of humor is when Satan turns himself into a river in front of Abraham and Isaac. Midrash Tan.uma (Vayera, 22) relates that Abraham jumped fearlessly into the water and nearly drowned, then God reprimanded Satan and the river dried up immediately. However, in Yudisher Shtam (32–33) Satan is also mocked:
God, blessed be He, screamed at Satan with a terrifying roar
That he had to drink all the water.
He drank so that his belly swelled up –
His belly was round and full.
He was quite distressed by that,
As well as by the fact that he could accomplish nothing more with his deceptions.
He ran around, back and forth, because of his discomfort
And roared like a bear in his great wrath.
Such humoristic elements belong, in my opinion, to the performative aspects of the public reading of texts, though their specific functions have yet to be studied. Yudisher Shtam provides an intriguing example of the use of humor, which should not be overlooked in the study of pre-modern Ashkenazic culture.
The German cultural influence seen in Yudisher Shtam accounts for the use of specific terms common to German epic when describing characters in the
ווא לגיבור ן
)and ”distinguished“,auserkoren (German אוי שע רקורן
e.g., poem,
(German wohlgeboren, “well-born”); the repetitive use of specific verbal formulae
(e. g.,
39,2 –“He/she was so overwhelmed that the power of sight left his/her eyes”); and
50 Felix Falk, “Die deutschen Vorbilder,”in: Das Schemuelbuch des Mosche Esrim Wearba: Ein biblisches Epos aus dem 15. Jahrhundert, Einleitung und textkritischer Apparat von Felix Falk, aus dem Nachlass hrsg. von L. Fuks, vol. 2 (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1961), 114–115. 51 Introduction to Old Yiddish Literature by Jean Baumgarten, edited and translated by
J. C. Frakes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 138–139.
דא רדע רשרא קע רד שאי םו רגינ גזיי ןגיזיכ
ֿ ט
,22,3 זי אדא רשרא קד שאי רו רגינ גד שגיזיכ
ֿ ט
the presence of an intrusive narrator, who speaks in the first person. It should be noted that the narrator of the Hebrew Piyyutim remains hidden, with the exception of the standard request at the end of the Piyyutim for God to redeem the Jewish people.52
These German literary influences serve as evidence of the familiarity of Jews with their Christian neighbors’ culture. Such ties are not reflected in the Hebrew poems, once again proving the value of Yiddish literature for the documentation of Ashkenazic cultural history.
Finally, one important feature common to both corpora is the Ashkenazic Jews’ reading of their own ‘bindings’ and trials into the story of Isaac’s Binding. This is seen in references within the classic narrative to Christianity as a persecuting religion, or in professions of the Jewish position in Jewish-Christian polemics. For instance, anti-Christian sayings like:
]כנס תישראל
[ דבוק הב ךא לח יול אבמת
(The Jewish people adhere to You, O living God, and not to the dead god [i. e., Jesus])53
or:
הקב
'' ה
]…[ זו ל
]…[ ד רלוז ןישרא לזיי ןאירשט יקינ ד
(May God redeem Israel, His first child)54
Persecutions are implied, for example, in the following passage:
אי רליב הליי טטו טא ןדי אעקיד הגידענקן
. פ
ֿ ו ןגאט שוועג ןזא למ ןזי ךלאז ןברענ ןאונ
' הענק ן
(Dear people, remember the Akeda! You should agree to be burned and hung for God’s sake!)55 or in Yuda bar Kalonimus of Mainz’s Piyyut:
בגלויו תנסתבכנ ו
]…[ כ להיו םנחשבנ וכצא ןטבח ה
(We are entangled in numerous exiles […] we are constantly slaughtered like sheep)56
These echoes of contemporary reality clearly situate the poems in Europe in the Middle Ages and early modern era. Indeed, all of the differences and similarities discussed here unequivocally show the Piyyutim as well as Yudisher Shtam to be the cultural product of Ashkenazic Jewish society.
52 Matenko, Two Studies in Yiddish Culture,20–21; Falk, “Die deutschen Vorbilder,” 114–115.
53 Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et
Francogallicis conscriptae, 104 [Hebrew].
54 Yudisher Shtam, 79, 3.
55 Ibid., 76, 1–2.
56 Goldschmidt (ed.), Preces p.nitentiales quae SELICHOTH vocantur: A poetis Germanicis et
Francogallicis conscriptae, 221 [Hebrew].
Conclusion
This article compares for the first time two central corpora in pre-modern Jewish Ashkenazic culture on the Binding of Isaac. Despite the fact that these Hebrew and Yiddish poems circulated side by side in Ashkenazic society for centuries, such a comparison has, surprisingly, never been conducted.
My comparison identifies the similar Ashkenazic character of the poems in Hebrew and in Yiddish. It notes the central cultural and religious role that Isaac’s story was given in both corpora, on the one hand, and the resonance of historical aspects of Jewish existence in Christian corpora, on the other. It also points to the different audiences that Hebrew and Yiddish served in pre-modern Ashkenazic society, proving once again that Hebrew had the upper hand in traditional Jewish society: the Hebrew Piyyutim reflect a deeper familiarity with classical Jewish sources and more stylistic refinement and, unlike the single Yiddish poem, they were set in Ma.zorim, and their large number constitutes a poetic school. Still, the unusually extensive documentation of Yudisher Shtam teaches us that we do not know everything – Jewish Ashkenazic culture also thrived in Yiddish, not only in Hebrew, and there may have been more Yiddish epic poems on other themes of which we are not aware.
Additionally, by pointing out the significant performative role of the precentor in the medieval Ashkenazic synagogue, and by highlighting the fact that some aspects of this oral tradition were not recorded, this article raises the possibility that synagogue services included some Yiddish texts in the past. This hypothesis still awaits further research.
As mentioned above, Hiram Peri writes extensively about the possibility of public Jewish prayer in the vernacular, and uses examples from various Jewish communities. He does not, however, discuss Yudisher Shtam, and it appears that he was unaware of it. It is my hope that this article will promote research into this intriguing question.
Another question that remains to be answered is what was the reason for the decline in popularity of the poems discussed here. Today, Hebrew Akeda Piyyutim are rarely recited in full in Ashkenazic synagogues, and they have even been completely omitted from some Ma.zorim.57 The decline of the Yiddish poem occurred decades before the language shift of German Jews, and no editions of Yudisher Shtam are known to have been printed after 1728. This means that the decline of Yudisher Shtam cannot be linked to the general collapse of Yiddish in Germany, and may have to do with changing literary
57 See for example Rinat Yisrael edition.
favor or other factors. Another mystery that remains to be solved is the lack of documentation about Yudisher Shtam in Eastern Europe. Perhaps this is purely coincidental, but perhaps there was a reason for it, pertaining to the differences between Eastern and Western Ashkenazic rite. In light of all of this, we can conclude without doubt that further research in this field is necessary.
Acknowledgments: Work on this paper was conducted during my year as a postdoctoral fellow at the Rosenzweig Minerva Research Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and with support from the Israeli Science Foundation, under grant 1492/13. I wish to thank Prof. Yfaat Weiss and Dr. Aya Elyada for their supervision and support.
Figure 1: Title page of the Yiddish epic poem “Yudisher shtam” (Altona, 1728). Source: Sammlung Tychsen, online-edition, Harald Fischer Verlag.
Figure 2: A page from the Yiddish epic poem “Yudisher shtam” (Altona, 1728). Source: Sammlung Tychsen, online-edition, Harald Fischer Verlag.
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