Level:
Master's Course Status:
Elective CEU code:
2 Academic year:
2011/2012 Semester:
Winter Start and end dates:
9 Jan 2012 - 30 Mar 2012 Host Unit:
Department of Medieval Studies Co-hosting Unit(s) [if applicable]:
Department of History CEU Instructor(s):
Carsten L. Wilke Additional information:
This course will provide a practical introduction to the study of Hebrew primary sources from the 9th-16th centuries. In order to allow students of different levels to profit from the class, our weekly readings will be very short extracts (each one around 250 words, or less than a page), but will extend over a wide range of literary genres, styles, periods, and geographical environments. Students will thus acquire a first hand knowledge of the basic linguistic and generic conventions and experience the various literary styles and linguistic textures present in medieval Hebrew literature. Requirements. The class requires knowledge of the basic grammatical features of Biblical Hebrew at least on the level of CEU Classical Hebrew beginners’ class. Participation in the course does not, however, require a wide vocabulary or a fluency in the language, but a readiness to concentrated text work with the help of auxiliaries. Learning Outcomes:
The course will practice the standard steps of approaching medieval texts in unvocalized Hebrew: elucidating the vocabulary by the help of dictionaries, concordances and web resources; localizing Biblical and Rabbinic references; establishing the vocalism, morphology, syntax, and sense units of the text; and finally translating it into English. In some cases, diverging textual traditions will be compared. We will mainly work on modern print or online editions in square script, but get a glimpse of the media in which these texts were originally written and transmitted by consulting some examples of medieval handwriting and early modern “Rashi script”.
Introductory remarks and interlinear commentaries will place the texts and authors in their time and milieu. However, the study of the intellectual and literary traditions developed during the Middle Ages can and must not abstract from their enduring reception. Reproduced by printed and electronic media, our texts have shaped Jewish intellectual and literary culture to this day; and many former elite products such as Talmudic dialectics, Kabbalah or secular poetry have a wider audience among today’s Jewry than they ever had in their time.
Assessment :
All participants are required to prepare the weekly reading. Less advanced students will work on shorter text portions, but will acquire and present background information instead. The grade will result to two thirds from the text work in class, and to the remaining third from a take-home translation exam at the end of the term. Full description:
Textual resources
http://www.responsa.co.il
http://www.daat.ac.il
http://www.mechon-mamre.org
1. LITURGY: gendered spirituality and kabbalistic clues
Text: Lekha Dodi, Sabbath hymn by Shlomo Alkabets (Palestine, c. 1505-1584) [
pdf]
Edition: Siddur Sefat Emet, p. 84. [pdf]
2. EXEGESIS: does the holy language contain dirty words?
Text: Commentary on Ex 30,13 by Moses ben Nahman (Catalonia, 1194-1270) [pdf]
Edition: Miqra'ot Gedolot, fol. 134r [pdf] [pdf]
Parallel source: Maimonides, Guide of the perplexed, III 8. [pdf]
3. PREACHING: Dominicans and Rabbis in rhetoric contest
Text: Preface to the homiletic collection of Isaac Arama (Castile, c.1420-1494)
Edition: 'Aqedat Yits'haq, Frankfurt on the Oder, Kalman & Hirsh Baschwitz, 1865. [pdf]
English translation: Marc Saperstein, Jewish Preaching 1200-1800: an Anthology (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1989), 392-393. [pdf]
4. TALMUDIC STUDY: how to elucidate texts by their inner contradictions
Text: Tossafot [Glosses] on the Babylonian Talmud, bKetubbot 13a “Ma'alah assu beyuhasin”, by Jacob ben Meir Tam (Northern France, c. 1100-1171)
Edition on www.tosfos.com, with English explanation and video [link] [pdf]
5. RESPONSA: on life's intricacies under persecution
Texts: Parallel responsa by Saadia ben Maimon Ibn Danan (Muslim Andalusia, 15th cent.) and Simon ben Solomon Duran (Algiers, 15th cent.)
Edition: Benzion Netanyahu, The Marranos of Spain, from the Late 14th to the Early 16th Century, According to Contemporary Hebrew Sources (3rd ed., Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1999), 55. [pdf]
English translation: ibid., 56-57. [pdf]
6. LAW CODES AND DECREES: on deviance and discipline
Text: Community ordinances (takkanot) against visiting the house of one's betrothed (Candia, Crete, 1238).
Edition and introduction: Louis Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government in the Middle Ages (New York : Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1924), 82-85 [link], 271-272, right column, from line 14 [link].
Abridged English translation: ibid., p. 279. [link]
7. AGGADA: a thrilling tale about a ferocious woman
Text: The Lilith Story from the anonymous Alpha-Beta de Ben-Sira (Orient, ca. 9th cent.)
Edition: A. M. Haberman, ed., Hadashim gam Yeshanim: Texts Old and New, Collected from Various Manuscripts with Introduction and Notes [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 1975), 135. [pdf]
Translation and study: Joseph Dan, "Samael, Lilith, and the Concept of Evil in Early Kabbalah", AJS Review 5 (1980), 17-40. [pdf]
Feminist reception [link]
8. ETHICS: advice for successful marriage-brokering
Text: Sefer Hassidim [Book of the Pious], compiled by Juda ben Samuel the Pious of Regensburg (Germany, c.1140-1217).
Edition: Jerusalem 1966, p. 100. [pdf]
Introductory study: Ivan Marcus, "The Politics and Ethics of Pietism in Judaism: The Hasidism of Medieval Germany", The Journal of Religious Ethics 8,2 (1980), 227-258. [pdf]
9. KABBALAH: decoding the Hebrew formula of creation
Text: Imre Shefer by Abraham Abulafia (Sicily, 1240-1291)
Online edition: http://www.hebrew.grimoar.cz/abulafia/imrej_sefer.htm; extract [pdf]
Introductory study: Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York: Schocken, 1995), 119-135. [pdf]
10. PHILOSOPHY AND SCIENCE: a universal language in Sephardi script
Texts: Treatise on Sea Monsters by Moses Ibn Tibbon (Southern France, 13th cent.)
Edition and facsimile of the manuscript: Colette Sirat, Du scribe au livre: les manuscrits hébreux au Moyen Âge (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1994), 256-257. [pdf]
11. POETRY: the medieval individuality
Text: "I Quartered the Troops for the Night" by Samuel ha-Nagid (Spain, 993-1055)
Edition: Yehuda Ratzaby, ed., The Middle Ages: Poems [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Am Oved, 1982), 13. [pdf]
Translation: Peter Cole, trl., The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain 950-1492 (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), 66. [pdf]
12. EPITAPHS: everyman's sacred language
Text 1: Epitaph for Put ben Yovianu Levi (Southern Italy, c. 800)
Edition: Cesare Colafemmina, "Hebrew Inscriptions of the Early Medieval Period", in: Bernard D. Cooperman and Barbara Garvin, eds., The Jews of Italy: Memory and Identity (Potomac: University Press of Maryland, 2000), 72-73. [pdf]
Text 2: Epitaph for Bella bat Nathan (Frankfurt, 1272)
Edition: Markus Horovitz, Avne Zikkaron (Frankfurt: Kauffmann, 1901), 1. [pdf]
