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Hello, welcome to the new books in Jewish Studies podcast. I'm your host, Ari Barbellat, and today I'm blessed and honored to be in dialogue with Dr. Vot Ben Vikum. He is a meritist professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Carnegie University in the Netherlands.
We'll be discussing his new book, The Religious Poetry of El Azhar Ben Yaakov Abovli of Baghdad of the 13th Century, published in Lidim by Brill, 2023. Without, I'm thrilled to be in conversation with you today. Thank you, Ari, for having me. To begin, can you kindly tell us about yourself?
Where did you grow up? Were there any formative events in your life that catalyzed the scholar you become as an adult? Yes, my name is Vot Ben Vikum. I am born at 21 May 1954 in a small town called Binshaunton, which is in the province of Groningen.
This province is situated in the northeastern part of the Netherlands, so it's not far from the German border. And you have the same name Groningen for the province and for the capital of the province. So when I finished my diemnasium, which is the classical education with Greek and Latin and many other topics, you can go to study in the city of Groningen, which has a university, and that university also had a so-called Institute of Semitic Languages and Cultures, including Egyptology and archeology of the ancient Near East. When I say this, it sounds already to me as a very long time ago, but at that institute, where I started in 1972, you would get languages like Classical Hebrew, which is Biblical Hebrew, Classical Arabic, including Quranic Arabic, and then also Aramaic, like Biblical Aramaic reading Daniel and Ezra at Nehemia.
And some Syriac is mostly New Testament, it's still the church language of the Syriac Church, and even a little bit of Cuneiform language, which was Akkadian, so-called Babylonian. So this was a lot of languages, but I liked languages. I liked texts. I still liked them mostly, but we had to confine.
So I confined into languages like Hebrew in different stages, the Redinic, the Beautiful, also modern, and Arabic was mostly medieval and some modern literary Arabic. So that's the picture of being at the Institute of Semitic Languages, and this is how it started off student, and then time in Jerusalem, 1977, 1979, and then becoming student assistant, and that's how you get into academics. What inspired you to engage with this book projects? What message does your book convey to readers?
This book, which now came out of religious poetry of Elasar Haabagli, is almost also to be considered as a spin-off of an earlier book with an edition from the same, poet, the same composer of all his so-called secular poems. So you could actually really consider those books as a twin, and we can talk later about what is secular and what is religious, how would you like to make a distinction? But you're talking about one and the same personality, and this all started with earlier literature from a person called Jacob Mann, and this Jacob Mann already had included in his books a number of poems by this Elasar, and another person called Haim Brody, who is a chief editor, who is a main editor also of many other collections of poems, who also had a fountain manuscript in New York in the Artler Collection of the D.B.C. and that was like one piece of secular compositions of this poet, and he writes in his book that he is very frustrated by the fact that he is actively another compliment in Leningrad, and he can't reach it, he can't get it in order to read it, but he was aware of it through a Russian scholar, a Russian-Jigy scholar, Haakavi, who knew about the manuscript, and there were a lot of compositions also in that one, and he could not edit it together with the American manuscript, so that triggered me in a period when the microfilms of these manuscripts from Leningrad, later St.
Petersburg, came to Jerusalem, and there I could consult the manuscript, so that's how it actively evolved into that first book, or based on one manuscript, and then all that, well, if you would say it rudely, all the leftovers and mostly reading religious, or at least close to something that you would call religious poetry, came much later. This is more or less the survey that I can give you. What are the primary themes in your book? Does your book advance any particular argument regarding the poet?
Yes, the main themes are certainly have to do with the relationship between man and god in a specific way, it's almost like an search of god, and it's also very much also concentrating on the god head, so to speak, so it's not just, let's say, completely turgical according to a calendar of festivals and special shabaptats or special status, it is more than that, he has a certain feeling for the yag, you could call it mystical, or you could call it biotistic, the relationship between man and god, and he seems to have reasons to do that for that matter, this is certainly one of his main themes, and then you come to shab seems like the situation of people who want to attain more knowledge about god, who want to attain more proximity with god, these are the elements which are being wrapped up in Jewish third terminology, which seems to be around already a longer time in his environment in Baghdad, or in urban Judaism, in urban Jewish communities like Baghdad, Cairo and Damascus, so that's the framework you could mention, and then you have all kinds of other elements which come to it, which you could call conventional, because poetry has a very long history in the Hebrew tradition, in Jewish tradition, and he is of course not entirely detached from it, so he's not a loner, he is also connected to his community and to liturgy for that matter, so that's also part of of his affiliation, so to speak. What would you like listeners to get out of her dialogue today? There is of course a context to be mentioned, the context is that we are talking about a Jewish community that existed for such a long time in the city of Baghdad, or in the vicinity of Baghdad, you only have to think of the gonim, who were of course mostly situated in cities like Surah and Pumbadit Dainar, it's all in the same region, it's all in the same country, so there is a long-standing tradition of Jewish presence and Jewish culture going on in Iraq, and this is of course important to mention, I would say the overall message is understanding in modern times for the relationship between Jews and Muslims, and you can say, okay, Judaism is a minority culture in Islam, it's the majority culture, but there is a lot of cooperation, there is a lot of, I would say, symbiosis between the two, historical, cultural, and then at a certain moment also religious, and to really call you can say, Allahik as well, so that's for me a very interesting point to make, that people can read this book, you are being taken to Baghdad, 13th century, and you learn from it how these groups and how these people live together, it's a real coexistence, with an outcome in poetry, language, and understanding the world at that specific moment, that is what I would like to convey to the readers. What does your book teach us about medieval Hebrew poetry and terminology?
Such a book like this one is of course, in that sense a little bit episodic, it's a little bit off-site, and I can explain you why, because Baghdad was the very important city until the fatal year of 1258, in 1258, and apparently not everybody was very much prepared to that, the Mongols reached Baghdad, and the Mongols destroyed the city completely, the nothing was left of this long, abussed rule of Baghdad and the enormous central position the city had in that part of the world, and the Mongols really annihilated everything and everybody, so many people lost their lives, so you ask me this question and then I have to look through this year and through this fatal date in order to see what happened there before, so it's much harder to reconstruct, and it's much more difficult to understand what was going on in that city before 1258. The Baghdad never recovered from that enormous blow that the city got in 1258, but that is in as a matter of fact the city of 1000 and one nights, it's the real, even in those days people could look back at the history of caliphs who had an enormous richness and were luxury, and they attracted many scholars and poets to the city, and this was already in Al-Azhar's days, three, four, five hundred years ago, but that for us the research is it's difficult to look back and to see in what kind of world in Al-Azhar was really living, so that's part of the answer. What kind of city was Baghdad in the 13th century, where and when was Rabbi Elazhar born? Can you describe the geography of the milieu that he was born into?
We do not know exactly when he was born, it seems to be around something like 1191, 1192, it's not very sure. The milieu must have been a Jewish community with certainly a lot of self-consciousness, also some self-pride, absolutely, it was absolutely present. I think they were very well aware of all kinds of information with regard to Tal-mid-Rash-Halaqah, Bible of course, there's no lack of knowledge in that enormous city, and there is a message from a major Spanish poet in major and allucian composer Yudah Al-Kharisi, who composed a famous book called the Dachrimonie, and at a certain moment he also reaches Alexandria, and there he says, I have met a young guy called Elazhar Hamifim, he uses a Hebrew word Hamifim, and he talks about his poetry, he said, well, it's okay, but he can do better, but you know, he says, some of his poetry is fine, but this is typical Yudah Al-Kharisi from under Lucia criticizing his colleagues in the East, he does it all the time, he has got Dachrimonie, but we are very happy with this information, because apparently in the Zareli young age this could have happened around 1215 was on his way to Alexandria, and now the Psalm hypothesis comes in and you said, why would he be in Alexandria, then reading his poetry and understanding that he is going in the direction of patriotism and spiritualism, it can occur your mind that he was on his way to Cairo, to freestad, in order to meet nobody less than Abraham the son of Moses, my Monides, so Abraham, my Monides was a person who was also very piotistic and ritual in his section in his religion, and that is what you could call Sufism, Sufism, practice, so I like to believe that his travel to Alexandria, at a young age was on his way to Cairo in order to meet Abraham, my Monides, and I have a little bit of proof for it because he wrote a few praise songs for Abraham, my Monides, and makes him actually his personal hero, so there you have some information about the start of his life, and we certainly returned to Baghdad where he got a living out of writing many praise poems, and these praise poems are for functionaries or rather dignitaries in the Jewish community, those people always have double names, they have an Arabic honorific name, like the hope of the state or the son of the state or something like that, and the Hebrew name, so he was actually really maybe also earning his money by writing many praise poems for dignitaries in the city, and this is also helpful in understanding who are all these people over there, what are their functions, what are their professions, you get some information out of it, although that can be found also in the other documentation which has been described by somebody like Shlomo Dov Goytain, the great Goytain who wrote his book a Mediterranean Society, because many letters also arranged Cairo, first thought, and were stored over there in the famous Ganesa, so there you have an addition, I would see my book and call my book also a some kind of an addition and addendum to everything that has been said about the Baghdad Jewish community in the first half of the 13th century, but on the other hand it was a scholar, because also there is a threatist on Hebrew poetry and poetics, very specific poetic means he is describing like how are you going to make the right meter for a poem, what are the best qualities of poetry and what are possibly the bad qualities of poetry, although unfortunately that chapter has been lost, so it's a fragment of Tretai, but it shows you that he was an absolute scholar in Hebrew language and linguistics, and he knew everything about Hebrew poetry and poetics, but if I say poetics you also have to include everything what comes from the Arabs, so this is more or less my description or my impression of the man. What were the characteristics of the Jewish community in Baghdad at the time when the LSR was alive?
I would say that this was a community in which rank and position played a major role, I cannot otherwise describe it because it must have been a multi-layered community in which elite and elitistic behavior was there and scholars, rabbis, and culturally developed people certainly belonged to an upper layer, and as usual you do not get that much information about the lower layers, but it wasn't a multi-layered community and I would believe that this was more or less the same as with the larger community of the Baghdadis and the Muslims, the Arabs, and the Sunites, the Shiites, the Persians who were in the city, and that must have been parallel more or less, but this is the community of ranks, positions, and status, I would believe so. How does Rabbi Elizar's poetry reflect trends in Hebrew language, linguistics, and grammar in the Arabic-speaking world of the Middle Ages? Can you comment on this in regard to Raim and Mitter in his poems? Yes, you can say that Elizar is mostly a very much conventional in his application of rhyme schemes or for metrical schemes, so in that sense you would say that he is very much in the tradition of Hebrew poetry throughout the Middle Ages.
It sounds and it looks like what has been written and composed by many others. On the other hand, it has to do with the genres he selects, and there is one genre which is called the girdle composition, the girdle rhyme, mous-a-shah, and mous-a-shah in Arabic is actually a girdle about, so to speak, which has to do with different perferses in which you have different rhymes and they gird around the stroke, so to speak, a little bit technical, but these so-called mous-a-shah, hymns were very popular in the streets, so they were actually always some, they were melodious. So I think in that genre he was trying also to express his Hebrew language and grammar in a rather visible way, in a rather obvious way, so it's not a person who is mystifying with his words, he wants to be clear, and actually to some extent I would call it a simple idiom, it's not very hard to understand him, it's not the language which is the puzzle, it's the message which is the puzzle, and that's what he's so intriguing about his poetry, because the Hebrew and I try to of course also to transport that into English, into proper English, is that that is not the linguist problem, but it's the message problem. So he was very well-versed in grammar in you everything about classical and biblical Hebrew, you do hardly see any features from rabbinic literature or redrashic literature, so he's in that sense very close to Bible and this makes sense that composers, Hebrew composers want to be as close as possible to Bible, this does not avoid the fact that he has some kind of a personal lexicon, so he uses words from classical Hebrew, it gives a different meaning, I mean I give you an example, you have the example of shol, shol means actually another world or underworld or something like that, for him it is simply a word for world, the same happens also with dei vale, so you do have these, you have some kind of a personal lexicon, if you want to know it then you can use it all the time, but this is only a very small part of his language and grammar in poetry, but he is certainly not the person who imitates the early amnists which have of course made any known as contribution to synagogue liturgy, the pycanine they are called, and I'm talking about Palestinian pycanine like Yannai and Kari'yur, but also a person from Yerak like Sadia G'on, Sadia G'on is of course a very interesting man from the 9th century who has written poetry that you hardly can use it in liturgy because language is awfully difficult and Telazar is not in that mood so to speak, I would say that even his secular compositions are more complicated than his religious poems which are being edited in this book.
He right out follows on page 12 about the Muwashaha as a liturgical song or religious hymn is also determined by the effects of poetic meters, it is expected to be maintained throughout the composition, although metrical shifts per strovi often occur, following his endlucian predecessors lsr make creative use of the liberties of the genre in choosing variations of standard meters, and in many cases a metrical variant was applied distinct from the classical examples, the majority of lrs Muwashaha have been modified meters and combinations of verse feet that are similar but not equal to classical Arabic and Hebrew meters, the use of alternating meters gives the impression that lrs was not as limited by strict metrical criteria as by the organizing principles of strophic division and rhyme, can you say more about the above, what is a Muwashaha, what is distinct about lrs Muwashaha? Right, I mentioned the name before, so this is the so-called girl's right composition but what you are reading is of course very intriguing because it shows you that there are rules for Hebrew poetry mostly arriving from Arabic poetics to something like neutral schemes, well I can tell you actually metrical schemes are doing very well in Arabic but when already in the 10th century they were transferred to Hebrew language and poetry you had a few difficulties for instance with regard to the shilbah, sometimes the shilbah can be seen as a vowel and sometimes you have to completely ignore it and you know this also from Hebrew grammar but it should be very clear also in poetry, in order to follow classical metrical schemes, classical meters which were defined by the arks, if you are reading about the modification of these even per stroke, so this means that not the entire composition is one and the same meter, then you have already taken the kind of liberty within such a Muwashaha in which you have different verses and these are let's say inner divisions in which you can modify these meters, so they do not follow a classical pattern but there are yeah, deviations so to speak, well this is a very difficult part of the Muwashaha, why and how could you simply change meter from time to time and also this also has to do with rhyme schemes, but they took that liberty because this was the fun of writing the so-called girl-doll composition of Muwashaha and as I said before only marginally this is a type of composition which must have been very popular in the streets, people were singing it because sometimes I came across a reference to a melody and sometimes you can find it and that's only rare but sometimes it was even an Arabic melody which was sung in Baghdad and that specific Yiburumu washa was sung in the Jewish community or in his personal circle or perhaps even in the synagogue, I am not sure about that if those melodies were really being used in synagogues, I believe so because there are indications to it but there is also criticism of this kind of composition, even my monadess criticized the use of these kind of street melodies or these kind of compositions and he would not like the fact that Hebrew language as a holy language was used for such a kind of secular composition so this is difficult with regard to this type of poetry, quite a few people have written about it but with Elazar I came across again some structures and some changes which I did not see before so he was also quite easygoing in that and he simply must have liked it a lot, unfortunately I must say perhaps the larger part of all his mawashahad were lost, perhaps even even deliberately torn out of the manuscripts, censored perhaps, this is the most difficult part of it out this type of censorship could have taken place later perhaps, copyists who omitted these compositions and it may have to do with the structure, it also may have to do with the message when it becomes too mystical, too sufi-like, something like that, maybe not everybody did like it so you see it's still a lot too to search for but this is more or less my answer to this very specific type of composition. You write the following on pages 26 and 27 where you talk about the collections where Elazar's manuscripts are found, you write as follows, the majority of Elazar's, the turtical or devotional over has survived in manuscripts of the Geniza and frick of its collections and was unknown until their discovery and disclosure in the 20th century, a smaller part of his pew team can be found in the mawashoreum of the east in contrast to Elazar's secular poetry, his pew team are in different texts of diverse origins and natures, the frick of its collection seems to yield a number of original pew team, culminating in the unique finding of ten trans-ripe poems by Ephraim de Nard that also originated from a hitherto unidentified frick of its manuscript, otherwise Elazar's religious verse is primarily found in fragments of paper and parchment that consists of one or more leaves and do not occur in any original bound state. If you don't want to skip ahead, you then point out the large parts of Elazar's religious poetry are presently found in the Geniza collections of Cambridge University Library, including the Moseri collection, the Bodleian libraries of Oxford, the British library, formerly the Library of the British Museum, Hebrew Union College, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, and Russian National Library of St.
Petersburg. Single pew team of peer in manuscripts of the Biblioteca Aposteleka Vatikana, Biblioteca Ambrósiana De Nilano, and Biblioteca Midicea Worentziana De Ferencé. Can you elaborate on the above? Can you comment on the different collections and libraries where Elazar's poetry and manuscripts are found?
Yes, first of all, if you read it like this, it is really looks like an enormous chaos of manuscripts and fragments of manuscripts, which you have to assemble and to bring together in order to get out an edition like this, and you're right in that, because I hope readers will understand what's going on here. The easy part is, of course, that you would find parts and pieces of his entire collection of poetry in standard libraries like Cambridge, Oxford, and also in St Petersburg and New York. Now, this is, of course, those collections are very well catalogued. Nowadays, we are in a very fortunate position that many of these fragments are being photographed.
They're very being digitalized in the so-called Freegberg and ESA project. It's a wonderful system of recent years in which you can bring all these fragments together through the computer. That's an enormous game, of course. But the first part we were reading out is about, yeah, let's say the mázurin, the prayer books, or the festival, sorry, even the secret books.
Yeah, so a part of it was never transmitted through manuscripts, but those manuscripts are gone, but somehow these poems have found their way into standard mázurin. These can be codisays, a codex, or printed stuff. Now, this can be from the days that printing books were appearing, and then a zarpole could appear there as well. So I could not only rely on fragments of manuscripts in famous libraries, but they also had to go through all these books of whatever written or printed and what is left of it.
And then you can see that Erosar has his own diaspora. Those mázurin are, of course, according to the Bágdadi right. It's the Bágdadi ritual. But where did Bágdadi Jews go?
Also specifically after the Mongol invasion and when Bágdadi was not so interesting anymore, economically, politically, culturally, they also being born to the east. They went to India, and they ended up in Bambhái or in Káguta, or they even went to China. And so you need it, interestingly enough, to consult mázurin from Indian press and Chinese press, and then finding one or two or more of Erosars hymns. Well, that's, of course, very curious, and it's very intriguing.
And when you were saying something about the Fercovitch connection, that's this very remarkable person, Adran Fercovitch, from the 19th century, who was sent and also he, himself, initiated so-called expeditions to the Middle East in order to buy manuscripts from court houses and synagogues of specifically the carayads. He himself was a so-called carayad. That was the literalists in Judaism, so to speak, only Bible people. They do not recognize the authority of the Talmud and the authority of rabbis.
That's why they are called carayads. So he was interested in all these connections, and in these collections, many parts and pieces were hidden, which had to do with poetry, also under Lucia, but also the east. And what also happened is that some of those manuscripts have never been found, but this person, Ephraim Dainard, who lived from 1846 to 1930, he transcribed poems of many people in his own manuscripts. They are now in Warsaw, in Poland, and yeah, those poems are not to be found in any manuscript, so it's an enormous search to get this all together.
This is the situation in which you can see that the Ganesa is, of course, very important in order to reconstruct many collections of poetry by many unknown, himless and unknown poets, but you need to go sometimes a little bit further, and then thanks to a person who loved books and manuscripts like Ephraim Dainard, you even find other poems in his own writing, and we do not have the original source. This is a small description of the labyrinths you are entering when you want to reconstruct and to rebuild the poetry, the collection of one poet. What do Rabbi Elizar's poems say about time? Can you elaborate on how time is presented in his poetry?
Yes. First of all, in his secondary poetry, he also wrote a lot of lamentations, dirges for people who died, and then he's always talking about time. Time is the same as fate. This is something that he borrowed from the Arabs.
The element of time is always a very strongly connected to human fate. People are sons and daughters of time, so time is actually the main, or the main instrument in which you are born, educated, you can attain some profession or some living, but at a certain moment you also will die, and time is for Elizar, almost something which has to do with the mysticism and with the divine, because there is no human who escapes the verdict of time, so to speak. So that's what he is seeing about time in these poems as well. So you cannot escape your fate, you cannot escape your destiny, so to speak.
Although I would not say that time is the same as predestination, but it is certainly destination, and he uses it in many in a variety of lyrical forms, it's lyrics in a way, in order to make clear to people that an attachment to the divine to God is also necessary in order to continue, and this continuation of human life is not attached to the body, but it's attached to the soul, and everybody has a soul, and as you know, soul is of course a philosophical term, and that's how soul poetry is also very strongly represented in his collection. So that's his way, it's a philosophical concept for him in a way, and at the same time, it's an existential concept. On page 46, you write the following, the characterization of a man or woman's life cycle into ten years stages in both Hebrew and Arabic literature and poetry provides a stimulus for El Azar to apply the same decennial format in his composition without overemphasizing the profanity of this motif. The first verse also seems to tab into this tendency by presenting men as creations of God, who in many ways do not realize their vain and temporal circumstances.
The decennial division of human existence in El Azar's version is not just entertaining, but intentionally serves a moralistic, didactic purpose in both the Hebrew and Arabic traditions. The message of the inevitability of men's aging and decay is equally apparent. It may have taken El Azar little effort to integrate this motif into his composition for any liturgical purpose. Can you elaborate on this passage for us?
Yes, sure. Well, in the first place, you have already used the term decennial division, it's a little bit strange term, but it means that in poetry, a human life is being described per ten years, and if you allow me, I would like to give you the example of El Azar from his own poetry. Sure, please. So also in order to make this passage clear, he writes the following poem, people satisfied with the image of their creator have gone into a land they do not know.
The string of eloquence and curls of speech filled with their mouth, their words have been impenseless. Men who gently ventured to set foot on earth, they will be brought down to scabs. Those who set on royal thrones, they bowed to the ground and were subdued, and now he starts to make the division. The ten-year-old, so much involved in worthless dreams, is misled by the pit-force of youth, or the twenty-year-old caught in the ropes of love, is hit by the force of love.
The thirty-year-old, filled with compassion for his children, delighted and amused by them, the forty-year-old, advanced in years, the early grainess of his sight-locks breaks for us. The fifty-year-old, his eyes no longer shine, his ears are very bothered by deafness. Reaching the age of sixty, your achievements have been eradicated from your heart. I say to the seventy-year-old, back your belongings for exile, the chariots of death are approaching.
Eight-year-old, you have the strength, but you are quiet, your life has already passed. More than the ninety-year-old, because the grinder sees and the keepers of his lofty out-strangle. Those more than ninety are considered dead, they do not hear and do not know. These are the outer fringes of human ways when days are fulfilled and life on earth-centers There are those who die in the wound and children who lose their lives before they are born, and while still in their prime they were snatched away, before they unsheathed they are swallowed up.
So wake up, you simpletons, from your foolish sleep, listen to wise counsel and do not ignore it. The white hairs on your head are calling, get up and set out for the nether will, you do not listen. Hurry up, rise from the my repeat, before you will be too late and round too. Well, this is a bizarre poem on the decennial, the vision of human existence, and as you can see, this is a motive.
This is how you can use it in many different ways in poetry, but he uses it very clearly for moralistic purposes, and you should be aware of your vanity. So this motive is, I think, it's in world literature, in many ways. You can find it even in Shakespeare drama plays. That's also very interesting to notice.
So this is also being derived from the Mishnah, you find it in Perikei of all, the sayings of the fathers. At five years of age the study of scripture, attend the study of Mishnah at 13, subject to the commandments, like the Bar Mitzvah, of course, at 15 the study of Talmud, at 18 the bridal canopy, at 24 pursuit of livelihood, at 30 the peak of years, at 40 wisdom, at 50 able to give counsel, at 60 old age, at 70 fullness of years, at 80 the age of strings, givulot, at 90 the bent body, at 100 as good as dead and gone completely out of the world. It's in Mishnah. So now you can hum their thoughts, the thought about from whom he is borrowing, but I think it's a beautiful mix from Arabic presentations of these ages of men and Hebrew presentations.
So he's standing here in a motive tradition, and he uses it for his own purposes, of course. But I would say I'm very happy to have this poet or plute also in this connection, because it shows his part of being part of literary culture. I hope I have explained it in this way. Thank you.
That was beautiful. I really appreciate it. What does your book teach us about Jewish Sufi relations in the Middle Ages? As you have noticed, I was a little bit, and I am a little bit reluctant using the word Sufi bluntly for Hebrew poetry, or Phaedasar.
But in a way, I have to concede to the fact that this is very close to Sufism. Sufism is of course Islamic. Sufi Islam is not a sect. It's not a separate movement or something like that.
It is part of Islamic devotional life. I would call it devotional. By the way, I can actually reveal a secret to you. I was in the first part of making this book, actually tempted to call the book the devotional poetry of Phaedasar.
But I thought that's too much stress on this specific effect in the specific references to what you could call Sufi belief and Sufi practice. That's why I chose for religious poetry as a more general term. But it's very interesting to see that this is more or less what he is using in his poetry, and I believe he derives this from a traethesis in that part of the world during the first half of the 13th century, specifically those from Abraham and Mānides. Because Abraham and Mānides has written a book which is called the Book of Worship, you could call it, Kītāb al-Ibanda, Seifar Al-Fudā.
And this is all about religious practices like the vigil in the night, bowing down during prayer, which is at the same time Islamic and also has some Sufi element in it. And he defends it by saying Muslim Sufis have a practice which they have actively borrowed from the ancient Israelites. So it's our practice, it's our custom. Sufis do it and we Jews can do it at the same in the same way in the cities of Paktāt and Cairo.
This is how Sufis and comes in, so to speak. And I think many words, many verses are that in that sense, both Sufi and Baitistik, and that's why you can say it. I hope that that is clear now. What do Elazar's poems say about listening as a practice and as a phenomenon?
Can you elaborate? I think that most of his poems were certainly being written for an audience. That has to do with a certain rhythm, it has to do with a certain speed. You can also use, if you read it in his Hebrew, it's in a way it's catchy.
You could call it catchy. People would certainly remember lines from his poetry, from his compositions. The only question which remains is which poetry was really used in synagogue because the Bākdadi synagogues already had a very rich liturgy with many many poems which were already revered by tradition. So I was, I'm wondering to what extent Elazar could add to a current liturgical practice in the synagogues he was attending or visiting.
So I have the tendency to believe that some of his poems were maybe used in private circles, in so-called Jewies, today or Sufi circles. Could very well have been the case. This is difficult to answer and there is no conclusive answer but it's more or less paraleits to liturgical. And then people would listen, maybe he would also recite them himself, he would sing it himself who knows, but others would have sung it too.
So this is my maybe too idealistic picture of the usage of his poetry. The other element is that you cannot exclude the fact that maybe part of his poetry was written and never read aloud. If you have, you need a chance to do that at the second one. But there is the reason to believe that part of it was certainly around all the time.
And there is one poem in the book which is still an integral part of many liturgies in Judaism. So it's in Baghdad, it's in Garfou, it's in Yemen, especially Yemenite Liturgy has conserved one specific poem of Alasar, which is known by many people. So the poem is called Matayya Vusar and that's actually a very short poem. If you would like me to read it, I will read it, and it says, when shall the good news come to the people whose eyes are like a beggar?
The year of salvation is nigh and the Redeemer shall come to Zion, imprisoned, dispersed, slaves to their masters. Together hear the good news, this is the year of the Redeemer. You shall not abandon your people forever in their exile. Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
Or press their oppressors and contend with those who contend with them, pour out your wrath on Israel and Israel. Build my temple, my holy domicile, and my inner sanctuary, and establish in your kindness ye a nun and the altar. You are high among the high ones, gather our scattered people to Zion, and you shall be like the Jew to Israel. And this is being found in a festival, Massor, but also in many other manuscripts and the light.
And yet this could have been, I think it's now being sung mostly for I think, Simchatorah. So you see, it hasn't clear liturgical function, and it's all around in different liturgies. I have also found it even in a liturgy, of cartoony island near the coast of Greece. So this is a very clear example of liturgical use until this very day.
This book is devoted to Rabbi Elazar's religious poetry. He previously published a volume of and on his secular poetry. How are his secular and his religious poetry interrelated? What are the advantages and disadvantages of the terms secular and religious as applying to his poetry?
Yes, that's, actually Elazar is the challenge, perhaps also the one who challenges this division we the researchers, we modern scholars are making between secular and religious. In earlier years, it was also called profane and religious. Maybe we should be very careful about that. There is an element of fluidity here involved.
I mean, if you are reading secular poems, it does not mean that God or Jewish tradition or Torah or how are completely excluded. If you are reading religious poems, it does not mean that there is no so-called secular motive involved, like the one we have seen. The ages of man is not specifically religious as a motive, but it is being elaborated as a religious motive with, you know, apost poetry and religious and secular poetry, he calls it social. And I do like it in a way, this element of social poetry, which has to do with society, with the world you're living in and with everything, what's happening in that world, and religious which has a certain destination.
So it has to do also with purposes. Most scholars in modern times have actually looked at the division in terms of purpose. And we have explained that Elazar is difficult when it comes to the destination of his poetry, but you have other him lists, and it's absolutely clear that all his, all their hymns and all their work was intended for synagogue practice. And you're talking about religious poetry, SAC, you don't have to discuss it.
But he actually, for example, you can still discuss this problem, it's not the finish. The final answer cannot be given. Can you comment on the relationships between Jewish poetry and Jewish philosophy and the medieval Islamic world, how are poetry and the surgical hymns put team and other forms of poetic writing interconnected with themes and questions in philosophical writing in this context and period? Philosophy, of course, and everybody knows this philosophy is something that actually comes from the Greek, but it's known that when the Arabs conquered the Middle East and much more than that, and when Islam was established as a religion, Arabs were very much interested in philosophy, so they translated many of the Greek books and many of the Greek philosophers.
And as when Jews were part of this greater Islamic world, they would certainly also get in touch and get acquainted with so many of the Greek philosophers through an Arabic lens. It would go via the Arabic line. This is very much visible in the writings of Maimonides, specifically in his Guide of the Perplex. You can find there this sub layer Greek and then the Arabic mediation, so to speak, but there's also a lot of additional Arabic philosophy involved.
So Jewish philosophy is some kind of a branch of a larger philosophical stream or a group of philosophical schools, and that there are main elements to be found in that. The main element is the issue of the soul, which we have mentioned before. Another element can be something about existence, life, earth and heaven is involved there. And this is what you can see, and I would call it philosophical ingredients in Jewish poetry.
The one who is the most outspoken in his use of Jewish philosophy or today, Arabic philosophy, if you like, is Shomo Ibn Gabbirol. That's the underlucian poet, and that Ibn Gabbirol's poetry became very famous. He was very, he gave the very short time, but his poetry was famous, it's very rich, it's very strict in its philosophy, but he is absolutely making a combination between philosophy and Jewish religion. And this was being imitated as a matter of fact.
So I am not sure if you could call Elazar entirely original in using philosophical motives. Many predecessors did it, the same applies also to us. We have lots of astronomical features in his poetry, but many others did the same. So this is how it is being inserted into his poetry.
Motives, rather than complete theories, but it belongs to one and the mainstream Jewish thinking about the specific philosophical concepts. There's another quotation I'd be curious to ask you about, which is on page 26, you write as follows. A large part of Elazar's distinctive use of the Hebrew language, lines in the idiosyncrasies of his lexicon, and syntaxes, which can also be found in his secular poetry. His preference of Tevel and She'ul as designations for a world is widely represented alongside Olam, to establish the meters Elazar had various prepositions at his disposal, sometimes semantically dissimilar from classical Hebrew, among which Be'ad meaning in or for the sake of, and Ad meaning to or until are the most prominent, similarly a selection of adverbs, conjunctions, negations, relatives, and their corellatives, interrogatory or exclamatory adverbs, considerably broadened the possibilities to meet the requirements of the metrical patterns.
Can you comment and elaborate on the above, and can you say more about grammar and Elazar's poetry? Yes, as you can see, he has a large lexicon at his disposal. This means that when he wants to make a verse, by the way the word poet is a Greek word, which means making, so poetry is actually you make, verse you make language, then he needs to choose words which fit into a metrical scheme. So it makes his life easier, so to speak, but you need to stretch sementical range a little bit sometimes, so that's why you would find different connotations for standard Hebrew words.
It's actually squeezing words into a metrical scheme. This is what is actually happening. That's why the selection of all kinds of adverbs and conjunctions and of all kinds and could make his life easier in order to make a perfect verse line. This is what this for.
So it's not entirely according to a standard classical grammar, but it's also not so far away from it. It's not a new invention, so to speak. Other hemlists in earlier ages would really invent complete neologisms, complete new words. He is not so much an inventor, no, he's not so much an maker of new words, but he squeezes all kinds of words into the scheme of the first.
That's what it's all about. He was very good and very well aware of Hebrew grammar. That's why he wrote this specific use of Hebrew language poetry, that that's the fragment that I have mentioned. So he must have been a well-known scholar for that, but this is how a composer manages his language and his lexicon and his syntax for making verse.
That's what I, that's the best what I could say about it. In the time remaining, would you like to comment on any of Elazar's other poems? Would you like to interpret any for us that have not yet come up in our dialogue? Well, as a, maybe also as some kind of a closure.
Sure. We could go to a poem in which I would hope many of the things that we have discussed come together. So let me read that and it's a poem again. I don't know for what purpose he wrote it, but it is as follows.
At least it has some liturgical elements. Sure. How shall I direct my prayer to you and declare your mighty ex? How?
And the soul of living shall praise your name. I desire and wish to come to an understanding of you. I shall command the eye of my intellect to behold your image. When my heart stirs for the dew of your law, then I shall bring.
I shall be the gatekeeper of your courts with sense and praise. I shall declare your power to the old and young. Around you stand hosts by ranks and positions, sometimes ascending and sometimes descending also revolving. When they move around in the vaulted heaven, they reveal at set times Jupiter, Saturn and Mars, also Mercury and Moon and Venus and Sun.
Confessing that you are the creator of all, you have distributed your brilliant knowledge to pure souls. You have made known your secret in heaven and on earth. To your holy people, you made them hear your voice from the heights. You satisfy their desire, its goodness, in a waste howling wilderness.
You appeared in your shining glory to those worthy and unworthy. Men of understanding have much to explore and to examine in themselves. You have the signs like Eden called from which you cleave their basic shape in gazing lights and fernan and still present. Because you are calling to each generation from the outside, rolling up the darkness for light and sunlight for the night.
And this is this specific poem. Thank you for sharing that. I genuinely appreciate that. You're welcome.
As we bring our dialogue today to a close, can you comment on your current research now that this book is behind you? What are you working on next? In the meantime, and this is quite different, I would say, I have dared to take the task of translating the entire guide of the perplexed by monotonous into Dutch. I'm working on it already for three years.
Part one is almost finished and this is of course a very draft kind of translation. Part two and three are for the next 15 years, perhaps eight years. I don't know. I don't want to set a time, so I don't want to be a child of time in that respect.
But it's an enormous exercise and I translate my monothes from the Judeo Arabic, not from the Hebrew. It's already a success. I'm invited, time and again, to talk about my monothes and his thinking that from the language from using his original language. But of course, you understand that translating is transferring all these ideas and concepts into a strange language.
But Dutch is my mother language, is my native language. So it's an enormous puzzle. But sometimes I feel that this is already some kind of a success in order to clarify my monothes of reasoning. I would call it much more his reasoning.
So this is on the track right now. And if you ask about poetry, there is still in my drawer an amount of dirties of of limitations in Hebrew from the 15th century, from the period from 1391, and fatal year in which there's were many persecutions of Jews in Spain and Portugal, and 1492, which actually represents the expulsion of the Jews from the Averian, Averian Peninsula. So these limitations, they need context and some of them I already edited many years ago. But now the bulk of these dirties also should go into an addition and in an addition and to be incremented and contextualized and so forth.
And this will also keep me off the street as we say in Dutch. Thank you. It sounds like an absolutely marvelous project. And I wish you the only the best of luck in seeing it to completion.
Thank you for all the sacrifice you are investing in that project, your upcoming current project, as well as all the sacrifice you invested in this one. It's a tremendous gift to humanity. Thank you. I need your good wishes.
And I will go on as long as I live. Thank you. I'm tremendously thankful. You're welcome.
To our listeners, I am your host on the new books in Jewish Studies channel on the new books network podcast. Today, I've been in dialogue with Dr. Vout van Beckam. He is a meritist professor of Middle Eastern Studies at Groningen University in the Netherlands.
We have been discussing his new book, The Religious Poetry of El Azar, Vinyakov Ha Bavely from Baghdad in the 13th century, published in Leiden by Brill Publishers, 2023. Thank you.