Hebrew Literature: Origins, Characteristics, Works and Most Outstanding Authors

The Hebrew literature is cataloged within classical literature and corresponds to the compilation of works (in verse and prose), written in Hebrew by Jewish and non-Jewish authors, whose origins date back to the 12th century BC. C. Within the Hebrew literature stand out the books of the Old Testament, section of the Bible and the Torah.

Especially the Torah occupies an essential part of the Hebrew history and its antecedents, as well as of the customs and traditions of both the Jewish and the Christian people. Hebrew literature is one of the most widespread and extensive cultural manifestations in the world.

Hebrew Literature: Origins, Characteristics, Works and Most Outstanding Authors

The great extension of this genre is due to the fact that it was produced in different historical moments, presenting its maximum splendor between the medieval and modern times. This literature has a very marked religious character; in fact, his most representative works belong to sacred books.

As a consequence of the fact that the Jewish people spread to different parts of the world, Hebrew literature came to be mixed with other genres, which allowed an important literary enrichment. Among the western countries that received the most influence, Spain and Italy stand out.

Origins and history

The first antecedents of the Hebrew Literature date from the expressions and oral lessons from the time of Abraham, considered one of the most important figures in Christianity and Judaism.

This sacred language was transcribed in what Jews know as The Law or the Torah. In this text we find everything concerning the patrimony of the Israelite people: from the origin of the world to the delivery of the tablets with the 10 commandments.

After the post-biblical era, Hebrew literature found another type of flourishing during the medieval period, since it is there when a set of moral and ethical precepts for the behavior that the Jew should have is established.

Other literary genres were also developed, such as poetry, which became fertile ground for secular and non-secular pieces. Even some of these pieces are included in liturgies read by rabbis today.

Later, in the modern era, Hebrew authors went a little further by exploring other genres such as fiction and written essays, which added to the poetry that had already developed for the time.

Although it is typical to see religious elements in Hebrew literature, it is in modernity when other themes that add diversity to this branch are manifested.

In the modern era one begins to write about the inconveniences that the Jews suffer in exile, satires towards the behavior of the rabbis and even criticisms towards certain superstitions of this culture.

The diversity of Jewish works in recent times has also allowed the expression of conflicts of religious and political tendencies among practitioners of Judaism.

With the creation of the State of Israel there is a new need to give diffusion and importance to Hebrew works, especially in the field of literature and language.

The intention is to promote the translation of modern non-Hebrew and Jewish works to this type of language, for the inclusion and knowledge of literary movements in the world.

Some writers do not have international recognition. However, there have been very relevant authors for Jewish literature.

One of them is Shmuel Yosef Agnón, Jewish writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1966 thanks to his stories about the life of the Jews and the process that was experienced during the founding of the State of Israel.

characteristics

- Due to the precepts contemplated in the Old Testament that contemplated the prohibition of the veneration of images, there was no development of pictorial art. On the other hand, there was an important development of poetry and literature.

- Much of literature is related to religion.

- The teachings and precepts that are compiled in the so-called sacred works, such as the Torah, come from the oral tradition of the first Jewish peoples.

- The first works are related to lived facts and personal experiences with God.

- The Hebrew Bible handles historical stories, teachings and morals supported by metaphors. It also has chants and poems made in order to propagate the basic precepts of religion.

- The Old Testament has been translated into several languages, which is why it is considered one of the most widespread works in the world.

The Tanach as the main work

The main books of Hebrew literature are those that make up the Tanach, a Jewish-Jewish work in which the sacred precepts of the Jewish and Christian religions are found.

The Tanach consists of three essential parts: The Law (Torah), the Prophets and the Writings.

Also called Pentateuch, it compiles the first five books of the Old Testament: Genesis, Exodus, Leviticus, Numbers and Deuteronomy.

These describe the most important events, such as the creation of the world, the departure of the Jewish slaves in Egypt and the delivery of the 10 commandments.

The prophets

It receives the name of Nabim. The writings that these books contemplate have to do with the meaning of the prophecies, which rather make an invitation towards the hope of the arrival of a messiah. Highlights the works of Joshua, Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel.

The writings

They are related to chants, poems and historical books, as well as more dramatic and painful works such as those contemplated in the book of Job, in the Bible.

They include the Psalms (considered songs made by the hand of King David), Canta de los Cantares, Ruth, Proverbs (which contain brief teachings and fast learning), Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, Maccabees, I Chronicles and II Chronicles.

Literary genres

To better understand what concerns Hebrew literature, it is also necessary to include the genres that developed from it and through time:

They include real and fictional stories, legends, myths and stories, as well as biographical information about the messiah.

Compilation of norms and precepts to guide the Hebrews from the religious, daily and moral. The most immediate reference is the 10 commandments.

Gender related to visions, oracles and announcements of those who claim to speak in the name of God.

They contain teachings and lessons as lived by the wise.

It is the most common genre in Hebrew literature, since it expresses very intimate and personal feelings. In fact, some can be found in Psalms, Lamentations, Job and Song of Songs (attributed to Solomon).

The 5 most prominent authors of Hebrew literature

As at the beginning the Jewish precepts were transmitted orally, the names of some authors were lost in history. However, the following are the most important writers:

It is one of the most relevant prophets of Hebrew literature. Isaiah reflects a series of visions and prophecies of what would await the world in the future. It stands out thanks to its refined and structured style.

Although some of his writings were lost, he was able to recover several of his precepts in which he tells the political and military history of the Jewish people.

3- Dunash ben Labrat

Introduces the Arabic metric to the poetry of this literature.

4- Semuel ibn Nagrella

Author of religious and secular poetry. These works also related to the Talmud and the Torah.

5- Shmuel Yosef Agnón

Win the Nobel Prize for Literature by creating short stories about the experiences in the founding of the State of Israel. His prose combines biblical style and modern Hebrew.

  • Hebrew literature. (s.f) On EncyclopediaBritannica. Retrieved: February 7 on EncyclopediaBritannica at britannica.com.
  • Hebrew literature. (S.f). In Wikipedia. Recovered: February 7, 2018 in Wikipedia from en.wikipedia.org.
  • Literatures of the world. (2004). In MailxMail. Retrieved: February 7, 2018 from MailxMail at mailxmail.com.
  • Hebrew literature. (s.f) In Wikipedia. Retrieved: February 7, 2018 in Wikipedia from es.wikipedia.org.
  • Hebrew literature. (s.f) In UAEH. Retrieved: February 7, 2018 in UAEH deuaeh.edu.mx.

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summary of hebrew literature

Hebrew Literature in Translation: A Reader’s Guide

You don't have to know Hebrew to enjoy some of Israel's best books.

By Naomi Brenner

Looking for the latest Hebrew literature in translation? Find catalogues detailing which Israeli books have been translated recently and which titles are in the works.

While not all Hebrew books appear in English as quickly as these Israeli best sellers, readers in English can sample the richness of modern Hebrew literature, particularly novels and short stories, through the many works currently available in translation.

Beginnings of Modern Hebrew Literature

Modern Hebrew literature first emerged in Europe during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Few of these classics are still in print, but several notable writers are featured in recent books and reprints.

READ: 7 Female Israeli Writers You Should Be Reading

Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) is one of the best known poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century renaissance of Hebrew literature. His rich and complex poetry, presented in translations such as David Aberbach’s C.N. Bialik: Collected Poems , explores radical changes in Eastern European Jewish life, biblical themes and the beauty of the natural world.

Yosef Chayim Brenner (1881-1921) was among the first generation of Hebrew writers in the Yishuv (the Jewish community in pre-state Palestine). Perhaps his best known work is Breakdown and Bereavement , a novel that traces the unraveling of an aspiring pioneer.

While Bialik and Brenner are mainstays of the Hebrew canon, a more surprising figure to find in English translation is Devora Baron (1887-1956). Baron wrote one novel and many intricate, lyrical short stories–often set in small towns in Eastern Europe–that have been collected in “The First Day” and Other Stories , translated and edited by Naomi Seidman and Chana Kronfeld.

Sly Modernists and Fervent Zionists

By the 1930s, the center of Hebrew literature had shifted from Europe to the Jewish community in Palestine. In the decades before and after the founding of the state of Israel, there is immense variety in Hebrew literature, mixing new and old literary themes and techniques.

S.Y. Agnon (1888-1970) was one of the most celebrated Hebrew writers of the twentieth century, and the only Israeli to receive the Nobel Prize for Literature. Among his best known works are A Guest for the Night , which narrates the protagonist’s return to his Galician town after the destruction of World War I, Only Yesterday , a sprawling social and psychological portrait of the Second Aliya, and his many short stories, collected in A Book That Was Lost and Other Stories .

In contrast to Agnon, Chayim Hazaz ‘s (1898-1973) modernist stories and novels are often explicitly ideological, examining different social and historical aspects of Zionism. In the story “The Sermon,” from the collection The Sermon and Other Stories , his characters reject Jewish life in the Diaspora and envision a new Jewish nation, free of the neuroses of previous generations.

Aharon Megged (1920-2016) often writes about the powerlessness and disillusionment of his generation. One of Megged’s best known novels, The Living on the Dead , questions the existence of heroism in Israeli society. A more recent book, Foiglman , examines conflicted relationships between fathers and sons, Israel and the Diaspora, and Hebrew and Yiddish.

The New Wave

Amos Oz in 2015. (Wikimedia Commons)

From the early 1960s, Israeli fiction has been filled with complex characters alienated from society and the land. Though writers such as Yehoshua Kenaz and Binyamin Tammuz are not easy to find in translation, many others writers of the time are well-represented in English.

Yehuda Amichai (1924-2000) is one of the best known and most beloved Israeli poets. His work has been translated into more than 20 languages, from Albanian to Turkish. His lyrical poetry and prose use everyday language to create vivid, poignant images and capture complex emotions and experiences, both in his early poetry, represented in the translated collection The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai , and in his final book, Open Closed Open: Poems .

Many of Amos Oz ‘s (1939-2018) novels reveal the dark underside of life and the psyche. In The Hill of Evil Counsel and My Michael , for example, passion and family dysfunction are narrated from very different perspectives, one of an adolescent boy during the British Mandate, the other of a women in 1950s Jerusalem.

A.B. Yehoshua , (1936-) another  prominent contemporary Israeli novelist, has written a wide range of books, from A Journey to the End of the Millennium , which chronicles a family’s voyage through medieval Ashkenaz, to A Woman in Jerusalem , which focuses on the circumstances surrounding a woman’s violent death.

The majority of Aharon Appelfeld ‘s (1932-2018) novels and novellas focus on the Holocaust, both the events leading up to the genocide and its lasting legacy. In clean, calm prose, he sketches a vibrant Jewish community that ignores the looming signs of disaster in Badenheim 1939 . Other works, such as The Iron Tracks and The Immortal Bartfuss , feature characters who wrestle with the physical and psychological scars of the Holocaust.

Surprisingly, Yoram Kaniuk’s (1930-2013) work is available in English, even though he has long been on the margins of Hebrew literature. Kaniuk writes innovative fiction that mixes the fantastic and the grotesque, including the exploits of Holocaust survivors in Adam Resurrected and Jewish identity and collective memory in The Last Jew .

Changing Society, Changing Literature

David Grossman in 2015. (Wikimedia Commons)

In recent years, Hebrew literature has reflected the increasing fragmentation of Israeli identity and society. Writers like Anton Shammas, Sami Michael, and Dorit Rabinyan represent the changing face of the Israeli author, while the works of writers such as David Grossman and Meir Shalev challenge traditional narratives about Israeli history and Zionism.

Though not always easy to find in print, Sami Michael ‘s (1926-) novels represent the emergence of mizrahi writing, work by Jews from Arab lands. Among Michael’s many novels, Refuge chronicles the complex relationships between Jews, Arabs, and Arab-Jews, while A Trumpet in the Wadi narrates a love affair that crosses boundaries between Jew and Arab.

Yoel Hoffman (1937-) weaves together experimental and fragmented language with elements of Buddhism and Western philosophy into books  such as the dream-like love story, The Heart is in Katmandu , and the complex mixture of reality and fantasy, Katschen and the Book of Joseph .

Haim Be’er ‘s (1945-) acclaimed novels, Feathers and The Pure Element of Time , are often described as Israeli magic realism. Both books explore life in religious communities in Jerusalem, leaping between past and present, comedy and the macabre, and wholeness and fragmentation.

Several of Batya Gur ‘s (1947-2005) popular mysteries, featuring Jerusalem police office Michael Ohayon, have been translated to English. From her first novel, The Saturday Morning Murder , to her final book, Murder in Jerusalem , Gur’s work combines the suspense of classic detective narratives with deft portrayals of Israeli characters and society.

Journalist and writer David Grossman (1954-) takes on some of the most sensitive subjects in Israeli society in his novels, including the legacy of the Holocaust, in the brilliant See Under: Love , and the disillusionment of a young soldier, in The Smile of the Lamb .

Palestinian-Israeli writer Anton Shammas (1950-) provoked a major controversy in Israel in 1986 when he published the Hebrew novel Arabesques , an exploration of Palestinian identity that weaves together personal stories, history, and fantasy into a rich and dense narrative.

Zeruya Shalev ‘s (1959-) popular novels focus on family dynamics in Israeli society andthe pressures of marriage. With lyrical prose and deep psychological insight, books like Husband and Wife investigate the mind and desires of contemporary Israeli women.

Orly Castel-Bloom (1960-) has written many stories and novels that capture the fragmentation of contemporary Israeli society. Her satirical novel Human Parts chronicles the exploits of a series of complex women, offering a fascinating portrait of Israeli life with a strange and often surreal sense of humor.

One of the best known Israeli writers to emerge in the 1990s is Etgar Keret (1967-) , whose stories, children’s books, and graphic novels have been extremely popular. His short-short stories, collected in Bus Driver Who Wanted to Be God and Other Stories and The Nimrod Flipout: Stories , are filled with cynicism, humor, irony, sexuality, and Israeli pop culture.

Deftly evoking Jewish life in Iran in Persian Brides and Iranian families in Israel in Strand of a Thousand Pearls , Dorit Rabinyan ‘s (1972-) lyrical novels offer rich emotional portraits of family life, especially the psychological and emotional dimensions of female characters.

Sayed Kashua (1975-) is a writer and journalist whose work focuses on Palestinian life in contemporary Israel. His first novel, Dancing Arabs , features the protagonist’s struggles as he moves from childhood and adulthood and navigates Palestinian and Israeli culture.

There are many more Hebrew writers who could be added to this diverse list, and many others who will hopefully be translated into English in the near future. Other rich sources of Hebrew literature in translation include the many anthologies of prose, such as the classic Modern Hebrew Literature and the more recent Oxford Book of Hebrew Short Stories , as well as collections of poetry, like The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse , The Modern Hebrew Poem Itself   and The Defiant Muse: Hebrew Feminist Poems From Antiquity to the Present . 

Pronounced: tah-MOOZ (oo as in boot), Origin: Hebrew, Jewish month that usually coincides with June or July.

Pronounced: yuh-HOO-dah or yuh-hoo-DAH (oo as in boot), Origin: Hebrew, Judah, one of Joseph’s brothers in the Torah.

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Literature, hebrew:, by: joseph jacobs , israel davidson.

  • Prophecy and Wisdom Literature.
  • Philosophic Haggadah.
  • Polemical Literature.
  • Secular Poetry.

Under this designation may be comprised all the works written by Jews in the Hebrew and the Aramaic tongue. Works written in Hebrew by non-Jews are too few to require consideration here. The term "Jewish literature" should be used in a broader sense, as including works written by Jews upon Jewish subjects, irrespective of the language in which they may be expressed, while the term "Judaica" should be applied to works written by Jews or non-Jews upon Jewish subjects, but in languages other than Hebrew. An exception is made in the case of Aramaic, not only because of its intimate philological connection with Hebrew, but also because at an early date it became practically a second mother tongue for the Jews, and was used in the Bible, in many of the Talmudic discussions, in the prayer-book, and in theCabala. Works written by Jews but not upon Jewish subjects and not in Hebrew are treated under the names of their respective authors. See also Judæo-German ; Judæo-Greek ; Judæo-Spanish .

The most significant characteristic of Hebrew literature is that the greater part of it is directly or indirectly the outgrowth of the Bible. There is a marked continuity in the development of the later from the earlier literary forms, all of them going back to the first source—the Bible. In other words, Hebrew literature is chiefly a religious literature, secular writings, produced mostly under the influence of foreign literatures, forming but a minor part of it. It seems, therefore, that, aside from dividing Hebrew literature into periods, as is usually done in histories, it will be best to give a sketch here under the categories into which the Bible itself may be divided, showing what part of the literature may be traced back to the Bible and what must be traced to foreign influence. These categories are "Law," "Prophecy and Wisdom Literature," "History," and "Psalmody." For more detailed information see subjects referred to throughout this article.

The Law as a literature has continued its development from the earliest times down to the present day, and has been of greater influence upon the life of the Jews than any other branch of literature. It owes its growth chiefly to the doctrine, long inculcated in the Jewish mind, that along with the written law Moses received also an oral law, which was faithfully handed down by an unbroken chain of teachers and leaders to the men of the Great Synod and by them to succeeding generations. This gave rise to the Talmudic law, or Halakah , which deals, like the Biblical law, not only with man's civil and public life, but also with his private habits and thoughts, his conscience, and his morality. Traces of the Halakah are discoverable even in the Later Prophets, but its period of full development lies between 300 B.C. and 450 C.E. ( see Mishnah ; Talmud ). In the latter half of the fifth century the Babylonian schools declined and the teachers of the Law no longer assumed authority. They confined their teachings to the comparison and explanation of the laws that came down to them from previous generations, allowing themselves to introduce only methodological and mnemonic signs into the Talmud. This sums up literary activity in the line of the Law during the period following the close of the Talmud. See Saboraim .

The development of the Halakah in the subsequent period received impetus from the fact that the Babylonian schools once more raised themselves to an important position, owing, perhaps, to Arabic dominion in that country. The Geonim, as the teachers of this period are called, did not produce independent halakah, but continued to promote the study of the Talmud. What the Bible was to the Tannaim and Amoraim that the Talmud became, in its turn, to the Geonim and later teachers. It lay before them as an object of exposition, investigation, and discussion. The succeeding period was one of systematization, condensation, and elucidation; introductions, commentaries, compendiums, and dictionaries were the outcome of the study of the Talmud in those days. A new epoch commenced with the activity of Maimonides. His "Mishneh Torah" embraces the whole field of Halakah, and became an object of much discussion and explanation. In the fourteenth century the halakic literature began to deteriorate, and instead of being the guide of conduct it became a mere play of the intellect. In the sixteenth century, however, it again received a fresh impetus through the Shulḥan 'Aruk of Joseph Caro, which is still the standard work of traditional Judaism. Works on the Halakah are to be found in various forms, viz., in the form of commentaries (Perushim; Ḳunṭresim), glosses (Nimuḳim), additions ( Tosefot ), novellæ ( Ḥiddushim ), collections (Liḳḳuṭim), compilations (Ḳobeẓim), compendiums (Ḳiẓẓurim), decisions (Pesaḳim), and judgments (Dinim), as well as in independent codes and responsa.

From the prophetic utterances to the preachings and homilies of later days was but a short step, and accordingly public preaching for general instruction and moral edification was instituted among the Jews in very early times. This gave rise to the Haggadah, which did for the spirit what the Halakah did for the practise of Judaism. Just as the Halakah embraces various kinds of law, so does the Haggadah embrace different forms of thought. In a restricted sense, however, the Haggadah may be said to deal with ethics and metaphysics, and it is in this sense that it may be regarded as the natural issue of the earlier prophecies. In its ethical characteristics the Haggadah was greatly influenced by the Wisdom literature of the Bible, but in its metaphysical tendencies it shows the influence of Hellenistic philosophy. To the ethical Haggadah belong a few apocryphal books, such as Ben Sira , the Apocalypse of Zerubbabel, and the Wisdom of Solomon, and the still more important works Pirḳe Abot, Abot de-Rabbi Natan, and Masseket Derek Ereẓ. The metaphysical Haggadah did not develop into a separate literature until a much later date. See Midrash ; Targum .

About the middle of the eighth century Arabic philosophy began to exercise a strong influence over the Jewish mind, and owing to the rationalistic character of that philosophy the Midrash ceased to grow, and its place was taken by theological and philosophical works of a systematic nature. The prophetic spirit is no longer so clearly discernible as before, owing to the large intermixture of foreign thought, but, on the other hand, the prodigious development of Hebrew literature in the Middle Ages must be ascribed to this foreign influence, for its presence is felt in almost every branch of thought cultivated in those days. It is seen in the rise of Karaism, in the development of philology and exegesis, as well as in the cultivation of general sciences among the Jews. Later, again, when Jewish thought came in touch with Christian mysticism, the developed Cabala sprang into existence in place of the metaphysical Haggadah ( see Cabala ). Finally, a great part of the large controversial literature owes its existence to the conflict between Judaism and Mohammedanism.

The theological literature previous to the twelfthcentury is very fragmentary, and consists mostly of partial translations from the Arabic. Though the beginning of this literature dates from the days of Saadia Gaon, there is no independent work of the kind in Hebrew until a much later date, and even the earliest among the prominent men in this field, Ibn Gabirol (11th cent.), Judah ha-Levi and Maimonides (12th cent.), wrote in Arabic, as had Saadia. The first important theological writers in Hebrew were Levi ben Gershon (14th cent.), Joseph Albo (15th cent.), and Elijah Delmedigo (15th cent.).

The ethical literature was continued in the works of Gabirol and Baḥya ben Joseph (11th cent.), Halevi (12th cent.), Isaac Aboab and Eleazar ben Judah (13th cent.), Jedaiah Bedersi (14th cent.), Leon of Modena (16th cent.), and Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto (18th cent.), as well as in the large literature of ethical Wills and correspondence current throughout the Middle Ages.

The metaphysical Haggadah assumed under the influence of Arabic philosophy the aspect of a systematic philosophy, and through the influence of Christian mysticism it became a sort of theosophy which looked for the hidden and disregarded the evident meaning of the Law, and which, under the name of Cabala, began to develop an extensive literature, first in Italy and in Provence, and later in the East. The founder of the Cabala was R. Isaac the Blind (12th cent.), who was followed, in the thirteenth century, by a host of eminent scholars. To the same century undoubtedly belongs the most famous cabalistic work, the Zohar, which is ascribed by all critics to Moses de Leon. The cabalistic literature of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries is mostly anonymous and not original. But a new epoch opens with the teachings of R. Isaac Luria in the sixteenth century. He inaugurated the "practical" Cabala. No longer content to be restricted to the world of thought, this Cabala assumed to interfere in the world of action and to direct man's conduct in life. Luria's chief disciple was Ḥayyim Vital , who committed the teachings of his master to writing. In the latter part of the seventeenth century this "practical" Cabala was at the root of the Shabbethaian movement, and in the eighteenth century it was the cause of the extravagances of the Ḥasidim, the chief of whom were Israel Ba'al Shem, Bär of Meseritz, and Salman of Liadi.

With the rise of systematic theology there came into existence an extensive literature of controversy. For although traces of this literature may be found in the Talmud, it was not until Judaism came into conflict with its two sister religions and with Karaism that religious controversy became a significant part of Hebrew literature. The first great work of this kind is the "Cuzari" of Judah ha-Levi, which is directed mainly against Mohammedanism and Karaism. But the most fruitful period for religious controversy was the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, and the leading authors of that period were Profiat Duran , Joseph Albo , Isaac Abravanel , and Yom-Ṭob Lipmann Heller . In the sixteenth century two strong polemics were written against Christianity: the "Hoda'at Ba'al Din" of Joseph Nasi and the "Hizzuḳ Emunah" of Isaac ben Abraham Troki . In modern times Isaac Baer Levinsohn wrote many controversial works.

Another product of the influence which Arabic philosophy exerted over Judaism is Karaism. It took its origin in the latter part of the eighth century and came early under the influence of Mohammedan dogmatism. Its literature dates from the same period, and consists mainly of dogmatics, exegesis, and grammatical works; its most prominent authors are: Judah Hadassi (12th cent.); Aaron the Elder (13th cent.); Aaron ben Elijah , author of "'Eẓ ha-Ḥayyim" and "Gan 'Eden" (14th cent.); Elijah Bashyaẓi (15th cent.); and Zarah Troki (17th cent.). In the nineteenth century the most prominent Karaite scholar was Abraham ben Samuel Firkovich . To the influence of Arabic literature must be ascribed also the scientific development of Hebrew grammar, which in turn greatly affected Biblical exegesis; both form important branches of Hebrew literature, but they can not be discussed here.

"The meager achievements of the Jews in the province of history do not justify the conclusion that they are wanting in historic perception. The lack of Jewish writings on these subjects is traceable to the sufferings and persecutions that have marked their path. Before the chronicler had had time to record past afflictions, new sorrows and troubles broke upon them" (G. Karpeles, "Jewish Literature, and Other Essays," p. 23). Though real historical works, in the modern sense of the term, are a very late product in Hebrew literature, the elements of history were never absent therefrom. The traditional nature of the Halakah created a demand for chronology and genealogy, while the Haggadah often enlarged upon the historic material of the Bible for purposes of its own. The most important historic documents of the Talmudic period are the Seder 'Olam Rabbah (1st cent.) and the Megillat Ta'anit (2d cent.; though in its present state, however, perhaps the product of the eighth century). From the geonic period there are a number of historic documents, e.g. , Seder 'Olam Zuṭa, Seder Tannaim we-Amoraim, and the Letter of Sherira Gaon. From the tenth century there is the "Yosippon," and from the eleventh the "Sefer ha-Ḳabbalah" of Abraham ibn Daud . Besides these there are some notable books of travel to be mentioned, as the "Sefer Eldad ha-Dani" (11th cent.), the "Sibbub Rab Petaḥyah" (12th cent.), and the "Massa'ot" of Benjamin of Tudela (12th cent.). The fifteenth, sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries produced notable chroniclers like Solomon Ibn Verga (15th cent.), Abraham Zacuto (16th cent.), Joseph ha-Kohen (16th cent.), David Gans (16th cent.), David Conforte (17th cent.), and Jehiel Heilprin (17th cent.). Azariah dei Rossi (16th cent.) may be regarded as the first critical literary historian, and his work is authoritative even to-day. In the eighteenth century Ḥayyim Joseph David Azulai is the most prominent literary historian, while in the nineteenth century the chief works on history and the history of literature are those of Rapoport, Schorr, I. H. Weiss, Frankel, and Isaac Halévy. See Historiography .

The literature devoted to the liturgy of the Synagogue extends over a long period. Although in the Bible there is no mention made of any composition specially written for the purpose of prayer, it is not unlikely that many Psalms were recited in the Temple service and then adopted as prayers. And inasmuch as the oldest prayers are largely mosaics, made up of quotations from the Scriptures, the liturgy may justly be regarded as a development of the Psalm literature. It was due to this Biblical origin also that the language of the old prayers was in most cases Hebrew and the style fluent and forcible. The later development of the liturgy, however, was closely connected with the development of the Midrash. This is evident from the fact that the additions which grew up around the old nucleus of the prayer were in the spirit of the Midrash, until finally the Midrash itself entered into the liturgy. Under the influence of the new forms of poetry in the Arabic period the daily prayers, and still more those of the festivals, assumed various forms. Liturgical poems adapted for special occasions were produced and new technical names invented. By degrees even dogmatic theology and halakah were versified and introduced into the liturgy. The important occasions of life—birth, marriage, and death—were made the subject of synagogal poetry. The literature of the liturgy is so large that no attempt is made to record names. It will be sufficient to state that although a skeleton of much of the ritual was already fixed in Talmudic times additions to it were made as late as the sixteenth century. See Liturgy ; Piyyuṭ .

From religious to secular poetry is but a step, yet it was only in the middle of the tenth century that secular poetry began to flourish. In this as in other branches of literature, Arabic influence was strongly felt from the days of Ḥasdai (10th cent.) down to those of Immanuel of Rome (14th cent.). From the fifteenth to the seventeenth century inclusive, Hebrew poetry declined, and was not revivified until the beginning of the eighteenth century, when it came under the influence of modern literatures. The period from Moses Ḥayyim Luzzatto to that of Naphtali Wessely may be called the Italian period, and that from Wessely to Abraham Bär Lebensohn, the German period. Judah Löb Gordon, though he came under the influence of foreign literatures, made the foreign taste subservient to the Jewish spirit. He is also the first poet to deal with real life, while the recent school of poets, under the influence of the national movement, shows a tendency to return to romanticism. Owing also to the influence of modern literatures, Hebrew has developed a literature of fiction and essays which deserves general recognition.

Finally, a word must be said of the works written in Hebrew that deal with the arts and sciences. Originally, the sciences developed among the Jews as a branch of Halakah, receiving recognition only by virtue of some religious function which they were made to serve, as, for example, astronomy in connection with the fixing of the calendar, upon which depended the observance of the festivals. Later, however, when the Jews came in contact with Arabic civilization, the sciences came to be cultivated for their own sake, and since the middle of the tenth century many books have been written on the various arts and sciences, irrespective of their religious bearing. See also Dictionaries ; Drama ; Fables ; Folk-Songs ; Folk-Tales ; Grammar, Hebrew ; Hebrew Language ; Poetry, Didactic ; Semitic Languages ; Translators .

  • Abrahams, Chapters on Jewish Literature, Philadelphia, 1899;
  • D. Cassel, Lehrbuch der Jüdischen Gesch. und Literatur, Leipsic, 1879 (2d ed., Frankfort-on-the-Main, 1896);
  • idem, Manual of Jewish History and Literature, London, 1883;
  • J. W. Etheridge, Jerusalem and Tiberias: Sora and Cordova, an introduction to the study of Hebrew literature, London, 1856;
  • A. S. Freidus, A Scheme of Classification for Jewish Literature in the New York Public Library, New York, 1901;
  • Grätz, Gesch. passim;
  • G. Karpeles, Gesch. der Jüdischen Literatur, Berlin, 1886;
  • idem, Ein Blick in die Jüdische Literatur, Prague, 1895;
  • idem, Jewish Literature, and Other Essays, Philadelphia, 1895;
  • S. Levy, Is There a Jewish Literature? in J. Q. R. xv. 583-603;
  • M. Steinschneider, Jüdische Literatur, in Ersch and Gruber, Encyc. section ii., part 27;
  • idem, Jewish Literature, London, 1857;
  • H. L. Strack, Bibliographischer Abriss der Neuhebräischen Literatur (C. Siegfried and H. L. Strack, Lehrbuch des Neuhebräischen Sprache, pp. 93-132, New York, 1884);
  • Weiss, Dor;
  • Winter and Wünsche, Die Jüdische Litteratur;
  • Zunz, G. S.;
  • What Is Jewish Literature? by W. Bacher, A. Wolf, and S. Levy, in J. Q. R. xvi. 300-329;
  • Hebrew Literature, Translations from the Talmud, Midrash, and Kabbala, with introduction by M. H. Harris, in Universal Classic Library, Washington and London, 1901;
  • Hebrew Literature, Comprising Talmudic Treatises, Hebrew Melodies, and the Kabbalah Unveiled, with introduction by E. Wilson, in The World's Great Classics, New York and London, 1901.
  • See also Jew. Encyc. iii. 199, s.v. Bibliography.

types of art styles

Hebrew literature: what it is, its history, literary development, characteristics and representatives

What is hebrew literature.

Hebrew literature, which developed from the 12th century B.C., counted with the participation of both Jews and non-Jews and is known as one of the most important cultural manifestations worldwide, due to the literary production generated as well as its great diffusion in different regions, being the medieval period with the medieval literature, one of its greatest moments of flourishing.

One of the main features of Hebrew literature will be the religious content, which will give rise to a series of fundamental works for the universal literature together with the Hebrew language, whose history includes antecedents of the Jewish and Christian people, which will be collected in the Torah. The Hebrews were mainly located in the region of Palestine, located in the central western part of the Asian continent.

History and origin of Hebrew literature

The emergence of Hebrew literature dates back to the doctrines that were dictated orally at the time of Abraham, one of the most relevant characters in Christianity and Judaism. These manifestations will take place in the oral language known as The Law, or the Torah.

After the Bible, Hebrew literature undergoes one of the most important changes, since it begins with the establishment of laws that are composed of both ethical and moral norms, which will determine the path to be followed by the Jew. During this same moment, a series of literary sub-genres emerged, among which we find formats that have both religious and non-religious content. When Hebrew literature reaches the modern era, it begins to use another series of formats previously exposed, among which we find the essay, fictional texts and poetry.

Thus, during the first stages of Hebrew literature, the Old Testament was written, entering the poetic subgenre. Subsequently, narrative began to develop within the psalms and oracles written by some prophets. And later, in the last stages of development, they reach the philosophical and ethical production, but not for long, because it will be replaced by the mythical writings.

Development of Hebrew literature 

Hand in hand with Hebrew literature, important fields of literary expression will develop, among which we find the historical formats, which cover almost all types of stories and in which it is possible to include from myths and legends, to informative documents, biographies, stories, among others. Likewise, the laws or set of rules and precepts to which the Hebrew people are subjected and which consist of both corrections made by the political power and religion are determined.

In addition to this, the sayings and speeches that were pronounced by the messengers, who were known as prophets and who related symbolic actions, biographical stories, visions and other series of contents, also emerged. Poetic texts will be worked on to a greater extent, maintaining a writing in verse with the expression and exaltation of the deepest feelings of the authors, as well as songs that will be directed to love, pain, religion, among others.

The literary composition will also include a series of wisdom contents of the time, containing collections of sentences and other contents such as proverbs and sayings that are expressed in a popular way and that will serve as teaching of the wise men, reasoned by their own experience.

The main characteristics of Hebrew literature 

Among the main characteristics of this literature are the following:

Theme of the works: a large part of the content covered by the works of Hebrew literature are inscribed within the religious framework, which is why its recognition is due to works based on teachings of prophets and other figures that compile the sacred works and that come from oral transmission by the Jewish peoples. Thus, the first works of Hebrew literature date from situations that were related to characters or prophets who had personal communication with God.

From this, the content of the texts will also include teachings, historical accounts, songs and poems with the aim of continuing to extend both the teachings and the rules of the religion, which will be seen later in the Old Testament, a text that is part of the Bible and that has translations made in almost all languages.

Importance of orality: during this period, oral transmission became very important, especially in the religious content, since the teachings and precepts found in works such as the Torah, came from content exposed and taught through orality by the first Jewish peoples.

Main works and most important authors 

Undoubtedly, one of the most important works not only of Hebrew literature but of universal literature is the Old Testament, which consists of a series of canonical books written before the birth of Jesus of Nazareth. This text includes accounts of the story of the creation of the world in the book of Genesis, as well as the fall of Adam from the Garden of Eden, the Flood, among others. On the other hand, the Tanakh is considered the main work of Hebrew literature, a work that brings together a series of sacred laws that govern the lives of both Christian and Jewish followers. This text is composed of the Writings, the Prophets and the Law or also called Torah.

As for the main representatives of Hebrew literature, we find prophets such as Joshua and Isaiah, as well as Dunash ben Labrat, Shmuel Yosef Agnon, Semuel ibn Nagrella, among others.

  • What is Neoclassical and Romantic Sculpture?
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Title: The Rebirth of Hebrew Literature

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The Rebirth of Hebrew Literature

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Table Of Contents

  • About the author(s)/editor(s)
  • About the book
  • This eBook can be cited

Chapter One: The Ashkenazim: The Center vs. The East

An Invitation to an Intellectual-Stylistic Discussion of Modern Hebrew Literature

  • Chapter Two: Rebirth
  • Opening Remarks for a Renewed Discussion of the Hebrew Literature of National Revival (Sifrut Ha’Tchiya)
  • Chapter Three: A Late Homecoming
  • “Occupied Territory” and “Phantom Language” in Eretz-Israeli and Israeli Prose
  • Chapter Four: But at Night, at Night, I Still Dream in Spanish
  • The Map of the Imagination of Israeli Literature: The South American Province
  • Bibliography

When I was a boy, my mother, who grew up in Budapest in an assimilated Jewish home in the years before World War II, said to me, “You know, the Hungarian Jews—Herzl and Nordau—are the ones who invented Zionism, but when we came to Israel, we discovered that the Russian and Polish Jews, who arrived before we did, had already taken everything over: the government, the Knesset, the Histadrut (Israel’s organization of trade unions). What not? And then what could we do? Only look from the side and laugh at everything.” “And that is why,” she went on, “all the satirists and political cartoonists in the country were Hungarian: Yosef (Tommy) Lapid, Dosh, Kishon, and Ze’ev—all of them.”

My mother, may her memory be a blessing, was not an especially reliable historical source. But I assimilated the things that she repeated many times and in various versions. I grew up with the sense that the Ashkenazim did not all belong to exactly the same “community,” in contrast to what I understood from my “integrated” public school, which was attended by representatives of all the Jewish communities of the Diaspora, which were divided “naturally” into Ashkenazim and Mizrahim. As my mother’s testimony indicated, my parents’ “community”—my father also came from Hungary, but from a family of Satmar Hasidim (making him doubtfully Hungarian in my mother’s eyes)—did not achieve the status it deserved, that is, its cultural, social, and political achievements were appropriated or minimized by another, stronger, and more organized “community.”

This insight, or perhaps more accurately, this sensitivity, accompanied me for many years, and is evident in my academic writings. For example, I have dedicated a great deal of study to the work of Aharon Appelfeld, who is, I believe, the most important “Austro-Hungarian” Hebrew writer of the second half of the twentieth century. This insight and sensitivity are also expressed in my taste as an editor, for example, in my great love of Yoel Hoffman and his oeuvre.

In the first chapter of this book, I made, for the first time in my life, an attempt to seriously examine this insight and/or sensitivity. I attempted to clarify whether it is possible to speak of Eastern European Jews as belonging to two different societies or communities. At the same time, and assuming that the issues are interrelated, I tried to determine whether it is possible to speak of two distinct literary styles: an Eastern European Jewish style and a Central European Jewish style. In addition, I attempted to understand why these questions, and subsequently, the (positive) answers to them, which, as I discovered in the research I conducted, formed the foundation of the Jewish cultural discourse in Europe in ← 7 | 8 → the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, hardly featured in the writings of the major historiographers of Modern Hebrew literature. And, accordingly, I tried to understand why, since the second decade of the twentieth century, most critics and scholars have placed the Austro-Hungarian Jewish writers in a marginal position in relation to their Eastern European brethren without, “of course,” being explicitly required to explain the “ethnic” and/or “intellectual” reason for this decision, but, at most, hinting at it using alternative concepts.

I suppose there will be those who read this chapter and perhaps the other chapters in this book and accuse me of taking an essentialist approach. In this context, I would like to make some clear statements from the start. The anti-essentialist approach is all well and good, in my opinion, as an ethos, or, in other words, as a code of basic ethical guidelines. Moreover, in my opinion, the critical strategy derived from it, which aims to point out every site where cultural construction poses as a natural phenomenon, to dismantle its mechanism of impersonation, and to reveal the aggressive motives it serves, is of the utmost importance.

However, this does not mean that we need to throw the baby out with the bathwater. The fact that cultural patterns displayed as natural phenomena are the products of mechanisms of control does not mean, in any way, that it is impossible to talk about the unique characteristics of different groups of people, characteristics that define their identities as individuals and as groups. It is possible to talk about an “intellectual dominant” or a “stylistic dominant” (in the Jakobsonian sense) and so on. It is possible and necessary, since, if we avoid doing so, we confine our field of vision to a limited spectrum of phenomena, turning the colorful, variegated world into a dull and intimidating X-ray image. This is, of course, under the condition that we refrain, as far as possible—and here there is no “always,” since “always” is a word used by purists, who are not among those who love people of all varieties—from organizing the many phenomena observed into a system of value judgments based on any kind of hierarchical thinking. In other words, I wish to adopt from the anti-essentialist approach its sensitivity to Others without its typical tendency to eschew phenomena that have any sort of “color.” And this is precisely out of respect for the Others. I hope and believe that this middle ground, from which I have chosen to discuss the issue of the Ashkenazim, has allowed me to open a window to a renewed examination of an important part of the fascinating history of Modern Hebrew literature.

In the other three chapters of this book as well, I attempted to open a window to a renewed examination of additional important and intriguing chapters of the history of Modern Hebrew literature. In the second chapter, I point to what I see as the central mission most of the Jewish writers in modern times took upon themselves: to create the “rebirth” of the Hebrew nation, and attempt to describe the ← 8 | 9 → key mechanism that served them in this task, its various characteristics, and some of its implications. In the third chapter, I discuss the unique features of Modern Hebrew literature among modern national literatures in general and among the national literatures of settlers/immigrants in particular, and the challenges these features presented to Hebrew writers, especially those who came to Israel in the first half of the twentieth century. In the fourth chapter, I address, or begin to address, what I consider a fruitful field of research: the map of the imagination of Israeli literature, as it is revealed through the changing status of different regions of the world about which Hebrew authors have written. As a test case I chose South America, a province that was “a place of significance” in Zionist history, and has recently returned in the writings of Israeli authors.

A very prominent common feature of all the chapters in this book is their dialogical “status.” These are four invitations to open a discussion, not to exhaust it, and certainly not to conclude it. My discussions of the Ashkenazim, with both of their intellectual-stylistic camps, in the narrative of rebirth, the issue of (late) homecoming in Revival literature, and the place of the South American province on the map of the Israeli imagination comprise a kind of initial marking of runways from which it is possible to take off, adding to the dozens of runways already marked and paved, and from which it would be possible, perhaps, to set out on renewed tours of Jewish and Israeli “literature and life.”

I would like to thank all those who helped me in my work: the students of the research group in the Department of Hebrew Literature at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 2011–2012: Irit Ronen, Ron Lasry, Yael Rubin-Shinhar, Moriah Dayan Kodish, Dekel Shai Schori, and Nirith Korman. Many thanks go to Ravit Levin, Administrative Director of Heksherim Institute for Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, for her hard work and support in all matters large and small. Thanks to my friends and colleagues who made important and useful comments: Ruth Kartun-Blum, Amos Oz, Avidov Lipsker-Albeck, Nili Scharf Gold, Shira Stav, Sylvia Fuchs-Fried, Shimon Adaf, Leah Aini, and Chen Shtrass. Anat Weisman deserves special thanks. I pestered her frequently with various and sundry questions, and she generously contributed her keen intelligence and rare sense of proportion. Thanks also to Avner Holtzman, who read the manuscript in several incarnations, for his usual profound, thorough, and responsible reading. He enlightened me on a number of issues, and spared me some embarrassing inaccuracies. I want to express my sincere thanks to Dr. Hannah Komy, who diligently translated the book with great sensitivity, skill, and dedication, as though it were her own. I also thank Ute Winkelkoetter, who published the book with skill and pleasantness worthy of emulation. ← 9 | 10 →

Finally, I want to thank my friends, who encouraged and supported me, my amazing children, Ben, Yoav, and Zohar, and the Peretz family, who have taken me into their home and their hearts, and my wife and beloved, Galit, who created for me a perfect space for creativity.

Neve Shalom, July 2013

A Prayer for the Wellbeing of the King

May He Who grants salvation to kings and dominion to rulers

Biographical notes

Yigal Schwartz (Author)

Yigal Schwartz is Director of the Heksherim Research Institute for Jewish and Israeli Literature and Culture at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev. He is also senior editor at Kinneret Zmora Dvir Publishing.

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"(Modern) Hebrew Literature"

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The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Modern Era, vol. 8. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017)

The Modern World, literature. It has been claimed frequently that what separates "old" Hebrew literature and the modern one is that the former is "religious" while the latter is "secular." But this is a simplifi cation that does not account for the complexity of the literary texts, their authors, and readers, as well as the historical-social contexts in the diff erent places in which they were produced.

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The Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women

Medieval hebrew literature: portrayal of women.

by Tova Rosen Last updated June 23, 2021

Stereotypes of women, “good” and “bad,” are found throughout the medieval Hebrew canon; With its conventional themes, clichéd metaphors, and stereotyped female figures, medieval Hebrew literature is an unsatisfactory source for tracing the actualities of women’s lives. As against ascetic sentiments that tended to demonize women, a great deal of medieval literature—Hebrew included—is obsessed with the idolization of women, with romantic love and carnal desire, with corporeal beauty and the pleasures of eros.The love poetry cultivated during the Golden Age in Muslim Spain seems to glorify and idealize women, but the female “beloved” is subject to the power of the male “gaze” and male rhetoric.

Poetry Written by Women

The only medieval Hebrew poem attributed to a female author is a rhymed letter sent by a young wife to her far-away husband. In it she recollects their departure and implores her husband not to forget her and their little child. This poem, dating from the latter part of the tenth century, survived only thanks to the reputation of the author’s more famous husband, the professional poet Dunash ben Labrat (ca. 920– ca. 985), who was the pioneer of Hebrew Golden Age poetry in Muslim Spain (Fleischer, 189–202; Kaufman et al., 62–63). Dunash’s wife is the first identifiable female poet in the Hebrew language since the biblical poets Miriam and Deborah . While Jewish sources do not refer to Qasmuna, Arabic literary historians mention her as a Jewish poet in who wrote in Arabic. They recount that her father (possibly Samuel ha-Nagid [Ibn Naghrela], 993-1056), the eleventh century poet and statesman from Granada) taught her to write verses (Bellamy, 423–424). Other known poets include the noble lady Tolosana de la Cavalleria of Saragossa, who wrote a dirge on the death of her son in the late fourteenth century (Granat, 2013, 152), and Merecina, a rabbi’s wife from mid-fifteenth-century Gerona who composed a single poem, a religious piyyut in which she incorporated an acrostic of her name (Kaufman, 64–65). Our lack of information about other medieval women poets may indicate that they did not exist or that male copyists chose not to preserve their work.

The absence of poetry by Jewish women is striking when compared to the relatively significant number of medieval non-Jewish female poets. In Christian Europe, although outnumbered by men and excluded from the canon, women—troubadours, nuns, mystics, and nobles — did write about their perceptions of life, love, and death in sacred and profane poetry. In recent decades, feminist researchers have rediscovered, reread, and reintegrated these women into the canon, correcting, to an extent, their historical absence (Dinshaw and Wallace, 2003). Even more remarkable are the scores of women who wrote poetry in Arabic. These poets, in both Andalusia and the Middle East, include princesses, courtesans, and slave-girls, as well as fighters, mystics, and musicians; their names, and sometimes also their texts, have been preserved or rediscovered (Nichols, 114–117).

Hebrew Poetry about Women Written by Men

Since the likelihood of discovering more medieval female Jewish poets is dim, a useful approach is to analyze how women and gender are represented in medieval poetry written by men. Historians have attempted to reconstruct women’s actual experiences based on a variety of texts written by men (Grossman; Baskin, 101–108; Assis, 25–59), or from the rare documents where women’s authentic voices can be heard, such as personal letters (Kraemer, 161–182). The task of feminist literary critics is to account for the ideological and symbolic roles designated to women in the male literary imagination, to map the positions of female figures and the positioning of their voices within the patterns of male discourse, and to explore the artistic strategies behind women’s presence/absence in a given text. Feminist criticism asks how literature fictionalizes social practices, and, how, in turn, it reflects its invented fictions back onto the real world (Rosen 1988, 67–88; Rosen 2003).

Stereotypes of women, “good” and “bad,” are found throughout the medieval Hebrew canon (Dishon 2009; Dishon 1994, 35–50; Caballero Navas, 9–16; Huss). The love poetry cultivated during the Golden Age in Muslim Spain (950–1150) seems to glorify and idealize women. Following the themes and style of Arabic poetry, Jewish poets like Samuel ha-Nagid (993–1055), Solomon ibn Gabirol (ca. 1022–ca. 1058/70), Moses ibn Ezra (1060–1139), and Judah Halevi (1075-1141) wrote rhetorically brilliant love poems in Hebrew, positing lofty and dazzling female figures at their center. This idealized lady is exalted but muted, aloof but lethal, tempting but unyielding; she is devoid of personality and speech. Her cruelty and beauty, and the poet’s passion and pain, dominate the poetic descriptions. The poet pleads for her response and her acquiescence in lovemaking. The more the lady remains steadfast in her refusal, the more the poet’s love grows and his pen flows. This male narrative is generated not so much by deep love of the lady as by the poet’s drive to please a male audience that shares his own aesthetic “courtly” values.

While most nineteenth- and twentieth-century mainstream critics have read these poems as manifesting Jewish “hedonism,” “universality,” and “normal sexuality,” a feminist reading reveals an unbalanced power-relationship. The female “beloved” is subject to the power of the male “gaze” and male rhetoric. Although the male speaker describes himself as weak, inferior, and fearful vis-à-vis his lady, the power of language and description is in his hands. Her hair is described as like a bundle of snakes; her eyes shoot arrows; her breasts are like apples growing on a “heart of stone.” She is vampire-like: her nipples are sharp spears threatening to drink the poet’s blood. Her eyes “tear prey like lions, [...] suck and sip my heart’s blood” (Judah Halevi, Diwan 2:6). [All poetry translations are by the author, unless otherwise stated.]

An alternative image to the cruel-but-muted lady in the male love lyric are the passionate voices of singing maidens that appear at the end of Arabic and Hebrew muwashshah poems (Rosen 1985; Rosen 2000, 165–89). These concluding couplets (called kharjas ) are often put in the mouths of young women who chant in the colloquial Andalusian-Arabic or in the Romance vernacular. Many scholars believe that these kharjas represent and preserve (or, alternatively, counterfeit) an oral poetic tradition of old songs sung by Iberian women in a Romance dialect. Unlike the aloof lady, these young women play an active role in the love relationship. They daringly suggest secret rendezvous, despite spies and slanderers. They send messengers, consult fortune-tellers, or confess their feelings to mothers and girlfriends. Many of these small songs are complaints about departure and desertion. The women coquettishly offer their bodies to their sweethearts, instructing them in lovemaking, or, bashfully stopping the too bold advances of admirers. Judah Halevi includes the following Romance kharja at the conclusion of a muwashshah : “Don’t touch me, my love;/ I don’t want him who hurts me./ My breast is sensitive./ Stop it, I refuse all [suitors]” (Judah Halevi, Diwan, 2:3).

Another type of woman who appears in Hebrew poetry is the professional musician. The qaynah (as she is called in Arabic) gives concerts at courtly events entertaining an audience of avowed admirers (Rosen 2003, 33-35, Granat). She flirts with them and stirs their emotions: “She parts her scarlet lips, holding the lute like a mother hugging her babe […] / She parts her lips to sing of parting, and as she thrills her voice her tears pour out" (Judah Halevi, Diwan , 1:14).

Another aspect of the beloved woman appears in wedding-songs, a genre reflecting the patriarchal imagination at its most favorable. While the love lyric exalts pre- and extra- marital love with its attractions and perils, the wedding poems depict married love as an Edenic paradise, devoid of danger and sin. The ideal bride is as stunning as the poets’ lady, but not as dangerous. The groom is encouraged (by the poet, or by the bride herself) to ignore the harmless serpents that decorate her face and to enjoy the fruit that grows in her delightful garden/body. The bride yields herself to her groom's pleasure; moreover, she entices the groom with a promise for future harmony and joy: “To you alone I will give my love/And you will lie between my breasts” (Judah Halevi, Diwan 2: 26). The bride is erotic yet pure and obedient, virgin yet a promise of future procreation. In language evoking the biblical Song of Songs, her sexuality is sanctioned by God and men, as eros is integrated within the frame of family and society.

When the bride becomes a wife, eros fades away and woman’s base nature is said to reveal itself fully blown. The wife, especially as she appears in the Hebrew rhymed narratives of the maqama variety (Drory, 190–210; Huss, 1:17–29; Pagis 1976, 199–244), is not mute as is the courtly lady, nor is her voice comely as is the bride’s. The wife’s mouth is ceaselessly open—complaining, lying, rioting, gossiping, revealing secrets, gulping food, and constantly scandalizing her poor husband by demanding money, maids, house utensils, clothes, and jewels:

A devil's shape on a woman’s face is engraved./ When I look at her my body tears apart. Her speech makes my hair bristle on my head./  Her voice loosens the bonds of my heart. She closes gates of peace and friendship/ and opens the doors for quarrel and strife. She builds her house on a mountain of complaints./ Her tent is spread there and stretched tight. (Joseph ibn Zabara, Schirmann 3:58)

If a wife appears good and obedient it is only because she manages to hide her greed, filth, and treachery; married life becomes the arena for the taming of the shrew. Themes like women’s wiles, female fickleness, and wives’ betrayal are emphasized (Roth, 145–165; Rosen 2003 (chapter 5); Dishon 2009) and husbands are advised to exercise their manly authority since a wife should be disciplined and domesticated. Such is the advice given to husbands by Samuel ha-Nagid in his book of moral epigrams: “Beat your wife daily, lest she rules over/ you like a man, and raises her head up./ Be not, my son, your wife’s wife,/ and let her not be her husband’s husband” ( Ben Mishle , 162). Wifehood is the result of a process of culturing and disciplining. Hence, women should be contained within walls, veiled, hidden, and muted: “Walls and castles were erected for woman/—her glory lies in bedspreads and spinning. / Her face is a pudendum displayed on the main road/ that has to be covered by shawls and veils.” ( ibid ., 283).

In marriage the wife is required to repress her feelings, opinions, appetites, desires, likes, and dislikes. She will earn the title of “the princess of the house” only if she agrees to be her husband’s servile maid. Mothers, no less than fathers and husbands, were agents of the patriarchal construction of wifehood. The following voice is that of a mother: “Beware of whatever makes your husband angry. Do not express your own anger. . . . Speak softly to him to abate his anger. Cook for him whatever he desires, and pretend to like his favorite dishes even if you don’t. . . . Save his money. . . . Don’t be jealous. . .” etc. (from Isaac, Mishle Arav, in Dishon 1986, 4).

The patriarchal imagination identified woman with nature and its uncontrollable forces. This is what a duped groom relates of what he saw when he uncovered his bride’s face: 

Her face—fury, her voice—thunder […], her mouth like a she-donkey’s, her breath—putrid. Her dried up cheeks—as if Satan himself had painted them with coal […]. Her eyes—scorpions, her stature—a town wall, her thighs—two tree-trunks […]. Her image resembles the angels of death. […]. Her mouth—a grave for food and drinks, her belly—a cave, her teeth putrid like bears’, full of slime and excrement. Her speech—like turmoil at midnight, her breath like a whirlwind. Her teeth grind food like a pestle and mortar before it all falls into her deep abyss. (from the 6th maqama by Judah al-Harizi, Schirmann 3: 120-122).

The female body, portrayed as grotesque, is dismembered and fragmented, with each limb hyperbolically compared to another terrifying object. The result is a disproportionate, surrealistic, mythical, horrifying creature. The emphasis on the mouth, lips, and teeth, and on what comes out of it (spittle, breath, and a horrible voice) is noteworthy: her mouth, analogous to her insatiable vagina, is busy grinding and gulping.

Another appalling female representation is that of Tevel as it appears in dirges over the dead and in ascetic (penitential) poems. Tevel (earth, or the terrestrial world) is the allegorical personification of the world’s evil. The belief that women are not only its embodiment but its very cause goes hand in hand with the perception that the material corrupted world itself is essentially feminine. The material world and its temptations are imagined as a female whose outwardly attractive appearance hides her true being as an ugly crone, a rotten prostitute. Wicked Tevel is said to hypnotize her human victims with her beauty, her riches, her scarlet skirts, gold, jewels, wine, nectar, fruits, and so on. She promises men (who are her, in fact, her progeny) possessions, honor, and stature but is then unfaithful to them, revealing her horrible nature. She marries her children and then divorces them; makes love and slays her lovers. Men should resist her dark attraction:

She lures the boors with her riches; / she tempts them with fine silks, Then she upsets them with much grief and pain— / and so few are the drops of her cure! (Moses ibn Ezra 1:86 )

Tevel seems to conform to the Jungian-Neumannian archetypes of the Great Adulteress and the Terrible Mother. She is the cannibal mother of her sons, who are also her philanderers. Her womb is their tomb. She feeds her children and then feeds on them: “She devours her children—though they have hardly savored her bread and flesh” (Solomon ibn Gabirol, 305). As Mother she should be dishonored and her shame made known. Her sons “ought to strip off the rims of your coat over your face” (Moshe ibn Ezra, 151).

Women’s exemplary virtues are listed in dirges. A deceased woman is praised as her husband’s support and as a mother dedicated to her children; she is lauded for her piety, acumen, kindness, nobility, philanthropy, diligence, and industry. A handful of Andalusian odes (in the literary form of the qasida ) lament the deaths of the wives or daughters of famous rabbis or comrade-poets. A group of dirges in a popular variety of strophic poetry by Judah Halevi diverges from this typical mold in realistic reflections of actual situations. These include a mother lamenting her young daughter who died just before her wedding. Hundreds of such dirges (mostly anonymous) have been found in the Cairo Genizah (Beeri). The male mourners (especially husbands, but also other male relatives) reveal their agitated emotions and express the pain and loss of the family and community. A number of them declare that the deceased woman was literate, educated, versed in the Torah, and in some cases, a teacher of young children.  

Liturgical poetry features the allegorical representation of the feminine Knesset Israel (the synagogue of Israel). Her speech is laden with the communal emotions of the nation (Scheindlin 1991). Following the traditions of prophetic and A type of non-halakhic literary activitiy of the Rabbis for interpreting non-legal material according to special principles of interpretation (hermeneutical rules). midrashic allegory, Knesset Israel was, in the biblical past, the passionate paramour of Israel’s God, but now she is forsaken, exiled, and despised, politically oppressed, and socially inferior. Her speech is that of a divorcée (or worse, a wife abandoned without divorce), a disenfranchised noblewoman, a bereaved mother, a disgraced widow, a sinful wife, a stray daughter, an outcast, who longs to be reunited with her husband, her children, and her homeland. Read as a political discourse, medieval Hebrew liturgy is the expression of a powerless minority. The choice of a woman to represent the praying congregation (and the national community, as a whole), as well as the choice of a woman’s voice to address God, is quite intriguing since Jewish women did not participate in public prayer, and, moreover, a woman’s voice in a communal setting was considered “an obscenity.”

Many liturgical pieces have as their theme the human soul ( nefesh ), which is gendered as feminine in Hebrew. In an allegorical extension, the grammatically feminine becomes figuratively female. The soul is the speaking subject (or the addressee) in many liturgical-penitential poems. The soul’s tragedy is her union with the body, and her attraction to it. Her pollution, caused by the sinful nature of the female body and its functions, especially menstruation, divorces her from the intellect and God. The female soul is called upon to purify herself, to rid herself from her femaleness, so that she may reconnect herself with the elevated male elements. In liturgical poetry and moral allegories, the soul speaks as a beloved gazelle yearning for union with her lover; as a deserted plaintive wife enslaved to her enemy, the body; as estranged daughter entreating her father God to be permitted to return home; or as a pupil listening to the lectures of the (platonic) Intellect. At times she is the intellectual soul, preaching to the stubborn body (Scheindlin 1991; Tanenbaum; Rosen 2003).

Poetry too appears as an allegorized figure. Gendered feminine, she is called shirah (poetry; poem), or bat ha-shir (literally, “poetry's daughter”). Like a woman, poetry is required to be beautiful and elegantly clad (that is, with rhetorical ornaments). She is depicted as a bride, adorned, veiled, and perfumed, or else, as an enchantress, rousing the poet’s poetic libido: “She hunts her lover’s heart without a hook/but with the sweetness of her mouth.” Poetry is, at one and the same time, the poet’s daughter, his mother, and his lustful mistress. These sexual, rather incestuous, metaphors highlight the link between eros and poetic creativity. The ungainly poem, which does not meet the required aesthetic standards, is likened to a menstruating woman. Poetry resembles woman not only in beauty but also in its use of artifice and deceit. The statement, “The best of poetry is in its lies,” indicates that poetry’s use of figurative rather than literal language is a form of deception. The mendacity of poetry, gendered feminine, is opposed to male philosophic truth. Thus, Moses Maimonides (1138-1204) links poetry with the feminine aspect in the male psyche and criticizes listening to the singing of women, since singing and poetry stir sexual emotions in men. Indeed, a growing animosity toward poetry in thirteenth-century Europe coincides with the flourishing of misogynistic literature (Rosen 2003).

The inferiority of women based on metaphysical, biological, or ascetic grounds was a constant theme for medieval Jewish philosophers, doctors, and moralists. They identified women with matter, body, and defiled sexuality. Men were repeatedly warned against women’s threat to their well-being and were urged to exclude women and silence them. Women were relegated to the realm of the beastly, the evil, and the demonic and were banished from the sphere of the intellect and the divine. They were considered an obstacle to a man’s peace in this world, and to his redemption in the hereafter.

The Hebrew maqama literature that flourished from the early thirteenth century on was infected by misogynous and misogamous (marriage–hating) humor. Minhat Yehuda Sone ha-Nashim [The Offering of Judah the Women-Hater] was written by Judah ibn Shabbetai around 1208 (Ibn Shabbetai; excepts in Schirmann 3:67-86; Rosen 2003, chapter 5). Its protagonist, Zerah, persuades husbands to divorce their wives and dissuades young men from marriage. Women, young and old, convene to struggle against his message and to save the institution of marriage. They insist on a wife’s right to be sexually satisfied (and on her husband’s religious duty [‘ onah ] to do so). Led by an shrewish old woman, they tempt Zerah to marry a flawless virgin (who is to be replaced later by an ugly, wicked, greedy, and big-mouthed woman). Upon unveiling her, Zerah reveals his wife’s true face and sues for divorce. The judge finds Zerah guilty of undermining marriage and sentences him to death. At this point, Judah, the author, comes to the rescue of his fictional protagonist, declaring that Zerah is an imaginary creature, which he, Judah himself, had invented. This complex ending dramatizes the cultural ambivalence vis-à-vis marriage in Iberian Jewish culture. This hostility, which co-existed among the intellectual elite with the positive Jewish values of marriage and procreation, could have permeated Jewish circles through ascetic trends in medieval Islam and Christianity (Biale).

“The Offering of Judah the Women-Hater” started a literary polemic that lasted throughout the thirteenth century. An immediate response was Ezrat Nashim [In defence of women] (Schirmann, 3: 87-96), whose title carries the double meaning of a woman’s support of her husband and the poet as defender of women. Its Provençal author, Isaac, admits that he was encouraged to write his story by those women abused by Ibn Shabbetai. In it, Rachel, a young pretty wife, an ideal helpmate, loyal and efficacious, helps her husband with her acumen and delivers him from great troubles (Schirmann, 3: 88–96). Another Provencal author, Yeda’aya ha-Penini (ca. 1270 -ca. 1340), responded to Ibn Shabbetai’s hostile work with his Ohev Nashim [A Lover of Women]; 1295] (Schirmann, 4: 489-496). Here, women, led by a virtuous heroine, celebrate their victory over marriage-haters such as Zerah and Ibn Shabbetai. When Ibn Shabbetai descends from heaven to defend his work in court, the court harshly denounces his anti-marriage views. Although the judges’ appreciation for his literary work saves him from a death verdict, the court rules unambiguously that marriage is mandatory and that monogamy is obligatory.

One should not be deluded by these “defenses of women.” What is defended here is primarily marriage and not women. Marriage is good while woman is basically evil. When women (like Rachel in Ohav Nashim ) are dubbed “good,” it is only because they are devoted to their husbands. This “profeminine discourse [has an] unfeminist quality” (Blamires, 12) and springs from the heart of patriarchy. Such works are clearly projections onto women (and marriage) of men’s concerns and anxieties.

Debates about Women in Italian Hebrew Literature

Debates for and against women are also a theme in Hebrew literature in Italy. The Ma h barot , a collection of poetry by Immanuel of Rome (1261-1328), is full of male poets entertaining themselves with the rhetorical sport of “praising the beautiful woman” and “condemning the ugly,” using highly sophisticated language (Immanuel of Rome, 35–43). Throughout the sixteenth century, some dozen Italian-Hebrew poets were involved in debates over women, cast in various poetic forms and influenced by Italian literature (Pagis 1986, 259–300). The Hebrew poets brought arguments from the Hebrew Bible, Greek mythology, and Roman history. Although no female writers participated in these poetic polemics, women were active readers and patrons.

Underlying many of the discourses and genres of medieval Hebrew literature is a framework of a male conversation in which men convene at the city gates or in literary salons to share poems, stories, sermons, epigrams, and jokes. The intention of such “homo-textual” economy is to share textual pleasure, particularly on the topic of “woman.” In the sixteenth and seventeenth maqama by Immanuel of Rome, a poetic contest is held between a husband and two suitors of his pretty wife. The three rivals agree that the winner’s prize will be the wife’s body. This pretty lady’s husband is impotent, and she, still a virgin, is eager to experience sex. Hence, she encourages her suitors to win the contest. She appears to play an active role in this comedy but actually serves as a medium channeling male rhetorical energy. What starts as a hilarious burlesque with an exchange of witty epigrams and bawdy rhymes, ends with the husband’s victory. The impotent husband wins back his own wife, who is paradoxically both a virgin and an adulterer, a wife whom he will never be able to satisfy. Marriage, however destitute and absurd, prevails (Rosen 2003, chapter 6).

In Immanuel’s second Ma h beret , the poet falls in love with his patron’s beautiful half-sister, who is very religious and inaccessible to men. Immanuel conducts a long correspondence with her, in which she shows no lesser rhetorical talent than he. The more she resists, the more Immanuel’s lust—as well as his poetic stimulus—is ignited. The refusing lady succumbs at last and is ready for love-making. The poet is foolish enough to boast about it to his patron, who firmly disapproves of the romance. Immanuel apologizes to the lady, admitting that all his praises of her were only intended to put her chastity to test. Realizing that she has been a pawn in men’s rhetorical games, the lady is overcome by melancholy and disgrace and starves herself to death. (Rosen 2003, chapter 6).

The ambivalence towards women that was widespread in medieval Muslim and Christian societies found its literary counterpart in a poetics of women’s adoration and condemnation. As against ascetic sentiments that tended to demonize women, a great deal of medieval literature—Hebrew included—is obsessed with the idolization of women, with romantic love and carnal desire, with corporeal beauty and the pleasures of eros. Writing about ambivalent attitudes in medieval Jewish-Spanish culture concerning sexuality, women, and marriage, David Biale has stated, “Indeed two souls often beat within the breast of the elite itself, and sometimes within the breast of the same individual. On the one hand, Jewish culture shared with its surroundings an extraordinary openness to the erotic. . . On the other hand, Jewish philosophers [adopted a] … negative stance on sexuality and the body. … Ambivalence over erotic behavior therefore plagued the Jewish elite” (Biale 1992, 89).

The issue of humor is also closely connected to the homo-textual frame. The humor employed “between men” is unavoidably gendered: Jokes not to be told in mixed company are spoken; men laugh at the expense of an absent woman; grotesque descriptions of women pass as entertainment. Most critical treatments of such elements in these works read them as parodies and satires; even modern male critics have seen the ridicule of woman as a legitimate pastime. That this humor was gendered has gone without notice; on the contrary, the “humoristic intention” of the authors was said to dissolve, or undercut, misogyny. However, as feminist criticism has demonstrated, “humor” is not the opposite of misogyny but rather one of its most effective tools.

With its conventional themes, clichéd metaphors, and stereotyped female figures, medieval Hebrew literature is an unsatisfactory source for tracing the actualities of women’s lives. Rather than supplying evidence of their presence and experiences, this literature, like contemporaneous literatures in other languages, more often furnished manifestations of their absence and erasure. This elimination of “real” women was accomplished by means of muting and silencing female figures; by stereotyping, allegorization, abstraction (woman as concept), by mythologization and dehumanizing (nymph, medusa, amazon, she-demon etc.), and by objectification (woman is matter, commodity, chattel, or body without subjectivity or mind), among other tropes. It is the task of feminist literary criticism to identify and deconstruct these deliberate misrepresentations.

Closely related to the question of women’s presence/absence is the issue of female voices. To what extent are female voices, captured within male texts, “authentic” and unmediated? Aren’t they muffled by male transmission? Don’t they serve the author’s androcentric position? Female voices often seem to embody patriarchal “truths” about women’s speech (women abuse language by lying, quarreling, complaining, enticing, and so on). However, utterances by female protagonists may help to reveal the limits of the misogynistic logic that produced them. They indicate points from which the homo-textual monolith can be dismantled. A woman’s voice, clear and assertive, is heard in al-Harizi’s forty-first maqama that is fashioned as a debate between a man and a woman on the issue of women’s worth. Here, the woman objects to the objectification of her gender and their silencing. She refutes one by one men’s assumptions about women’s inferiority. She acts as a capable advocate of womankind, manifesting familiarity with male erudition (Bible, Talmud, Aristotle, Maimonides). Her resisting speech, inserted within the dominant male discourse, foreshadows the “resisting reader” of modern feminist criticism. As such it invites reading these female utterances as sites of embedded empowerment and resistance; they are seeds of “otherness” which defy the self-proclaimed and ostensibly solid assumptions of their male creators (Rosen 2003, chapter 6).

Primary sources

Al-Harizi, Judah. “ Sefer Tahkemoni ” (selection). In Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence [Hebrew], edited by Jefim (Hayyim) Schirmann, 115–123. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: 1960,.

Ibn Ezra, Moses. Secular Poems, edited by Hayyim Brody. Berlin: 1935.

Halevi, Judah. In Diwan Jehuda ha-Levi , edited by Heinrich Brody. Berlin: 1894–1930.

Ha-Nagid, Shmuel. “Ben Mishle.” In Divan Shmuel Hanagid , vol. 2, edited by Dov Jarden. Jerusalem: 1982.

Ibn Gabirol, Solomon. Secular Poems , edited by Hayyim Brody and Hayyim Schirmann. Jerusalem: 1976.

Ibn Shabbetai, Yehudah. Critical Editions of “Minhat Yehudah,” “Ezrat ha-Nashim” and “Ein Mishpat” with Prefaces, Variants, Sources and Annotations [Hebrew], edited by Matti Huss. Jerusalem: 1991.

Ibn Zabara, Joseph. “Sefer Sha’ashu’im.” In Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence [Hebrew], edited by Jefim (Hayyim) Schirmann. Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: 1960.

Immanuel of Rome. Ma h berot Immanuel Ha-Romi, edited by Dov Jarden. Jerusalem: 1957.

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Baskin, Judith R., “Jewish Women in the Middle Ages.” In Jewish Women in Historical Perspective . 2nd Edition, edited by Judith R. Baskin, 101–127. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998.

Beeri, Tova. “Dirges for Unusual Female Figures” [Hebrew]. In Ot Letova: Essays in Honor of Professor Tova Rosen, edited by Eli Yassif et al. Mikan 2 (2012): 98-114.

Bellamy, James A. “Qasmūna the Poetess: Who Was She?” Journal of the American Oriental Society 103 (1983): 423–424.

Biale, David. Eros and the Jews: From Biblical Israel to Contemporary America. New York: Basic Books, 1992.

Blamires, Alcuin. The Case for Women in Medieval Culture . Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Caballero Navas, Carmen. “Women Images and Motifs in Hebrew Andalusian Poetry.” World Congress of Jewish Studies 11, C3 (1994): 9–16.

Dinshaw, Carolyn and David Wallace, eds. The Cambridge Companion to Medieval Women’s Writing . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

Dishon, Judith. “Images of Women in Medieval Hebrew Literature.” In Women of the Word: Jewish Women and Jewish Writing , edited by Judith R. Baskin, 35–50. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994.

Dishon, Judith. Good Woman Bad Woman: Loyal Wise Women and Unfaithful Treacherous Women in Medieval Hebrew Stories [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: 2009.

Drory, Rina. “The Maqāma.” In The Literature of Al-Andalus , edited by María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, 190–210. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Fleischer, Ezra. “On Dunash Ben Labrat, His Wife and His Son: New Light on the Beginnings of the Hebrew-Spanish School” [Hebrew].  Jerusalem Studies in Hebrew Literature 5 (1984): 189–202.

Granat, Yehoshua. "'Unto the Voice of the Girl's Songs': On Singing Women in Medieval Hebrew Poetry (The Andalusian School and its Offshoots)" [Hebrew]. In Textures: Culture, Literature, Folklore, for Galit Hasan-Rokem , edited by Avigdoor Shin'an and Hagar Salmon. Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore , 28 (2013): 153–168.

Grossman, Avraham. Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Europe in the Middle Ages [Hebrew]. Jerusalem: 2001; English translation by Jonathan Chipman, Waltham MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004.

Harris, Julie A. “Finding a place for women's creativity in medieval Iberia and modern scholarship.” In Women’s Creativity and the Three Faiths of Iberia: Reassessing the Roles of Women as ‘Makers’ of Medieval Art and Architecture . Journal of Medieval Iberian Studies 6 (2014): 1–14.

Huss, Matti. “Misogyny in the Andalusian School of Poetry” [Hebrew]. In Studies in Hebrew Literature of the Middle Ages and Renaissance in Honor of Professor Yonah Davi , edited by Tova Rosen and Avner Holtzman. Te’uda 19 (2012): 29–53.

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Rosen, Tova. "Medieval Hebrew Literature: Portrayal of Women." Shalvi/Hyman Encyclopedia of Jewish Women . 23 June 2021. Jewish Women's Archive. (Viewed on February 17, 2024) <http://jwa.org/encyclopedia/article/medieval-hebrew-literature-portrayal-of-women>.

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A Summary and Analysis of the Book of Ruth

By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)

The Book of Ruth is one of the shorter books of the Bible, but the story it tells is one of the most movingly ‘human’ in all of the Old Testament. However, how the story of Ruth should be interpreted is not an easy question to answer. Let’s delve deeper into the Biblical Book of Ruth to discover a world of outsiders, love, law, and mysterious customs involving shoes.

Before we come to the analysis, though, it might be worth summarising the plot of the story of Ruth as it’s laid out in the Bible. The Book of Ruth is thought to have been written some time between 450 and 250 BC.

Book of Ruth: summary

A man named Elimelech, from Bethlehem-Judah, left his hometown when a famine struck. He and his wife Naomi, along with their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, left for Moab. Elimelech died, leaving Naomi with her two sons.

These two sons married Moabite women: Orpah and Ruth. Ten years passed, and Mahlon and Chilion both died. Naomi decided to return to Judah, hearing that the famine had passed, but she entreated her sisters-in-law to remain in their homeland of Moab. After all, this was their home, and why should they accompany her back to her homeland now their husbands were dead? They have a house in Moab and will be provided for.

Although both women initially pledged to stay with Naomi, when she urged them to leave her, Orpah agreed. But Ruth stayed by Naomi’s side and vowed to accompany her back to Judah.

Back in Judah, there was wealthy relative of Naomi’s dead husband, a man named Boaz. Ruth went into the field to gather corn for the harvest, where she caught the eye of Boaz.

Boaz promised to treat Ruth, an outsider in the land of Judah, as an equal, and welcomed her. Ruth was overcome by his kindness, and asked what she, a stranger, had done to deserve it. Boaz replied that he had heard how she left behind her own parents in Moab to accompany her mother-in-law into a strange land.

Ruth went home to her mother-in-law that evening, and told her what had happened. Naomi told Ruth that Boaz was a near-kinsman, and as such he will protect and provide for them. Ruth went to Boaz that night and knelt at his feet. She told him she was his handmaid and they were kin.

Boaz replied that there was a man who was an even closer kinsman to her than he was, and this other man had, essentially, first refusal on whether he wished to marry Ruth. However, if this other man said he didn’t want to marry Ruth, Boaz declared he would happily do so. And he gave her six measures of corn to take back to Naomi as pledge.

Boaz called a counsel of elders, including this other kinsman of Ruth’s, and explained that Naomi had her dead husband’s parcel of land to sell, but that if the kinsman wished to claim it, he must also agree to marry Ruth.

There followed a strange custom involving a shoe, whereby a man ‘plucked off his shoe’ and handed it to his neighbour if he wished to forgo his claim to something. This was a kind of ‘testimony in Israel’ in those days, we are told, a legal ritual which sealed the deal.

So this other man took off his shoe and gave it to Boaz, signalling that he relinquished all claim to Ruth or her dead father-in-law’s land. Marrying Ruth would damage his own inheritance from his father (presumably for marrying a Moabite foreigner) so he declined. Boaz announced that he would marry Ruth, and they promptly got married, and Ruth had a son.

This son, we are told, in turn had a son named Jesse, who himself had a son, named David.

Book of Ruth: analysis

Many books of the Old Testament seem to have been written to counter the narrow nationalism of other books of the Old Testament. So the message of the Book of Jonah – in which the title character’s disdain for the people of Nineveh receives a sharp moral rebuke from God – functions as a sort of riposte to the Book of Obadiah. And we can analyse the Book of Ruth as a response, or counter-response, to those other stories in the Bible which endorse a nationalistic understanding of Israel.

Whichever interpretation of Ruth we choose to follow, we should bear in mind the key fact of the story, which is that Ruth is a Moabite who leaves her family and her own people behind to begin a new life, as the devoted companion to her widowed mother-in-law Naomi, in the land of Judah.

The Dictionary of the Bible emphasises this aspect of the story, and suggests that Ruth’s loyalty to her adopted nation of Judah is important because Ruth is the ancestor of David, the great King of Israel. (Ruth is David’s great-grandmother.) So one ‘meaning’ for the Book of Ruth, and its significance for Judaism and Christianity, lies in its genealogical quality, in providing the story of David’s ancestry. If Ruth had never left Moab and followed Naomi to Judah, David would never have been born.

All of our lives hinge on such chance happenings or vagaries that occurred somewhere in our ancestral history, but for Jews and Christians the story of Ruth’s adoption of Judah as her new home, and her union with Boaz, possesses greater importance because her descendants would include King David of Israel.

Ruth is an idyllic romance, and one of only two books of the Bible named after women (the other one is Esther). But it would be wrong to offer a feminist interpretation of the story of Ruth which saw her as somehow bucking the patriarchal customs and laws of her time.

After all, the patriarchal laws binding women to men are still present her: Ruth may wish to marry Boaz, but he is intent on observing the law which gives Ruth’s closer kinsman first dibs on her, as it were. Both Ruth and Naomi are survivors in this patriarchal landscape, but they are nevertheless constrained by its laws and traditions.

We should view the Book of Ruth firmly as fiction: it’s a ‘short story’, essentially, some two millennia before the ‘short story’ came into existence as a recognised genre. But the details of the narrative are too neat to be strictly historical.

For instance, the names of Elimelech’s children, Mahlon and Chilion, literally mean ‘sickness’ and ‘wasting’ respectively; these strike us as unlikely names for a parent to give to their children, and given the fates of the two sons, their names seem far too pat. They chime symbolically, however, with the famine which drives Elimelech to leave Judah behind for Moab.

Continue to explore the Bible with our summary and analysis of the Book of Esther .

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Summary of the Book of Hebrews

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Summary Of Hebrews

Summary of the epistle to the hebrews.

A brief introduction and overview of the book to the Hebrews as recorded in ‘ The Bible Brief’ A summary of the complete Bible book by book.

The Bible Brief’s Hebrews Summary:

When: Around A.D. 65-70.

Who: Unknown, but Apollos or Barnabas most likely.

People & Places: Christ; Melchizedek; Moses

Sound-Bites: How will we escape if we neglect so great a salvation? After it was at the first spoken through the Lord, it was confirmed to us by those who heard. (Ch.2:3)

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. (Ch.4:14)

So much the more also Jesus has become the guarantee of a better covenant. (Ch.7:22)

Now faith is the [a]assurance of things hoped for, the conviction of things not seen. (Ch.11:1)

Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and today and forever. (Ch.13:8)

The Messianic Link:

He is the Heir of All Things (Hebrews 1:2)

The Merciful & Faithful High Priest (Hebrews 2:17)

The Author and Finisher of our Faith (Hebrews 12:2)

The Book: The book of Hebrews was written primarily to Jews who had converted to Christianity, but were now perhaps a little unsure as to the person of Christ.

Jesus is portrayed throughout as the perfect revelation of God and superior to Angels, Moses, Melchizedek or the Priesthood; and indeed was the Perfect Sacrifice that instituted the New Covenant . (Chaps 5-10)

The author frequently appeals to the Torah to re-enforce their claims, as in the case of Melchizedek (Ch.7), as the Jews would be familiar with these scriptures.

From chapter 10 onward, the writer warns of the perils of falling away, and reverting to the old, broken system of sacrifice that was only ever a temporary measure until the perfect sacrifice had come. (Ch.10:14)

The last chapters continue to emphasize the efficacy of Jesus , and to encourage the believers to meditate on and believe what he has told them.

Notes & Quotes: There is no doubt that the book of Hebrews is one of the ‘big hitters’ in the New Testament, for in it there is a great wealth of information regarding the person of Christ, and just how exactly he was indeed the perfect sacrifice able to cover our sins.

There is also a lot to be said about the pearl of unbelief, or falling away from the faith. These passages must be approached with great consideration as to just whom they are aimed at; believers, intellectual believers, or wannabees who had made a confession of sorts, but when persecution came, had rejected Christ.

The Book of Hebrews In A Nutshell

The book of Hebrews was written to Jews who had converted to Christianity and emphasizes the superiority of Grace over the Law. Jesus is the Faithful High Priest who is superior to the law of Moses and sits higher than the angels. 

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Hebrew Bible

Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | BCE

Plot Summary

The Hebrew Bible is the sacred and holy scripture for Judaism. Much of the Christian Bible is based upon the Hebrew Bible’s teachings, and scholars argue that the Christian Bible can’t be understood without referring to these teachings. The Hebrew Bible is also known as the Hebrew Scriptures, Old Testament, or the Tanakh . For discussion of the Christian Bible, see the SuperSummary Study Guide, Bible: Old Testament: English Standard Version .

The Hebrew Bible explains that God selected the Jews, Jerusalem, and Israel as his chosen people, capital city, and holy land. The authors of the individual books comprising the Hebrew Bible are unknown. Although it is impossible to know for sure when the books were written, scholars date the Hebrew Bible to between the tenth and twelfth centuries BCE (Before the Common Era).

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The Hebrew Bible comprises twenty-four books in total. The first six books describe God’s creation of the world and humanity, and the settlement of the Promised Land by the Jewish people. The next seven books provide a history of the Promised Land and what happens when the Jewish people forget God. The remaining books offer additional context, theological explanations, and poetry. Each book stands for a scroll containing the individual works. In total, the Hebrew Bible covers a period of around 3,500 years.

The first portion of the Hebrew Bible is known as the Torah . Although there are six books in the first section, only five are traditionally associated with Moses, who received God’s revelations. The Torah explains the story of Adam and Eve, the first humans, and how they rejected God, or Yahweh.

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It is not until Abraham, an early Hebrew, or inhabitant of Israel, comes along that a human proves devoutly faithful to Yahweh. Yahweh promises Abraham that, thanks to Abraham’s devotion, the people of Israel are blessed. Israel will flourish into a great and prosperous place. Abraham puts his faith in Yahweh, believing that the Hebrews are the chosen ones.

Abraham has a grandson, Jacob, who sires twelve sons. These twelve boys go on to form the twelve main tribes in Israel. However, when many Hebrews are enslaved to a tyrannical Egyptian king, their faith in Yahweh wavers. Moses is chosen to bring great tragedies to Egypt to show them that Yahweh will always protect the Hebrews.

The Hebrews, fleeing Egypt as it collapses around them, search for a new home. They find Mount Sinai and settle there. At Mount Sinai, Moses turns to Yahweh for further guidance. Yahweh speaks directly to him and Moses writes his commandments down—and, so, the Torah is born. The Hebrews have faith that Yahweh will provide for them, and he does. They soon find the Promised Land.

In the next seven books (or eight books, depending on how the reader divides the first section), otherwise known as the Nevi’im , covers the stories of the prophets. The major prophets are Joshua, the Judges, Samuel, and kings. The books of these prophets tell the history of the Jewish people. They cover the Hebrews conquering of an area of land which they distribute between the twelve tribes, and what happened when leadership problems arose between the different tribes.

The land is in dire need of a king, but Yahweh doesn’t yet provide one. The people remain faithful that Yahweh will provide when the time is right. In the meantime, elected figures, known as judges, rule the land the best they can. Finally, Israel receives its monarchy. The first three kings are better known as Saul, David, and Solomon. Most importantly, David, the second king, establishes Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.

Once David establishes Jerusalem, Solomon later constructs a temple for worshipping Yahweh. This becomes the Jewish heartland, the most important place in Jerusalem. However, when Israel later falls, it is split into two distinct places—Assyria and Babylon. Each place has its own idea of how to worship Yahweh, and so the seeds of division are sown once more. The remaining books in the Nevi’im recount Yahweh’s messages of hope and His calls for unity. The major premise of the Nevi’im is that the people have forgotten their one true King, and Israel can only be restored by remembering Yahweh.

The remaining books in the Hebrew Bible, known as the Ketuvim , are of mixed content. For example, the final books, the Chronicles, provide additional historical detail. They recount the attempts to restore Jerusalem and what happens when Hebrew society flourishes once more. On the other hand, the Lamentations are poetic writings lamenting Jerusalem’s downfall, and the Psalms celebrate Yahweh and ancient Israel through song and poetry. The tone of the Lamentations compared to the Psalms is very different—one is somber, the other less so.

Other books in the Ketuvim include general theological commentary and moral philosophy. The Proverbs, the Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Job are known as wisdom books, meaning they aim to educate readers, making them consider how to become better people. Books such as the Book of Ruth are short stories with hero narratives. These short stories entertain as much as educate.

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COMMENTS

  1. Hebrew literature

    Hebrew literature, the body of written works produced in the Hebrew language and distinct from Jewish literature, which also exists in other languages.. Literature in Hebrew has been produced uninterruptedly from the early 12th century bc, and certain excavated tablets may indicate a literature of even greater antiquity.From 1200 bc to c. ad 200, Hebrew was a spoken language in Palestine ...

  2. Hebrew literature

    Hebrew literature. Hebrew literature consists of ancient, medieval, and modern writings in the Hebrew language. It is one of the primary forms of Jewish literature, though there have been cases of literature written in Hebrew by non-Jews. [1] Hebrew literature was produced in many different parts of the world throughout the medieval and modern ...

  3. Hebrew Literature: Origins, Characteristics, Works and Most Outstanding

    The Hebrew literature is cataloged within classical literature and corresponds to the compilation of works (in verse and prose), written in Hebrew by Jewish and non-Jewish authors, whose origins date back to the 12th century BC. C. Within the Hebrew literature stand out the books of the Old Testament, section of the Bible and the Torah.

  4. A Short History of Hebrew Literature, From Genesis to Etgar Keret

    Jewish writers addressed medicine, science, philosophy, linguistics and more - in Arabic. An exception to this rule was poetry, which was written in Hebrew, and for the first time touched on non-religious subjects including wine, love and sex.

  5. Hebrew literature

    The language of ancient Israel was Hebrew, one of the Semitic languages of the Middle East. It is the language in which most of the Hebrew Bible —what Christians call the Old Testament—was originally written. Literature in Hebrew has been produced continuously since at least the 12th century bc. Until about ad 200 Hebrew was a spoken and ...

  6. Hebrew Literature in Translation: A Reader's Guide

    Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873-1934) is one of the best known poets of the late 19th century and early 20th century renaissance of Hebrew literature.His rich and complex poetry, presented in translations such as David Aberbach's C.N. Bialik: Collected Poems, explores radical changes in Eastern European Jewish life, biblical themes and the beauty of the natural world.

  7. Hebrew literature

    Hebrew literature, literary works, from ancient to modern, written in the Hebrew language. Early Literature The great monuments of the earliest period of Hebrew literature are the Old Testament and the Apocrypha. Parts of the Pseudepigrapha and of the Dead Sea Scrolls were also produced before the conquest of Judaea by Titus.

  8. LITERATURE, HEBREW

    LITERATURE, HEBREW: By: Joseph Jacobs, Israel Davidson Table of Contents The Law. Prophecy and Wisdom Literature. Philosophic Haggadah. Polemical Literature. History. Psalmody. Secular Poetry. Under this designation may be comprised all the works written by Jews in the Hebrew and the Aramaic tongue.

  9. Hebrew literature

    Hebrew literature - Modern, Israeli, Poetry: The first formative influences on 20th-century Hebrew literature belong to the late 19th century. The middle classes of eastern European Jewry that read Hebrew books turned to Jewish nationalism, and Zionist activity, coupled with the movement for speaking Hebrew, widened the circle of Hebrew readers. Hebrew daily papers began to appear in 1886 ...

  10. Hebrew literature: what it is, its history, literary development

    One of the main features of Hebrew literature will be the religious content, which will give rise to a series of fundamental works for the universal literature together with the Hebrew language, whose history includes antecedents of the Jewish and Christian people, which will be collected in the Torah.

  11. Hebrew Literature, Modern

    The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature, vols. 1-7, 1979-1985; new series. ed. I. Goldberg, N. Raz, A. Zipin, E. Kandelshein and N. Duchovni, v. 1-10, 1988-1998; I. Goldberg and N. Duchovni, S. Agnon: A Bibliography of His Work in Translation Including Selected Publications about Agnon and his Writing (1996); E. Lapon ...

  12. Jewish literature

    v t e Jewish literature includes works written by Jews on Jewish themes, literary works written in Jewish languages on various themes, and literary works in any language written by Jewish writers. [1] Ancient Jewish literature includes Biblical literature and rabbinic literature.

  13. The Rebirth of Hebrew Literature

    Summary. The book invites readers to a reexamination of Modern Hebrew literature and culture from complementary critical perspectives, through readings of texts from this corpus. Among the issues explored are the Eastern European Jewish and Central European Jewish versions of this literature and their battle for cultural hegemony; the narrative ...

  14. " (Modern) Hebrew Literature"

    This is a summary of the book "The Advent of Modern Hebrew Literature" by Gershon Shaked. One of the most important books on Modern Hebrew Literature. ... (1833-1856). The Hebrew literature writ- ten by the writers of the so-called Galician Haskalah was clearly influenced by the work done in Prussia and Vienna, but the genres they created ...

  15. Hebrew Literature (Chapter 27)

    A summary is not available for this content so a preview has been provided. Please use the Get access link above for information on how to access this content. ... Modern Hebrew Literature: From the Enlightenment to the Birth of the State of Israel: Trends and Values. New York: Schocken Books, 1970.Google Scholar.

  16. Medieval Hebrew Literature: Portrayal of Women

    The Hebrew maqama literature that flourished from the early thirteenth century on was infected by misogynous and misogamous (marriage-hating) humor. Minhat Yehuda Sone ha-Nashim [The Offering of Judah the Women-Hater] was written by Judah ibn Shabbetai around 1208 (Ibn Shabbetai; excepts in Schirmann 3:67-86; Rosen 2003, chapter 5).

  17. A Summary and Analysis of the Book of Ruth

    Book of Ruth: summary A man named Elimelech, from Bethlehem-Judah, left his hometown when a famine struck. He and his wife Naomi, along with their two sons Mahlon and Chilion, left for Moab. Elimelech died, leaving Naomi with her two sons. These two sons married Moabite women: Orpah and Ruth. Ten years passed, and Mahlon and Chilion both died.

  18. Summary of the Book of Hebrews

    Brief Summary: The Book of Hebrews addresses three separate groups: believers in Christ, unbelievers who had knowledge of and an intellectual acceptance of the facts of Christ, and unbelievers who were attracted to Christ, but who rejected Him ultimately. It's important to understand which group is being addressed in which passage.

  19. Hebrew literature ppt

    ANCIENT HEBREW LITERATURE Literature in Hebrew begins with the Oral Literature of the Leshon Hakodesh or the "Holy Language". The most important work of Ancient Hebrew is the Hebrew Bible named Tanakh. Mishna - primary rabbinic codification of laws as derived from the torah. It was written in Mishnaic Hebrew.

  20. Summary Of Hebrews

    The Author and Finisher of our Faith (Hebrews 12:2) The Book: The book of Hebrews was written primarily to Jews who had converted to Christianity, but were now perhaps a little unsure as to the person of Christ. Jesus is portrayed throughout as the perfect revelation of God and superior to Angels, Moses, Melchizedek or the Priesthood; and ...

  21. Summary & Conclusion to Hebrews

    Summary & Conclusion to Hebrews. Hebrews summons us into the world of God's promise to Abraham— a promise to bring all humanity into the sacred space of his kingdom. It announces the fulfillment of God's will to incorporate all the cosmos into the sphere of his own holiness. As a people on a pilgrimage into God's kingdom, we are called ...

  22. Hebrew Bible Summary

    Nonfiction | Scripture | Adult | BCE Plot Summary The Hebrew Bible is the sacred and holy scripture for Judaism. Much of the Christian Bible is based upon the Hebrew Bible's teachings, and scholars argue that the Christian Bible can't be understood without referring to these teachings.