Sacred Trash (40 page)

The original of “As who … on high” comes from Davidson,
Mahzor Yannai;
Burkitt,
Fragments,
Facsimile II, T-S 12.184r. The restored text is based on other manuscripts that have been found since and differ distinctly from Davidson’s reading. It appears in the Rabinovitz edition and might be translated (without the acrostic) as follows:

The mishnaic quote citation is from Berakhot 4:4. See also Hagiga 14a: “Every day, ministering angels are created from the fiery stream, and utter song, and cease to be, for it is said: ‘They are new every morning: great is Thy faithfulness’ (Lam 3:23).” See, too, Palestinian Talmud, Berakhot 84:4 and
Midrash Tehillim
(Buber, end of chapter 87). For more on prayer and
piyyut,
see also Zulay, “Between the Walls of the Institute,” in
Eretz Israel and Its Poetry
[Heb]; Langer,
To Worship God Properly
(Cincinnati, 1990); Zulay, unpublished lecture, “Hebrew Poetry in the Cairo Geniza” [Heb] (Schocken Institute, Zulay archive, exhibition box); Fleischer, “The Cultural Profile of Eastern Jewry in the Early Middle Ages as Reflected by the Payyetanic Texts of the Geniza” [Heb],
Te’uda
15, 1999.

For the Hebrew of “You, Lord, who are faithful,” see Davidson,
Mahzor Yannai,
Fragment 4; Rabinovitz,
Yannai
[Heb], poem 88, part 3. See also T-S 12.184r.

The educational function of poetry in this context is discussed by Zulay in “The Master Hymnist” [Heb]. On the notion of poetry as a kind of prayer that substitutes for sacrifice, see Michael D. Swartz and Joseph Yahalom,
Avodah: An Anthology of Ancient Poetry for Yom Kippur
(University Park, 2005); J. Yahalom,
Poetry and Society
[Heb] (Tel Aviv, 1999); Yahalom, “The Sepphoris Synagogue Mosaic and Its Story,” in
From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and Society in Late Antiquity,
L. I. Levine and Z. Weiss, eds. (Portsmouth, 2000); and M. Swartz, “Sage, Priest, and Poet,” in
Jews, Christians, and Polytheists in the Ancient Synagogue,
Steven Fine, ed. (London, 1999); and S. Fine, “Between Liturgy and Social History: Priestly Power in Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues?,”
JJS
56/1, 2005. For helpful English descriptions of the “elaborate structure” and “elliptical … development” of the
kerova,
see Lieber, “Piyyut,” and, for considerably more detail,
Yannai on Genesis.
The description of a “fresh, living, and instructive word” is from Zulay’s Motza lecture.

For more on the connection between
piyyutim
and the standard liturgy, see S. Elizur’s commentary in Zulay,
From the Lips of Poets and Precentors
[Heb] (Jerusalem, 2004). Elizur makes clear that the origins of the form remain murky. See also S. Elizur, “Poetry Is in the Details: Words in Memory of Prof. Ezra Fleischer” [Heb],
Madda’ei haYahadut
43, 2006; and E. Fleischer, “Studies in the Problems Relating to the Liturgical Function of Types of Early Piyyut” [Heb].

II

Information on Salman Schocken is drawn primarily from Anthony David,
The Patron
(New York, 2004); Stephen M. Poppel, “Salman Schocken and the Schocken Verlag,”
Leo Baeck Institute Yearbook
17, 1972; Racheli Edelman, “Rediscovering Grandpa Schocken,”
Haaretz,
Nov. 9, 2007; and from interviews with Shmuel Glick and Baruch Yunin at the Schocken Institute, Jerusalem (March 26, 2009).

For more on the discovery of Schocken 37, see Hayyim Schirmann,
The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain
[Heb], ed., supplemented, and annotated by Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1995); and in English, Peter Cole,
Selected Poems of Solomon Ibn Gabirol
(Princeton, 2001). Another important manuscript of poems by Schocken 37’s copyist has since been found among the Geniza documents (T-S K 25.2 and Or. 1080 4.1). For a detailed description of the mss., see Hayyim Brody,
The Poems of Moshe ibn Ezra, Secular Poetry
2 [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1942).

Information about Zulay comes mainly from a short memoir by his daughter, Ada Yardeni, “In Memory of Menahem Zulay” [Heb],
Mehkerei Yerushalayim besifrut Ivrit
21, 2007, and from the authors’ interview with Yardeni, Sept. 24, 2009, Jerusalem.

For more about Paul Kahle, see Matthew Black, “Paul Ernest Kahle, 1875–1965,”
Proceedings of the British Academy
51, 1965; Marie Kahle, “What Would You Have Done? The Story of the Escape of the Kahle Family from Nazi Germany” (London, 1945); Norman Bentwich, “German Scholar in London,”
Palestine Post,
May 15, 1942. Kahle’s
The Cairo Geniza
(Oxford, 1947) was the first general book on the subject.

Zulay’s comment on Davidson’s publication of Yannai’s poetry comes from “The Master Hymnist” [Heb]. On the importance of this literature, see also Zulay, “Yannai Studies” [Heb], and S. Lieberman, “Yannai’s Cantorial Poetry” [Heb],
Sinai
4, 1938. For more on Osiris see James Frazer,
The Golden Bough,
Theodor H. Gaster, ed., abridged edition (New York, 1959). See under “Osiris,” sections 242–43.

Quotations by Zulay are as follows: “an entire literature … ‘In my dream’ ” is from “From Geniza to Geniza”; “Memory … is the finest index” is from “Between the Walls of the Institute”; “a sacred task” is from “Between the Walls”; “Each photostat is a prayer” is from “The Master Hymnist” (all from
Eretz Israel and Its Poetry
[Heb]).

Zulay’s description of his own work is taken from an unpublished prose fragment with which he originally intended to open his (Hebrew) essay “Between the Walls of the Institute.” The essay appeared in a Festschrift for Schocken in 1952. His draft contains a note in his hand saying, “I took this out and drafted a new version” (Schocken Institute, Zulay archive, exhibition box).

On the last Hebrew volume published in Nazi Germany, see M. Schmelzer, “The Contribution of the Geniza to the Study of Liturgy and Poetry,”
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
63, 1997–2001; E. Fleischer, “Perspectives on Our Early Poetry after One Hundred Years of Studying the Cairo Geniza” [Heb],
Madda’ei haYehadut
38, 1999.

For a description of the sometimes “obscure or bizarrely exegetical” nature of the
kerova,
see S. Elizur, “The Congregation in the Synagogue and the Ancient Qedushta” [Heb], in
Knesset Ezra,
S. Elizur, M. D. Herr, et al., eds.; Laura S. Lieber, “The Rhetoric of Participation: Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry,”
Journal of Religion
90, 2010. For examples of how Yannai’s sequences could open into a more resonant and emblematic mode, see “You, Lord, who are faithful” (pp. 111, 260) and, in the same sequence, poem 7B, “He is human and so will be humbled,” Rabinovitz,
Yannai,
p. 428. Also see “Our eyes are weak with longing” (p. 121) and S. Elizur,
From the Lips,
pp. 10–11. The likening of Yannai’s poems to “a new midrash” is Ernest Simon’s, as quoted by Yehoshua Granat,
Haaretz,
April 29, 2005. The
rahit
is described in Elizur, “The Congregation and the Qedushta” [Heb].

The manuscript of “Angel of Fire” is Bodl. MS Heb. e 73.54. It is based on the weekly reading beginning at Exodus 3:1 and focuses on the second verse of that reading, which serves as a kind of lead-in to the poem (here an epigraph). See Zulay,
The Liturgical Poems of Yannai
[Heb], poem 33, part 7; Rabinovitz,
Yannai
[Heb], poem 46, part 7; see also commentary in Elizur,
A Poem for Every Parasha
[Heb] (Jerusalem, 1999),
Parashat
Tzav,
and Nahum M. Bronznik,
The Liturgical Poems of Yannai: A Commentary
1 [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2000), notes to poem 46. The translation departs in several places from the literal Hebrew in order to preserve the spirit and form of the poem. As Ezra Fleischer has noted with regard to the Hebrew liturgical poetry of late antiquity, “Sometimes what the poet is saying is not important; what’s important is how he says it and the intensity of the magic and the wizardry of the words” (
Yediot aharonot,
March 20, 1987). The translation of the poem here is by the authors. A different translation appears in T. Carmi,
The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse
(New York, 1981).

The
kerova
“Our eyes are weak with longing” is based on the reading starting with Genesis 29:31: “And the Lord saw that Leah was hated,”
The Liturgical Poems of Yannai
[Heb], M. Zulay, ed., supplementary poems to
kerova
17, part 4; poem 27, part 4 in Rabinovitz. Schirmann has a fine brief analysis of this poem in his essay on Yannai, in Schirmann,
Hebrew Poetry and Drama
[Heb]. See also T. Carmi,
Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse.

Quotations by Zulay are as follows: “Mr. Zulay will continue to write the reports,” interview with Zulay’s daughter, Ada Yardeni; “remnant of a vital faith and naiveté,” Zulay, “From Geniza to Geniza,”
Eretz Israel and Its Poetry
[Heb]; “mute orphans,” Zulay, “Between the Walls,”
Eretz Israel and Its Poetry
[Heb]; “the passport of Hebrew literature,” Motza lecture. Information about Zulay’s health is drawn from the interview with Yardeni and from her article “In Memory of My Father” [Heb]. On Zulay’s accomplishment, see S. Elizur, “Fifty Years of Research after Menahem Zulay” [Heb],
Mehkerei Yerushalayim besifrut Ivrit
21, 2007.

Yannai’s
mahzor
has continued to develop. Some half a century after the 1938 Schocken collection a nearly complete edition of the poet’s work (by Z. M. Rabinovitz) was published in two volumes with extensive commentary. New fragments of poems by him have continued to surface.

For more on Fleischer as heir to Zulay, see
Yediot aharonot,
July 25, 1975, interview with Penina Meizlisch; Elizur, “From the Depths” [Heb],
Madda’ei HaYahadut
43, 2006. Fleischer’s quotes are as follows: “uniquely Jewish beauty,” Fleischer,
Yediot aharonot,
March 20, 1987, interview by Zisi Stavi; “The Geniza didn’t change [this] discipline,” Fleischer, “The Cultural Profile of Eastern Jewry” [Heb].

Quotations from Ben Sira are: “those who composed musical psalms,” 44:5; “who have no memorial,” 44:9–10; “maintain the fabric of the world,” 38:26–29.

7. That Nothing Be Lost

The “salt-mine” comparison is Gerson Cohen’s, in “The Reconstruction of Gaonic History,” introduction to the reprint edition of Jacob Mann’s
Texts and Studies in Jewish History and Literature
(New York, 1972).

Information about Worman comes from
Ernest James Worman,
1871
–
1909 (Cambridge, 1910); Reif,
A Jewish Archive;
“Report of the Library Syndicate for the Year Ending December 31, 1909”; and citations below. The account of Abrahams’s trip to Cairo is drawn from Phyllis Abrahams, “The Letters of Israel Abrahams from Egypt and Palestine in 1898,”
Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England
24, 1975. See Jefferson, “The Historical Significance.”

Descriptions of the help Worman gave other scholars are derived from Reif, “A History of the Geniza Collection” [Heb]; Louis Ginzberg, “Preface,”
Geonica
(New York, 1909). In “Geonic Jurisprudence from the Cairo Geniza” (
Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research
63, 1997), Neil Danzig blames Worman for many errors in Ginzberg’s texts. Worman’s own scholarly articles are “Notes on the Jews,”
JQR
18/1, 1905; “Forms of Address in Genizah Letters,”
JQR
19/4, 1907; “The Exilarch Bustani,”
JQR
20/1, 1908; “Two Book-Lists from the Cairo Genizah,”
JQR
20/3, 1908.

The two documents that Worman accounts for here are T-S 18 J 1.10 and T-S 18 J 1.11. Both are transcribed, translated, and discussed in Norman Golb’s “Legal Documents from the Cairo Genizah,”
JSS
20, 1958. Worman’s transcription contains several mistakes; we have replicated the notebook entry as it appears, without correcting those errors.

Descriptions of Mann come from A. M. Habermann, “Jacob Mann—The Man and the Scholar” [Heb], in
Men of the Book and Men of Action: Reflections on Writers, Scholars, Bibliographers, Printers and Book-Dealers
[Heb] (Jerusalem, 1974); Gerson Cohen, “The Reconstruction of Gaonic History,” in Mann,
Texts and Studies;
Victor Reichert, “Jacob Mann, 1888–1940,”
American Jewish Year Book
5702; Dov Nitzani, “Professor Dr. Jacob Mann,” in
Sefer Przemysl
[Heb] (Tel Aviv, 1964); Mark Cohen,
Jewish Self-Government in Medieval Egypt: The Origins of the Office of Head of the Jews, ca.
1065
–
1126 (Princeton, 1980); Menahem Schmelzer, “One Hundred Years of Genizah Discovery and Research in the United States,” in
Studies in Jewish Bibliography and Medieval Hebrew Poetry
(New York, 2006). Mann’s “cautious and laborious … method” is outlined in the preface to his
Texts and Studies.
The account of the value of Mann’s
The Jews
is based on S. D. Goitein, “Preface and Reader’s Guide” to the reprint edition of Jacob Mann,
The Jews in Egypt and in Palestine under the Fatimid Caliphs
(New York, 1970). All quotes from Goitein in this chapter come from this preface.