The Convergence of Judaism and Islam. Religious, Scientific, and Cultural Dimensions

234 r Libby Garshowitz

Along with his objective to “praise, ridicule, arouse love, mock,” Jacob
ben Elazar’s actors have strung together words to make a necklace of song,
love, and beauty that both captivates and titillates the reader. In his col-
lection of love songs, Jacob ben Elazar has included all the elements of
secular Andalusian poetry: luxuriant settings, wine, desire, praise, death,
plaints, and hyperbole. He has also incorporated, in a parodic and alle-
goric manner, the substance of courtly love: a burlesque of the aristocracy,
the lampooning of courtly wooing, quasi-secrecy, and imagination. Above
all, he has made his whimsical characters and situations breathe life and
frolic into this Hebrew mahberet. This work may not shed much light on
Jacob ben Elazar’s own personal life, but perhaps the circumstances that
led his male characters, Yoshefe and Sahar, to “flee,” namely, the downfall
of the elite or flight from one’s own family, may reflect some details of his
own history: personal turmoil or upheaval in the Jewish communities
amid hostile Muslim and Christian host societies with the resultant loss of
Jewish autonomy, scholarship, and culture. And, most likely, this particu-
lar work was intended to imbue the reader with wisdom (diverei hokhma),
knowledge (da ̔at), and perception (derekh tevunot), key features of a
Spanish-Jewish intellectual. However, Jacob ben Elazar has proven the
mettle of his introduction: the Hebrew language can arouse love, mock,
play, sing, tantalize, brood, reflect, and, above all, entertain.

Notes

1. On Dūnash ben Labrat, see Eliyahu Ashtor, The Jews of Moslem Spain, 2 vols. (Phil-
   adelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1973), 1:252–63; Arie Schippers, Spanish Hebrew
   Poetry and the Arabic Literary Tradition (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1994), 50. For a good back-
   ground to medieval Hebrew poetry, see Ross Brann, The Compunctious Poet (Baltimore:
   Johns Hopkins University Press, 1991), 1–22.


2. See Rina Drory, “Literary Contacts and Where to Find Them,” Poetics Today 14
   (1993): 277–302. Her thesis stresses that non-Arabic contacts, especially in Christian
   Spain, also contributed to the literary climate of Jews turning to writing in Hebrew.


3. See Hebrew Poetry in Spain and Provence (hereafter HPSP), 4 vols., ed. Hayyim
   Schirmann (Jerusalem and Tel Aviv: Bialik Institute and Dvir, 1954, 1961), 1:34.


4. See in Schirmann, HPSP, 1:147, #4, hitna ̔ari, hitna ̔ari, based on Isaiah 52:1–2.


5. See Keter Malkhut in Schirmann, HPSP, 1:257–85.


6. See Drory, “Literary Contacts,” 284–87. Jacob ben Elazar, the author of Sefer Me-
   shalim, or Sippurei ’Ahava, was also dependent on benefactors, such as Samuel and Ezra,
   the sons of Judah ben Nathanael in Beaucaire, Provence, who were among Alharizi’s
   patrons.