266 CHAPTER NINE
had set into the liturgy, so that olderpiyyutcycles were frequently reused—
fortunately for us, because this guaranteed their preservation, at least long
enough to be deposited in the genizah of the Palestinian synagogue of Fustat
(Old Cairo).^65 It was there that massive quantities of late antique and early
medieval Palestinianpiyyutcame to light at the end of the nineteenth century,
material previously almost wholly unknown because in the high Middle Ages,
the Babylonian rabbinic hostility to thepiyyutprevailed throughout the Jewish
world, so that the oldpiyyutcycles largely fell into desuetude.
It is not known how widespread thepiyyutwas in sixth century Palestine.
It seems a priori likely that only wealthy urban communities could afford the
services of a full-timepayyetan, as was true also of professional cantors in the
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries in eastern Europe amd America, or
professional organist/choir masters in the eighteenth century in western Eu-
rope .But there is no reason why rural communities should not have occasion-
ally commissionedpiyyutimfor special occasions, or that, like famous orators
during the high Roman Empire, famouspayyetanimmight not occasionally
have gone on tour.^66 Perhaps there were also semiprofessionalpayyetanim
working outside the cities, like the homespunba’alei tefillahand church or-
ganists of later periods, but their works, if any, have apparently not been pre-
served, so we know nothing of them.
Thepiyyutimwere usually composed in Hebrew, are characterized by an
obscure and allusive style, and make frequent use of neologisms.^67 The striking
formal resemblance of somepiyyutimto thekontakion, a type of Christian
liturgical poetry written in Greek and, like thepiyyut, introduced in the sixth
century, would benefit from a more thorough examination than it has so far
received.^68 What is certain, though, is that some of thepayyetanimwere intel-
lectuals of the first rank, masters of biblical and rabbinic lore, allusions to
which often seem the main point of their work .Thepiyyutis above all a
learned poetry that could be fully appreciated only by the highly educated
and highly refined.
This point requires emphasis, since it is often assumed that thepiyyutwas
in general readily comprehended by its real audience, the men (and women
and children?) who attended synagogues in places like Tiberias, Sepphoris,
Caesarea, and Bet Shean-Scythopolis in the sixth and seventh centuries.^69 At
first glance, this is a fair point: after all, why usepiyyutimif few people under-
(^65) See Fleischer,Shirat Haqodesh, pp .14–22.
(^66) For similar speculation, see Fleischer,Shirat Haqodesh,p.54.
(^67) See in general J .Yahalom,Poetic Language in the Early Piyyut(Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985).
(^68) See H .Schirmann, “Hebrew Liturgical Poetry and Christian Hymnology,”JQR44 (1953):
123–61; Yahalom, “Piyyut as Poetry,” pp .121–25 .Schirmann was mainly interested in arguing
that Romanos the Melode, the main composer ofkontakia, who was allegedly of Jewish origin,
was influenced by thepiyyut; but the chronological issues are at present unresolvable.
(^69) See, e.g., Rabinowitz,Liturgical Poems, pp .72–76; Yahalom,Poetic Language, pp .12–13;
Schirmann, “Yannai Ha-payyetan,” p .50 (with reservations).