258 r Merav Rosenfeld-Hadad
Islam (Kahen 1995, 415). The Ottoman Empire became the next, and to
date, the last, of the great Islamic world states. In this same year, the Jews
were expelled from Spain, a trauma that left its mark on Jewish life for
many centuries. A number of places within the Ottoman Empire became
the home of large and important Jewish communities formed by both
the already existing Jewish population together with the new exiles from
Spain. The spiritual crisis of the post-exile experience led to a remarkable
engagement in Jewish mysticism, Kabbalah, which was accompanied by
rituals of singing. This was an attempt by the Jewish people, as a nation,
to understand the meaning of this last trauma while establishing a new
life under the wings of a new empire and hoping for a better future. In
addition, the void caused by the departure from the rich cultural milieu
of Spain was filled, for these Jews, by Ottoman Turkish culture (Tietze and
Yahalom 1995, 11). In this new environment Najarah’s poetry emerged,
reflecting the influence of the Turkish culture as well as Arabic.
The poet and musician Israel Ben Mosheh Najarah (1555–1625) mirrors
in his poetry both a strong bond with his predecessors, the poets of Mus-
lim Spain, and a new poetic form, style, and content. His work symbolizes
a significant phase in the history of Hebrew religious poetry, inasmuch as
it represents, for the first time, a simple poetic version of the genre that is
more accessible to all members of the community (Benayahu 1990, 281).
Najarah’s poetry served as a model for an entirely new school of poets in
subsequent years, a school that still exists today in Hebrew religious po-
etry. There is no Arab-Jewish poet of religious poetry who has not been
influenced by Najarah (Benayahu 1990, 283). The Babylonians’ admira-
tion for this poet is expressed through the inclusion of eighty-one of his
poems, which have been identified in the Mishaf and thus make him the
most popular poet in this collection.
Arabo-Islamic Influence: Text and Music
Both Arabic secular poetry and mysticism continued to be influential
in Najarah’s poetry. It reflects a combination of strong Jewish identity,
steeped in Jewish suffering and longing for redemption and elements
taken from the wider cultural environment, such as Arabic poetic genres
and melodies (Tietze and Yahalom 1995, 19). Indeed, the content of his
poems are no longer similar to Dunash’s serene descriptions nor to Ibn
Gabirol’s refined expression of the sensitive worshipper who experiences