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This chapter highlights Holocaust poetry in Poland and Hungary. The Holocaust was a subject for most Polish poets after the war. Outrage over the mass killings of Polish Jews was voiced by Antoni Słonimski, who spent the war in exile in England and France; the non-Jewish Władysław Broniewski, whose wife Maria died in Auschwitz; and Tadeusz Różewicz, who was a soldier in the Home Army during the German occupation. Meanwhile, the great majority of Hungarian Jews were assimilated and the Holocaust was a greater shock for them than for their Polish counterparts. The losses of Hungarian Jewry in the period 1941 to 1945 included many writers and poets killed in the last months of 1944 or early 1945, among them Miklós Radnóti. Apart from Radnóti at least five other published Hungarian Jewish poets or poets of Jewish extraction lost their lives in the Holocaust. While most Hungarian readers are familiar with Radnóti's life and death, it is a non-Jewish poet whose poems constitute a central part of the Holocaust canon: János Pilinszky. In the early 1960s, the Holocaust re-emerged in the poetry of the next generation.

This chapter discusses the poetry of Dunash ha-Levi ben Labrat. Dunash came from a distinguished Jewish family of the Eastern Caliphate, and was, according to Moses ibn Ezra, born in Fez, in Morocco, in the first half of the tenth century. He studied under the great Jewish grammarian and philosopher, Sa’adia Gaon, in Baghdad, returned to Fez after Sa’adia’s death (942), and later attached himself to the family of Hasdai ibn Shaprut in Cordoba. It was Dunash who first demonstrated both in theory and in practice how Hebrew could be adapted to the writing of poetry in imitation of Arabic usage. His fame as a grammarian, and as a poet, quickly spread throughout the Jewish communities of Spain. However, only a few of his poems have survived. The chapter then presents two of his poems: Reply to an Invitation to a Feast and A Song for the Sabbath.

This introductory chapter provides an overview of Spanish Hebrew poetry. The revival of Hebrew poetry was a direct consequence of two factors: the residence of the Jews in Muslim lands, and the Jews’ reappraisal of the Hebrew Bible. The Jews of Spain followed their Arabic masters in much of their poetic subject-matter, but they often transmuted it into specifically Jewish material. One encounters often their awareness of the passing of time, of the futility of life, and of the precious quality of the immortal soul. And, above all, one experiences with them their search for the knowledge of God, their sense of dependence on him as the Creator of the world, their consciousness of the relationship between God and the Jewish people, their desire to serve him with all their being, their remorse at their own iniquity, and their torment and their bewilderment at the sufferings of their people. The Spanish period not only saw the efflorescence for the first time since the ‘song of Songs’ of secular Hebrew poetry. It also provided for the first time the framework for the professional Jewish poet.

This chapter examines how the generation born about 1910 found propitious conditions for the creation of a ‘Jewish school’ of Polish literature. Life, including their most inner life, was lived through the Polish language. Yet this life was marked by unexpectedly strong Jewish features. Jews had certainly made themselves felt in Polish literature much earlier. Already at the turn of the century, writers of Jewish descent played an important role in the intellectual elite. Their role was to increase considerably in independent Poland. However, those who desired assimilation had to abide by the tacit understanding that they were not to explore their Jewish experience, at least not in their literature. Thus, the first intellectuals to surface as identifiably Jewish in their work were critics and historians; then came poets. Yet prose writers were significantly absent. Novelists base the substance of their work on their life experience, particularly the experience of youth; the Polonized Jews preferred to leave their past in the dark.

This chapter focuses on the poetry of Isaac Ibn Kalpon. Isaac came from a North African Jewish family and was born in the middle of the tenth century. He lived a while in Cordoba and spent a great deal of his life wandering from one city to another. His poems are full of complaints against his patrons and contemporaries. However, he had a firm friend in his considerably younger contemporary, Samuel ha-Nagid. The chapter then presents Isaac’s poem A Present of Cheese. The poem talks about a ‘dearest friend’ who gifted the poet ‘a portion of cheese’ At the end, the poet asks ‘And what’s the good of cheese, when I am dry with thirst?’ Isaac died some time after 1020.

This chapter addresses the poetry of Solomon Ibn Gabirol. Solomon was born in Malaga in 1021 or 1022, and lived the greater part of his life in Saragossa. From his early years, he was crippled by disease, and his illness is a constant theme of his poetry. He was compelled to live by his writing, and found a sympathetic patron in Yekutiel ben Isaac ibn Hasan, who was executed in 1039. Perhaps as a result of his indisposition, and his consequent sense of inferiority, he was not an easy companion, and he left Saragossa, to die, perhaps in Valencia, between 1053 and 1058. He devoted much of his life to the pursuit of philosophy or ‘wisdom’, in which he found consolation for his physical cares; he was an adherent of the Neoplatonic school. His absorption in the ‘new’ philosophy, however, contributed to his personal unpopularity in the Jewish community of Saragossa. Meanwhile, Solomon’s fame as a poet rests mainly on his liturgical poems, which are masterpieces of concision and delicacy. It was he who introduced into the Hebrew poetic canon the poem addressed to the ‘soul’, by which he generally meant man’s intellectual aspiration to discover God.

This chapter addresses the poetry of Shem Tob ben Palquera. Shem Tob ben Palquera was born in northern Spain in 1225 and died after 1290. He was a follower and renowned exponent of Maimonides, and author of a number of moral and philosophical works. His main achievement as a poet was his rhymed popular philosophical work, Ha-Mebakkesh (The Seeker), which consists of a series of dialogues between the main character and men of different professional and social classes. The chapter then presents Shem Tob ben Palquera’s poem If Fear is Like a Rock. The poem talks about the strength of the poet’s heart amid fear and sorrow. He likens his heart to ‘the moon that shines brighter when the darkness falls’

This chapter explores the poetry of Isaac Ibn Gi’at, who was born in Lucena. Under his spiritual leadership and authority, the city became the leading light of Jewish scholarship throughout the western Mediterranean. He was deeply attached to the family of Samuel ha-Nagid, and when the latter’s son was killed in 1066, he welcomed his family who had fled from Granada into his own home. Isaac was a prolific writer of Talmudic and Biblical commentaries. His poetic fame rests mainly on his liturgical work, in which he displayed familiarity not only with traditional modes of thought, but also with philosophy and the physical sciences. Moses Ibn Ezra was numbered among his pupils. The chapter then looks at Isaac’s poem The Greatness of God.

This chapter examines the poetry of Abraham Ibn Ezra. Abraham ben Meir Ibn Ezra was born in Tudela. His birth may be dated in 1092, and it is possible that he met Judah ha-Levi in Southern Spain some time before they both left that country in 1140. Abraham Ibn Ezra did not set out for Palestine, but journeyed first to Rome. Subsequently, one sees him in Lucca, Pisa, Mantua, Béziers, Narbonne, Bordeaux, Angers, Rouen, and London. In all these places, he endeavoured to bring the culture of the Spanish Jews to those living in Italy, France, and England, and it is primarily due to him that schools of poetry began to flourish in Italy and Provence, which took the Spanish achievement as their model. He was a master of many skills — a mathematician, astronomer, grammarian, and philosopher, as well as a fine expounder of the Biblical text. In contradistinction to many contemporary Jewish thinkers, he was a firm believer in astrology. Ultimately, his humour and satire bring a new note into the poetry of the Spanish school of Hebrew poets. This must be seen against the background of his religious humility before the Creator, which is expressed in some of his finest work.

This chapter explores the poetry of Todros ben Judah Abulafia. Todros ben Judah Halevi Abulafia was born in Toledo in 1247. Alfonso of Castille attracted many Jews to his court, and Todros was among those who sought wealthy patrons in an effort to reach the royal favour, and he did indeed succeed in being received by the king, to whom he dedicated a number of verses. One of his patrons, Don Isaac de la Maleha, was executed by the king in 1279. Todros himself was imprisoned with many other Jews of Castille, and held for ransom. In 1281, however, he was released amid circumstances which are unknown. He appears to have received the approbation of Alfonso’s successor, Sancho IV. The chapter then looks at Todros’s poem From Prison.

This chapter explains the translation of the selected Hebrew poems of the Spanish Jews. Biblical references play a large part in these poems. The making of poetry in Muslim lands was a far different exercise from the making of poetry today. It was predominantly an intellectual, formally precise, operation. Indeed, the metres of the Arabs, adopted by the Jews, were complicated and varied. Rhyme-schemes likewise required the skill of an artist in mosaic for their perfection. Practically all their poems were rhymed. Because of the structure of the semitic languages, whose nouns have possessive suffixes, and whose verbs likewise are conjugated partly by the changing of word-endings, it was not a difficult matter for Jewish and Arab poets to write long poems based entirely on one rhyme.

This chapter studies the poetry of Moses Ibn Ezra. Moses was born not later than 1055 and was one of four distinguished brothers from Granada. There is no record of what became of him during the persecution of the Jews in Granada in 1066, but it may have been at this time that he went to Lucena to study under Isaac ibn Gi’at. At all events, one finds him in Granada again when the Jewish community was re-established there, and he gathered round him a circle of scholars and poets, both Jewish and non-Jewish, among whom was the young Judah ha-Levi. His early poetic achievement in Granada received great acclaim. Moses died between 1135 and 1140, and he spent his last years in Christian Spain, longing for the physical and intellectual environment of his birthplace. In addition to his poetical work, Moses ibn Ezra wrote a comprehensive treatise on poetry, and a philosophical work, called ‘The Bed of Spices’

This chapter focuses on the poetry of Joseph Ibn Zabara. Joseph ben Meir Ibn Zabara was born in Barcelona in 1140. He appears to have lived there for most of his life, following the profession of physician. His main work, Sefer Sha’ashuim (The Book of Delights), is the first major Hebrew imitation of the Arabic makam literature, i.e. a romantic collection of stories attached to a main theme. His book is in rhymed prose interspersed with short poems, and contains popular fables as well as long dissertations on medical and anatomical details. The chapter then presents Joseph’s poem The Doctor. The date of his death is not known.

This chapter assesses the poetry of Samuel ha-Nagid. Samuel ha-Levi hen Joseph ibn Nagrela was born in Cordoba in 993. After the invasion of the North African Berbers in 1013, he was forced to leave Cordoba, which was sacked, and he settled in Malaga, which was, at this time, part of the Berber province of Granada. The story goes that, while in Malaga, his skill as an Arabic calligraphist came to the attention of the vizier Abu al-Kasim ibn al-Arif, and he was appointed the latter’s private secretary. Before the vizier died, he recommended Samuel to Habbus, king of Granada, who made him vizier in 1027. The Jews henceforth called him Nagid (Prince) as a mark of his eminence within the Jewish community. Samuel was, at one and the same time, poet, rabbi, statesman, and general, and distinguished in each one of these fields. His poems are some of the finest in the whole range of Hebrew literature, and his expertise in the elucidation of Biblical and rabbinic literature was acknowledged by all. His poems are noteworthy for the way in which he was able to inform the artificiality and occasional preciosity of construction with deep and obviously sincere content. Ultimately, his long martial poems are unique in the poetic output of the Spanish Jews.

This chapter discusses the poetry of Judah ha-Levi. The peak of Spanish Hebrew poetry was reached in the works of Judah ben Samuel ha-Levi. He excelled in all the media of his art, and he is generally considered to be the greatest of all post-Biblical Hebrew poets. He was born in Tudela not later than 1075. Tudela was close to the Christian part of Spain, and it is possible that as a young boy he had some experience of life in that part of the peninsula. However, he desired to pursue his learning in southern Spain among the Jews living under Muslim rule. And so he came to Granada, where he was befriended by Moses Ibn Ezra. Judah ha-Levi believed that the redemption of the Jews would be accomplished by their return to the Holy Land; he himself determined to go on pilgrimage and settle there. He met with opposition both to his personal departure and to his ideas. But his belief became for him a strong emotional desire, and this theme forms one of the most characteristic elements of his work, both in his poems and in his philosophical dialogue, ‘The Kuzari’

This chapter begins by studying paramedic Fanny Sołomian's book The Ghetto and the Stars which was published in 1995. Her recollections belong among the most important books about the Shoah. She shows how women were treated as sexual property, individual and communal, which added another duty for the battalion ‘doctor’, namely, innumerable abortions. She also describes the courts martial and executions without trial. The chapter then looks at The Memoir of Maria Koper. The manuscript, found and edited by Henryk Grynberg, was written by a young Polish Jew who had hidden in the countryside near Rawa Mazowiecka for two years. The chapter also considers Nathan Gross's series of short essays, Poets and the Shoah, which provides a reminder of the poets and poems that testify to the Shoah.

This chapter examines the poetry of Joseph Ibn Abithur. Joseph was born in the middle of the tenth century in Merida and lived in Cordoba, which was the centre of Muslim and Jewish civilisation in Spain at this time. There is a tradition, preserved by Abraham ibn Daoud, that he gave an Arabic explanation of the Talmud to the Caliph al-Hakim II. Joseph was surrounded by controversy. He was forced to leave Spain after making an unsuccessful bid for the intellectual leadership of the Jewish community, and he spent the latter part of his life journeying in the lands of the Middle East. He is known as a poet mainly for his liturgical work, much of which was adopted into the prayer-books of the Provencal, Catalonian, and North African Jews. Ultimately, his poetry is more akin to that of the piyyutim of Eastern Mediterranean Jewry than to the ‘new’ poetry beginning to flourish in Spain. The chapter then looks at three of his poems: Sanctification, A Song for the New Year, and Lament on the Devastation of the Land of Israel (1012).

This chapter assesses the poetry of Judah al-Harizi. Like Joseph Ibn Zabara, Judah al-Harizi’s fame depends mainly on his collection of rhymed prose narratives, known as ‘Tahkemoni’. He was born in Spain in the second half of the twelfth century, and the end of that century saw him living in Provence where he was engaged in the work of translation from Arabic into Hebrew, in which field he attained great eminence. He was a devoted follower of Maimonides, began a translation of his commentary to the Mishna, and completed a translation of his great philosophical work, ‘The Guide for the Perplexed’. In addition to his secular poetry, Judah al-Harizi also wrote poems expressing religious devotion to the Holy Land, on the pattern of those of Judah ha-Levi. The chapter then looks at two of his poems: A Secret Kept and The Lute Sounds.