Piyyuṭ and Midrash: Form, Genre, and History [1 ed.] 9783666570803, 9783525570807

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Journal of Ancient Judaism Supplements Edited by Armin Lange, Bernard M. Levinson and Vered Noam Advisory Board Katell Berthelot (University of Aix-Marseille), George Brooke (University of Manchester), Jonathan Ben Dov (University of Haifa), Beate Ego (University of Osnabruck), Ester Eshel (Bar-Ilan University), Heinz-Josef Fabry (University of Bonn), Steven Fraade (Yale University), Maxine L. Grossman (University of Maryland), Christine Hayes (Yale University), Catherine Hezser (University of London), Alex Jassen (University of Minnesota), James L. Kugel (Bar-Ilan University), Jodi Magness (University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill), Carol Meyers, (Duke University), Eric Meyers (Duke University), Hillel Newman (University of Haifa), Christophe Nihan (University of Lausanne), Lawrence H. Schiffman (New York University), Konrad Schmid (University of Zurich), Adiel Schremer (Bar-Ilan University), Michael Segal (Hebrew University of Jerusalem), Aharon Shemesh (Bar-Ilan University), Gunter Stemberger (University of Vienna), Kristin De Troyer (University of St. Andrews), Azzan Yadin (Rutgers University) Volume 30

Tzvi Novick

Piyyuṭ and Midrash Form, Genre, and History

Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht

Bibliografische Information der Deutschen Bibliothek: Die Deutsche Nationalbibliothek verzeichnet diese Publikation in der Deutschen Nationalbibliografie; detaillierte bibliografische Daten sind im Internet über http://dnb.de abrufbar. © 2019, Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht GmbH & Co. KG, Theaterstraße 13, D-37073 Göttingen Alle Rechte vorbehalten. Das Werk und seine Teile sind urheberrechtlich geschützt. Jede Verwertung in anderen als den gesetzlich zugelassenen Fällen bedarf der vorherigen schriftlichen Einwilligung des Verlages. Satz und Produktion: Datagrafix GmbH, Berlin und NEUNPLUS1 - Verlag + Service GmbH, Berlin Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht Verlage | www.vandenhoeck-ruprecht-verlage.com ISSN 2197-0092 ISBN 978-3-666-57080-3

Table of Contents Acknowledgements�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������7 Chapter 1 Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ�������������������������������������������� 9 Introduction��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������9 The Petiḥ ta��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������12 Multiple Petiḥ ta Units��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������17 Voices in the Biblical Past��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������25 Voices in the Eschaton�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������30 God and Israel as Speakers������������������������������������������������������������������������������������33 The Voice of the Performer�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������35 The Voice of the Audience������������������������������������������������������������������������������������37 “When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance��������������42 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������52 Chapter 2 Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ������������������������������������������������������� 53 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������53 Analogical Constructions in Piyyuṭ and Midrash���������������������������������������������53 Analogy as a Marker of Dependence in Midrash����������������������������������������������59 Use of Verses in Piyyuṭ and Midrash�������������������������������������������������������������������62 Iterative Verse Headers in Tibat Marqe���������������������������������������������������������������68 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������75 Chapter 3 Piyyuṭ as Prayer: The Presence of God in Midrash and Piyyuṭ���������������������������� 79 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������79 Divine Attentiveness: Abraham’s Anxiety�����������������������������������������������������������80 Divine Attentiveness: The Misery of Leah����������������������������������������������������������86 Divine Speech: The Three of Yannai’s Qedushta for Genesis 15:1�������������������89 Divine Modesty������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������92 Conclusion��������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������96 Chapter 4 The Serial Narrative����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������97 Introduction������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������97 The Biblical Past as Exemplum Series�����������������������������������������������������������������98 The Biblical Past in Relation to the Historical Present�����������������������������������100

6

Table of Contents

The Fluidity of the Historical Present ��������������������������������������������������������������108 The Historical Present and the Liturgical Present�������������������������������������������110 The Judgement Holidays�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������113 Historical Present as Performative Context������������������������������������������������������122 Genetic Serial Narratives ������������������������������������������������������������������������������������131 Distribution of Serial Narratives������������������������������������������������������������������������142 Christian Serial Narratives ���������������������������������������������������������������������������������143 Conclusion������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������148 Chapter 5 Kingdoms in Serial Narratives���������������������������������������������������������������������������������149 Daniel’s Four Kingdoms and Foreign Kings ����������������������������������������������������149 The Four Kingdoms in Rabbinic Literature and Piyyuṭ��������������������������������� 153 The Problem of Egypt������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������160 A Sitz im Leben of Kingdom Discourse������������������������������������������������������������165 Chapter 6 Salvation History and Saving Prayers��������������������������������������������������������������������169 Pre-rabbinic Background������������������������������������������������������������������������������������169 Rabbinic Literature����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������173 Liturgical Salvation Histories: Mishnah Ta‘anit and Qillir�����������������������������178 A Samaritan Heilsgeschichte������������������������������������������������������������������������������187 Chapter 7 The Serial Confession�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������191 Pre-rabbinic Background������������������������������������������������������������������������������������191 Rabbinic Literature����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������195 Qillir: Serial Confession as Lament��������������������������������������������������������������������200 Yannai and Pre-Classical Piyyuṭ: The Serial Confession and the Intercessor�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������207 Serial Tragedies�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������212 Conclusion�����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������215 Glossary����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������219 Bibliography���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������221 Text Editions (Rabbinic and Para-Rabbinic Literature)���������������������������������221 Other Literature����������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������222 Index���������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������233

Acknowledgements Earlier versions of parts of four of this book’s seven chapters were written for conference presentations. I thank Rachel Neis and Rebecca Wollenberg for the opportunity to present material now in Chapter 1 at the University of Michigan; Michal Bar-Asher Siegal and Bernard Septimus for collaborating with me on an Association for Jewish Studies conference panel that featured part of the argument in Chapter 2; Jeremy Dauber for hosting a conference at Columbia University at which I presented the germ of Chapter 3; and Barry Wimpfheimer and Mira Balberg for allowing me to workshop some of the material that makes up Chapter 4 at Northwestern University. I was able to take advantage of a leave from the University of Notre Dame to produce drafts of the final three chapters. I offer special thanks to Avi Shmidman, who read and offered copious comments on a preliminary draft of the complete manuscript, and to Elizabeth Sunshine, who copyedited the final draft and corrected many errors. A note on citations and translations: For the Hebrew Bible, I make use of the NJPS translation, but often diverge from it, typically for the sake of forefronting the features of the verse that are of interest to the rabbinic or liturgical text. For rabbinic texts and piyyuṭim, I cite parenthetically to the page number of the standard (critical) edition. Unless otherwise indicated, the texts themselves either come from the cited edition or have been modified in accordance with the evidence of the best manuscripts, typically as transcribed in the online database of the Historical Dictionary Project of the Academy of the Hebrew Language (Maagarim). For the Dead Sea Scrolls I use Qimron’s edition. The editions that I have used are listed in the bibliography. The translations of all post-biblical texts are my own.

.‫אֹודה‬ ֶ ‫ ּולְ ָך‬/ ‫ יָ ַדי ְּתלַ ֵּמד‬/ ‫מֹועד‬ ֵ ‫ ְמ ַׁש ֵּתל ְּב‬/ ‫עֹומד‬ ֵ ‫צּור‬ .‫אֹודה‬ ֶ ‫ ּולְ ָך‬/ ‫ ֲחטֹוב ּכְ ַת ְבנִ ית‬/ ‫ ָּבנִ ים ְּב ַמ ְר ִּבית‬/ ‫ָּבנֹות ּכְ זָ וִ ית‬ .‫אֹודה‬ ֶ ‫ ּולְ ָך‬/ ‫ ָׂשא לָ ּה ָּפנִ ים‬/ ‫ ּכְ ֶאלֶ ף ָמגִ ּנִ ים‬/ ‫יֹוׁש ֶבת גַ ּנִ ים‬ ֶ

Chapter 1 Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Introduction The Jewish community of late antique (Roman and Byzantine) Palestine produced two great corpora, rabbinic literature and piyyuṭ (liturgical poetry). Neither corpus is exclusively exegetical in form or aim, but biblical exegesis and allusion loom large in both, and the Bible is the connective tissue that binds them. Piyyuṭ has deep roots, tracing back to the Second Temple period, but it flourished and acquired its distinctive character in what the dean of piyyuṭ studies, Ezra Fleischer, called its classical period, between roughly the sixth and ninth centuries, when piyyuṭ made a formal break from poetic tradition by adopting rhyme.1 Piyyuṭ in this period also began to incorporate rabbinic literature, especially rabbinic exegetical and homiletical literature (“midrash”), to a massive and unprecedented degree.2 It is this development that underlies the questions at the heart of this book: How does classical piyyuṭ receive midrash? How is classical (and to a lesser extent, pre-classical) piyyuṭ continuous with midrash, and in what characteristic ways does it adapt or otherwise diverge from midrash in engaging with the biblical text and the interpretive tradition? What does the reception of midrash in piyyuṭ reveal about the midrash corpus itself? Formidable obstacles stand in the way of this project of reception and comparison. The generic differences between the corpora present one such obstacle. In part, the generic differences are precisely what motivate the project: The fact that piyyuṭ, as poetry, is more formally constrained than midrash, and that piyyuṭ, as prayer, is directed, at least prima facie, to a very different audience than midrash texts, makes it interesting to ask how piyyuṭ integrates and adapts traditions from rabbinic literature. But generic differences also stand, at least in part, in the way of comparison. In the case of piyyuṭ, we possess scripts for performance, complete with deictics that gesture to the speaker, the addressee, 1  See Ezra Fleischer, Hebrew Liturgical Poetry in the Middle Ages (Jerusalem: Keter, 1975), 115–36. 2  The identification of the sources of piyyuṭ is of course a fraught undertaking, and even when a piyyuṭ includes substantive and formal features familiar from a particular rabbinic text, it is possible that the piyyuṭ depends not on the rabbinic text itself, but on a different expression of the tradition to which the rabbinic text witnesses.

10

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

and the circumstances. Rabbinic texts, by contrast, preserve the rare transcript (or purported transcript) of specific performances, and more commonly, in the case of the homiletical literature that is particularly important for classical piyyuṭ, material that may have been employed in homiletical performances, but that clearly does not offer scripts for or transcripts of performances. Insofar as the project centers on the narrow question of the ways in which piyyuṭ receives midrash texts, these differences become relatively unimportant, but the broader comparative project runs the risk of assigning too much weight to differences that stem largely from incidental aspects of transmission history. Another important obstacle is the internal variety of both corpora. Classical piyyuṭ incorporates numerous different genres and sub-genres, and the most important macroform in classical piyyuṭ , the qedushta, itself divides into units that differ starkly from one another. In the case of Yannai’s qedushta, the One typically features stately (metrical) prayer, the Five often has a homiletical character, the Six looks something like an expanded targum, and the Eight approaches ecstatic prayer.3 In the case of Qillir, Yannai’s great successor, there are also characteristic differences among the units, but these differences are different again from those in Yannai’s qedushta. The internal variation of the piyyuṭ corpus becomes still larger when we include in our purview the roughly contemporaneous corpus of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poems, which feature not only a different language of composition but also, in general, a distinct Sitz im Leben, more distant from prayer proper.4 The midrash corpus is just as varied, encompassing exegetical texts that hew closely to the lemma-comment form, exegetical narratives that rewrite rather than annotate, and homiletical texts that include, as in the case of the qedushta, internally differentiated macroforms. Dating poses a third obstacle. We may be relatively confident that the payṭanim of the period of classical piyyuṭ knew tannaitic collections as collections, and probably also—but here with less confidence—early amoraic collections of exegetical and homiletical material like Genesis Rabbah and Pesiqta de Rab Kahana. But midrash production continued into the period of classical piyyuṭ and beyond, and many later midrash texts rework earlier ones, or otherwise innovate, in ways

3  For a helpful introduction to Yannai’s qedushta, see Laura S. Lieber, Yannai on Genesis: An Invitation to Piyyut (Cincinatti: Hebrew Union College Press, 2010). 4  On this corpus see Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity: Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999), 204–19. On points of contact between this corpus and classical piyyuṭ see Michael Rand, “Observations on the Relationship between JPA Poetry and the Hebrew Piyyut Tradition—The Case of the Kinot,” in Jewish and Christian Liturgy and Worship: New Insights into its History and Interaction (JCPS 15; ed. Albert Gerhards and Clemens Leonhard; Leiden: Brill, 2007), 127–44.

Introduction

11

that in certain respects evoke piyyuṭ .5 These later texts are difficult to date, both absolutely and in relation to classical piyyuṭ .6 Both because of these methodological challenges and, more importantly, because it better suits the project of reception and comparison, at least at this stage, the chapters that follow involve case studies, close readings, and cataloguings, as much as arguments, and only on occasion venture generalizations. The two parts of the book are designed, from a methodological perspective, to complement each other. The first part, encompassing the first three chapters, begins with generic features of piyyuṭ that to one degree or another distinguish it from the midrash corpus, and considers how these features become manifest in points of contact between the corpora. The starting point of the first part is thus difference.7 The second part, encompassing the final four chapters, takes up a specific literary genre (or macroform), the serial narrative, which is attested in late biblical and Second Temple literature but becomes far more prevalent in rabbinic literature and in piyyuṭ. I devote one chapter to an overview of aspects of serial narratives in midrash and piyyuṭ, and subsequent chapters to sub-genres that trace to late biblical literautre. The starting point of the second part thus occurs outside midrash and piyyuṭ, and considers the two corpora alike as links in a biblically determined chain of interpretive composition. Following the current chapter, the second and third chapters of the first part of the book consider the extent and import of two major differences between piyyuṭ and midrash texts, both briefly noted above. First, piyyuṭim are poetic, to one degree or another, while midrash texts are, to one degree or another, in prose, so that formal constraints loom larger in piyyuṭ than in midrash. Second, piyyuṭim 5  Consider, e.g., the greater salience of mythic motifs in later Tanḥ uma midrashim, per Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, “From Mythic Motifs to Sustained Myth: The Revision of Rabbinic Traditions in Medieval Midrashim,” HTR 89 (1996), 131–59, in relation to the prominence of myth in Qillir’s poetry, on which see Joseph Yahalom, Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 226–58. 6  For cases where late midrash texts manifest dependence on classical piyyuṭ see Shulamit Elizur, “From piyyut to midrash,” in Rabbi Mordechai Breuer Festschrift (ed. Moshe Bar-Asher; 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Akademon, 1992), 383–97; Yehoshua Granat, “Before ‘In the Beginning’: Preexistence in Early Piyyut Against the Background of its Sources” (Ph.D. diss.; Hebrew University, 2009), 70–82; Eden Hakohen, “On the Relationship Between Midrashim on Esther and Qillir’s Expansion-Piyyutim asaperah el ḥ ok and amal ve-ravakh,” Netu‘im 7 (2000), 45–74; Tzvi Novick, “Liturgy and Law: Approaches to Halakhic Material in Yannai’s Kedushta’ot,” JQR 103 (2013), 487–88; and especially Joseph Yahalom, ‫“[ הרקע הפייטני של מדרש תדשא ובני חוגו‬The Payyṭanic Background to Midrash Tadshe and the Members of its Circle”] (forthcoming). 7  The third part of Granat, “Before ‘In the Beginning,’” especially the third chapter therein, identifies characteristic ways in which piyyuṭ texts rework earlier exegetical traditions about things created before the world: extension, selection, and combination. Insofar as I am interested in this book in differences, my focus is on differences attributable to the distinctive generic features of piyyuṭ . Granat attends to such differences less systematically elsewhere in the dis­ sertation, especially in chapter 5.

12

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

belong, as a general rule, to the genre of prayer, even if elements within and outside of large piyyuṭ macroforms are better understood in other ways. The current chapter focuses on the topic of performativity.8 It sidesteps the question of how performances of piyyuṭ before synagogue audiences resembled and differed from homiletical performances recorded or assumed in rabbinic texts, even if the tradition of piyyuṭ performance derives in part from homiletical performance practices in which rabbis participated. There is too little evidence about homiletical performance, and still less about a continuous tradition of performance, to put this question front and center. Only in the next two sections does the chapter aim seriously to get behind the homiletical texts to the circumstances of their performance. The first section briefly introduces the petiḥ ta. The second argues that a salient feature of the homiletical midrashim that seems clearly to distance them from their performative context may in fact be a reflection of that context, and thus that the midrash texts may be a better window into homiletical performance than is sometimes supposed. The remainder of the chapter maps out, with a comparative eye, the performative elements indicated in the texts themselves, and especially the element of voice. Each section considers a different set of voices, or of narrative circumstances impacting voice. The analysis in these sections sets the stage for the final section, a case study centered on a piyyuṭ that features a voice at once related to but notably different from that of the rabbinic homilist.

The Petiḥ ta As noted above, rabbinic Palestine of the amoraic period has bequeathed to us edited exegetical collections known in rabbinics scholarship as “homiletical midrashim.” In contrast with all of the exegetical works of the tannaitic period, and some of the amoraic period, which proceed through the relevant biblical book (more or less) verse by verse, explicating each in turn, the homi8  In a series of recent articles, Laura Lieber has addressed many aspects of piyyuṭ performance in late antiquity. See Laura S. Lieber, “The Rhetoric of Participation: Experiential Elements of Early Hebrew Liturgical Poetry,” Journal of Religion 90 (2010), 119–47; eadem, “Setting the Stage: The Theatricality of Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity,” JQR 104 (2014), 537–72; eadem, “Theater of the Holy: Performative Elements of Late Ancient Hymnography,” HTR 108 (2015), 327–55; eadem, “On the Road with the Mater Dolorosa: An Exploration of Mother-Son Discourse Performance,” JECS 24 (2016), 265–91; eadem, “Stage Mothers: Performing the Matriarchs in Genesis Rabbah and Yannai,” in Genesis Rabbah in Text and Context (TSAJ 166; ed. Sarit Kattan Gribetz et al.; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016), 155–73. See also Loren Roberts Spielman, “Sitting with Scorners: Jewish Attitudes toward Roman Spectacle Entertainment from the Herodian Period through the Muslim Conquest” (Ph.D. diss., The Jewish Theological Seminary, 2010), 329–61.

The Petiḥ ta

13

letical midrashim—Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta de Rab Kahana paragimatically—appear to be structured by the (or a) synagogue lection, either from the Pentateuch (the seder) or from the Prophets (the hafṭ arah). The typical unit in a homiletical midrash begins with a series of subunits centered on a verse that has usually been understood to represent the first or close to the first substantial verse of the lection (to the exclusion of quotation-marking verses, e.g., “And the Lord spoke to Moses saying”). These subunits all share the same form, which goes in the scholarship (not in the rabbinic corpus itself) by the Aramaic term petiḥ ta (“opening”), on which more momentarily. After the petiḥ ta series comes a relatively brief collection of comments on (some of) the verses of the lection, in verse order. This section is called (in the rabbinic texts themselves) the “body” or gufa. The unit concludes, in most cases, with a messianic peroration. This account of the homiletical midrashim and their characteristic macroform is rough and loose, and we will have occasion in the continuation to nuance it. The petiḥ ta is by far the most common homiletical form to have emerged from rabbinic Palestine of the classical period. It begins with a “distant verse,” not from the lection, often from Proverbs, Psalms, or the Song of Songs. After quoting the distant verse, the homilist expounds upon it in such a way that he eventually arrives at the first substantial verse of the lection. Below is an example. ‫ויהי אחר הדברים האלה והאלהים נסה את אברהם נתתה ליריאיך נס להתנוסס ניסיון אחר ניסיון אחר‬ ‫ניסיון גידלון אחר גידלון אחר גידלון בשביל לנסותן בעולם בשביל לגדלן בעולם כנס הזו שלספינה כל‬ ‫כך מפני קושט סלה בשביל שתתקשט מידת הדין בעולם שאם יאמר אדן למי שהוא רוצה מעשיר למי‬ ‫שהוא רוצה הוא מעני למי שרוצה הוא עושה מלך אברהם כשרצה עשאו עשיר כשרצה עשאו מלך‬ ‫יכול אתה להושיבו ולאמר לו יכול אתה לעשות כמה שעשה אבינו אברהם הוא אמר לך מה עשה‬ ‫ותמר לו ואברהם בן מאת שנה בהולד וגו' ואחר כל הצער הזה נאמר לו קח נא את בנך ולא עיכב‬ ]‫נתתה ליריאיך נס להתנוסס [והאלהים נסה את אברהם‬ “And it was after these things, and God tested (‫ )נסה‬Abraham” (Gen 22:1). “You gave those who fear you a banner to be bannered about (‫( ”)נס להתנוסס‬Ps 60:6a). Raising (‫ )נסיון‬after raising after raising, i.e., enlarging (‫ )גידלון‬after enlarging after enlarging, to raise them in the world, i.e., to enlarge them in the world, like the mast (‫ )נס‬of a ship. All of this “because of truth (‫( ”)קשט‬Ps 60:6b),” in order that the measure of justice might be adorned (‫ )תתקשט‬in the world. For if a person should say: Him whom he wishes he makes wealthy, him whom he wishes he makes poor, him whom he wishes he makes king; when he wished, he made Abraham wealthy, and when he wished, he made Abraham king—then you can respond to him: Could you do what our father Abraham did? He will say: What did he do? And you will tell him: “And Abraham was one hundred years old [when Isaac was born to him]” (Gen 21:5) And after all this trouble, it was told

14

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

him: “Take now your son” (Gen 22:2), and he did not delay. “You gave those who fear you a banner to be bannered about.” [“And God tested Abraham.”]9

This homily attaches to the story of the binding of Isaac in Genesis 22. If we set aside the opening quotation of Gen 22:1, which is extraneous to the petiḥ ta form, the homily begins with a quotation from Ps 60:6. The homilist takes the verse to convey a general rule, that God elevates the righteous in the world for the sake of justice. That is to say, he gives the righteous occasions to prove their righteousness, so that no one will accuse God of whimsy when he rewards them.10 After this general opening, the homily shifts to Abraham in particular, and imagines someone wondering what justifies God’s decision to enrich Abraham, and to make him king.11 God gives “you” the response to this challenge: You can point to the fact that Abraham was willing to sacrifice the son born to him after years of barrenness.12 The homily ends by quoting the begin9  Gen. Rab. 55:1 (584–85). 10  The exegesis reads the forms of ‫ נס‬in Gen 22:1 and Ps 60:6 in their plain senses, to indicate a test, and a banner or mast, but also as instantiations of ‫“( נשא‬to raise”). The threefold “raising” (“Raising after raising after raising”) corresponds to the three forms of ‫ נס‬in Ps 60:6: once in the word ‫נס‬, and twice, implicitly, in the two letters ‫ ס‬of the word ‫להתנוסס‬. Cf., e.g., the dual interpretation of the duplication in ‫ ויתמהמה‬in Gen. Rab. 50:11 (528), with the same exegetical construction and the same morphology: ‫‘“ ויתמהמה תמהון אחר תמהון‬And he delayed’ (Gen 19:16). Wonderment after wonderment.” The word ‫ קשט‬in Ps 60:6 is also cashed out twice, first as a form of the verb ‫“( התקשט‬to adorn”), and second, via the plain sense of the word— “truth, rightness”—as the measure of justice, i.e., God’s judicial capacity. Cf., e.g., the term ‫דינא‬ ‫“ דקושטא‬judgment of truth,” meaning strict justice, in Lev. Rab. 10:1 (196). 11 That Abraham was wealthy is clear enough from Gen 12:16; 13:2, 6, and see especially 14:23. The subtler basis for Abraham’s kingship lies chiefly in Gen 23:6, and secondarily in 14:17. On the latter verse see Gen. Rab. 43:5 (419). 12  I think it likely that the homily represents a secondary reflection upon a tannaitic debate recorded in the continuation of the same unit of Genesis Rabbah, in Gen. Rab. 55:6 (588). Commenting on the word ‫ נסה‬in Gen 22:1, R. Yose the Galilean and R. Akiva disagree. R. Yose the Galilean says: ‫“ גידלו כנס הזו שלספינה‬He elevated him like the mast of a ship.” This language— elevation (‫)גידלו‬, the mast of the ship—is incorporated almost unchanged into our petiḥ ta. R. Akiva says thus: ‫‘“ ניסה אותו וודיי שלא יהו אומ' הממו עירבבו ולא היה יודע מה לעשות‬He tested’ him, in the plain sense, so that they shouldn’t say: He rattled him, he confused him, and he did not know what to do.” According to R. Akiva, the Torah specifies that God tested Abraham in order to refute the charge that Abraham did not obey God out of piety, but only because God flustered and discomfited him. (The attribution of this view to R. Akiva correlates with the finding of the first chapter of Dov Weiss, Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism [Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016], that opposition to protest against God in the tannaitic period attached especially to the figure of R. Akiva.) How, precisely, the words “and God tested Abraham” represent a response to this charge is unclear. Perhaps R. Akiva takes these words to convey that God had tested Abraham previously, and so gave him experience (‫ )נסיון‬as one tested, so that Abraham was not flustered by this most difficult test. In any case, our petiḥ ta appears to borrow from R. Akiva’s opinion the view that Gen 22:1 is intended as a refutation of

The Petiḥ ta

15

ning of Genesis 22. The closing quotation from Genesis 22 is in fact missing from the manuscripts, but Joseph Heinemann, in one of his treatments of the petiḥ ta form, nevertheless classifies this homily as a petiḥ ta, and with reason.13 Whether the homily ends by quoting Gen 22:1, it typifies the petiḥ ta form in its movement from a distant verse (here Ps 60:6) to the topic at hand (Genesis 22). We will have more to say about the nature of the petiḥ ta, and this passage in particular, below. As Heinemann and other scholars have noted, the effect of the petiḥ ta as a rhetorical exercise seems to turn on the gap between the starting point and the destination: The distant verse that opens the unit must be opaque. Interesting evidence for a conscious attempt to produce opacity comes from another petiḥ ta later in Genesis Rabbah, on the beginning of the Joseph story (Gen 37:1). ‫בזעקך יצילוך קיבוציך וגו' תני כינוסו וכינוס בניו הצילוהו מיד עשו ואת כלם ישא רוח יקח הבל זה עשו‬ '‫והחוסה בי ינחל ארץ וירש הר קדשי זה יעקב וישב יעקב וגו‬ “In your cry your gatherings will save you, etc.” (Isa 57:13). It was taught: His gathering and the gathering of his sons saved him from Esau. “They shall all be borne off by the wind, snatched away by a breeze” (ibid.). This is Esau. “But one who trusts in in me will inherit the land and possess my sacred mountain.” (ibid.). This is Jacob; “And Jacob dwelled [… in the land of Canaan]” (Gen 37:1).14

This brief homily links Gen 37:1, on Jacob in Canaan, to the previous chapter, Genesis 36, which describes Esau’s departure to Seir. The relationship between the distant verse and the lection verse is obscure to the point of inscrutability. Although the last unit of Isa 57:13 refers, like Gen 37:1, to the faithful coming into possession of God’s land, there appears to be nothing about Isa 57:13 that would seem particularly to evoke the story of Jacob and Esau. How did the homilist come to seize upon this verse? There is evidence that Isa 57:13 served at least for some Jews in late antique Palestine as the opening of the hafṭarah for the seder beginning with Num 26:52, on the division of the land among the tribes.15 This practice might have contributed to the verse’s salience for the homilist, but does not suffice to explain the decision to employ the verse in relation to Gen 37:1. one who would challenge Abraham’s greatness, but it modifies the challenge so as to synthesize R. Akiva’s view with R. Yose the Galilean’s. 13  Joseph Heinemann, ‫[ דרשות בציבור בתקופת התלמוד‬Public Homilies in the Talmudic Period] (Jerusalem: Bialik, 1982), 39–40. 14  Gen. Rab. 84:1 (1002). 15  See the Three of Yannai’s qedushta for this seder (2.117), which leads into a quotation of Isa 57:13.

16

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

An exegetical unit later in the same chapter of Genesis Rabbah (Gen. Rab. 84:5 [1005]) enables us to answer this question more satisfactorily. ‫ אמר ר' לוי לנפח שהיה פתוח באמצע‬... ‫מה כת' למעלה מן העיניין ואלה המלכים וגו' וישב יעקב‬ ‫פלטייה ובנו זהבי פתוח כנגדו ראה נכנסות למדינה חבילות חבילות שלקוצים אמר חבל למדינה מה‬ ‫שנכנס לתוכה היה שם פקח אחד אמר ליה מאילו את מתיירא גץ אחד משלך וגץ אחד משלבנך ואתם‬ ‫שורפים אותם כך כיון שראה יעקב עשו ואלופיו נתיירא אמר לו הקדוש ברוך הוא מאילו את מתיירא‬ ‫גץ אחד משלך וגץ אחד משלבנך ואתם שורפים אותם הה"ד והיה בית יעקב אש ובית יוסף להבה ובית‬ ‫עשו לקש ודלקו בהם‬ What is written above the matter? “And these are the kings, etc.” (Gen 36:31), “And Jacob dwelled, etc.” (Gen 37:1). … Said R. Levi: [It is comparable] to a blacksmith who was open in the middle of the square, and his son, the goldsmith, was open across from him. He saw bundles upon bundles of thorns entering the province. He said: Woe to the province, that such is entering it. There was an intelligent man there. He said to him: Of these you are afraid? A spark of yours and a spark of your son, and you can burn them. Likewise, when Jacob saw Esau and his princes, he was afraid. Said to him the Holy One, blessed be He: Of these you are afraid? A spark of yours and a spark of your son, and you can burn them. Thus is what is written: “And the house of Jacob will be a fire, and the house of Joseph a flame, and the house of Esau straw, and they shall burn it.” (Obad 1:18)

Like the petiḥ ta, this passage interprets the juxtaposition of chapter 36 (in particular, in this case, Esau’s genealogy) and chapter 37 (in particular, the occurrence of Jacob and Joseph in Gen 37:1–2). For R. Levi, it is Obad 1:18 that explains the juxtaposition: Esau and his descendants, however seemingly daunting, are naught but straw, destined to be burned by Jacob and Joseph.16 There is an obvious resemblance between R. Levi’s “a spark of yours and a spark of your son” and the petiḥ ta’s “his gathering and the gathering of his sons,” but only Obad 1:18 provides a sound exegetical basis for the pairing of Jacob with his son(s). More importantly, there are only two passages in the Bible that speak of inheritance or possessing in relation to the “holy mountain”: Obad 1:16–17 and Isa 57:13. What has evidently occurred, then, is that a homilist or editor transferred R. Levi’s exegesis (or something like R. Levi’s exegesis) of the Obadiah passage from its native biblical soil to Isa 57:13. Perhaps he transferred the 16  R. Levi’s exegesis seems to be in dialogue with a different use of Obad 1:18 in Gen. Rab. 77:2 (912), in reference to Jacob’s nighttime struggle with the “man,” understood to be the angelic prince of Esau. As R. Levi has God say ‫“ מאילו את מתיירא‬Of (lit. from) these you are afraid?” so in this other passage, Jacob tells the angel ‫“ מן הדא את מדחל לי‬With (lit. from) these you frighten me?”

Multiple Petiḥ ta Units

17

exegesis in part to explain this challenging verse. But as or more likely, he also did so precisely because Isa 57:13, as a secondary hook for the exegesis, does not transparently convey the exegesis, and so better suits the rhetorical purposes of the petiḥ ta form.

Multiple Petiḥta Units One of the questions that has bedeviled scholars of rabbinics is how the forms preserved in the homiletical midrashim—the macroform composed of the petiḥ ta series, the commentary collection, and the messianic peroration, and also each of the microforms separately, especially the petiḥ ta—correspond to what occurred “on the ground” in rabbinic Palestine. Might a homilist have delivered something like the typical macroform found in the homiletical midrashim? How do we account for the occurrence of multiple petiḥ ta units in most macroforms, and the relative lack of interest in the gufa? Is it possible that the proper Sitz im Leben of these forms is the academy, not the synagogue?17 And how homiletical are these forms, really? Questions of this sort abound, and remain largely unresolved, in part for lack of data: The rabbinic corpus contains precious few records of real homilies, or homilies alleged to be real, or the conditions under which aggadic exegesis in general occurred.18 More than a century ago, Julius Theodor contended that the entire macroform, including its multiple petiḥ ta units, represents more or less what a homilist would have spoken in a synagogue, even possibly a rough transcription thereof.19 Heinemann critiques this view as “absurd,” and it is easy to see why.20 The entire rhetorical force of the petiḥ ta lies in the fact that the homilist begins as it were unexpectedly, with a distant verse. Once, however, he has wound that verse back toward the lection, it would make no sense for him to introduce another distant

17  I use “academy” and “synagogue” very loosely, with appreciation for the ambiguity of the signifiers (which refer to spaces in the first instance, but also, metonymically, to people and praxes) and for the slipperiness of the range of distinctions that they implicitly convey. On the “academy” see most recently Paul D. Mandel, The Origins of Midrash: From Teaching to Text (SJSJ 180; Leiden: Brill, 2017). Mandel’s book appeared too late to inform the discussion below, but its findings (beyond those already introduced in his earlier work, cited below) do not appear substantially to impact my own. 18  For a summary of the data and scholarship see Marc Hirshman, “Aggadic Midrashim” in The Literature of the Sages: Second Part (ed. Shmuel Safrai et al.; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2006), 122–26. 19  See J. Theodor, “Zur Komposition der agadischen Homilïen,” MGWJ 30 (1881), 505. 20 See Joseph Heinemann, “The Proem in the Aggadic Midrashim: A Form-Critical Study,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 22 (1971), 106.

18

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

verse, and play the same game again.21 This problem is easily solved by supposing that the synagogue homily opened with a single petiḥ ta, then moved on to the gufa, and finally to a messianic conclusion. Heinemann himself goes a step further, and separates the petiḥ ta, in its original, oral context, from the continuation of the macroform. The petiḥ ta, he avers, was in fact a self-standing synagogue homily, and it concludes with the first substantial verse of the lection because its function was to “open” (pataḥ ) or introduce the lection.22 Some recent scholarship has questioned the degree to which the petiḥ ta, and the macroform that it heads, have any connection to the synagogue, or even to homiletics.23 The term petiḥ ta, which, as noted above, does not occur in rabbinic literature, derives from the occurrence in many petiḥ ta homilies of the verb pataḥ (“He opened”), as in “Rabbi so-and-so opened,” in the incipit preceding the quotation of the distant verse. The verb has often been understood, in context, as a transparently rhetorical term, signaling the beginning of a speech. But as Paul Mandel has recently clarified, the basic sense of the verb is exegetical, not rhetorical: One “opens” a mysterious verse by decoding its meaning. There is no reason to think that the verb has anything other than an exegetical function in the phrase “Rabbi so-and-so opened.”24 It does not follow from this conclusion, however, that, as Burton Visotzky would have it, “there was no petihah or petihah homily”—Vitsotzky employs the Hebrew equivalent of Aramaic petiḥ ta—or that the petiḥ ta units at the beginning of the macroform represent no more than “a redactor’s device to organize

21  In his recent book, Rabbis as Greco-Roman Rhetors: Oratory and Sophistic Education in the Talmud and Midrash (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), Richard Hidary defends Theodor’s view by observing that in Greco-Roman rhetoric, an epideictic orator might preface the main body of the argument with multiple prooemia, each introducing a different strand of the argument. (My thanks to the author for sharing a draft of the book with me.) In the continuation, I too will argue for the proximity of the literary macroforms of the homiletical midrashim, with their multiple petiḥ ta’ot, to actual homiletical performance, but on different grounds. Hidary’s view is not incompatible with my own, and is attractive in itself, but in my view, it too readily overlooks the differences between the petiḥ ta and the prooemion, and in particular, first, the way in which the form of the petiḥ ta desposits the audience directly at the lection (the gufa), and second, the fact that, in a passage like Song Rab. 2:3, analyzed below, the petiḥ ta can occur (to all appearances) independently from a subsequent, longer disquisition. 22  See Heinemann, “Proem,” 100–122, and the convenient summary of older scholarship, with abundant bibliography, in H. L. Strack and Günter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash (trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl; Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1996), 243–46. 23  For an excellent summary of much of this research see idem, “The Derashah in Rabbinic Times,” in Alexander Deeg et al., Preaching in Judaism and Christianity: Encounters and Developments from Biblical Times to Modernity (SJ 41; Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 7–21. 24 Paul Mandel, “On ‘Patah’ and the Petihah: A New Investigation,” in Higayon L’Yona: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, Aggadah and Piyut in Honor of Professor Yona Fraenkel (ed. Joshua Levinson et al.; Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 49–82.

Multiple Petiḥ ta Units

19

his materials.”25 Mandel himself does not take this position, even though he, like Visotzky, supposes that the homiletical midrashim are a product of the academy rather than the synagogue. Following Jonah Fraenkel, Mandel suggests that the occurrence of petiḥ ta units at the beginning of the macroform attests to a practice of marking the beginning of a new curricular unit of exegesis—and the demarcation of the unit might have been determined by the lection, or by the interests and pacing of the academy—with “something a little festive,” a homily linking a distant verse to the first verse of the new unit.26 The petiḥ ta form is indeed undoubtedly homiletical in essence. What makes the petiḥ ta essentially homiletical is that it begins with the quotation of a verse that is not immediately determined by the occasion at hand. If—to take as an example the first petiḥ ta analyzed above—a rabbi is engaging with his students in serial exposition of the book of Psalms, and has reached Psalm 60, then for him to quote Ps 60:6, and then identify the case of Abraham in Genesis 22 as an illustration of the principle encoded in this verse, is for him to engage not in homiletics but in exegesis. The literary context of the above petiḥ ta is what makes it instead homiletical: It occurs in the context of serial exegesis of the book of Genesis, not of Psalms, which is to say that it occurs, from a formal perspective, out of the blue. It is the technique of beginning with a verse out of the blue that determines the petiḥ ta form, and makes it homiletical, even if, in the case of the petiḥ ta in Genesis Rabbah, the homily is literary.27 So defined, this form—and perhaps it would be best, for the sake of avoiding confusion, to call the form, defined in this minimal way, by some name other than petiḥ ta—can occur outside the context of scriptural interpretation, as we will see below, and there seems to me no reason to

25  Burton L. Visotzky, “The Misnomers ‘Petihah’ and ‘Homiletic Midrash’ as Descriptions for Leviticus Rabbah and Pesikta de-Rav Kahana,” JSQ 18 (2011), 21, 26. It is worth noting that while Visotzky points to Richard Sarason’s article on redacted petiḥ ta units (“The Petihtot in Leviticus Rabbah: Oral Homilies or Redactional Compositions?” JJS 33 [1982], 557–67) as a starting point for his own far-reaching conclusions (Visotzky, “Misnomers,” 21), Sarason himself never denied a homiletical setting for the petiḥ ta. Sarason’s more recent work draws on piyyuṭ to root the petiḥ ta more firmly in the synagogue, and likewise to corroborate the (by no means uncomplicated) connection between piyyuṭ and the homiletical midrashim. See “Petiḥ ta and Piyyut: Examining the Connections,” in Jewish Prayer: New Perspectives (ed. Uri Ehrlich; Beer Sheva: Ben-Gurion University of the Negev Press, 2016), 99–160. I thank Dr. Sarason for sharing a pre-publication copy of the paper with me. 26  The quotation is from Jonah Fraenkel, ‫[ דרכי האגדה והמדרש‬The Ways of Aggadah and Midrash] (Givatayim: Yad la-Talmud, 1991), 447, cited in Mandel, “Patah,” 72. 27  Mandel, “Patah,” 68, links the phrase “Rabbi so-and-so opened” to the practice of serial exegesis of the book from which the distant verse was drawn. I see no compelling reason to posit such an original Sitz im Leben, though it is not impossible. In any case, my point is that, as the phrase occurs in the homiletical midrashim—i.e., as it occurs in the petiḥ ta—it occurs, necessarily, outside the context of serial exegesis of the distant verse.

20

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

assume that the homiletical midrashim do not attest, implicitly, to the pervasive use of the petiḥ ta as a prelude to an exegetical discourse. But what—and here I shift from the work of ground-clearing and clarification to the novel argument of this section—are we to make of the fact that the macroform characteristic of homiletical midrash generally includes multiple petiḥ ta homilies? Fraenkel appears to assume that this aspect of the macroform has no correlate in the practices of the academy, but reflects instead the commitment of the editors of the homiletical midrashim to gathering and preserving material.28 In principle, however, there is no reason to exclude the possibility that the homiletical event marking the beginning of a new exegetical unit in the academy (or elsewhere) often involved multiple speakers, each of whom would deliver a petiḥ ta homily. Evidence for such a possibility comes from the fact that texts about other occasions, outside the academy, can imagine multiple rabbis, each, in succession, delivering a petiḥ ta homily.29 Thus an extended passage in the major aggadic work on the Song of Songs, Song of Songs Rabbah, tells the story of seven rabbis who gather other rabbis and students to themselves in Usha around the middle of the second century. Upon departing Usha, the rabbis offer a series of public blessings, the first, by R. Judah, of the rabbis in attendance, and the other six, of their Ushan hosts. Each rabbi, in turn, “enters” and “expounds.” The exposition begins, without exception, with a citation from a verse. The rabbi interprets the verse in such a way that he comes round, in the end, to addressing the Ushans (or in the first case, the attending rabbis) directly in praise.30 Below is an example. '‫נכנס ר' נחמיה ודרש לא יבא עמוני ומואבי בקהל ה' תני שתי אומות גדולות פרשו מלבא בקהל ה‬ ‫למה על דבר אשר לא קדמו אתכם בלחם ובמים וכי צריכין היו ישראל באותה שעה והלא כל ארבעים‬ ‫שנה שהיו ישראל במדבר היה הבאר עולה להם והמן יורד להם והשלו מצוי להם וענני כבוד מקיפין‬ ‫אותם ועמוד ענן נוסע לפניהם ואת אמר אשר לא קדמו אתכם בלחם ובמים ואמר ר' אלעזר דרך ארץ‬ ‫הוא שהבא מן הדרך מקדמין לו במאכל ומשתה בא וראה מה פרע להם הקב"ה לאלו שתי אומות‬ ‫כתיב בתורה לא יבא עמוני ומואבי בקהל ה' ואתם בני אושא שקדמתם רבותינו במאכלכם ומשקיכם‬ ‫ומטותיכם הקב"ה יפרע לכם שכר טוב‬

28 See Fraenkel, ‫דרכי‬, 447. 29  Mandel, “Patah,” 72, points to rabbinic exegesis at a wide range of public events—at circumcisions, weddings, funerals, etc.—to support Fraenkel’s position on the academy rather than the synagogue as the Sitz im Leben of the petiḥ ta, but he does not take up the question of the multiplicity of petiḥ ta homilies. 30  Despite the fact that the last exposition, like the preceding five, praises the Ushans, not the rabbis, it achieves closure vis-à-vis the first exposition because only the first and the seventh cases do the verses expounded not directly concern hospitality, but instead refer to hearing the law from Moses. In the very different version of the passage in b. Ber. 63b-64a, the seventh unit is moved up, and follows directly after the first.

Multiple Petiḥ ta Units

21

R. Nehemiah entered and expounded: “An Ammonite or a Moabite may not enter the assembly of the Lord” (Deut 23:4a). It was taught: Two great nations stood apart from entering the assembly of the Lord. Why? “On account of the fact that they did not greet you with bread and water” (Deut 23:4b). And was Israel in need at that time? Is it not the case that all forty years that Israel was in the wilderness, the well rose for them, and the manna fell for them, and the quail was available to them, and the clouds of glory encircled them, and the pillar of cloud traveled before them, and yet you say “that they did not greet you with bread and water”? And R. Eleazar said: It is proper conduct (lit. “the way of the land”) that one greet someone coming from travel with food and drink. Come and see: How did the Holiness, blessed be He, repay them? It is written in the Torah: “An Ammonite or a Moabite may not enter into the assembly of the Lord.” And you, sons of Usha, who greeted our masters with your food and your drink and your beds, the Holiness, blessed be He, will repay you with good reward.31

There is no question that this and the other speeches in the passage are editorial inventions. Indeed, R. Nehemiah’s entire discourse, minus the concluding address to the Ushans, occurs more or less verbatim in an earlier text, Leviticus Rabbah, where it forms part of a carefully constructed amoraic discourse—by R. Simon b. R. Eleazar—on biblical figures who do kindness to others by offering them food.32 What is important for our purposes, however, is that Song Rabbah could imagine such a scene, with such speeches, and it is important for two reasons. First, the passage sets in an oral context what we must call, on the definition offered above, a petiḥ ta. The verse occurs out of the blue: R. Nehemiah is not in the midst of a serial exposition of the book of Deuteronomy. The destination of the petiḥ ta is not the first verse of a lection, or indeed any sort of verse, but a speech act of thanksgiving or praise, but this distinction need not be construed as categorical, and indeed, we gain considerable insight when we appreciate that the petiḥ ta form need not attach to a verse. What is important, rather, is that R. Nehemiah’s destination is well known—the speech act of thanksgiving—but he gets there via citation and exposition of a verse.33 Second, and as importantly, the passage depicts—imagines—the delivery of a whole series of petiḥ ta discourses, by one rabbi after another. It would indeed make no sense for a single rabbi, having 31  Song Rab. 2:3. The text is from the Vilna printed edition, as transcribed in the Bar-Ilan Responsa Project. I have checked it against the online synoptic edition produced by Tamar Kadari (http://www.schechter.ac.il/schechter/ShirHashirim/5.pdf) and have found no important differences. 32  Lev. Rab. 34:8 (786). 33  It may be notable that in the Bavli version (b. Ber. 63b), the rabbis do not “enter and expound” but “open (‫ )פתח‬and expound.” On the distinctive profile of the root ‫ פת"ח‬in the Bavli see Mandel, “Patah,” 63–65.

22

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

wound his way from the opening verse to his ultimate destination, here the act of praise, to then introduce, out of the blue, another verse. For another rabbi to take the floor and do so is, however, entirely reasonable.34 But the possibility that multiple petiḥ ta homilies reflect a practice involving multiple speakers provides a basis for returning the petiḥ ta, and indeed the macroform as a whole, to the synagogue. There is abundant evidence that the standard practice in many churches in fourth century Palestine and its environs was for the presbyters who were present in the church to deliver homilies, each in turn, prior to the bishop’s sermon. The pilgrim Egeria, in her diary, reports that such was the practice for the Sunday liturgy in the church at Golgotha, just beside Jerusalem. At daybreak the people assemble in the Great Church built by Constantine on Golgotha Behind the Cross. It is the Lord’s Day, and they do what is everywhere the custom on the Lord’s Day. But you should note that here it is usual for any presbyter who has taken his seat to preach, if he so wishes, and when they have finished there is a sermon from the bishop. The object of having this preaching every Sunday is to make sure that the people will continually be learning about the Bible and the love of God. Because of all the preaching it is a long time till the dismissal, which takes place not before ten or even eleven o’clock.35

The same practice is attested in the work of Jerome for Bethlehem, of John Chrysostom for Antioch and Constantinople, in the Apostolic Constitutions for other parts of Syria, and elsewhere.36 To my knowledge, there is no preserved instance from the Christian context of a macroform consisting of homilies by the pres­ 34  Consider likewise Gen. Rab. 35:3 (330–32). (A different version of the story occurs in b. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 9a.) This passage tells the story of three rabbis who, having learned from R. Shimon b. Yoḥ ai, take leave of him, but then tarry another day. They raise among themselves the question: Before they depart, must they take leave of their rabbi again? The continuation is complex and layered. It appears that each of the three introduces a verse connected with leavetaking and blessing. The interpreter then shows that the leavetaking was a second leavetaking, and that the blessing was all the greater for it having been the second. The conclusion in each case is the same: ‫“ הברכה האחרונה היתה גדולה מן הראשונה‬The last blessing was greater than the first.” The story probably means to convey that these homilies occurred in the presence of R. Shimon b. Yoḥ ai, for the story reports that he recognized that the three were “men of persuasion” (‫בני אדם‬ ‫)שליישוב‬. The homilies about leavetaking are thus themselves leavetaking performances, as in Song Rab. 2:3. And like Song Rab. 2:3, this passage involves rabbis serially introducing verses and wending their way, via exegesis, to a conclusion of blessing. 35  John Wilkinson, Egeria’s Travels: Newly Translated with Supporting Documents and Notes (3rd ed.; Warminster: Aris & Phillips, 1999), 145 (25.1). 36 See Joseph Bingham, Origines Ecclesiasticae, or the Antiquities of the Christian Church (8 vols.; London: William Straker, 1834), 5.93–95; Paul Bradshaw, Liturgical Presidency in the Early Church (Bramcote: Grove Books, 1983), 17, and the references cited there; Robert F. Taft, S.J., Through Their Own Eyes: Liturgy as the Byzantines Saw It (Berkeley, CA: InterOrthodox Press, 2006), 81–82. For the reference to Bradshaw’s book I thank my colleague Max Johnson.

Multiple Petiḥ ta Units

23

byters followed by the bishop’s sermon, and little evidence on whether, and if so how, the presbyters and bishop coordinated their remarks, but the following passage, from a homily by Chrysostom, conveys what one might in any case have supposed, that the presbyters’ homilies were conceived of as preludes to the main event that was the bishop’s sermon. Certainly there remains much more to say, but even these words are enough for the correction of the sober ones. It is necessary for me to finish the discourse, since I now have the desire to hear our father’s voice. For we, like the little shepherds, play our small shepherd’s pipe, sitting in the shadow of these sacred buildings as if under an oak tree or a poplar tree. But he like an excellent musician arouses the entire theater with the harmony of his golden cithara and, with the harmony of his words and actions inspires us to great benefit.37

Chrysostom counts himself as a shepherd, playing upon his humble shepherd’s pipes, in contrast to the bishop to follow, a genuine musician who handles the golden cithara. Evidence that similar homiletical arrangements pertained in the ancient synagogue comes from a report about the “congregation” or “assembly” of R. Yoḥ anan. ‫רבי לוי ויהודה בר נחמן הוון נסבין תרתין סילעין מיעול מצמתה קהלא קומי רבי יוחנן‬ R. Levi and Judah bar Naḥ man would take two selas to enter and gather the assembly before R. Yoḥ anan.38

The continuation clarifies that R. Levi and Judah would “gather” the assembly by offering their own remarks before ceding the floor to R. Yoḥ anan. But it is also clear from the continuation that in this case, the two would alternate in this role at any given (Sabbath?) assembly. I suggest that the multiple petiḥ ta units at the beginning of the typical macroform in the homiletical midrashim may be indirect evidence that in some synagogues in Palestine, the homiletical practice was the same as that attested in neighboring churches, and partly in the above rabbinic text : One or more individuals, presumably of lower rank or reputation, delivered petiḥ ta homilies, and See also 1 Cor 14:26–32, and the reference to it in Jerome’s letter to Nepotian (F. A. Wright, trans., Selected Letters of St. Jerome [London: William Heinemann, 1933], 210–11 [lii.7]). 37 St. John Chrysostom, On Repentance and Almsgiving (Fathers of the Church 96; trans. Gus George Christo; Washington, D.C.: Catholic University of America Press, 1998), 68. I thank my colleague Blake Leyerle for this reference. 38  See the parallel versions in Gen. Rab. 98:13 (1261–62); y. Suk. 5:1 (55a). The word ‫ציבורא‬ “congregation” occurs in the first version, and ‫“ קהלא‬assembly” in the second; I reproduce the latter.

24

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

the last of them yielded the floor to the chief homilist, who delivered the subsequent sermon, perhaps something corresponding to the gufa and the peroration. Usha was a gathering of sages. Could a synagogue on a typical synagogue in fourth or fifth century Palestine have furnished enough speakers for multiple petiḥ ta homilies and a main sermon? We are well into the realm of speculation, of course, but the recent pushback in rabbinics scholarship against the bold position of Seth Schwartz, that the rabbinic movement was for many centuries a miniscule, embattled group, has underscored, on the contrary, that while rabbis did not “control” Palestinian Jewish society, there is good reason to think that, even from the beginning of the amoraic period, they exerted substantial influence, beyond what the number of individually named rabbis might suggest.39 In any case, we need not assume that every synagogue could have supported a full panoply of learned homilists of the sort implied, according to my argument, by the macroform, but only that some could: that there were some synagogues in which rabbis and their affiliates congregated in numbers, or that the homiletical midrashim reflect the practice in academies that doubled as synagogues.40 A synagogue or synagogue-like setting is in any case to be preferred over an academic one as the Sitz im Leben for the homiletical midrashim. The academic setting favored by Fraenkel and Mandel has trouble accounting for the fact that the structure of Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, if not Leviticus Rabbah, is determined entirely by the liturgical calendar.41 More importantly, their reconstruction cannot easily explain why the macroform units in Leviticus Rabbah and Pesiqta de Rab Kahana very commonly devote half or more of their space to petiḥ ta homilies. Why should the editors of these works have lavished so much attention on the incidental “festive” introductions to new exegetical undertakings, and so little, in relative terms, to the work of aggadic exegesis itself? If, however, we posit a synagogue setting, along the lines I have suggested, the ratios make more sense: Petiḥ ta homilies were sermons too, even if prefatory, and their combined length might easily have exceeded that of the “main event” that followed. 39 See Seth Schwartz, Imperialism and Jewish Society, 200 b.c.e. to 640 c.e. (Princet on: Princeton University Press, 2001), and for the response, see, e.g., Stuart S. Miller, Sages and Commoners in Late Antique ’Ereẓ Israel: A Philological Inquiry into Local Traditions in the Talmud Yerushalmi (TSAJ 111; Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2006). 40  On the numerous classes of synagogue leaders attested in late antiquity, at least some of whom surely possessed some rhetorical competence, see Lee I. Levine, The Ancient Synagogue: The First Thousand Years (2nd ed.; New Haven: Yale University Press, 2005), 412–53. 41  For an excellent recent treatment of Pesiqta de Rab Kahana that emphasizes its homiletical elements, and identifies general points of contact with contemporary Christian preaching, see Rachel A. Anisfeld, Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes: Peskita deRav Kahana and the Popularization of Rabbinic Judaism (SJSJ 133; Leiden: Brill, 2009).

Voices in the Biblical Past

25

Voices in the Biblical Past The previous section suggested that the homiletical midrashim may more closely preserve the form of homiletical performances than scholars have heretofore assumed. Against this background, we now turn to comparative reflection on performance in midrash and piyyuṭ. The representation of speech or voices is constitutive of drama.42 A dramatic text, a text with voices, need not be a script meant for performance, but the more prominently a text features speech, the closer it is, in form and perhaps in Sitz im Leben, to the framework of performance. In this and the following sections, I consider aspects of voice in piyyuṭ in relation to related midrash texts. Midrash texts regularly feature the voices of biblical characters, typically in their biblical setting.43 In piyyuṭ, too, biblical characters speak, and also, in general, in the biblical past. Consider the following example. In Deut 31:14, God informs Moses that his time has come to die, and that he should call to Joshua and have them both stand in the tent of meeting, so that God might instruct Joshua there (‫“ והתיצבו באהל מועד ואצונו‬and station yourselves at the tent of meeting, and I will command him”). In Deut 31:15, God appears at the tent in a cloud, which stands at the entrance of the tent. The rabbinic reader is sensitive to numerous oddities in these verses. First, why should God tell Moses to summon Joshua to the tent of meeting? Why does God not appear to Joshua himself? Second, why should Moses stand with Joshua in the tent of meeting, if God wishes to instruct only Joshua? Third, Moses and Joshua are supposed to be in the tent, and yet God’s cloud stands at the entrance to the tent. Finally, after a section break, the biblical text continues with God’s instructions to Moses to write a song (Deut 31:16–22), followed by God’s encouragement to Joshua that he be strong in leading Israel (Deut 31:16:23). These verses seem (or so the rabbinic interpreter could construe them) to belong to a different event, both because God did not say anything in Deut 31:14 about commanding Moses, and because there is a section break between Deut 31:15 and Deut 31:16. But if this is true, then at what point does God command Joshua, as he promised to do in Deut 31:14?

42  Thus, e.g., in a Homeric scholion: “Plato says that there are three forms of literary art: the dramatic, where the poet constantly distinguishes himself by means of the characters represented; the amimetic, such as Phocylides’; the mixed, such as Hesiod’s.” For the quotation (slightly modified) and discussion see René Nünlist, The Ancient Critic at Work: Terms and Concepts of Literary Criticism in Greek Scholia (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 95. 43  On character speech in midrash texts in relation to the perspective of the narrator see Joshua Levinson, The Twice Told Tale: A Poetics of the Exegetical Narrative in Rabbinic Midrash (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2005), 172–91.

26

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Against the background of these anomalies, an exegetical narrative emerges. Moses, having already been told that the time has arrived for Joshua to lead Israel, infers that God intends to do away with Moses. And so he hits upon a way to avoid his appointed death: He will simply renounce his leadership position in favor of Joshua. Below is a version of this event and its continuation that appears in Deuteronomy Rabbah, which reached its final form after the classical midrash collections described above.44 ‫אמר לפניו רבש"ע יטול יהושע ארכי שלי ואהא חי אמר הקדוש ב"ה עשה לו כדרך שהוא עושה לך‬ ‫מיד השכים משה והלך לביתו של יהושע נתיירא יהושע ואמר משה ר' בוא אצלי יצאו להלוך הלך משה‬ ‫לשמאלו של יהושע נכנסו לאהל מועד ירד עמוד הענן והפסיק ביניהם משנסתלק עמוד הענן הלך משה‬ ‫אצל יהושע ואמר מה אמר לך הדיבור א"ל יהושע כשהיה הדיבור נגלה עליך יודע הייתי מה מדבר עמך‬ ‫אותה שעה צעק משה ואמר מאה מיתות ולא קנאה אחת ושלמה מפרשה כי עזה כמות אהבה קשה‬ ‫כשאול קנאה‬ He said before him: Master of the world, let Joshua assume my office, and let me live. Said the Holiness, blessed be He: Do to him as he does to you. Immediately Moses arose and went to Joshua’s house. Joshua was afraid, but Moses said: My master, come to me. They went out to go, with Moses walking to Joshua’s left. They entered the tent of meeting. The pillar of cloud descended and separated them. When the cloud departed, Moses went to Joshua and said: What did the Word say to you? Said Joshua to him: And when the Word was revealed to you, did I know what it said to you? At that time Moses cried out and said: A hundred deaths and not jealousy! And Solomon explicates it: “For love is as strong as death, one jealousy as hard as Sheol” (Song 8:6).

According to this narrative, the reason that the verse has God command Moses to summon Joshua, and to escort him to the tent, is that he wishes to test Moses’ readiness to cede authority to Joshua. If Moses is truly willing to renounce authority in favor of Joshua, then Moses must take Joshua’s place, and serve Joshua. To Joshua’s consternation, Moses does so, and leads Joshua to the tent. But then God’s cloud descends and parts them, and this is evidently the import, according to the midrash, of the biblical report that the cloud stood at the entrance of the tent: It serves to keep Moses out of the tent, so that God can speak with Joshua alone. Moreover, Joshua refuses to report to Moses on Joshua’s conversation with God; his refusal is implicitly conveyed, for the rabbinic interpreter, by the Bible’s silence about what God commanded Joshua. This humiliation is too great even for Moses to bear. He exclaims (anticipating Solomon) that jealousy is worse than death, and thus

44  Deut. Rab. (Vilna ed.) va-yelek 9. See also Deut. Rab. (Lieberman ed.) va-yelek (124).

Voices in the Biblical Past

27

concedes that his proposal is inadequate, and that Joshua’s ascension means that he must die. The payṭ an Yannai, in the Five poem of his qedushta to the seder that begins with Deut 31:14, tells more or less the same story, but with some notable differences.45 First, in Yannai’s version, it is not God but Moses himself who proposes that Moses minister to Joshua.46 ‫ השיב פני אל למה אמות‬// ‫אז בהיקרא באזני עניו מות‬ ‫ למשרתי משרת‬/ ‫ אחיה ואהיה‬// ‫ כמו אשר שירת‬/ ‫בן נון אם אשרת‬ When upon the ears of the Humble fell “Die!” // He replied before God: Why should I die? If to the son of Nun I minister,/ as he ministered, // I will live and be / to my minister a minister.

Do the midrash and Yannai simply know different versions of this part of the story, or is one more original? The verbal parallels—for example, the words ‫כמו‬ ‫“ אשר שירת‬as he ministered” in Yannai’s poem echo God’s words in the midrash, ‫“ כדרך שהוא עושה לך‬as he does to you”—suggest a close link. The version in the midrash represents an interpretation of the verse: It is God who tells Moses to call Joshua to the tent of meeting. It is likely, then, that the midrash is more original, and that Yannai has modified it for dramatic effect: Moses’ comeuppance is more striking if it is he himself who suggested not only that Joshua lead in his stead, but that he minister to Joshua.47 A second notable difference comes at the end of the poem. Moses’ concession is described briefly in the midrash, with a single, short exclamation. In Yannai’s version, it takes up more than two lines.

45  For the text see Benjamin Loeffler and Michael Rand, “‘You Say and Act’ – A Qedushta for the Torah Portion ‘Behold the Days Approach When You Must Die’ (Deut 31:14) by Yannai,” Leshonenu 72 (2010), 179–99, at 190–91. 46  The version in Deut. Rab. (Lieberman ed.) va-yelek (124), like that in Deut. Rab. (Vilna ed.) va-yelek 9, attributes the proposal to God. 47  In a different and earlier attested reflex of the same motif, attached to Deut 3:26 ‫רב לך‬ “Enough for you,” it is Moses who suggests that he serve Joshua; the words ‫ רב לך‬are taken to signify: You are the master (‫)רב‬, hence cannot become the student. See Sifre Num. 135 (458). My claim is that with reference to the motif as attached, as in the Deuteronomy Rabbah passage and in Yannai’s poem, to Deuteronomy 31, the version in which God instructs Moses to serve Joshua is more original. In Deut. Rab. (Lieberman ed.) va-‘etḥ anan (41), a story that is similar to the one in the Deuteronomy Rabbah passage quoted above and in Yannai’s poem, but less exegetically conditioned, has Moses broach the idea to God.

28

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

‫ ופץ לקנואים טוב הוא המות‬// ‫חימה וקנאה כבדה בו עד מות‬ ‫ עלה אלי ההרה והיה שם‬// ‫ בעת נאמר לי‬/ ‫טוב הוטב לי‬ ‫ עלה אל הר העברים ומות שם‬// ‫ בעת נאמר לי‬/ ‫יחד הורע לי‬ Wrath and jealousy weighed on him unto death, // and he said: For the jealous, good is death! Good was done to me / when it was told to me: // Ascend to me to the mountain and be there. So bad was done to me / when it was told to me: // Ascend to mount Abarim and die there.

That Yannai allows Moses a plaintive lament—contrasting, on the basis of shared vocabulary and syntax, the joy of the revelation at mount Sinai (Ex 24:12: “Ascend to me to the mountain and be there, and I shall give you the stone tablets, etc.”) to the sorrow of the injunction to die on mount Abarim (Deut 32:49–50: “Ascend to mount Abarim … and die on the mountain of which you are ascending there”)—may be evidence, as in the case of the first divergence from the midrash, of a greater interest in voicing on Yannai’s part. A later poem, probably by the payṭ an Pinḥas (ca. late 8th c.), echoes and probably depends in part on Yannai’s poem. It is a rahiṭ , from a qedushta designated for Deut 31:1 ff., the last lection from the Torah.48 The poem consists of two series of exchanges between Moses and God. In each, first Moses puts forward a ground for voiding (in the first series) or delaying (in the second series) his death decree, then God responds sympathetically but without relenting. Formulae structure the exchanges: Each speech by Moses begins with a fixed couplet; the shift from Moses’ speech to God’s speech is marked by a fixed introduction by a narrator; and each speech by God ends with a fixed couplet. The fixed couplet that introduces Moses’ speech in the first series of exchanges begins with the words ‫לא אמות‬ ‫ למה אמות‬/ “Let me not die;/ why should I die?” While the words ‫“ לא אמות‬Let me not die” come from Ps 118:17, the words ‫“ למה אמות‬Why should I die?” may derive from the opening line of Yannai’s poem.49 Near the end of Pinḥas’ poem (ll. 150–51), Moses proposes that he serve Joshua: ‫“ יבא אחר וישרת ואני משרת‬Let another minister, and I will be minister [to him].” To this God responds: 48  For the text and commentary see Shulamit Elizur, The Liturgical Poems of Rabbi Pinḥ as Ha-Kohen (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2004), 559–69, and see ibid., 60, on the question of attribution to Pinhas. 49  But in the later poem, this header is designated specifically for the first series of exchanges, in which Moses suggests that he does not deserve to die. The proposal on which Yannai focuses consists not of an argument that Moses does not deserve to die but a stratagem for allowing Moses to delay death until after entering the land of Canaan; it finds its place in the second series of the later poem.

29

Voices in the Biblical Past

‫רועה מאמיניי‬ ‫אל תעשה גניי‬ ‫ומיתה לאמוניי‬ ‫יקר בעיניי‬ ‫איך תקטן וכקופדן תיעשה‬ ‫ונקראיתה עניו בכל מעשה‬ Shepherd of my Faithful, Do not act disgracefully, When the death of my faith-keepers Is precious in my eyes. Would you be small, and become petty, When you have been called humble amidst all creation?50

It appears that when God cautions Moses about becoming “petty,” he is anticipating what will happen should Moses in fact become minister to Joshua: Despite his unparalleled humility, Moses will take offense.51 If this interpretation is correct, then the exegetical narrative plays out, in this strophe, not as a series of events in the world, but as an argument in a conversation. Pinḥ as’ poem is a dialogue or dispute poem, in that it consists entirely of interchanges between speaking characters.52 While many midrash passages, including the Deuteronomy Rabbah passage above, feature interchange and dispute, a synergy in piyyuṭ between its performative element and its formal character (the subject of the next chapter) yields, in the form of dialogue and dispute poems, an almost complete reduction of narrative into voice. The reduction is almost but not entirely complete because the dialogue is itself a narrative, and thus allows, at least in principle, for a narrator who can introduce the voices in turn, and frame the dialogue. We will return to the voice of the narrator later. Outside of the phenomenon of dialogue and dispute poems, the above analysis does not permit any general conclusions about differences between piyyuṭ performance and performed homiletics; Deuteronomy Rabbah is, after all, not a script, nor even a homiletical midrash, and Yannai’s version might better be understood 50  I take ‫ בכל מעשה‬in the last line as a paraphrase of Num 12:3 ‫מכל האדם אשר על פני האדמה‬ “[more humble] than any person on the face of the earth.” 51  In her commentary ad loc., Elizur interprets the line differently, as a more general rebuke occasioned by Moses’ refusal to accept the decree of death. 52  On this very long-lived genre see G. J. Reinink and H. L. J. Vanstiphout, eds., Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East: Forms and Types of Literary Debates in Semitic and Related Literature (Leuven: Peeters, 1991). On one sub-genre in piyyuṭ and contemporary Christian poetry see Ophir Münz-Manor, “Jewish and Christian Dispute Poems on the Relation between the Body and the Soul,” Jerusalem Studies in Jewish Folklore 28 (2013), 187–209.

30

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

as a template, mutatis mutandis, for how a homilist might have performed the material in Deuteronomy Rabbah. The secure point in the comparison is that despite the fact that the poems are more interested in and attentive to subtleties of voicing than is the midrash passage, even the latter includes much character speech, and even the former, in general, give voice only to biblical characters speaking in the past.53

Voices in the Eschaton In some exceptional circumstances, biblical characters can burst out of the past. Patriarchs may speak on Israel’s behalf from the grave, at post-mortem points in the biblical past and even in the present. We will consider examples of this phenomenon later, in Chapter 4. Here we take up a different context for the resurrection of biblical characters, through the comparison of an Aramaic piyyuṭ for the festival of Purim and an approximate parallel in midrash. The Aramaic composition is another dispute poem; it stages a conversation between the various enemies of Israel in some unspecified, post-biblical setting, to which we will return below.54 In the poem, each oppressor, beginning with Nimrod, speaks for two strophes, and in each case, Haman replies with his own two strophes. The exchanges are dramatic, with sharp criticism on both sides. Thus, for example, Pharaoh tells Haman: ‫ מן לקה מן ראשה‬/ ‫ הווה לך למפשפשה‬/ ‫“ גורייא בישא‬Wicked whelp,/ you should have considered / who was struck at first.” That is to say: Haman should have taken a lesson from the fate of his ancestors, the Amalekites of the wilderness.55 As Menahem Kister has observed, the basic conceit of the poem has a parallel in a homily attributed to R. Levi.56 53  A stronger predilection for voicing in piyyuṭ may explain an interesting pattern in Qillir’s qedushta’ot for Shavuot. Of the four exegeses in this corpus for which Shulamit Elizur (Rabbi El‘azar Birabbi Kiliri Hymni Pentecostales [Jerusalem: Mekize Nirdamim, 2000], 76–79) can find no source or parallel in rabbinic literature, three involve the attribution of biblical speech to someone (angels, an echo, Israel) other than the apparent speaker. The second of the unsourced midrashim in Yannai’s oeuvre, in the list collated by Zvi Meir Rabinowitz, Halakha and Aggada in the Liturgical Poetry of Yannai: The Sources, Language and Period of the Payyetan (Tel-Aviv: Alexander Kohut Memorial Foundation, 1965), 269, has the same feature. 54  The text of the Aramaic poem is from Sokoloff and Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry, 204–19. 55  There may be an allusion to Num 24:20, which characterizes Amalek as ‫“ ראשית גוים‬the first of the nations.” 56 Menahem Kister, “Jewish Aramaic Poems from Byzantine Palestine and their Setting,” Tarbiz 76 (2007), 161–62. The passage below occurs in slightly different versions in Pesiq. Rab Kah. 9:11 (158–59) and Lev. Rab. 27:11 (Margulies ed., 644–47). I quote from the version in Pesiqta de Rab Kahana.

Voices in the Eschaton

31

‫א"ר לוי אוי לרשעים שהן מתעסקין בעצות רעות על ישראל כל אחד ואחד או' עצתי יפה מעצתך עשו‬ ‫א' שוטה היה קין שהרג את אחיו בחיי אביו ולא היה יודע שאביו פרה ורבה אני איני עושה כן אלא‬ ‫ א"ר לוי אף גוג לעתיד לבא עתיד‬...‫יקרבו ימי אבל אבי ואהרגה יעקב אחי פרעה א' שוטה היה עשו‬ ‫לומר כן שוטים היו הראשונים שהיו מתעסקין בעצות רעות על ישר' לא היו יודעין שיש להם פטרון‬ ‫בשמים אני איני עושה כן אלא בתחילה אני מזדוג לפטרונן ואחר כך אני מזדוג להם הד' דכת' יתיצבו‬ ‫מלכי ארץ ורזנים נוסדו יחד על י"י ועל משיחו אומר לו הקב"ה רשע לי באתה להיזדווג חייך שאני‬ ‫עושה עמך מלחמה‬ Said R. Levi: Woe to the wicked, who preoccupy themselves with evil counsels against Israel. Each one says: My counsel is better than yours. Esau said: Cain was a fool, for he killed his brother in his father’s life; did he not know that his father would be fruitful and multiply? I won’t do so, but rather, “let the days of mourning for my father approach, and I will kill Jacob my brother” (Gen 27:41). Pharaoh said: Esau was a fool, … Said R. Levi: Also Gog in the future will say so: Those earlier ones were fools, for they preoccupied themselves with evil counsels against Israel; did they not know that they have a patron in heaven? I won’t do so, but rather, first I will deal with their patron, and afterward I will deal with them. This is what is written: “Kings of the earth take their stand, and regents intrigue together against the Lord and against his anointed” (Ps 2:2). Says to him the Holiness, blessed be He: Wicked man, do you come to deal with me? By your life, I will do battle with you.

This passage—a historically ordered sequence of similar events, and thus a serial narrative, of the sort that we will examine in great detail in the second half of this book—begins with Esau critiquing not Cain’s wickedness but his foolishness: If he meant to eliminate rivals, he should have put off fratricide until his father could no longer bear new children. Esau resolves to learn from his predecessor: He will not kill Jacob until Isaac has died.57 Afterward comes Pharaoh, in the elided portion, who calls Esau a fool for not appreciating that by the time Isaac died, Jacob would already have borne sons. And Pharaoh therefore does away with all sons. But for Haman, who comes next, Pharaoh was a fool for not killing the daughters; Haman aims to destroy them all. Finally, at the eschaton, comes Gog, who dismisses all of his predecessors for attempting to go after Israel before doing away with their divine patron.58 57  R. Levi thus turns Gen 27:41 on its head: Delaying his vengeance until after his father’s death is no longer a matter of filial piety, but of strategic cunning. 58  This claim about Gog’s plan depends on the fact that in Ps 2:2, “the Lord” precedes “his anointed.” The motif of not learning from one’s wicked predecessor, which is the most salient common denominator between the Aramaic poem and Pesiq. Rab Kah. 9:11, recurs in Midr. Tanḥ . (Warsaw) Noaḥ 18, in connection with the generations of Enosh, the flood, and the tower of Babel. Closer still, it arises in a malkiyot poem by Yose b. Yose for the New Year (Aharon Mirsky, ed., Yosse ben Yosse: Poems, Edited with an Introduction, Commentary and Notes (2nd

32

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Kister notes the contrast between the intensely theatrical poem, featuring giveand-take between the characters, and the less dramatic midrash. The midrash is bound by biblical time: Esau cannot know Pharaoh, and while Haman can reflect on all of the wicked men who preceded him, he cannot speak with them; he, like everyone else in R. Levi’s comment, speaks only to himself. Constraints can, of course, be productive, and this constraint compels the midrash to locate a coherent argumentative line running from the first murderer, Cain, to the eschatological enemy, Gog. In the piyyuṭ, which does not adhere to this constraint, the argumentation is diffuse and fragmentary, and is not asked to bear structural weight. The differences between the midrash and the piyyuṭ are especially notable in light of the fact that the biblical basis for the midrash encourages the sort of conversation staged in the piyyuṭ. The verbal overlaps between the beginning of R. Levi’s comment and the end, on Gog, in the form of the words “preoccupy/preoccupied themselves with evil counsels against Israel,” demonstrate that the prooftext that R. Levi introduces in connection with Gog, Ps 2:2, is in fact present, implicitly, from the beginning. What the nations say, according to R. Levi, namely, “my counsel is better than yours,” indeed probably represents a paraphrase of Ps 2:2 (“Kings of the earth take their stand, and regents intrigue together against the Lord and against his anointed”); notably, in this initial paraphrase, as in the verse, the enemies of Israel speak to each other, with the second person, and not merely, as in the serial narrative itself, about each other. When R. Levi, then, has the enemies of Israel speak about each other, in succession, he is resisting the verse’s demand that they speak to each other. But in this case, too, as in the previous comparison, we should be wary of generalization. The piyyuṭ is able to escape the constraint of biblical chronology by situating Israel’s enemies in a post-biblical moment, presumably the afterworld or the eschaton, where they gather in their defeated state. But this choice is available to the homilist too. We may note as an example one passage that depends on the same biblical text as R. Levi’s homily, and that also will prove relevant in the continuation of the chapter. The passage occurs in the Bavli, in b. Abod. Zar. 2a-3b, but the exegetical narrative therein is attributed to Palestinian figures—R. Ḥ inena b. Papa, or alternatively R. Simlai—and there are other good grounds to locate it, in its original form, in amoraic Palestine.59 ed.; Jerusalem: Bialik, 1991], 94 l. 12): ‫ ועטה מלוכה‬/ ‫ מי נלחם בים‬// ‫ כי לא למד‬/ ‫דור‬-‫“ ויולעג בכל‬And he will be mocked in every generation / because he did not learn // who had fought at the sea / and was cloaked with kingship.” The references to mockery and kingship are especially evocative of the Aramaic poem and the rabbinic passage. 59  While parallels occur in Midr. Tanḥ uma (Buber) Shofeṭim 9, and Midr. Tanḥ uma (Warsaw) Shofeṭim 9, these versions appear to depend on the Bavli, as noted in Jeffrey L. Rubenstein, Talmudic Stories: Narrative Art, Composition, and Culture (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999), 381 n. 5. But the Bavli passage itself, insofar as it distinguishes sharply between the base narrative, in Hebrew, and the commentary thereon, in Aramaic, supports a Palestinian

God and Israel as Speakers

33

According to the exegetical narrative, God, in the future age, will come carrying a Torah scroll and say: “Let anyone who has occupied himself with this come and take his reward.” The gentiles will then approach, and offer evidence to support their claims that they did in fact observe the law. This part of the homily depends on Isa 43:9, which it cites: ‫ יתנו עדיהם ויצדקו‬... ‫כל הגוים נקבצו יחדו‬ “All the nations assemble as one … Let them produce their witnesses and be vindicated.” In the continuation of the narrative, God rejects their arguments, but he is persuaded to give them a final chance: They will have an opportunity to observe the festival of Sukkot. And they do observe it. But when God makes the sun bear down on them, they abandon the sukkah, and kick it as they leave, and are therefore condemned to perdition. The last part of the narrative depends on Psalm 2. It ends, for example, with God laughing at the nations, after Ps 2:4 ‫“ יושב בשמים ישחק‬The heaven-dweller will laugh.”60 Thus, in this homily, as in the Purim piyyuṭ, the eschaton emerges as a stage whereon performances can loose themselves from the chronological constraint of the biblical past.

God and Israel as Speakers God and Israel must be treated separately from the other biblical characters, because these two characters persist into the performative present that is presupposed by midrash and piyyuṭ texts. One important way in which both midrash and piyyuṭ link the biblical past to the present is precisely through these two characters, especially as these characters speak in the circumstances of exile. The Bible describes exile in detail, especially in the prophetic books, and situates much speech by God and by Israel in the exile. Because the circumstances for the performance of midrash and piyyuṭ (pre-classical and classical alike) are also exilic (not geographically but insofar as they occur in the expectation of a future restoration), the distinction between the biblical past and the homiletical or liturgical present more or less dissolves in such cases. The dissolution occurs also provenance, even if we can hardly assume that the Bavli refrained from modifying the base narrative itself. Moreover, as we will see later in this chapter, this story was transmitted together with a work of Palestinian midrash, Pesiqta de Rab Kahana, in an appendix that also includes specifically Palestinian material. Finally, as we will note in the same context, two interrelated silluq poems by the Palestinian poet Qillir make use of traditions preserved in this appendix. These aspects of the tradition’s reception confirm its Palestinian provenance. On the story in the Babylonian Talmud see also Yehudah Brandes, ‫ שיעור מבוא ללימוד מסכת‬:'‫פתיחתא לפרק 'ימי אידיהן‬ ‫“[ עבודה זרה‬An Opening to the Chapter ‘The Days of Their Festivals’: An Introductory Lesson to the Study of Tractate Avodah Zarah”], Akdamut 5 (1998), 9–23. 60  As Brandes, ‫פתיחתא‬, 18 n. 23, observes, a partial parallel to the interpretation of Psalm 2 in this context, but independent from the longer narrative, occurs in y. ‘Abod. Zar. 2:1 (40c), in the name of R. Hosaiah.

34

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

in the context of biblical law (and prophetic exhortation), insofar as the audience of the imperatives and exhortations is corporate Israel. God and Israel also blur the boundaries between past and present within a liturgical framework, insofar as the very same Israel that “now”—in the liturgy—celebrates the biblical past, and the very same God before whom Israel celebrates, were themselves actors in that past. We will return in Chapter 4 to the construction in midrash and piyyuṭ texts of a present constituted by exile, by law, and by the liturgical cycle, and the case study at the end of the current chapter features God in a speaking role in that present. In this section, I will take note of a piyyuṭ in which the voice of Israel plays a structural role. The poem, ‫“ אספרה אל חוק‬Let me tell by rule,” by Qillir, is designated for a qerova for Purim.61 The poem tells the story of Haman’s lot in two parts. In the first part, Haman attempts to determine a day of the week for the planned annihilation of the Jews, but each day resists, citing the things created on that day as grounds for sparing Israel. The second part constructs the same narrative arc in relation to the months of the year. Below are representative passages, one from each of the two parts. ‫ מלהלשיני‬/ ‫ ואילם מלשני‬/ ‫ להצדיק שפת שני‬/ ‫זע יום שיני‬ ‫ זוהר הרקיע‬/ ‫ ומי זה בא להשקיע‬/ ‫ והבדיל רקיע‬/ ‫חי בי הרקיע‬ The second day quivered / to justify the Scarlet Lip,/ and muted my slanderer / from slandering me. The Living One firmamented on me,/ and separated the firmament,/ and who now comes to sink / the Shine of the Firmament? ‫ שיכך חמה‬/ ‫ ומבתולה הומה‬/ ‫ ששי המה‬/ ‫לעישור בהמה‬ For the tithe of animals/ the sixth moaned,/ and from the bemoaning Virgin / suppressed anger.

In the first passage, the second day of the week speaks in defense of “the Scarlet Lip,” a reference to Israel deriving from Song 4:3. This reference anticipates the characterization of Israel’s opponent, Haman, in the continuation of the line, as ‫“ מלשן‬slanderer,” from ‫“ לשון‬tongue.” The second day argues that God created the firmament on the second day, and therefore the second day cannot serve as the occasion for the downfall of Israel (“The shine of the Firmament,” after the characterization of the righteous in Dan 12:3). In the second passage, the sixth month invokes the merit of the animal tithe, for which the sixth month serves as the fixed point dividing one year’s young from the next. Israel is called the “Virgin” (after, inter alia, Amos 5:2) because Virgo is the zodiacal sign of the sixth month. 61  For the critical edition with analysis see Hakohen, ‫לבירור זיקתם‬.

The Voice of the Performer

35

What is of immediate note, for our purposes, is the dramatic voicing of Israel in the poem. Israel reflects on the past events marked by the current liturgical occasion, the festival of Purim. Israel thus implicitly speaks in the liturgical present. In the couplet quoted above, Israel’s first person occurs only in the first line (“my slanderer”; “slandering me”), not the second, but it is pervasive in the poem. More precisely, and interestingly, it is pervasive in the first part of the poem, on the days; it is entirely absent in the second part of the poem, on the months. This stark contrast calls for explanation.62 It seems clearly to be related to the fact that Qillir directly quotes the speech of the days whereas, with one exception (for the fifth month), he never directly quotes the speech of the months. In the first part of the poem, Qillir devotes two lines (strophes) to each day, the first of which involves narration (often including self-reference) by Israel, and the second of which represents the quoted speech of the day, quoted speech that is self-referential because the day refers to the things created on it. (The total number of lines is determined by an acrostic constraint.) By contrast, in the second part of the poem, most months receive, at most, one line. It is difficult to trace cause and effect: Could it be that the decision to allot two lines to the days determined the decision to allow the days to speak directly, and self-referentially, which in turn explains why Israel, too, speaks self-referentially? Could it be, too, that the fact that the days are described by ordinal numbers (like ‫שני‬, in l. 1 above), which end in ‫–י‬, phonologically identical to one form of the first-person singular pronominal suffix, also explains the prevalence of Israel’s self-referential speech in the first part of the poem? It is noteworthy, in this connection, that such speech is absent, in the first part, only from the units dedicated to the first day (‫ )יום ראשון‬and the Sabbath (‫)יום שבת‬, the only two days not described by ordinal numbers ending in ‫–י‬. But Qillir also references many months, like the sixth (‫)ששי‬, in l. 3, above, by the use of ordinal numbers, and yet they do not inspire self-referential speech by Israel. Ultimately, it is the absoluteness of the divide between the two parts that merits attention: Israel and the days speak throughout the first part, whereas Israel and the months (with one exception) are silent in the second part. The poem thus suggests that Qillir can use voicing not only as an ad hoc aesthetic device, but also as a structuring principle.

The Voice of the Performer The most categorical contrast in relation to voices between piyyuṭ texts, on the one hand, and homiletical midrash texts, on the other, lies in the speaking presence in the former, but not in the latter, of the performer. The performing payṭan 62  The contrast is also present in Esth. Rab. 7:11 (ad Esth 3:7) (Tabory and Atzmon ed., 132–36), which, as Hakohen shows, depends on Qillir’s poem.

36

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

speaks in his own, first-person singular voice, whereas, as a general rule, neither the anonymous voice in the homiletical midrashim, nor the rabbis quoted therein, refer to themselves. Here, of course, the methodological challenge posed by the gap between homiletical material and homiletical performance becomes especially salient: Surely, in the homiletical Sitz im Leben from which works like Pesiqta de Rab Kahana emerged, a homilist would have made reference to himself in some circumstances. And yet comparison with piyyuṭ may be illuminating on precisely this point. For in fact, in pre-classical and classical piyyuṭ, the poet speaks in his own voice relatively rarely, and mainly at the very beginning of the composition, by way of brief introduction.63 There are exceptions to this tendency, one of which is the case study featured at the end of this chapter. At the same time, and in light of the genetic relationship between the rabbinic homiletical midrashim and classical piyyuṭ, the relative reserve of the payṭan may perhaps serve as evidence, however slight in light of the gaps in time and genre, that the absence of a self-referential homilist in rabbinic homiletical texts is not a marker of the gap between text and performance, but a feature of homiletical performance. In any case, the fact that, as Rachel Anisfeld, building from the work of David Stern, has shown, there is an “implied preacher” in many homiletical texts—a biblical figure within the homily who seems to give voice to the intentions of the preacher or homilist—shows that the absence of a self-referential homilist in the midrash texts is not merely an artifact of the gap between text and performance; these texts “work” precisely by concealing the rabbinic homilist behind biblical characters.64 In the context of the voice of the performer let us also briefly return to the dialogue or dispute poem. We have noted two examples above. In the first, probably by Pinḥas, Moses pleads with God to allow him to live and to enter the land of Canaan. The second is an Aramaic composition in which Haman bickers in turn with the other historic enemies of Israel. Here I wish only to note a difference between the two that is of incidental import for the substance of the dialogue, but of considerable import for the dialogues as performances. In Pinḥ as’ poem, the narrator introduces God’s replies to Moses: ‫ בעצם היום‬/ ‫“ והשיבו איום‬And the fearful one replied / on that very day.”65 In the Aramaic poem, every other strophe ends with an indication of the speaker of the preceding six lines: ‫“ אמר נימרוד‬said Nimrod”; ‫“ אמר המן‬said Haman”; etc. But in the case of Pinḥ as’ poem, the narrator’s line is set off, by rhyme and meter, from God’s speech; it is a strophe unto its own. In the 63  See most recently Yehoshua Granat, “The ‘Emissary of the Congregation’ as an Individual in the Early Reshut,” in Jewish Prayer: New Perspectives, 79–99. 64  See the second chapter of Anisfeld, Sustain Me with Raisin-Cakes; David Stern, Parables in Midrash: Narrative and Exegesis in Rabbinic Literature (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1991), 86–93. 65  Interestingly, the fixed formula that introduces Moses’ pleadings are in Moses’ own first person.

The Voice of the Audience

37

Aramaic poem, by contrast, the indication of the speaker is integrated by meter (though not by rhyme) into the strophes otherwise dedicated to character speech: It represents the third and final foot of the third line of each alternating strophe. As a result, it is rather easier to imagine a division of lines between “character actors” and a narrator in Pinḥas’ poem than in the Aramaic poem.66

The Voice of the Audience A final voice that we must consider in this survey is that of the audience. As in the case of the homilist, so in the case of the audience, the gap between midrash text and midrash performance looms large. Homiletical midrashim like Pesiqta de Rab Kahana include only homilies, not audience response, nor do the texts ever address the audience in the second person, but there is little doubt that homilists did address audiences directly, and abundant evidence that audiences did, in one way or another, respond. In the passage from Song of Songs Rabbah quoted near the beginning of this chapter, which purports to transcribe a serial homily delivered by seven rabbis to their hosts in Usha upon the rabbis’ departure, the rabbis refer to the audience directly, in the second person. Rabbinic and non-rabbinic sources indicate that synagogue audiences, in different contexts, would punctuate homilies with indications of approval or acclamation, or of disapproval.67 66  We need not in any case imagine two different character actors, each taking on a different voice. Perhaps, like the contemporary pantomime, whose skill lay, inter alia, precisely in being “multi-faced,” and embodying an array of different characters, a single performer would modulate his voice for each character in the poem. On the pantomime, see Ruth Webb, Demons and Dancers: Performance in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2008), 64; and on the mime and pantomime in and around the rabbinic community of Roman Palestine see Zeev Weiss, Public Spectacles in Roman and Late Antique Palestine (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2014), 120–35. 67  See, e.g., Philo, Hypothetica, 7.11–12 (LCL ed., 432–33), where Philo depicts the audience listening to the exposition of the law in silence, save to assent with applause or praise. (On the latter see Ezra Fleischer, “On the Beginnings of Obligatory Jewish Prayer,” Tarbiz 59 [1990], 423–24, identifying a parallel in t. Suk. 4:6; and note in passing that the organization of the congregants in the Alexandrian synagogue of t. Suk. 4:6 according to profession finds a parallel in the seating arrangements common in contemporary Greco-Roman theaters, on which see Webb, Demons and Dancers, 33.) For an example of a negative audience reaction see Gen. Rab. 28:3 (261), where R. Judah b. R. Simon expounds that in the flood, even the dust of primordial Adam was dissolved, and ‫“ אווש עליה ציבורא‬the congregation shouted (?) at him,” or according to a different version, the congregation “did not accept” (‫)ולא קביל ציבורא‬. (The translation “shouted” for ‫ אווש‬is proposed tentatively by Michael Sokoloff, A Dictionary of Jewish Palestinian Aramaic of the Byzantine Period [Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002], 38, presumably on the basis of context. Perhaps, alternatively, ‫ אווש‬is a metathesized form of ‫ ;באש‬this root does regularly metathesize in Syriac in the Gt stem, where it carries the meaning: to become upset.) See also Qoh. Rab. 8 (ad Eccl 8:1), where the congregation, seeing one rabbi’s face light up upon

38

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Especially important for the purpose of comparison with piyyuṭ are cases in which the audience’s response to the homily is formulaic.68 For in the case of piyyuṭ from the pre-classical and classical periods, the audience, to the extent that it participated, appears to have done so (in whole or in part) via the repetition of fixed choral refrains.69 An interesting example comes from a Nine poem attributed to Qillir, from a qedushta for the Day of Atonement.70 The poem, an alphabetical acrostic, serves to introduce a lightly modified version of Ps 8:2a ‫ה' אדנינו‬ ‫“ מה אדיר שמך בכל הארץ‬Lord, our lord, how mighty is your name in all the land,” which in turn leads into the final sentence of the qedushah.71 The first hemistich of each line anticipates via rhyme the refrain that follows it, ‫“ ה' אדנינו‬Lord, our hearing the question of the expounding rabbi, ventures: ‫[“ דידע דין מה דאמ' דין‬It is] because this one knows what this one said (i.e., asked)” (ms Vatican Biblioteca Apostolica ebr. 291, as transcribed in Maagarim). In parallels (e.g., Pesiq. Rab Kah. 4:4 [67]), the setting is not described as an exposition, and it is the teacher himself who makes the inference. See also Marc Hirshman, “The Preacher and His Public in Third-Century Palestine,” JJS 42 (1991), 108–14; Saul Lieberman, Greek in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Life and Manners of Jewish Palestine in the II-IV Centuries C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1994 [1941]), 161–62. On acclamation see also the discussion of verse headers in Chapter 2. 68  See the admittedly late Qoh. Rab. 9 (ad Eccl 9:14) and Midrash Mishle 10, indicating a formulaic response to the homily, ‫ יהי שמו הגדול מבורך‬or ‫“ יהא שמיה רבא מברך‬may his great name be blessed.” See also Esth. Rab. 7:1–2 (ad Esth 3:1) (Tabory and Atzmon ed., 124 l. 26), where, in the story of R. Pinḥ as, the fox is called upon to “sing”—in the continuation he tells a parable— and asks his audience to repeat after him, and they consent. 69  For scholarship on the choral refrains see Ezra Fleischer, ‫עיונים בהשפעת היסודות המקהלתיים על‬ ‫“[ עיצובם והתפתחותם של סוגי הפיוט‬Studies in the Influence of Choral Foundations in the Formation and Development of the Varieties of Piyyuṭ ”], Yuval Studies 3 (1974), 18–48. On refrains in Romanos’ kontakia see Thomas Arentzen, “Voices Interwoven: Refrains and Vocal Participation in the Kontakia,” Jahrbuch der Österreichischen Byzantinistik 66 (2016), 1–11; idem, The Virgin in Song: Mary and the Poetry of Romanos the Melodist (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), 13, 56–59. For reflections by Jacob of Serugh on the participation of the audience in and around his metrical homilies, see Susan Ashbrook Harvey, “Liturgy and Ethics in Ancient Syriac Christianity: Two Paradigms,” Studies in Christian Ethics 26 (2013), 308–16. 70  Goldschmidt, ed., ‫מחזור לימים הנוראים‬, 2.176. I see no reason to doubt the attribution—and note, for example, that the forms of the moniker ‫“ נשואי רחמך‬those borne of your womb (or mercy)” in the concluding line (from Isa 46:3) are attested elsewhere for Yannai (e.g., 1.307 l. 43) and Qillir—but because the poem’s form is to my knowledge relatively unusual, I withhold final judgment. 71  The modification consists in the prefacing of the verse with ‫“ אדיר אדירנו‬Mighty, our mighty.” Lexically, this preface anticipates the word ‫“ אדיר‬mighty” in the verse, but morphologically and phonologically, it is patterned (with minor changes) after the first two words of the verse, which, with the pious substitution of ‫(“ אדני‬our) Lord” for the Tetragrammaton, read: ‫“ אדני אדנינו‬Lord, our lord,” with repetition of the initial syllabus ’ăd. It seems to me clear that in origin, Ps 8:2 was introduced into the angelic liturgy that is the qedushah on the assumption (rooted in a widespread exegesis of Ps 8:5) that Psalm 8 represents (at least in part) the speech of the angels. In this particular prelude piyyuṭ , however, Qillir does not take up the theme of angelic speech.

The Voice of the Audience

39

lord,” while the second hemistich, in turn, anticipates via rhyme its own refrain, ‫“ מה אדיר שמך‬how mighty is your name.” Here are two representative stichs. ]‫ חי כי אין זר עמך מ[ה] א[דיר] ש[מך‬/ ]‫זכור ברית אתנינו י[י] א[דנינו‬ ]‫ יחידי הדן בעולמך מ[ה] א[דיר] ש[מך‬/ ]‫טהור לשמך קננו י[י] א[דנינו‬ Remember the covenant with our Powerful Ones, “Lord, our lord,” / O living one, for there is no stranger with you. “How mighty is your name.”72 O pure one, acquire us for your name, “Lord, our Lord,” / Who alone judges in your world. “How mighty is your name.”

In the Hebrew, the first refrain, and thus also the rhyming syllable binding every first hemistich, end with the pronoun ‫“ –נו‬our” (or “of us”), while the second refrain, and thus every second hemistich, end with ‫“ –ך‬your” (or “of you”). The refrains thus encode and reinforce the confrontation between Israel and God that is constitutive of prayer. Given the fact that the hemistichs anticipate their refrains, and that the refrains are short, and drawn from a very familiar verse, it is easy to imagine that a chorus or even the congregation as a whole would voice the refrains. While refrains like these offer much suggestive evidence about the performance of piyyuṭ, I wish to focus in the continuation on a different feature that characterizes some refrains, both because previous scholarship has not dwelled on it, and because it can be put into conversation with aspects of the case study to which the last section of the chapter is devoted. In some compositions, the main body of the poem narrates an event or events from the biblical past before it turns, at the end of the poem, to the liturgical present, even as, at the same time, the refrain itself, from the very beginning, draws attention to the liturgical present. An example occurs in a Six poem by Qillir, ‫“ אם אשר בקץ נתישנה‬The mother who at the appointed time was old,” from a qedushta for the New Year.73 This poem, an alphabetical acrostic, concerns the birth of Isaac to Sarah, which according to rabbinic tradition occurred on the New Year. The first strophe, covering the first three letters of the alphabet, runs as follows. ‫ גוחה פקדה בראש השנה‬/ ‫ במו נתיאשה בתכל דושנה‬/ ‫אם אשר בקץ נתישנה‬ The mother who at the appointed time was old,/ though she despaired, in the end turned fertile./ Her maker recalled her on the New Year. 72  The “Powerful Ones” are the patriarchs. 73 Shulamit Elizur and Michael Rand, eds., Rabbi El‘azar Berabbi Qillir, Liturgical Poems for Rosh ha-Shana: Critical Edition, Introduction and Commentaries (Jerusalem: World Union of Jewish Studies, 2014), 210–16.

40

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

The body of the poem keeps its eye trained on this incident from the past. It only rarely and briefly makes reference to the liturgical present, and never addresses God, until the end, in the ‫ ש‬and ‫ ת‬lines of the acrostic. The last strophe, devoted to the ‫ ת‬line, addresses God throughout, and is entirely given over to the liturgical present, as is evident from the fact that the rhyme revolves around the word ‫יום‬ “day,” or, in context, “today.” ‫ תצדיק בצדקם מיחליך‬/ ‫ ושלוש עקרות אשר נפקדו בזה יום‬/ ‫תיפן בצורים אשר הוללו (חוללו?) היום‬ ‫איום‬ Turn to the Rocks who were celebrated (conceived?) today,/ and to the three barren ones who were visited on this day./ Justify by their justice those who hope in you, O fearful one.74

The refrain anticipates this conclusion, insofar as it involves direct address of God, and direct reference to “today”: ‫ מרום וקדוש‬/ ‫ היום לטובה תפקוד‬/ ‫צאציה כן פקוד‬ Her offspring likewise, visit!/ Today, for good, do visit,/ O high and holy one!

The poem thus puts the payṭan and his congregation—or his choir—on two different tracks that will ultimately converge. The poet turns again and again to the past, “resisting” the congregation’s fixed attentiveness to the present, to God, to prayer, until finally he joins with them, and likewise prays. We may posit that the occurrence of the congregational refrain in the liturgical present “allows” the payṭan to dwell at such length on the past. A similar dynamic pertains in the previous poem, the qiqlar, from the same qedushta.75 The payṭan reflects throughout on the destruction and oppression of Israel and its kingdom at the hands of Edom, or Rome. Here is the first triplet of strophes: ‫ ועוד לא מלכה‬/ ‫ על מה השלכה‬/ ‫אדרת ממלכה‬ ‫ שלא כהלכה‬/ ‫ ואחריו הלכה‬/ ‫לבל המליכה‬ ‫ עד תופיע מלוכה‬/ ‫ גברת ממלכה‬/ ‫עליה הומלכה‬ The glorious kingdom,/ why was it cast off,/ and still does not reign? (Because) it kinged Bel,/and walked after him,/ against the law. Upon it was kinged/ the mistress kingdom/ until (true) kingship should appear.76 74  The “Rocks” are the patriarchs. 75  Elizur and Rand, Liturgical Poems for Rosh-Hashanah, 205–10. 76  The “glorious kingdom” is Israel; the “mistress kingdom” is Rome.

The Voice of the Audience

41

There is no reference in the body of the poem to the liturgical occasion—the New Year—except indirectly, by the fixed mention of kingship at the end of each triplet of strophes, and by the scattered references to kingship throughout. Nor is there any direct address of God, until the final strophe, as in the Six poem analyzed above. But the refrain addresses God, and while it does not make explicit reference to “today,” it does refer to its characteristic command, the blowing of the shofar: ‫ קדוש‬/ ‫ ותקדש ביודעי להריע‬/ ‫ להכרית כל ריע‬/ ‫תעיר ותריע‬ Awake and blare / to end every evildoer,/ and be sanctified by those who know to blare,/ O holy one.

In this case too, then, the refrain anticipates, as it were, the conclusion.77 The above phenomenon is rooted in the fact that both the refrain and the conclusion are privileged moments of reflection with the piyyuṭ. Both thus naturally tend to turn their attention from the biblical past to the liturgical present. It is worth considering how the overlap between the refrain and the conclusion might have been experienced, even if this line of inquiry is inevitably speculative, and even if the experience would undoubtedly have varied depending on the poem and the circumstances. Perhaps the dynamic was one of delayed gratification, where the congregation or chorus repeatedly offers the poet an immediately pertinent inference from the biblical narrative detailed in the body of the poem, only to find that the poet withdraws back into the biblical narrative, until finally the poet reaches the end of the poem, and unites his voice with that of the chorus. Alternatively, the dynamic could have been experienced in pedagogic terms. The payṭan would, on this understanding, have represented the teacher, reflecting on the biblical past, and the congregation would have perceived itself as the student, who, having learned the lesson, is moved to respond with prayer. This dynamic repeats itself, until finally the poet brings the poetic homily to its close by joining the congregation in prayer. In the context of the case study below, we will take note of instances in which a pedagogical dimension of the piyyuṭ performance becomes explicit.

77  See also the rahiṭ , ‫“ לא אמות‬Let me not die,” probably by Pinḥas, analyzed above (Elizur, Pinḥ as, 559–69). One of the refrains is defined by the rhyme ‫“ זאת‬this,” drawn from the first word of the reading. In the body of the poem, ‫ זאת‬occurs as the rhyme word specifically in the last strophe.

42

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance In this final section of the chapter, we consider, as a case study in the performative character of piyyuṭ in relation to midrash, a silluq by Qillir for the festival of Sukkot, ‫“ כי אקח מועד‬When I seize the appointed time.”78 In light of the length of the poem, I will provide only the English translation, with one omission indicated by an ellipsis. Strophe 1 1. When I seize the appointed time / to arrive at the end of the appointed time, 2. As then to speak from the appointed tent, / to sit on the appointed mountain, 3. In the farthest north in the appointed city,/ the holy ones in it to assemble, 4. At a time, two times, and half a time,/ to walk among them and be met, 5. To have them sit in tents as in the appointed days,/ then this song will answer79 as a witness. 6. And the sukkah will become a shade by day, a witness,80/ as an honest advocate to bear witness, 7. For all who fulfilled the sukkah commandment to bear witness./ And all who observed it will come and bear witness, 8. And I am he who knows and is witness, Strophe 2 9. That my people fulfilled its commandments / with its measures and its bounds, 10. With its ells and its curtains,/ with its walls and its fixtures, 11. With its covers and its shades,/ with its comings and its goings, 12. With its fences and its breaches,/ with its fests and its joys. 13. And no stranger shall be at its exits,/ nor a foreigner pass its limits, 14. Nor one uncircumcised join in its curtains,/ nor a gentile trample its courts,

78  For the Hebrew text see Goldschmidt and Fraenkel, ‫מחזור סכות‬, 126–35. At a few points, explained in the notes below, I have deviated from this text in favor of alternatives attested in manuscripts. 79  Goldschmidt and Fraenkel include ‫“ לפניו‬before him” before ‫“ לעד‬as a witness,” as in Deut 31:21, to which Qillir alludes. But the preposition does not make sense in this context, where only “I” and “they” are present, not “him,” and many manuscripts delete the word. 80  The construction, with two objects, is awkward but exegetically subtle. Qillir conflates the phrase ‫ היה לצל‬in Isa 4:6 ‫“ וסכה תהיה לצל יומם‬And there will be a sukkah for shade by day” with the very common sequence ‫“ היה לעד‬he became (i.e., served as) a witness” and variants (e.g., Gen 31:43; Deut 31:19; Jer 42:5), so that Isa 4:6 can be appropriated to convey that the sukkah will bear witness.

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance

43

15. Nor a nation mingle in its streets,/ save my Borne,81 who preserve its commandments, 16. And do not annul its counsels./ Full-hearted will they return to its boundaries. 17. Now let my people come to its boundaries. 18. As they alone hoisted its ornaments,/ so alone will they dwell in its restings, 19. To give them the reward of its effort,/ in the age of God’s sukkah its recompense, 20. At the time of its land’s divisions,/ far from the eastern edge by its boundaries, 21. And to the oceanic sea by its dictates,/ seventy-five miles wide its sectors, 22. To join them in rows82 by its limits,/ that each tribe’s boundary thus enters in its distributions. Strophe 3 23. Then an echo will go forth in this land,/ on a high hill to proclaim this news: 24. All who fulfilled this commandment,/ let them come, his pleasant form to see, 25. To stand sentinel at doors and guard posts,/ to look at and see joyous salvations, 26. And on every glory, canopies of posts,/ and unto the throne of glory reaching,83 27. Him who sits on the throne in his beauty to see,/ through clear visions, nine visions. 28. And all who unvaryingly do this/ will merit to be told this: 29. Fortunate the mortal who does this!/ It will be deemed him as he observed all this law. 30. And who has heard like this?/ And from the Lord was this. 31. And I probed to know this,/ and it was too wondrous, this, in my eyes, 32. Until I came to the dwellers of the Unwalled Places,84/ and asked the elders of Who is This:85 33. What is the reward for those who observe the commandment of this sukkah?86 81  I.e., Israel, after Isa 46:3. 82  I read ‫ בשורות לחברם‬with Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1035 (Maagarim). 83  For the text of these lines I follow Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1035 (Maagarim). 84  The “Unwalled Places” are Jerusalem, after Zech 2:8, and the dwellers therein are thus the sages. 85  Israel, after Song 3:6, 8:5. 86  With Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1035 (Maagarim) and the many other witnesses in the apparatus, I delete ‫עם‬.

44

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

34. And they reply with powerful replies,/ and show me things hidden, concealed, 35. The great things hidden in the concealed place / to be plundered by the sukkah owners. Strophe 4 36. And from rampart to rampart they will step,87/ and from sukkah to sukkah they will assemble, 37. And from tent to tent they will be met/ in the sukkah in which they are joined. 38. In the sukkah of Shalem they will be adjoined,/ in the sukkah of the valleys they will be measured, 39. In the sukkah of the Harpooned88 they will be strengthened,/ in the sukkah of his surroundings they will be cheered, 40. In the sukkah of their king they will assemble,/ in the sukkah of his hidden they will be united, 41. In the sukkah of green pastures they will be isolated,/ in the sukkah of still waters they will be glorified, 42. In the sukkah of the tree of life they will be founded,/ in the sukkah underneath it they will be feasted, 43. In the sukkah of its shade mightily they will praise. 44. In its upper parts God will they unify,/ in its plains a crown will they ornament, 45. In its squares they will be decked,/ and the measure of its reachings they will take. Strophe 5 46. Five hundred years its paths rise,/ and its thick trunk is like a line to rise. 47. The number of its branches rises beyond counting,/ and its roots extend beside the river, 48. And all the waters of Genesis extend from it,/ and courses divide into all pools, 49. And seven lofty holy groups /are lofted beneath its sukkah canopy, 50. And beneath them thirty ascents/ lie in their shade in the song of ascents, 51. And above them sixty ascents / one above the other ascends, 52. And unto the throne of glory soar and rise / in the pleasant speech of the song for ascents.

87  The allusion is to the first half of Ps 84:8. Importantly for the poem, the second half describes the appearance of (or appearance before) God in Zion. 88  The Leviathan, after Job 40:31.

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance

45

53. And each one according to his glory,/ with glory and splendor he will give his grandeur. 54. He will distinguish him with his shining presence,/ with sight of the face he will honor him, 55. With ten garments to ornament him,/ with fine weaving to bedeck him, 56. Like the vision of the rainbow to bestow him,/ like the vision of the brightness across him, 57. Like the entrance of the sun in force,/ through which his righteousness attests him. 58. And in accord with what is recorded in his own hand,/ and in accord with his deeds and doings, 59. They shall recompense him as he has done. … Strophe 6 60. And he will walk among them,/ with him to his sukkah to draw them, 61. With cords of love to pull them,/ with his pinion to shelter them, 62. Beneath his wings to cover them,/ in the hiddenness of his tent to conceal them, 63. Between himself and his ministers to insert them. Strophe 7 64. And the rider will put aside clouds89/ to dwell among the sweet ascents / in the merit of taking two willows. Strophe 8 65. And he will come from tens of thousands/ to stand amidst the plaited myrtles / in the merit of the three fathers. Strophe 9 66. And the singular throne will be raised,/ and he will sit with the elders of the Single Nation,90/ binders of the single palm,/ and attaching to them a single citron. Strophe 10 67. And the sons will come, of three fathers,/ a people of three genealogies,/ beyond those who call the three “Holy”s. 89  Ps 68:5 speaks of God as ‫“ רכב בערבות‬riding with the clouds.” In l. 64, it would be most natural to construe ‫ ערבות‬as the nomen rectum in construct with ‫רוכב‬, but this interpretation leaves the transitive verb ‫ יניח‬without an object. I therefore take ‫ ערבות‬to be the object of the verb ‫יניח‬. 90  Israel, after 2 Sam 7:23.

46

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Strophe 11 68. And he will find sweet the words of the faithful,/ who praise with four species,/ more than the four four-faced beasts. Strophe 12 69. And he will desire the flautists of five and six,/ who contemplate five and order six,/ beyond the praise of those wrapped in six wings.91 Strophe 13 70. And he will arouse the love of the Strongmen92/ and the investiture of the marriage crown, 71. Such that they will be placed above them,/ and their screen more inward, 72. And they will delight in the More Precious than Pearls,93/ In Shadai’s shadow, most inward. 73. And them will the Warriors94 ask,/ in the sukkah of the secure dwelling: 74. What is the keeper of faith doing,/ and what has he instructed in the lairs? 75. And what has he revealed to the faithful,/ and what has he exposed of things hidden? 76. And they will explain to them the concealed palate,/ the resounding voice of salvation that they face.95 77. For they will be first,/ the sword of sharpened edges, 78. Praises repeatedly reciting,/ new and also old, 79. Songs and praises declaiming,/ and after them the sound of the beasts thrumming,96 80. With loud voice strumming,/ “Holy” and “Blessed” answering,

91  The numerical sequence in ll. 64–69—from two to three to one to three to four to five/ six—suggests that the text has become corrupted. Notably, every strophe in this sequence consists of three lines, with the exception of the strophe devoted to the number one (l. 66), which contains four lines. If l. 66 is deleted as secondary, or bracketed as a transplant from the beginning of the sequence, then the numbers consistently rise. There are two strophes devoted to the number three (ll. 65, 67), but the second of these strophes (l. 67) begins with the righteous as the semantic subject, whereas in the first of these strophes (l. 65), as in all of the other number strophes, the semantic subject is God. I venture, then, that l. 67 is secondary. The four number strophes that (on my reconstruction) belong to the original composition divide into two subgroups: the two and three strophes (ll. 64–65) manifest the same grammatical structure, as do the four and five/six strophes (ll. 68–69). 92  The patriarchs, after 1 Kgs 8:2. 93  The Torah, after Prov 3:15. 94  The angels, after Ps 68:18. 95  With Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1035 (Maagarim), I delete ‫הם‬. 96  With Oxford, Bodleian Library, 1035 (Maagarim) and many other witnesses in the apparatus, I read ‫ נוגנים‬rather than ‫נותנים‬.

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance

47

81. And the seraphs above with wing singing,/ standing atop and chanting,/ and above the throne, the correct ones97 incanting, 82. Celebrating him who dwells on the throne,/ Chorusing him who is praised in the holy ones’ assembly, 83. With one mouth answering,/ and with each other coinciding, 84. And to each other gesturing,/ and each the other teaching, 85. And from each other learning,/ and each other as learned labeling,/ and the threefold holiness to the Holy rendering.

Monumental silluq poems like this one are common in Qillir’s corpus. The poem begins, in strophe 1, with the voice of God, who says that at the end of days, he will reward those who have observed the laws of the sukkah booth. The sukkah will, as it were, serve as a witness, together with “this song,” probably a reference to the Torah, on behalf of the righteous.98 Strophe 2 describes the various categories of sukkah laws that the righteous will have observed, and in the course of this description, the sukkah transforms into an image of the land of Israel, which Israel will possess in the eschaton. Israel’s eschatological possession of the land comes into focus in the continuation of strophe 2, which still retains the first person voice of God. By strophe 3, God’s voice has dropped out, and he is instead the object of sight: The righteous will attain to a vision of the enthroned God, whose seat is canopied so that it, too, is a sukkah. In the middle of strophe 3, a new “I” emerges, evidently the voice of the poet or the performer. He is puzzled about the precise nature of the reward of the righteous, and inquires of the elders. They respond by revealing their secrets, which presumably represent the content of the next strophe, strophe 4. Here the poem details a litany of booths under which the righteous dwell, among them the sukkah formed by the skin of the “Harpooned,” the Leviathan, to whom we will return below. The last sukkah in this litany is none other than the tree of life, which is the subject of strophe 5. This strophe describes the tree of life, stationed upon “all the waters of Genesis,” reaching up to the throne of glory, and tells how the righteous are positioned among its branches, at different heights, “each one according to his glory.” The poem transitions toward its end in strophe 6, which introduces the notion that God will interpose the righteous between himself and the angels, or in other words, that the righteous will be closer to God than will the angels. Strophes 7–12 work out this notion through a series of verbal and numerical correspondences connected with the ritual practices of sukkot: God will put aside his clouds (‫)ערבות‬, i.e., the company of angels, to attach himself to those who took the willow 97  That is, the righteous. 98  Another alternative, intriguing but less likely, is that “this song” is reflexive, so that its referent is the silluq itself.

48

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

branches (‫ ;)ערבות‬he will favor those who piped music at the festival of the water drawing for six days over the six-winged angels (Isa 6:2), etc. The final strophe, strophe 13, turns to the consequences that follow from the privileged position of the righteous. The angels will ask the righteous to tell them what God has said in his inner chambers, and the righteous will precede the angels in praising God. The description of this praise sets the stage for the qedushah, which follows immediately after the final strophe. This silluq, though itself monumental, should be understood as one half of a diptych, the other half of which is a silluq, ‫“ ויכון עולם על מלאיתו‬And the earth will be set upon its fullness,” from a qerova for the Ninth of Ab.99 This silluq begins with a description of the eschatological renewal of the world. In figures that evoke strophe 5 in our silluq, Qillir speaks of the river that will issue from the temple, alongside which such trees will flourish as can heal illness and cure barrenness. The poem continues by imagining an assembled body, studying the Torah, and into its midst enters God, with his angelic attendants, and afterward the messiah, who wrests control of the land of Israel from the “prostitutes” (‫ קדשים‬qədēšīm) and transfers it to the “holy ones” (‫ קדשים‬qədōšīm) (ll. 78, 80). In ll. 84–108, Qillir describes the division of the land; this unit is intimately connected with, though far longer than, the latter part of strophe 2 of our silluq. And just as strophe 3 transitions from the land of Israel to the God’s throne of glory (l. 26), so in his silluq for the Ninth of Ab, Qillir transitions from the length and breadth of the land of Israel to its height (ll. 109–10), and thus upward, to the throne of glory (l. 113).100 Immediately afterward follows, as in strophe 4 of our silluq, a vision of Eden, and the tree of life within it (l. 125). As strophe 6 of our silluq has God walk among the righteous in the garden, so the silluq for the Ninth of Ab has God walk, as of old, in the garden (ll. 129–31). From this point, the silluq for the Ninth of Ab takes up its own distinctive burden, a detailed description of the eschatological battle between Leviathan and Behemoth that culminates in their mutual slaughter.

99  I cite from T-S H 2, 74, as transcribed in Maagarim. For a critical edition of part of the silluq, see Jefim Schirmann, “The Battle Between Behemoth and Leviathan According to an Ancient Hebrew Piyyuṭ,” in Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4 (1970), 27–62. For contextualization of the poem within its late antique cultural setting see Joseph Yahalom, Poetry and Society in Jewish Galilee of Late Antiquity (Tel Aviv: Hakibbutz Hameuchad, 1999), 251–58, and see also Spielman, “Sitting with Scorners,” 362–69. Perhaps the last word of the first line of the silluq is not ‫ מליאתו‬but ‫“ מלואתו‬its setting,” so that Qillir is indicating that the world will be set in its setting like a jewel (cf. Ex 28:20). 100  For this motif Qillir appears to depend on Pesiq. Rab Kah. 20:7 (317). The same passage speaks of the future Jerusalem expanding “like a date tree, narrow below and wide above, … and the exiles will come and rest beneath it.” Qillir’s description in strophe 5 of the righteous nested in the tree of life may draw on this notion. See also Yannai’s (?) silluq for the Sabbath after the Ninth of Ab (2.330–34). As Rabinovitz notes in his commentary ad loc. (2.332), this silluq also depends on Pesiq. Rab Kah. 20:7.

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance

49

Further evidence for a relationship between the two silluq poems comes from the fact that the closest parallels to both poems in Palestinian rabbinic literature occur in a single unit published by Mandlebaum as an appendix in his edition of Pesiqta de Rab Kahana.101 To my knowledge, it is only here, in rabbinic literature, that we find reference to a battle between Leviathan and Behemoth along the lines envisioned by Qillir. The parallel to the silluq for Sukkot, our focus here, occurs at the very beginning of the appendix, which reproduces the eschatological exegetical narrative in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 2a-3b that we analyzed earlier. The notion of testimony about righteousness in the eschaton is crucial to the first part of the exegetical narrative, centered as it is on Isa 43:9 ‫ יתנו עדיהם‬... ‫כל הגוים נקבצו יחדו‬ ‫“ ויצדקו‬All the nations assemble as one … Let them produce their witnesses and be vindicated.” In the same vein, the first two strophes of Qillir’s silluq have God speak of testimony about Israel’s faithfulness in observance of the commandments, testimony that will be produced in the eschaton. In the same two strophes, the two witnesses that testify to Israel’s righteousness, and that justify the exclusion of the gentiles are “this song”—the Torah—and the sukkah, just as in the exegetical narrative, the nations’ case falls on their failure to observe the Torah and in particular on their failure to observe the sukkah commandment. While the silluq, like the exegetical narrative, envisions the eschaton, God in the silluq speaks in the liturgical present. It is he himself, and not, as in b. ‘Abod. Zar. 2a-3b, the homilist, who foretells the end. The second and final “I” in the poem, that of the poet in ll. 30–35, is especially intriguing. His exchange with the sages, from whom he seeks God’s secrets, strikingly anticipates the exchange near the very end of the poem, in ll. 73–76. In the latter lines, the righteous are in God’s inner chamber, privy to his secrets, and the angels are on the outside looking in; they ask the righteous to tell them God’s secrets, and the righteous oblige.102 101  Pesiq. Rab Kah., appendix B (452–59). 102 See Tanḥ uma (Buber) Balaq 23: ‫כעת יאמר ליעקב ולישראל מה פעל אל ראתה עינו שישראל יושבין לפני‬ ‫ ולא יכנף עוד מוריך והיו עיניך רואות את מוריך ומלאכי השרת‬... ‫ וכן הוא אומר‬... ‫הקדוש ברוך הוא כתלמיד לפני רבו‬ ‫‘“ שואלין אותם מה הורה לכם הקדוש ברוך הוא לפי שאינן יכולין להכנס למחיצתן‬Then it will be said to Jacob and to Israel: What has God done’ (Num 23:23): His (Balaam’s) eye saw Israel sitting before the Holiness, blessed be He, like a student before his master, … and thus it says, ‘and your teachers will not be hidden (?), and your eyes will see your teachers’ (Isa 30:20). And the ministering angels ask them: What did the Holiness, blessed be He, teach you? For they are not able to enter into their partition.” See also Tanḥ uma (Warsaw) Balaq 14; Num. Rab. Balaq 20. In y. Šabb. 6:10 (8d), an antecedent of this exegetical narrative is paired with a different interpretation of Num 23:23: “In the future a heavenly voice will burst forth in the tents of the righteous and say: Everyone who did with God, let him come and take his reward.” The basic narrative thread of Qillir’s silluq is something like a synthesis of these two interpretations of Num 23:23. For another instance in Qillir’s corpus of the motif of the angels’ exclusion in favor of Israel see Joseph Yahalom and Benjamin Loeffler, “‘Mi Lo Yirakha Melekh’: A Lost Silluq by Kallir for Rosh Hashanah,” in Studies in Hebrew Poetry and Jewish Heritage in Memory of Aharon Mirsky (ed. Ephraim Hazan

50

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

What is notable about the poet’s “I” here, especially in relation to midrash, is that it takes on the persona of the student. Midrashic texts sometimes feature student speech, perhaps most notably in the formula, ‫“ ילמדנו רבינו‬Let our master teach us.” But in midrash, the governing voice, the authoritative voice, is that of the teacher. In Qillir’s piyyuṭ, by contrast, the poetic voice that coordinates the composition is that of a student. While it would be an exaggeration to say that this rhetorical move is prevalent in Qillir, it is not without partial parallels. In another silluq, this one at the end of a qedushta for a Sabbath that coincides with the New Moon festival, Qillir includes an analysis of the details of the sacrifices.103 The analysis is structured in a question-answer format: Each strophe has a ‫למה‬ line, asking “why,” and a ‫ כי‬line, answering “because.” Qillir prefaces this analysis with a general reflection on the obscurity of the Torah. Included in this preface is a couplet that appears to represent the background for the question-answer exchange in the analysis: ‫וכל המשכיל יחלה פני מבין‬ ‫ישאל ויפתח לו פתחי בין‬ And every wise man will seek the face of one who understands, And ask, and he will open for him the gates of understanding.

The speaker in the poem does not explicitly represent himself as the “wise man” who inquires of “one who understands,” but the interchange of “why” and “because” in the continuation appears to model precisely such inquiry.104 Why does the poet represent himself, in the silluq for Sukkot, and less directly in the silluq for the New Moon Sabbath, as a student? Why, in the silluq for Sukand Joseph Yahalom; Ramat-Gan: Bar-Ilan University Press, 2006), 151 ll. 243–44 (“Forever will we be together, I and he [scil. Israel], and you will be outside his dwelling.”). 103  See Shalom Spiegel, The Fathers of Piyyut: Texts and Studies, Toward a History of the Piyyut in Eretz Israel (ed. Menahem H. Schmelzer; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1996), 114–15. 104 The silluq for the New Year Sabbath should be understood in relation to a silluq by Qillir for ‫“ אחת שאלתי‬One thing do I ask,” a qedushta for the Sabbath devoted to the red heifer. See Shulamit Elizur, ‫ קדושתא לשבת פרה לר' אלעזר בירבי קיליר‬:"‫‘“[ "אחת שאלתי‬One Thing I Asked’: A Qedushta for the Red Heifer Portion by R. El‘azar bi-rabbi Qillir”], Qovetz al Yad 10 (1982), 11–55, esp. 44–53. The silluq features an extended series of questions and answers, first between ‫מה טעם‬ “for what reason” and ‫“ כמו‬just as,” then between ‫“ למה‬why” and ‫“ רמז‬a hint.” In the preface to this series, the poet humbly declares his intention, despite his obtuseness, to interpret the laws of the red heifer: ‫“ ואני בער אירשה ואדרשה‬And I, though a dolt, will seek leave to expound.” A silluq by Qillir from another qedushta, ‫“ אצולת אומן‬The side companion,” for the same Sabbath, reprises similar motifs, but without the use of the first-person singular. For discussion of the exegetical and rhetorical elements in both silluq poems and their influence on medieval midrashic works see Yahalom, ‫הרקע הפייטני‬.

“When I Seize the Appointed Time”: A Case Study in Performance

51

kot, does he manufacture the exchange between himself and the sages? We may gain insight into this question by considering one other case of a student “I,” from a teqi‘ata for the New Year composed by Yose b. Yose. The strophe of interest runs as follows.105 ‫ משמיעיי קול‬/ ‫ ובל יכנפו‬/ ‫ לבל יעופו כנשר‬/‫צור חוקים מני‬ ‫ ואל משיבו בקול‬/ ‫ כאז ציר מדבר‬/ ‫ ועיניי למוריי‬/ ‫צרופה אלמד‬ Bind statutes, that from me/ they not fly off like the eagle,/ and that they not take wing,/ those who sound a voice.106 The Refined107 shall I learn,/ my eyes to my teachers,/ as then, with the Messenger108 speaking,/ and God replying to him with a voice.

As is clear from the context, the “I” in Yose ben Yose’s strophe is not the poet himself, but collective Israel. Insofar as collective Israel conceives of itself in relation to the framework of Torah study, it naturally takes up the subject position of the student, not of the teacher.109 I suggest that Qillir represents himself as a student in our poem for the same reason. The “I” of the Sukkot silluq is not collective Is105  Mirsky, Yosse ben Yosse, 115. 106 As Mirsky notes (but only partially clarifies) in his commentary, this line, together with the following one, brilliantly links Isa 8:16 ‫“ צור תעודה חתום תורה בלמדי‬Bind up the testimony, seal the instruction with my students” and Isa 30:20–21 ‫ונתן לכם אדני לחם צר ומים לחץ ולא יכנף עוד מוריך והיו‬ ‫“ עיניך רואות את מוריך ואזניך תשמענה דבר מאחריך‬And the Lord will give you meager bread and scant water, and your teachers will not be hidden (?), and your eyes will see your teachers, and your ears will hear a word from behind you.” (Note the use of Isa 30:20 in Tanḥ uma [Buber] Balaq 23, quoted above, n. 102, and note the probable allusion to Isa 8:16 at the end of the Two of Qillir’s qedushta, ‫אצולת אומן‬, for the red heifer Sabbath: ‫“ צו צור לציר צור צרורה לאלעזר‬The Rock [God] bade the Messenger [Moses] bind the bound for Eleazar.” I quote the text from Maagarim.) The two verses are bound by the vocabulary of study: ‫“ למדי‬my students”; ‫“ מוריך‬your teachers” (on the prevalent rabbinic understanding of the word). The near homonyms ‫ צור‬and ‫ צר‬represent another link. The juxtaposition of the teachers with the hearing of a word in Isa 30:20–21 allows Yose to characterize the teachers as ‫“ משמיעיי קול‬those who sound a voice,” and thus satisfy the constraint that every line end with the word ‫קול‬. Yose uses Isa 30:20–21 to explain Isa 8:16: Why should there be a need to bind the Torah (‫ ?)צור תעודה‬Because one’s teacher might “take wing” (‫יכנף‬, understood as a denominative from ‫“ כנף‬wing”). Indeed, this possibility should perhaps be understood as a reformulation of the circumstances of Isa 8:17, where the Lord hides his face from the house of Jacob. Yose throws Prov 23:5 into the mix, because this verse speaks of “your eyes” (‫ )עיניך‬turning away from an object (the ruler’s wealth) because it will “sprout wings like an eagle and fly to heaven” (‫)יעשה לו כנפים כנשר יעוף השמימה‬. 107  The Torah, after 2 Sam 22:31. 108  Moses, after Prov 25:13. 109  The comparison of the situation of Israel before its teachers to that of Moses before God is especially effective because Moses speaks in the biblical event, and in the liturgical present, too, Israel—the “I” of the poem—is speaking. See also Shulamit Elizur, ‫“[ פיוט חדש ליניי החזן‬A New Piyyuṭ by Yannai the Ḥ azzan”], Kiryat Sefer 62 (1988–89), 869 l. 15. Here, in a Three, Israel, af-

52

Piyyuṭ as Performance: Voices in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

rael—nothing in the context associates the “I” with the nation—but because this “I” speaks as the prayer leader, he nevertheless adopts the posture characteristic of Israel, i.e., the posture of the student.110

Conclusion The comparative analysis in this chapter has focused on the performative elements in midrash and piyyuṭ. We have avoided general claims about differences; the limitations in our knowledge in relation both to homiletical and liturgical performance make it difficult to mount such claims, and there are good reasons to shun categorical distinctions between them. The work of this chapter has lain, rather, in the articulation of categories for analysis and comparison, and in the isolation of subtler aspects of voice, aspects not captured by these categories, by means of local comparisons and case studies. The next two chapters take up two generic features of piyyuṭ that more categorically distinguish it from midrash: the formal or poetic character of piyyuṭ, and its status as prayer.

flicted as though by an unnatural flow of blood, speaks in the first person: ‫ נשאלתי‬/ ‫נדרשתי לזקניי‬ ‫“ לחכמי‬I sought out my elders. / I put the question to my sages.” 110  This phenomenon is also evidently related to the representation of the poet as student in early reshut poems, on which see Granat, “‘Emissary of the Congregation,’” 90–93.

Chapter 2 Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Introduction A helpful starting point for analysis of form in piyyuṭ in relation to midrash is a classic work by Aharaon Mirsky, The Origin of Forms of Early Hebrew Poetry, a revision of his doctoral dissertation.1 For Mirsky, the answer to the question implicitly posed by the book’s title—wherein lies the origin of forms in early piyyuṭ ?—is midrash. The title might therefore give the impression that Mirsky means to contend that all of the characteristic formal features of piyyuṭ derive from classical rabbinic literature, but his claim for the influence of midrash on piyyuṭ is in fact more limited. Mirsky’s short book divides into two parts. The first and much larger part, covering five chapters and seventy pages, concerns analogical exegesis, i.e., exegesis that depends on identifying similarities between two things. The book’s second and considerably briefer part, of two chapters and little more than twenty pages, concerns the use of verses to begin or conclude rhetorical units. The analysis below tracks these two parts. As we shall see, the argument of the first part of Mirsky’s book is more persuasive than that of the second, but even in the second case, additional data can be brought to bear that sheds light on the question of form in piyyuṭ and midrash.

Analogical Constructions in Piyyuṭ and Midrash Analogy, or similarity, represents the foundation of both midrash and piyyuṭ. The two most fundamental exegetical principles in midrash, ‫“ קל וחמר‬lightness and heaviness” and ‫“ גזרה שוה‬comparison with the equal,” involve nothing other than comparison: A thing may be “lighter” (‫ )קל‬than another, “heavier” (‫)חמר‬ than it, or “equivalent” (‫ )שוה‬to it.2 Piyyuṭ, for its part, like most traditional poetry, rests on the patterns of similarity that we can in the most general sense call

1 Aharon Mirsky, The Origin of Forms of Early Hebrew Poetry (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1985). 2  On these principles, and especially for the meaning of ‫גזרה שוה‬, see Saul Lieberman, Hellenism in Jewish Palestine: Studies in the Literary Transmission, Beliefs and Manners of Palestine in the I Century B.C.E.–IV Century C.E. (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1962), 53–62.

54

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

parallelism.3 Meter, for example, involves identity (or near-identity) of stress patterns across different lines; rhyme, identity of line-ending phonemes, etc. As an initial matter, analogy operates at different levels in midrash and piyyuṭ. In the case of midrash, analogy occurs at the level of substance: The exegete attempts to identify, and to reason from, analogies that he identifies in Scripture. In the case of piyyuṭ, analogy is a compositional principle: Poets use analogy to give expression to their thoughts. But perhaps inevitably, one level of analogy bleeds into another. The exegete not only finds analogies in Scripture, but also, especially insofar as he is also a homilist, labors to express them in balanced lines, while the poet not only writes parallelistically, but devotes poems to scriptural analogies identified by exegetes, and even identifies new scriptural analogies, previously unobserved. A more or less comprehensive account of these processes has been worked out by Mirsky and, after him, Shulamit Elizur. Mirsky, in the first part of his book, focuses on lines of continuity leading from midrash to piyyuṭ: on ways in which homilists, working with exegetical traditions about scriptural analogies, come to express these exegetical claims in parallel lines, so that payṭanim can, in turn, easily absorb these exegetical texts into their own work. Elizur, in a series of articles, has collected numerous cases in which liturgical poets identify new analogies, without a basis in rabbinic sources.4 Because these poets’ interest in the exegetical project of analogy is secondary to their interest in analogy as a compositional principle, the analogies that they identify are often superficial, dependent on the sound of words rather than on their meaning: in short, the sorts of analogies that do not survive translation.5 Thus, for example, Mirsky traces probable steps in the evolution of a certain mode of reflection on the correlation between God’s court above and the temple below.6 The earliest stage is to be found in Pesiq. Rab Kah. 1:3 (7–8). R. Berekhya 3  For a helpful linguistic approach to poetic parallelism, building on the insights of Roman Jakobson, see Adele Berlin, The Dynamics of Biblical Parallelism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1985). 4 Shulamit Elizur, ‫“[ מבית מדרשם של פייטנינו הקדומים‬From the Academy of Our Early Payṭanim”], in ‫ דרך אגדה‬12 (Jerusalem: Efrat Teachers College, 2013), 264–89; eadem, “On the Ways of Design of the Analogous Sermon in the Piyyutim,” in Joshua Levinson et al., Higayon L’Yona: New Aspects in the Study of Midrash, Aggadah, and Piyyut in Honor of Professor Yonah Fraenkel (Jerusalem: Magnes, 2006), 499–528. 5  This is by no means always the case, as the versions of the story of Moses and Joshua in Deuteronomy Rabbah and Yannai, analyzed in the previous chapter, plainly demonstrate. Yannai introduces two intensely parallelistic lines that rest on substantive verbal and syntactic links between Ex 24:12 and Deut 32:49–50, whereas the midrash version does not link the verses at all. 6  Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 18–28. See also Eden Hakohen, “On the Relationship Between Midrashim on Esther and Qillir’s Expansion-Piyyutim asaperah el ḥ ok and amal ve-ravakh,” Netu‘im 7 (2000), 45–74; Eliezer Treitl, Pirke de-Rabbi Eliezer: Text, Redaction and a Sample Synopsis (Jerusalem: Hebrew University and Yad Ben-Zvi, 2012), 262–66.

Analogical Constructions in Piyyuṭ and Midrash

55

has God tell Moses that if Moses makes a structure below that is like the structure above, God will make his home in the former. ‫מה למעלה שרפים עומדים אף למטה עצי שטים עומדים‬ ‫מה למעלה ככבים אף למטה קרסים‬ ‫א"ר חייא בר אבא מלמד שהיו קרסי זהב נראין במשכן ככוכבים הקבועין ברקיע‬ Just as above, “seraphs stood” (Isa 6:2), so below, “standing frames of acacia wood” (Ex 26:15). Just as above, stars, so below, clasps.7 Said R. Ḥ iyya b. Abba: It teaches that the golden clasps appeared in the tabernacle like the stars fixed in the firmament.8

The two noted comparisons are curious, for two reasons. First, they depend on different mechanisms: the first on verbal links across prooftexts, a mechanism characteristic of rabbinic exegesis, and the second on visual resemblance, more characteristic of earlier, poetic compositions on the temple.9 Second, there would appear to be other, far more obvious parallels between above and below than the two named, e.g., between the cherub upon which God rides (2 Sam 22:11) and the cherubs above the ark (Ex 25:18). Perhaps, indeed, R. Berekhya means to bring together two different ways of thinking analogically about the relationship between above and below. In any case, the first comparison may implicitly furnish the basis for the above/below dichotomy, for the seraphs stand, in the immediate continuation of Isa 6:2, ‫“ ממעל‬above.” The link to Isa 6:2 in the first comparison also does exegetical work, furnishing an explanation for the unexpected adjective ‫“ עומדים‬standing” in Ex 26:15. As Mirsky notes, the analogy between upper and lower is worked out at far greater length in a statement again attributed to R. Berekhya in Ex. Rab. (Vilna) 33:4. Here over fifteen comparisons are identified, all in the same pattern, as in the examples below. ‫למעלן שרפים עומדים ממעל לו למטן עצי שטים עומדים‬ ‫למעלן כרובים שנאמר יושב הכרובים למטן ויהיו הכרובים‬ ‫למעלן והאופנים ינשאו לעומתם למטן ומעשה האופנים כמעשה אופן המרכבה‬

7  See Ex 26:6. 8  Leqaḥ Ṭ ov ad Ex 36:34 plausibly suggests that the comparison depends on the fact that the loops into which the clasps were set were of blue thread (Ex 26:4), thus the color of the firmament. 9  See especially Sir 50:6. For Sirach’s poem and its echoes in later piyyuṭ see Ophir MünzManor, “‘As the Apple Among Fruits, So the Priest When He Emerges’: Poetics Similes in the Pre-Classical Poetry of the ‘How Lovely” Genre,” Ginzei Qedem 5 (2009), 165–88.

56

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Above, “seraphs stood above him” (Isa 6:2); below, “standing frames of acacia wood” (Ex 26:15). Above, cherubs, as it is said, “who sits on the cherubs” (Isa 37:16); below, “And the cherubs were” (Ex 37:9). Above, “and the wheels were lifted up over against them” (Ezek 1:20); below, “the wheels were made like chariot wheels” (1 Kgs 7:33).

Consistent with the conventions of rabbinic exegesis, each comparison depends on verbally linked prooftext; not surprisingly, the link between the stars and the clasps, which has no basis in prooftexts, is absent from this composition. At the same time, as Mirsky notes, the composition moves away from exegesis, and becomes more densely parallelistic, by dropping the reasoning particles ‫“ מה‬just as” and ‫“ אף‬so.” Yannai conveys this rhetorical structure into piyyuṭ , in a silluq from his qedushta for Hanukkah (2.241–43). Below are excerpts from the alphabetical acrostic.10 ‫ קר]שים הנקבעים במטה‬... ‫[ז‬ ‫חש[וב כ]קבוע כוכבי מעלה‬ ... ‫כרובים סוככים בכנפיהם במטה‬ ‫למלל מ[טפס]רים [בכנפי]הם במעלה‬ ‫מנורת שבעה נירות מטה‬ ‫נדמו לשבעת מזלות מעלה‬ [The shining11 of the cl]asps fixed below Is acc[ounted like] the fixed stars above. … Cherubs overshadow with their wings below To the sound of those crowning with their wings above.12 The seven candles of the candelabrum below Appear like the seven planets above.

While the basic structuring device of the poem—analogy—comes from the above rabbinic antecedents, the formal embellishments are distinctive to piyyuṭ: acros10  I omit a dittography. 11  The translation assumes that the missing initial word of the ‫ ז‬line is ‫זהר‬. 12  The first line depends on Ex 25:20. The allusion in the second line is to Isa 6:2–3 or to Ezek 3:12–13, where the angelic song that speaks of God’s kingship or glory is associated with angels’ wings.

Analogical Constructions in Piyyuṭ and Midrash

57

tic, and rough metrical equivalence across lines. Like the Exodus Rabbah homily, Yannai insists on verbal links between the comparands, but, unlike it, he need not find them in prooftexts, but can invent them. The comparison of the clasps to the stars can therefore return, cemented through the use of the root ‫“ קב"ע‬to fix” in both lines of the first strophe. In many cases, described by Elizur, liturgical poets innovate comparisons. A spectacular example comes from the silluq of a qedushta for the seventh day of Passover by Qillir, ‫“ אויביך משנאך‬Your enemies, your foes.”13 The poem is dedicated to identifying points of contact between the crime and punishment of Egypt (the subject of the Torah reading) and the crime of punishment of the Canaanites under Yabin and Sisera (the subject of the hafṭarah). I cite some excerpts below, first from his comparison of their crimes, then from the lines on their punishments. ‫ כן אלה לחצו גבולך‬/ ‫כי כמו אלה העבידו קהלך‬ ... ‫ ואלה מפריה ורביה חדלו עם‬/ ‫אלה מפרות ורבות מנעו עם‬ ... ‫ ואלה שטפו בנחל גבורי עם‬/ ‫אלה השליכו יאורה זכורי עם‬ ‫ ואלה על שלוש עבירות פגשו עם‬/ ‫אלה שלוש גזירות חידשו על עם‬ For just as these enslaved your congregation, / so these oppressed your boundary.14 … These restrained a people from being fruitful and multiplying, / and these made a people cease from fruitfulness and multiplication.15 … These cast to the Nile the males of a people, / and these swept away in the river heroes of a people.16

13  For the text and analysis see Elizur, ‫מבית מדרשם‬, 269–76. For the extant fragments of the qedushta in full see Shalom Spiegel, The Fathers of Piyyut: Texts and Studies, Toward a History of the Piyyut in Eretz Israel (ed. Menahem H. Schmelzer; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1996), 167–80. 14  ‫“ לחצו‬oppressed” is drawn from Judg 4:3. 15  The first half of the line depends on a well-attested midrashic motif; the second, without apparent midrashic antecedent, directly on Judg 5:7. 16  In Judg 5:21, the Kishon evidently sweeps away the Canaanites, not the Israelites. As noted by Elizur, Spiegel, in the commentary accompanying his original publication of the poem, ibid., 170 l. 41, suggests that Qillir took this punishment as evidence that the Canaanites committed a crime along the same lines. Spiegel also implies that the reference to ‫ גבורי עם‬may be bound up with the ‫ גבורים‬of Judg 5:13 or 5:23, construed as Israelites rather than (with the plain sense) as Canaanites.

58

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

These innovated three decrees against a people, / and these on account of three transgressions encountered a people.17 ‫ וכהפרעות אלה כן פורעו אלה‬/ ‫וכמפולת אלה כן נפלו אלה‬ ... ‫ ואלה בהמיית סיסרא וכל הרכב‬/ ‫אלה ברמיית סוס ורכב‬ ‫ ואלה איחרו פעמי מרכבותיו‬/ ‫אלה בהסרת אופן מרכבותיו‬ ... ‫ ואלה בעד החלון נשקפה לפנות בקר‬/ ‫אלה בהשקפת אשמרות בקר‬ Like the downfall of these, so fell these, / and like the punishment of these, so were punished these: … These with the casting of horse and chariot, / and these with the confusion of Sisera and all the chariotry.18 These with the removal of the wheels of his chariots, / and these, delayed were the clatterings of his chariots.19 … These with peering at the watch of morning, / and these, from out the window she peered before morning.20

While Qillir draws his inspiration, and specific points of comparison, from scattered comments in rabbinic literature, most of the parallels have no attested rabbinic antecedent, and possibly—in some cases very likely—represent the poet’s own invention. It is notable that when Qillir engages in complex analogical exegeses as in the above passages, he often self-consciously assumes the mantle of a rabbinic 17  For the first half of the line there is, as Elizur notes, a clear basis in rabbinic midrash, but there is nothing of the sort for the second. Perhaps Qillir interprets Judg 5:2 ‫ בפרע פרעות‬as “when unloosening occurred,” with reference to sin, as in the use of ‫ פר"ע‬in connection with the golden calf incident, in Ex 32:25. A statement in b. Šabb. 119b links these two verses. The root can be said to occur thrice in the phrase in Judg 5:2, once in the “singular” ‫ בפרע‬and twice in the plural ‫פרעות‬. But note Qillir’s use of ‫ פר"ע‬in a different sense in the introduction to the section on the punishments. 18  See Ex 15:1; Judg 4:15. Qillir’s starting point is the phonological resemblance between ‫סוס‬ sūs “horse” and Sisera, which he complements with additional associations. 19  See Ex 14:25; Judg 5:28. 20  See Ex 14:24; Judg 5:28. There is no indication in the latter that Sisera’s mother peered from the window specifically before morning, but the poet might have inferred this timing from indications that the battle lasted through the night: The stars fought Sisera (Judg 5:20), and he was sleeping or drowsy when he was killed (Judg 4:21). See b. Sanh. 96a, setting the battle against Sisera at night, on the basis of Judg 5:20 and in conversation with Gen 14:15.

Analogy as a Marker of Dependence in Midrash

59

exegete, or of a student thereof. Thus, for example, after completing the list of parallels between the punishments of Egypt and the Canaanites, Qillir remarks: ‫ויתר פילאי סוף המפורשים‬ ‫בתבור סתומים ולא מפורשים‬ ‫לילמד סתומים ממפורשים‬ And the other wonders of Suf, which are explicit, At Tabor are implicit and not explicit, So that one learns the implicit from the explicit.

Qillir describes what he is doing in the language of exegesis: deduction of the implicit from the explicit. This text recalls the passages analyzed toward the end of the previous chapter, in which Qillir positions himself as a student of the sages.

Analogy as a Marker of Dependence in Midrash Before turning to the other focus of Mirsky’s book, the use of verses to introduce and conclude units, let us take brief note of a corollary of the above discussion: Attentiveness to analogy at the compositional level in rabbinic exegetical texts can (though need not necessarily) be a marker of dependence on piyyuṭ, or at least of some sort of genealogical affinity with piyyuṭ. This appears to be the case, most notably, with respect to Sifre Zuta Numbers. This work is distinctive in the corpus of tannaitic midrashim for the self-consciously poetic character of its language and rhetoric. The following example concerns the law implicit in Num 19:15 that sealed vessels prevent their contents from becoming defiled by the presence of a corpse.21 ‫צאו ורא[ו] מישיש לו טומאה ייפה כוחו להציל וכל מי שאין לו טומאה אל ייפח כחו להציל‬ Go and see: One that has defilement, let its strength be enhanced to save. And any that does not have defilement, let its strength not swell to save.

The point is that only a vessel that can contract defilement can “save” its contents from defilement; vessels that cannot contract defilement are therefore counseled, as it were, against attempting to save their contents. The expected contrast to 21  For the text see Hallel Baitner, ‫ לשון ועריכה‬,‫ פרשנות‬,‫ עיונים בנוסח‬:‫[ ספרי זוטא במדבר לפרשת פרה‬Sifre Be-Midbar for the Red Heifer Portion: Studies in Text, Commentary, Language, and Editing] (M.A. thesis; Hebrew University, 2012), 51, and for analysis of the passage to which it belongs, see ibid., 135–42.

60

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

‫“ ייפה‬let it be enhanced” is, as Saul Lieberman noted, ‫“ יורע‬let it be worsened,” but the exegete replaces the latter with ‫“ ייפח‬let it swell,” for the sake of phonological parallelism.22 The poetic elements in Sifre Zuta Numbers are especially notable because a late, fourth-generation tanna who appears to have been very directly involved in the coalescence of this work, R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon, is identified explicitly in an amoraic text as a ‫קרוב ופוייטון‬, terms that may very well suggest a role in the production of liturgical poetry.23 Another, still later tanna, Bar Qapparah, of the fifth generation, who appears to have played an instrumental role in the final stages of the editing of Sifre Zuta Numbers, also knows how to recite a riddle poem and parables, and to formulate a lament replete with figurative, mythic imagery.24 Another case in which analogy at the compositional level may point to the influence of poetry occurs in Mek. R. Sh. Ex 14:15 (59), in connection with God’s exhortation to Moses at the sea in Ex 14:15–16, ‫מה תצעק אלי דבר אל בני ישראל ויסעו‬ ‫“ ואתה הרם את מטך ונטה את ידך על הים ובקעהו‬Why do you cry to me? Speak to Israel and let them proceed. And you, raise your staff and stretch forth your arm over the sea and split it.” ‫ר' יוסי הגלילי אומ' אמ' לו כבר המוריה נעקר ממקומו ומזבחו של יצחק בנו על גביו ומערכתו כאילו‬ ‫ערוכה עליו ויצחק כאילו עקוב (!) ונתון על גבי המזבח ואברהם כאילו בידו מאכלת לשחוט את בנו‬ ‫אמ' לפניו רבונו שלעולם אני מה עלי לעשות אמ' הוי מפאר ומרומם וכול' עניינא‬ R. Yose the Galilean says: He said to him: Already Mount Moriah is uprooted from its place, and the altar of Isaac his son is upon it, and its woodpile is as though arranged upon it, and Isaac is as though bound and set upon the altar, and Abraham as though has the knife in his hand to slaughter his son. He said before him: Master of the world, what am I to do? He said to him: Glorify and elevate, etc.25

22  Saul Lieberman, Siphre Zutta (The Midrash of Lydda) (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1968), 116. 23  Pesiq. Rab Kah. 27:1 (404). Lieberman, Siphre Zutta, 115 n. 128, adverts to a passage in Sifra ṣ av 11:3 (40a–b) wherein R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon explains his position on a matter of purity law involving the ṭevul yom, the onen, and the one missing atonement by means of a drama in which these categories occur as characters, and the halakhic argumentation occurs in the mouths of the tevul yom and a priest. Lieberman plausibly suggests that this very idiosyncratic passage reflects R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon’s reputation as a payṭan. A passage in Sifre Num. 4 (16–17), associated with R. Eleazar b. R. Shimon in the parallel version in Sifre Zuta Num. 5:10 (232), echoes the Sifra passage in a number of ways, among them that it, too, takes a dramatic turn by having the relevant halakhic actors voice the halakhic argumentation. 24  See Lieberman, Siphre Zutta, 115 nn. 26–27, citing y. Mo‘ed Qaṭ. 3:1 (81c); y. Kil. 9:4 (32b); Lev. Rab. 28:2 (654). 25  A close parallel occurs in Mek. R. Ish. be-šalaḥ 3 (100).

Analogy as a Marker of Dependence in Midrash

61

The relationship between the binding of Isaac and the splitting of the sea, and between Ex 14:15–16 and the exegesis of R. Yose the Galilean, is far from clear. Earlier in the same midrash passage, the splitting of the sea, described with the root ‫ בק"ע‬in Ex 14:16, is ascribed to the merit of Abraham’s sacrifice, which involved splitting wood, described by the same root ‫ בק"ע‬in Gen 22:3.26 Perhaps, more specifically, R. Yose the Galilean means to connect the image of Moses’ outstretched staff with that of Abraham’s outstretched knife, a visual analogy—like that between the clasps and the stars in the discussion above—more characteristic of poetry than of midrash. The reference to praise at the end of the passage seems in any case bound up with the fact that God asks Moses not only to raise his staff, but to stretch out his arm, a doubling that by standard exegetical logic naturally entails that the outstretched arm is different from the arm that holds the staff; and if that arm is indeed outstretched, then it could be outstretched in prayer.27 In any case, what is of immediate note is the remarkable ekphrasis that is God’s speech. In syntactically, lexically, and even (more or less) metrically balanced lines, God leads Moses’ eyes upward, from Mount Moriah, uprooted from its place (and hovering above Moses?), to the altar on the mountain, to the wood arranged on the altar, to Isaac upon the wood, to Abraham standing above him with his knife. Behind the careful parallelism, largely unmotivated by exegetical considerations, may lie the influence or predilection of the poet, especially given the injunction to pray to which the passage leads.28

26  Mek. R. Sh. Ex 14:15 (57). See Mek. R. Ish. be-šalaḥ 3 (98). 27  There may also be a link to the exegesis of Ex 17:9, 12, in the Mekiltot. In these verses, Moses takes his staff in hand to support the war against the Amalekites. The Mekiltot assume that the taking of the staff was bound up with prayer, and that Moses did different things with each hand. On the Mekiltot to Ex 17:9, 12, see Menahem I. Kahana, The Two Mekhiltot on the Amalek Portion: The Originality of the Version of the Mekhilta d’Rabbi Ishma‘el with Respect to the Mekhilta of Rabbi Shim‘on ben Yohay (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1999), 236–39, 292–96. Note that in a Greek poem on the binding of Isaac from roughly the fourth century (P.Bodm. 30), a reference to the splitting of the sea occurs suddenly and somewhat inexplicably: “At once experienced men built a fire around the altar, the sea gushed forth around the flame, the sea that Moses would part; a wave raised up the son of Abraham.” The translation is from Kevin James Kalish, “Greek Christian Poetry in Classical Forms: The Codex of Visions from the Bomder Papyri and the Melding of Literary Traditions” (Ph.D. diss.; Princeton University, 2009), 76. 28  The upward movement of the description may be rooted in Gen 22:9–10, which describes, in turn, the arrival at Moriah, the construction of the altar “there” (‫ ;)שם‬the arranging of the wood; the binding of Isaac; the placing of Isaac “on” (‫ )על‬the altar, “upon” (‫ )ממעל‬the wood; and the taking of the knife. For another case involving a vision of a hovering altar see Sifre Num. 119 (365).

62

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Use of Verses in Piyyuṭ and Midrash The last two chapters of Mirsky’s book concern the use of verses to structure exegetical remarks and liturgical poems. Our discussion will focus on the book’s sixth chapter, on verse headers. Mirsky identifies two different constructions involving verse headers in midrash texts. In the first, which we may call the serial verse header, each word or phrase from the verse, in series, heads a comment. The pattern of lemma-comment, lemma-comment, etc., is, of course, the very stuff of exegesis, but it becomes more rhetorical when a series of lemma-comment pairs forms a unified whole, and when the comments within that whole share lexemes or metrical patterns. In piyyuṭ, too, successive stanzas are very often headed by successive words of a verse, and Mirsky finds in this fact a sign of the indebtedness of piyyuṭ to midrash. But the claim of indebtedness, while impossible to refute, is difficult to prove, and in any case of relatively little importance, because, as Mirsky himself insightfully acknowledges, serial verse headers in piyyuṭ function very differently from their counterparts in rabbinic exegetical texts. In the latter, the verse header retains its status as lemma: The rabbinic comment represents an explanation of the verse header, or at least gets its thematic bearing from it. In the case of piyyuṭ, by contrast, “Scripture enters not as a meaning-bearing unit,” to be explicated, “but as individual speech units, and these speech units bring to piyyuṭ nothing other than themselves, their literal meaning.”29 The second construction involves iterative use of the same verse header. Mirsky notes a strong predilection in the rabbinic corpus for the use of iterative verse headers in interpretation of verses that contain closely spaced units that repeat, e.g., ‫“ נחמו נחמו‬comfort, comfort” (Isa 40:1); ‫“ פקד יפקד‬He will indeed call to mind” (Ex 13:19). In these cases, the exegete often mirrors—or “interprets”—the verse’s repetitiveness by reduplicating the repeating items across many lines. Thus Isa 40:1, for example, inspires an extended list of paired comforters; the following are the first two pairs.30 ‫נחמוה עליונים נחמוה תחתונים‬ ‫נחמוה חיים נחמוה מתים‬ “Comfort” her, those above; “comfort” her, those below. “Comfort” her, the living; “comfort” her, the dead.

In some cases, also noted by Mirsky, it is not exact lexical repetition but rather parallelism of a more abstract sort—in the case of the passage excerpted below,

29  Mirsky, Origin of Forms, 87. The translation is mine. 30  The text is from Pesiq. Rab Kah. 16:8 (276). For discussion see Mirsky, Origin, 90.

Use of Verses in Piyyuṭ and Midrash

63

on Song 5:2 ‫“ אני ישנה ולבי ער‬I sleep but my heart is awake,” contrastive semantic parallelism—that inspires the iterative verse headers. ‫אני ישנה מן המצות ולבי ער לגמילות חסדים‬ ... ‫אני ישנה מן הקרבנות ולבי ער לקריאת שמע ותפילה‬ “I sleep” from the commandments, “but my heart is awake” for acts of kindness. … “I sleep” from sacrifices, “but my heart is awake” for the recitation of the Shema and prayer.31

In still other cases, not noted by Mirsky, the iteration in the biblical text is manufactured by the exegete, by bringing together disconnected instances of the same phrase. A remarkable set of examples comes from tannaitic interpretation of the passages about the cities of refuge in Numbers 35 and Deuteronomy 19. In at least four distinct cases, tannaitic commentators rely on the occurrence of three instances of the same word (or in one case, something like three instances of the same word) to produce a threefold legal rule, each part headed by the relevant word. Thus, for example, in Sifre Zuta Num. 35:11 (331), the threefold occurrence of the phrase ‫“ ערי מקלט תהיינה‬cities of refuge shall they be” (Num 35:11, 13, 14) yields two threefold exegeses, each with an iterative verse header.32 ‫ערי מקלט אל יעשו גנות ופרדסין ערי מקלט אל יעשו חנויות ופונדקין ערי מקלט אל יעשו בית יצורה‬ “Cities of refuge” (Num 35:11): Let them not be made gardens and orchards. “Cities of refuge” (Num 35:13): Let them not be made shops and inns. “Cities of refuge” (Num 35:14): Let them not be made a factory. ‫תהיינה הלחם עליהם תהיינה תן נך עליהם תהיינה אל יעשו עיר נדחת‬ “They shall be” (Num 35:11): Fight for them. “They shall be” (Num 35:13): Give your money for them. “They shall be” (Num 35:14): Let them not be made a misled city.

While in each case there is a strict one-to-one correspondence between the three occurrences of the lemma and the tripartite explanation, the comments, in their 31  For the text, from Song Rab. 5:2, and for discussion, see ibid., 95. 32 The quotation is from ms Oxford, Bodleian Library, c. 18 (2634), as transcribed in Maagarim. I thank Hallel Baitner for drawing my attention to the first passage, which led me in turn to the others.

64

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

artificiality, implicitly convey that the force of the repetition is as much rhetorical as halakhic. There is no compelling reason, for example, to distinguish, among the prohibited uses of the city of refuge, between shops and inns, on the one hand, and factories, on the other, or to join these uses to gardens and orchards and not to others. The comments implicitly indicate, rather, that the repetition means to convey that the cities of refuge are not to be sites for any commercial usage at all.33 The following case, from Gen. Rab. 85:1 (1029), offers another interesting illustration of the work that exegetes do to manufacture biblical iteration as a basis for their own iterative use of lemmas. The passage comments on Gen 38:1 ‫ויהי‬ ‫“ בעת ההיא וירד יהודה מאת אחיו ויט עד איש עדלמי ושמו חירה‬And it was at that time, and Judah went down from his brothers, and turned unto an Adullamite man by the name of Hirah.”34 ‫בגדה יהודה וגו' אמר ליה כפרת יהודה שקרת יהודה ותועבה נעשתה בישראל וגו' כי חלל יהודה‬ '‫נעשתה חולין יהודה קדש י"י אשר אהב ובעל בת אל נכר ויהי בעת ההיא וירד וגו‬ ‫עוד היורש אביא לך יושבת מרשה עד עדולם יבא כבוד ישראל קדושו שלישראל עד עדולם יבוא מלכן‬ '‫שלישראל עד עדולם יבא ויהי בעת ההיא וגו‬ “Judah was treacherous” (Mal 2:11): He said to him: You have denied, Judah! You have been unfaithful, Judah! “And an abomination was made in Israel [and in Jerusalem,] for Judah profaned.” You have been made profane, Judah! “The 33  Briefly, on the other two cases of tripartite exegesis involving the city of refuge: First, in t. Mak. 3:5, R. Eliezer b. Jacob contends: “What does it teach that it says “thence” (‫ )שמה‬three times? There (‫ )שם‬will be his residence, there will be his death, there will be his burial.” (The translation is based on the text of ms Erfurt , as t ranscribed in Bar-Il an Universit y’s Torah HaTannaim website, https://www.biu.ac.il/JS/tannaim/.) Here, too, the rhetorical force attributed to the biblical text’s repetition of the word ‫ שמה‬is perceptible in the artificiality of the distinction between residence, death, and burial. But the artifice is even more striking in this case, for there are in fact five instance of ‫ שמה‬in Numbers 35 (vv. 6, 11, 15, 25, 26); the number three was evidently selected either (or both) to match the other three-part exegeses of the chapter, or (and) because of the rhetorical attractiveness of the threefold structure. Parallels occur in Sifre Deut. 181 (224) (evidently a transfer from a comment on Numbers 35, as ‫ שמה‬occurs only twice in Deuteronomy 19); m. Mak. 2:7 (which lacks the iterative verse header). Sifre Zuta Num. 35:25 includes a tripartite comment on the word ‫ שמה‬that is probably loosely related to the aforementioned texts, but the content is different, and it employs an iterative header unrelated to the lemma. In the final instance of tripartite exegesis connected with the cities of refuge, rhetorical considerations again loom large. According to t. Mak. 3:8 (ms Erfurt ), “t hese cit ies are not t o be built as great metropolises (‫)כרכים גדולים‬, nor as small settlements (‫)טירים קטנים‬, but rather middling cities (‫)עיירות בינוניות‬.” In Sifre Deut. 180 (223), this exegesis is attached to the lemma ‫שלש‬ ‫“ ערים‬three cities” (Deut 19:7). Remarkably, as though the word ‫ ערים‬occurred three times, the midrash assigns to each “instance” of the word an exclusionary force: ‫ערים ולא טירים ערים ולא כרכים‬ ‫‘“ ערים ולא כפרים‬Cities’ and not settlements; ‘cities’ and not metropolises; ‘cities’ and not villages.” 34  I thank Hallel Baitner for drawing my attention to the second half of this passage.

Use of Verses in Piyyuṭ and Midrash

65

sanctuary the Lord loves, and married the daughter of a strange God”: “And Judah went down.” “I will bring a conqueror against you, who live in Maresha. Unto Adullam will come the glory of Israel.” (Micah 1:15) The holy one of Israel. “Unto Adullam will come” the king of Israel. “Unto Adullam will come”: “And Judah went down.

This complex, two-part passage links Mal 2:11 and Micah 1:15 to the story of Judah in Genesis 38: Mal 2:11 because the verse refers to Judah engaging in intercourse with foreign women, and Micah 1:15 because it speaks of a noble Israelite going “unto Adullam,” as Judah turns “unto an Adullamite man.” Both comments feature iteration: in the first case, of vocatives addressed to Judah, and in the second, of the lemma “unto Adullam will come [x] of Israel.” It appears that the iteration in the first part depends on the fact that Mal 2:11 contains two similar phrases, ‫“ בגדה יהודה‬Judah was treacherous” and ‫“ חלל יהודה‬Judah profaned.” The iteration in the second part may represent an extension of the iteration in the first part, but it may also draw inspiration from the repetition of the syllable ‫‘ עד‬ad (in the second case ‘ăd) in the sequence ‫עד עדולם‬.35 In any case, the iteration in the second part is worthy of special note because it operates through substitution of monikers: “glory of Israel” becomes “holy one of Israel” and then “king of Israel.” As we shall see, this mode of iteration is common in liturgical poetry.36 In some, albeit relatively rare instances, rabbinic texts employ iterative verse headers where there is no exegetical basis (i.e., no iteration in the verse) whatsoever. One example is introduced incidentally by Mirsky in the course of his 35  This repetition may in turn have been more prominent to the exegete because the verse begins with the orthographically identical word ‫‘ עד‬ōd. In all, then, there are three instances of the consonantal sequence ‫ד‬-‫ ע‬in the verse, corresponding to the tripartite exegesis. 36  The moniker sequence in this passage is especially notable because, insofar as the context involves kingship, it recalls the frequent use of repetitive acclamations in the celebration of kings. See Samuel Leiter, “Worthiness, Acclamation, and Appointment: Some Rabbinic Terms,” PAAJR 41/42 (1973–74), 137–68. At ibid., 160, Leiter introduces Gen. Rab. 41:3 (410), interpreting the conversation between Abraham and the Hittites, and in particular Gen 23:6 ‫נשיא אלהים אתה בתוכנו‬ “A prince of God are you in our midst.” According to the midrash, the Hittites (in fact, all the nations of the world, thankful for Abraham’s intervention in the war against the four kings) station Abraham on a dais and acclaim him (‫)מקלסין לפניו‬. The midrash produces a characteristically repetitive acclamation by splitting the construct phrase ‫“ נשיא אלהים‬a prince of God” in two, so that the people shout: ‫“ מלך אתה עלינו אלוה אתה עלינו‬A king are you upon us! A god are you upon us!” The two sentences differ only in their opening moniker. See also Mek. R. Ish. shirta 1 (119–20), where the commentary on the words '‫“ אשירה לה‬Let me sing to the Lord” denigrates the acclamations of human kings as false flattery, and, by way of contrast, expands the lemma, via repeated use to head successive lines, into acclamations of God that introduces a new moniker in each line: ‫לייי נאה גדולה‬ ‫“ לייי נאה גבורה‬To the Lord power is apt! To the Lord might is apt! etc.”; and again, ‫אשירה לה' שהוא‬ ‫ אשירה לה' שהוא חכם‬... ‫ אשירה לה' שהוא עשיר‬... ‫“ גיבור‬Let me sing to the Lord, who is powerful! … Let me sing to the Lord, who is rich! … Let me sing to the Lord, who is wise! etc.”

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Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

discussion of serial verse headers. In Lam. Rab. (Buber) petiḥ ta 7, R. Abbahu comments on Isa 3:24 ‫“ ואנו ואבלו פתחיה ונקתה לארץ תשב‬Her gates will sorrow and mourn. Destitute, she will sit on the ground.” ‫ אנינה מבפנים ואבילה מבחוץ פתחיה חורבן ראשון וחורבן שני ונקתה נקיה מדברי תורה‬... ‫ואנו ואבלו‬ ‫נקיה מדברי נבואה נקיה מצדיקים נקיה ממצות ומעשים טובים‬ “Sorrow and mourn”: … sorrowing within and mourning without. “Her gates”: the first destruction and the second destruction. “Destitute”: clear of words of Torah, clear of words of prophecy; clear of righteous people, clear of commandments and good deeds.

The dualities in the first two lemmata—the parallel, alliterative verbs, and the plural “gates”— provide, at best, just the slightest impetus for the fourfold exegesis of ‫“ נקתה‬destitute.” In any case, each part is headed by a slightly revised form of the lemma, ‫“ נקיה‬clear.” Iterative verse headers are not widespread in classical piyyuṭ, but they are pervasive, as Mirsky observes, in the qedushta’ot of the poet Yannai, where they constitute fixed features of the Six and Seven poems.37 The sixth section of Yannai’s qedushta consists of an acrostic spanning eleven strophes, each covering two letters of the alphabet. Each strophe begins with one or more words from the first substantive verse of the lection to which the qedushta attaches. Thus, for example, in Gen 31:3, God enjoins Jacob: ‫ ואהיה עמך‬... ‫“ שוב אל ארץ אבותיך‬Return to the land of your fathers … and I will be with you.” Each strophe of the Six begins with the words ‫שוב אל ארץ‬, perhaps recited by the congregation. The continuation of each strophe extends the verse, usually in a syntactically similar way. Here are some representative strophes (1.186). ]‫[שוב אל ארץ‬ ‫ ומכל ארצות מוקדשת‬// ‫אדמת קודש מקודשת‬ ‫ וקדושים אשר בה מקדשת‬// ‫בעשר קדושות ניקדשת‬ ]‫[שוב אל ארץ‬ ‫ אשר נשאתי ידי בשבועה‬// ‫גבול נחלת עממים שבעה‬ ‫ יחלקוה מחלקי חלק לשבעה‬// ‫דיגלי חצובי חצבה שבעה‬ ... ]‫[שוב אל ארץ‬

37 See Mirsky, Origin, 95–96. On Yannai’s Six and Seven poems see Tzvi Novick, “Praying with the Bible: Speech Situation in the Qedushta’ot of Yannai and Bar Megas,” Masoret HaPiyyut 4 (2008), *7–*39; idem, “The Poetics of Yannai’s Sixth: Between Scripture, God, and Congregation,” in Giving a Diamond: Essays in Honor of Joseph Yahalom on the Occasion of His Seventieth Birthday (ed. Wout van Bekkum and Naoya Katsumata; Leiden: Brill, 2011), 69–81.

67

Use of Verses in Piyyuṭ and Midrash

‫ ולא כשאר ארצות היא‬// ‫זבת חלב ודבש היא‬ ‫ ארץ ישראל לשמך היא‬// ‫חבל נחלתך גאון יעקב היא‬ [“Return to the land”]: Holy and sanctified soil //, and of all lands sanctified. By ten sanctifications sanctified, // and sanctifying the holy ones in it. [“Return to the land”]: The bounded lot of seven nations, // about which I raised my hand in oath. The camps of them hewn by the Hewer of seven, // those dividers will divide it into seven.38 … [“Return to the land”]: Flowing with milk and honey is it, // and unlike all other lands is it. Your surveyed lot, the pride of Jacob is it. // The land of Israel, after your name, is it.

Each of the three strophes is, or at least begins as, something like a paraphrase of the continuation of the verse that heads the strophe. As in the case of the exegesis of Micah 1:15 in the passage from Gen. Rab. 85:1 quoted above, what varies from strophe to strophe is the moniker for the land of Israel, with which the strophe begins: “holy and sanctified soil,” “the bounded lot of seven nations,” etc. The seventh unit in the qedushta’ot of Yannai typically consists of multiple poems, each of which consists of short lines unified by dense repetition, almost always with elements from one of the opening verses of the lection. The following passage is the beginning of a Seven for the qedushta to Gen 44:18 (1.243), wherein Judah, approaching the Egyptian vizier (Joseph), pleads with him, ‫בי אדני‬ ‫“ ידבר נא עבדך דבר באזני אדני ואל יחר אפך בעבדך‬Pardon, my master, but please let your servant speak something in my master’s ear, and do not be angry at your servant.” ‫בי אדני אב אל תאבד‬ ‫בי אדני בן אל תבקש‬ ‫בי אדני גדי אל תגזול‬ ‫בי אדני דין אל תדחוף‬ Pardon, my master, do not destroy a father. Pardon, my master, do not seek a son. Pardon, my master, do not steal a kid. Pardon, my master, do not drive off justice.39 38  The “Hewer of seven” is the Torah, after Prov 9:11. 39 For ‫ תדחוף‬in the fourth line see Nachum M. Bronznick, The Liturgical Poetry of Yannai: Explanations and Interpretations with Suggestions for Textual Emendations and Completions of Lacunae (2 vols.; Jerusalem: Rubin Mass, 2000), 2.42.

68

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

Using the words ‫“ בי אדני‬Pardon, my master” and ‫“ אל‬not” from the verse as iterative headers, Yannai fashions a double acrostic, the first from the noun following ‫בי אדני‬, and the second from the verb following ‫אל‬.40 Yannai lends the acrostic special poignancy by devoting the first line to the ‫“ אב‬father,” and the second to the ‫“ בן‬son,” the topics of Judah’s plea. What is the relationship between the iterative verse headers in rabbinic literature and in Yannai’s corpus? Mirsky posits dependence of the latter on the former, but, as he himself acknowledges, the iteration in the case of Yannai is unconditioned, whereas in rabbinic texts it depends very heavily, albeit not exclusively, on the existence of iteration in the verse.41 Nevertheless, there is little reason to deny any connection between the corpora. The repetition of a phrase from the verse at the beginning of a rhetorical unit for the sake of emphasis or expansion was a tool available to exegetes, homilists, and poets alike. It occurs in relatively circumscribed circumstances both in rabbinic literature and in classical piyyuṭ , but we get further insight into its currency by looking beyond both corpora, to roughly contemporaneous Samaritan literature.

Iterative Verse Headers in Tibat Marqe Tibat Marqe is a collection of Samaritan exegetical and homiletical texts on the Pentateuch. While the attribution of the work in its final, medieval form to the 4th c. (?) c.e. poet and exeget e Marqe cannot be sustained, t he earl iest st rat um, concentrated in the first two books, very likely traces to him or to his circle.42 Marqe operates within the same late antique literary milieu occupied by Jewish and Christian authors writing in Hebrew, Aramaic, Syriac, and to a lesser extent Greek. Thus, for example, acrostic and the four-foot line, so characteristic of pre-classical piyyuṭ , feature in Marqe’s poetry as well.43 Likewise, Marqe shares with his Jewish and Christian contemporaries an affinity for making biblical characters express astonishment. Indeed, no narrative motif so pervades the first book of Tibat Marqe as the expression of astonishment, so that the book is aptly titled (likely by later tradents) “the book of wonders.” Thus, for example, in rewriting Ex 4:3, wherein Moses, upon seeing the staff that he has cast to the 40  In his commentary ad loc., Rabinovitz appears to miss the fact that Yannai draws the iterated ‫ אל‬from the verse. 41  Ibid., 95. 42  See Z. Ben-Ḥ ayyim, ed., Tībåt Mårqe: A Collection of Samaritan Midrashim (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1988), 23–24. 43  See Ophir Münz-Manor, “Liturgical Poetry in the Late Antique Near East: A Comparative Approach,” JAJ 1 (2010), 344–45.

Iterative Verse Headers in Tibat Marqe

69

ground transformed into a serpent, flees from it, Marqe has Moses reflect at length on his amazement. ‫אמר ולבה מלי צדו דאהן תמח חיול לית בי משום יתה קיצם נגיב עביד נחש מטיעל קבלי בלועד מדעי‬ ‫ ארתע לבי מן דחלתה‬... ‫עובד יקיר שריר לית עפרה כלום כל דמנה צדו לית בעי מעבד גבורה מבלדה‬ ‫ושפפי עיני ממעגל אל צורתה‬ He said, and his heart was full of fear: This is a mighty wonder and I cannot make sense of it. Dry wood has become a serpent moving before me. Beyond my comprehension, a most weighty deed! Dust is nothing, everything from it is desolation. It ought not make a frightening power. … My heart trembles from fright, and my eyes are lowered lest I see its form.44

Moses cannot make sense of the transformation of dry wood—dust—into a living serpent. Interest in the miraculous physics of Moses’ rod is attested in contemporary Christian sources, which introduce it as evidence for supernatural aspects of Jesus’ birth.45 More generally, expressions of astonishment, and specifically (though of course by no means exclusively) at the exaltation of dust or flesh, are well attested in Jewish and Christian late antique poetry. Thus a Palestinian Jewish Aramaic poem for Pentecost has the angels look on stupefied when Moses ascends to receive the law. ‫ קמו להון תמהין‬/ ‫טירוני מרומא‬ ‫ הכא מנן הוא‬/ ‫די אכסנאה‬ ‫ לבשרא למקרב הכא‬/ ‫יה יהיב רישו‬ The recruits of heaven / stood amazed: This stranger,/ whence is he? The Lord gave leave / to flesh to approach here.46

Likewise, the 6th c. c.e. Greek hymnographer Romanos, whose work owes much to the Syriac Christian tradition, imagines Belial standing confounded upon

44 Ben-Ḥ ayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 55. The translation departs from Ben-Ḥ ayyim’s. That the dust refers to the staff, and not, pace Ben-Ḥ ayyim, to humanity, is made relatively clear by the statement in the second book (ibid., 115) that the earth (as one of the four elements) played its part in Israel’s salvation six times, the first being “the staff of Moses, before Moses it became a serpent, through which he conveyed the secret that Pharaoh was in his hand.” 45  See, e.g., Cyril of Jerusalem, Catechetical Lectures, 12.28. 46  The text is from Michael Sokoloff and Joseph Yahalom, Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity: Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (Jerusalem: Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, 1999), 112.

70

Piyyuṭ as Poetry: Form in Midrash and Piyyuṭ

seeing Adam restored, through Christ and through the baptism of his descendants into Christ, to his former glory. Who is this whom I see? I do not understand. The heap of earth is renewed, dust has been deified.47

Marqe’s poetics of wonderment thus mark him as a late antique reader of Scripture. There are also numerous specific points of contact between Marqe and rabbinic exegesis. Various scholars have identified shared exegetical traditions.48 I would draw attention, too, to a shared phrase. In the Mekiltot on the splitting of the sea, a parallelistic line recurs almost like a refrain in the midst of the prose exposition: ‫“ (ה)ים סוגר ושונא רודף‬the sea closes in and the enemy pursues.”49 The refrain appears to be based on Ex 14:3, where God tells Moses that Pharaoh will suppose that “the wilderness has closed in” (‫ המדבר‬... ‫ )סגר‬on Israel; Ex 14:9, where the Egyptians, having pursued (‫ )וירדפו‬Israel, finds them encamped at the sea (‫ ;)הים‬and Ex 15:9, which the enemy (‫ )אויב‬announces his intention to pursue (‫ )ארדף‬and overtake Israel. A version of the same refrain occurs in a Jewish Palestinian Aramaic poem for Passover. ‫ סגר מן קודמיהון‬/ ‫הכה ימה‬ ‫ מן בתרהון‬/ ‫וסנאה רדיף‬ Here the sea is closed before them And the enemy pursues after them.50 47  For the Greek text see Paul Maas and C. A. Trypanis, eds., Sancti Romani Melodi Cantica: Cantica Genuina (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997 [1963]), 455. The translation is from Marjorie Carpenter, trans., Kontakia of Romanos, Byzantine Melodist, II: On Christian Life (Columbia, MO: University of Missouri Press, 1973), 230. On this kontakion see Georgia Frank, “Memory and Forgetting in Romanos the Melodist’s On the Newly Baptized,” in Between Personal and Institutional Religion: Self, Doctrine, and Practice in Late Antique Eastern Christianity (ed. Brouria Bitton-Ashkelony and Lorenzo Perrone; Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 37–55. 48 See Mordechay Mishor, “Tibat Marqe y el midráš: paralelos samaritanos-rabínicos,” ’Ilu 3 (2000), 111–26; Moshe Florentin, “Embedded Midrashim in Samaritan Piyyutim,” JQR 96 (2006), 528–30; Steven Fine, “‘For This Schoolhouse is Beautiful’: A Note on Samaritan ‘Schools’ in Late Antique Palestine,” in Shoshanat Yaakov: Jewish and Iranian Studies in Honor of Yaakov Elman (ed. Shai Secunda and Steven Fine; Leiden: Brill, 2012); 65–75, and esp. 68. 49 See Mek. R. Ish. be-šalaḥ 2 (94); 3 (97, 100); 5 (106); Mek. R. Sh. Ex 14:13 (55); 14:15 (57). The word ‫“ ים‬sea” consistently carries the definite article in the Mek. R. Ishmael passages and not in the Mek. R. Shimon passages. In light of the poetic character of the line and the parallelism with ‫שונא‬, I am inclined to favor the anarthrous form as more original. 50  See also ibid., 94 ‫“ טרדנא עליהון ימא ומדברא‬the sea and the wilderness closed in against them,” clearly an allusion to Ex 14:3. In the zulat from a pre-classical yoṣ er for the Ninth of Ab,

Iterative Verse Headers in Tibat Marqe

71

Marqe has Israel, penned in, challenge Moses in more or less the same words: ‫“ דבבה בתרן וימה קמינן‬The enemy is after us and the sea is before us.”51 In light of the absence of any biblical verse explicitly linking the pursuing enemy to the enclosing sea, it seems likely that the three formulae above are genealogically related. The fact that the Hebrew refrain in rabbinic literature uses the word ‫שונא‬, cognate with Jewish Palestinian Aramaic ‫סנאה‬, to describe the Egyptian enemy, and not the biblical ‫אויב‬, may indicate that the refrain first circulated in Aramaic, and entered therefrom into rabbinic literature.52 The form of immediate interest in Marqe’s commentary involves a sequence of lines in each of which the first words of a verse are followed by the exegetes’s own expansion.53 Below are two examples. The first is based on Ex 4:20 ‫ויקח משה את‬ ‫“ אשתו ואת בניו‬and Moses took his wife and his sons,” which introduces the story of Moses’ return to Egypt from Midian.54 ‫ונסב משה ית אתתה וית בניו ביתה צפרה בתר כריזתה‬ ‫ונסב משה ית אתתה וית בניו נצוחה אזל מפק לקרבה‬ ‫ונסב משה ית אתתה וית בניו אריס בעי מיזל לסחנתה‬ ‫ונסב משה ית אתתה וית בניו חכימה אזל מסק לדרגה‬ ‫ונסב משה ית אתתה וית בניו רחמה משלח ליד רחמה בזריזו רבה‬ “And Moses took his wife and his sons” on the very morning after the call. “And Moses took his wife and his sons,” a commander going to depart for war. “And Moses took his wife and his sons,” a farmer seeking to go to his inheritance.55 “And Moses took his wife and his sons,” an elder going to take his rank.56 “And Moses took his wife and his sons,” a lover sent to his beloved in great haste.

The first line expands the verse by clarifying what the biblical text does not, namely, precisely when Moses returned. He set out, according to Marqe, the very ‫“ איכה במחשכים הושבתה‬How did you make dwell in the darkness,” the ‫ ה‬strophe makes reference to the Egyptians as pursuers (‫)רודפים‬, while the ‫ ו‬strophe speaks of the sea closing (‫)הים סוגר‬. (For the Hebrew text I depend on the transcription in Maagarim.) 51 Ben-Ḥ ayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 103. 52  For another possible phraseological point of contact between Marqe and rabbinic Jewish circles see Münz-Manor, “Liturgical Poetry,” 345 n. 37. 53  On these units see Ben-Ḥ ayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 38. Pace Ben-Ḥ ayyim, I see no reason to assume that they existed independently before their incorporation into Tibat Marqe. 54 Ben-Ḥ ayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 61. 55  For the characterization of the patriarchs as farmers see Ben-Ḥ ayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 97 ll. 984, 993. 56  Cf. Ben-Ḥayyim, Tībåt Mårqe, 47, l. 103, where God pledges to raise Moses’ rank (‫למסק‬ >‫)