Vernacular Voices: Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities 0812242505, 978-0812242508

Table of contents :
Frontmatter
Pages i-vi

Contents
Pages vii-viii

Notes on Translations and Transcription and Typographical Conventions
Pages ix-xii

Abbreviations
Pages xiii-xiv

Introduction. The Medieval French Jewish Community in Its Linguistic Context
Pages 1-25

Chapter 1. Language and Identity
Pages 26-59

Chapter 2. Speech and Silence, Male and Female in Jewish-Christian Relations
Pages 60-88

Chapter 3. Texts of Two Colors
Pages 89-123

Chapter 4. Hebrew-French Wedding Songs
Pages 124-150

Epilogue
Pages 151-154

Appendix 1. Hebraico-French Glosses and Texts
Pages 155-158

Appendix 2. The Medieval Jewish Wedding Song ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie
Pages 159-174

Notes
Pages 175-216

Bibliography
Pages 217-244

Index
Pages 245-252

Acknowledgments
Pages 253-258

Citation preview

Vernacular Voices

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PAGE i

JEWISH CULTURE AND CONTEXTS Published in association with the Herbert D. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies of the University of Pennsylvania David B. Ruderman, Series Editor Advisory Board Richard I. Cohen Moshe Idel Alan Mintz Deborah Dash Moore Ada Rapoport-Albert Michael D. Swartz A complete list of books in the series is available from the publisher.

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Vernacular Voices Language and Identity in Medieval French Jewish Communities

Kirsten A. Fudeman

universit y of pennsylvania press phil adelphia  oxford

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Copyright 䉷 2010 University of Pennsylvania Press All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of review or scholarly citation, none of this book may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. Published by University of Pennsylvania Press Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Fudeman, Kirsten Anne. Vernacular voices : language and identity in medieval French Jewish communities / Kirsten A. Fudeman. p. cm. — (Jewish culture and contexts) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8122-4250-8 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Hebrew language, Medieval—France. 2. Jews— France—Languages—History. 3. Jews—France—Identity. 4. Jews—France—History—To 1500. I. Title. PJ4995.F8F83 2010 492.4⬘7—dc22 2009050751

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PAGE iv

For Alexander and Gregory

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contents

Notes on Translations and Transcription and Typographical Conventions ix List of Abbreviations xiii Introduction: The Medieval French Jewish Community in Its Linguistic Context 1 Chapter 1. Language and Identity 26 Chapter 2. Speech and Silence, Male and Female in Jewish-Christian Relations: Blois, 1171 60 Chapter 3. Texts of Two Colors 89 Chapter 4. Hebrew-French Wedding Songs: Expressions of Identity 124 Epilogue

151

Appendix 1. Hebraico-French Glosses and Texts 155 Appendix 2. The Medieval Jewish Wedding Song ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie 159 Notes

175

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viii c o n t e n t s

Bibliography 217 Index 245 Acknowledgments 253

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notes on translations and transcription and typographical conventions

Translations from French and Hebrew, both medieval and modern, are mine, unless otherwise noted. A general exception is Bible verses, for which I generally chose the NRSV (New Revised Standard Version) or NJPS (Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text) translation, duly identified, after comparing them to the Hebrew. Different types of texts seemed to require different presentations. For Hebrew texts containing only one or two isolated French glosses, I chose to present the Hebrew text along with an English translation, inserting the French word or words in the translation between square brackets. For texts containing significant portions in both Hebrew and French, I present the Hebrew-letter transcription, a transliteration of the Hebrew integrated with romanization of the Old French, and finally an English translation. Where a Hebrew text is readily available, I present only the English translation. Particularly in block quotes, I use small capitals to identify transliterations and translations of Hebrew portions and differentiate them from romanization and translations of French. In Hebrew texts, [!] indicates sic, and a rafe (horizontal line above a letter) does double duty for rafe and a scribal mark resembling an inverted circumflex. Square brackets enclose editorial emendations or explanations, and parentheses letters or words to be subtracted. Strict transliteration, when provided, has been carried out according to the table of equivalences reproduced here. Although two transliteration symbols are used twice (s for samekh and sin, t for tet and taw), medieval Jews’ general avoidance of samekh and taw for writing French words leads to a oneto-one correspondence of transliteration symbols and Hebrew letters in the strict transliteration of French. Final and non-final forms of Hebrew letters are not differentiated in strict transliteration because their distribution is regular.

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x notes on translations

’

aleph

l

lamed

b

bet

m mem

g

gimel

n

nun

g˘

gimel with scribal mark (inverted circumflex)

nˇ

nun with scribal mark (inverted circumflex)

d

dalet

s

samekh

h

he

‘

ayin

w

waw

p

pe

z

zayin

s.

tsade

h.

h.et

q

qof

t

tet

cˇ

qof with scribal mark (inverted circumflex)

y

yod

r

resh

k

kaf

s

sin

ˇs

shin

t

taw

In most instances, however, including the transliteration of Hebrew borrowings into English and Hebrew titles in the notes and bibliography, I have opted for a simpler, general-purpose system of transliteration, omitting aleph at the beginnings of words; using ts for tsade, sh for shin, w, o, or u for waw, as appropriate, and y or i for yod, as appropriate; using v, kh, and f where called for; and indicating vowels but not vowel length. In quoting other scholars’ work, I retain their transliteration conventions. (The only one not listed above is z. for tsade.) Furthermore, the names of Jewish scholars are given in the form most often encountered in American scholarship: I write Joseph Kara, for example, instead of Joseph Qara. As in much American scholarship, my transliteration of Hebrew words reflects their pronunciation in modern Hebrew, rather than their pronunciation by medieval Frenchspeaking Jews, who, for example, pronounced final taw as /s/ (cf. today’s Ashkenazic pronunciation). An exception is my use of w for consonantal waw in transcribing medieval texts; however, in titles of modern works, as well as in the title of the Mah.zor Vitry, I have used v instead.

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n o t e s o n t r a n s l a t i o n s xi

While it is more standard in academic works to put titles of short poems in quotation marks, I put them in italics here so as to avoid confusion with the symbols for aleph (’) and ayin (‘). Finally, la‘az technically refers to a language other than Hebrew, but in the texts discussed in this book, it refers to French.

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PAGE xi

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abbreviations

AND

CCCM EJ f. JQR m. MED

NJPS NRSV REJ T-L

Troyes elegy

William Rothwell et al., eds., Anglo-Norman Dictionary, 2nd ed. (London: Manley Publishing for the Modern Humanities Research Association, 2005) Corpus christianorum. Continuatio mediaevalis. Michael Berenbaum and Fred Skolnik, eds., Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed. (Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA, 2007) feminine Jewish Quarterly Review masculine Hans Kurath, Sherman Kuhn, and Robert E. Lewis, eds., Middle English Dictionary (Ann Arbor, Mich.: University of Michigan Press, 1952–) Tanakh: The Holy Scriptures. The New JPS Translation According to the Traditional Hebrew Text New Revised Standard Version Revue des E´tudes juives Adolf Tobler, Erhard Lommatzsch, and Hans Helmut Christmann, Altfranzo¨sisches Wo¨rterbuch (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1925–2002) Edition in Kirsten A. Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice: The Old French Elegy of Troyes.’’ Jewish Studies Quarterly 15 (2008): 190–221

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PAGE xiii

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introduction

The Medieval French Jewish Community in Its Linguistic Context

Gloss It for Me in French! A thirteenth-century text called the Desputoison du juyf et du crestien (Disputation between the Jew and the Christian) records a fictional debate between two men.1 Though side by side, they seem to come from two different worlds, separated not only by creed but also language. The text begins with the Christian declaring one of the mysteries of his faith, the virgin birth, in Latin. At the most basic of levels, the Jew does not understand. ‘‘Parole a moi franc¸ois,’’ he says, ‘‘et espon tes paroles. . . . Ce que diz en latin, en franc¸ois le me glose!’’ (Speak to me in French and explain your words! . . . Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin!) The Christian obliges him, the dialogue continues, and, as is typical in texts of this genre, the Jew is won over to the Christian’s way of thinking. The Christian and Jew of the debate both inhabit the so-called Latin Middle Ages of Ernst Robert Curtius and Erich Auerbach,2 but only the Christian is comfortable with Latin. Had he persisted in speaking that language, or had the Jew insisted on using Hebrew, there could have been no exchange of ideas. Communication between them was possible only through French. In the area roughly corresponding to today’s northern France, French, the vernacular, was the linguistic point of contact between medieval Latin culture and medieval Hebrew culture and the medium through which Christians and Jews communicated with one another. Though during this time

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2 introduction

Latin and Hebrew had greater prestige than French, having been used to record sacred Scripture, liturgy, and countless other texts, and being preferred by scholars, it was French that Jews and Christians spoke most often in the territory that concerns us here, among themselves and to one another, day after day. This book is concerned with the roles played by language in shaping identity and culture. How did language affect how Jews thought, how they interacted with one another and with Christians, and who they perceived themselves to be? What circumstances and forces led to the genesis of a medieval Jewish textual tradition in French and helped shape it? Who were the writers, and how did they choose to write in the vernacular or Hebrew? What types of speech-related behaviors did Jews see in Christians, and which inspired trust or distrust? How and in what terms did Jews define their relationship to the larger French-speaking community? In beginning to offer answers to these and other questions I draw on a variety of sources, of which the most important are three sets of medieval Jewish texts produced in northern France: Old French texts in Hebrew letters, bilingual Hebrew-French texts, and selected Hebrew texts that are explicitly preoccupied with verbal interactions with Christians. A fundamental assumption underlying this book is that by studying language, we will be able to sketch a more comprehensive picture of the Jewish community in medieval France and better understand the way the Jews themselves perceived their relationship to and place within the larger Jewish and Christian communities. This is what ‘‘identity’’ refers to in this book: the consciousness of individuals that they exist in relation to communities, and the ways in which objective characteristics of those communities contribute to the way individuals represent themselves and are represented by others.3 A major theme that emerges from studying the historical, literary, and scholarly documents treated in the following chapters is that language was a tremendous force behind the construction of Jewish identity in the twelfth, thirteenth, and early fourteenth centuries and a means of expressing, maintaining, and preserving that identity. Many or most Jews living in northern France during that period assimilated major elements of the vernacular culture, and certain aspects of their identity were intimately bound to the status of French as their mother tongue, with all that entailed. Especially relevant here is that Jews partook of French-language culture, enjoying and to a limited extent producing literature in medieval French. Most of their textual production was in Hebrew, but in linguistically mixed texts, French, their

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Linguistic Context 3

mother tongue, seems literally to seep through the cracks in the form of glosses, lines of poetry, and occasionally complete poems and prose texts in French. More subtly we find medieval French influence on the spelling, morphology, syntax, and semantics of their Hebrew, and Hebrew influence on the way they used French. Although it appears that in many situations the Jews’ French was more or less indistinguishable from that of Christians, there is extensive written evidence that in other situations, the Jews’ French was distinctive and that its distinctiveness resulted especially from Hebrew influence. Jews used the Hebrew alphabet for writing French. They incorporated Hebrew loanwords into their written French and, we may assume, their spoken French as well. Words in their French texts sometimes combine a Hebrew root with French suffixes, and sentences in bilingual texts sometimes begin in one language and end in the other. Another type of interaction between French and Hebrew in the Jews’ daily lives is seen in documents like the letters written in response to the Blois incident of 1171, which use Hebrew to report conversations that took place in French. Knowing that the conversations have been translated not only from one language to another but also from one system of symbolic references to another helps the scholar read them with greater sophistication. Did medieval Christians recognize or think they could recognize a Jew based on his or her vernacular speech? Could a Jew recognize a fellow Jew just by the way he or she spoke French? These are two of the questions I attempt to answer in Chapter 1. I argue that while there can be no doubt that the mother tongue of most northern French Jews in the Middle Ages was French (the same varieties of French spoken and written by Christians), in some situations the Jews’ French was made distinctively Jewish through their use of Hebrew loanwords and code-switching. The most prominent linguistic marker of Jewishness, however, remained Hebrew, even though only some Jews learned it well, and some Christian scholars also studied it. Chapter 2, comprising three main sections, offers a close reading of Hebrew texts written in response to the burning of over thirty Jews in Blois in 1171. In the first section, I argue that one of these texts, called the Orleans letter, serves as both a record and an attempt to explain and understand the tragedy that befell the Jewish community of Blois, and I speculate that the explanation may lie in the words of Prov. 6:16–19. I argue furthermore that the authors of the Orleans and three other letters pay special attention to linguistic behaviors and to the way that Christians used speech and silence during the incident. In the second section, I argue that the Blois letters, as

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4 introduction

well as later accounts of the incident from Ephraim of Bonn and Joseph HaCohen, point to deep differences between the linguistic channels available to medieval Jewish men and women and illuminate the relationship of gender to formality and informality in language. Limitations on women’s access to Hebrew meant that even women with some knowledge of the language were less able to engage in style-shifting, limiting in turn the repertoire of public identities that they were able to assume. Finally, the Blois documents and the Blois incident itself demonstrate the extent to which the Jews were integrated into Christian society but at the same time were set apart. For their own safety and self-preservation, the Jews sought help from those in authority, all the while remaining deeply distrustful of them. The interplay of French and Hebrew in the unfolding of the Blois incident is illustrative of this complex Jewish-Christian relationship. Chapter 3 is concerned with bilingual Hebrew-French manuscripts that graphically illustrate the dual identity of the medieval French-speaking Jewish community. Jewish texts in French appeared centuries later than non-Jewish texts in French, but even late medieval Jewish texts in French are strikingly similar in certain respects to the earliest Old French texts, which date from the ninth and tenth centuries. Why did a medieval Jewish textual tradition in French take so long to emerge? And why should it be similar to a Christian tradition that predated it by centuries? An exploration of similarities and differences between Christian and Jewish society and the Latin and Hebrew textual traditions offers possible answers to these and other questions. Chapter 4 begins with two bilingual Hebrew-French wedding songs and their manuscripts and ends with thirteenth- and fourteenth-century persecutions and expulsions of the Jews. Analyzing the wedding songs from the standpoints of language, ritual, community, and identity, I argue that their lover-warriors and noble brides challenge the notion of a French identity that is inextricably bound to Christian beliefs and that the songs present a forceful vision of a dual French-Jewish identity at odds with the representations of Jews in Christian texts from the same period. These four chapters, framed by an introduction and an epilogue, are ordered deliberately. The central question of Chapter 1, whether and how the Jews’ vernacular differed from the French spoken all around them by nonJews, is central to the book’s larger concern with language and identity. Chapter 2 addresses documents that reveal an authorial concern with speech and serves as a reminder that despite this book’s concern with vernacular texts, most medieval Jewish documents from northern France are in Hebrew.

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Both chronologically and conceptually, it precedes the discussion of the remaining chapters: Chapter 3 builds on the first chapter by offering a closer and more extensive look at Jewish texts in Old French and also, through its focus on the development of literary languages, serves as a bridge to Chapter 4, an examination of specific Hebraico-French literary texts, two wedding songs. The limits of this study are addressed further below.

Judeo-French, Hebraico-French, and the Scholars Who Have Studied Them In this volume I use the term ‘‘Hebraico-French’’ to refer to Old and Middle French texts written in Hebrew letters. (The scholarly division between these two stages of the language is generally placed in the first half of the fourteenth century, but there was never a moment of transition: speakers called their language simply romanz or franc¸ois.)4 Even if some of the texts discussed here are bilingual, composed in both Hebrew and French, Hebraico-French texts are not necessarily linguistically mixed: ‘‘Hebraico’’ refers solely to the alphabet used.5 Except in discussions of earlier scholarship, I avoid using the term ‘‘Judeo-French’’ to describe texts. Although favored by many scholars, including Raphael Levy and D. S. Blondheim, the term ‘‘Judeo-French’’ is ambiguous, since it has been used to describe French texts recorded in the Hebrew alphabet, as well as a hypothetical Jewish dialect of Old French whose existence will be taken up in Chapter 1. The Comencement de sapience (Beginning of wisdom), a 1273 French translation by Hagin le Juif of an astrological treatise by Abraham ibn Ezra, is unique in being the only known Jewish text in Old French to have been written in the Roman alphabet, the reason being that Hagin dictated it to a certain Obert de Montdidier, a Gentile. Some have suggested that Hagin did not know how to write; more precisely, it seems that he did not know how to write in the Latin alphabet. The translation itself seems to have been intended for an erudite Christian patron, Henry Bate, in whose house (in Malines) the translation was made.6 We might call Hagin’s translation a French Jewish text, a term that applies equally well to Hebraico-French texts but that I generally avoid because it, too, is ambiguous and can refer simply to any Jewish text written in French or produced in a French-speaking area. Mathieu (Mahieu) le Juif, a possible Jewish convert to Christianity about whom little is known, wrote poetry in

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Old French on worldly themes. Neither his subject matter nor his audience nor the script in which his work is recorded (the Latin one) justify calling his poetry ‘‘Jewish.’’7 Although scholars have long been aware of the existence of HebraicoFrench glosses, and to a lesser extent, texts, we can date the beginnings of intense scholarly interest in Hebraico-French literature and Judeo-French language to the mid- to late nineteenth century. The most famous of the early researchers were Arse`ne Darmesteter (1846–1888) and David S. Blondheim (1884–1934). Both edited and published Hebraico-French texts and glosses but died tragically young.8 Among their most famous publications are compilations begun by Darmesteter and completed by Blondheim of the Old French glosses scattered throughout the biblical and talmudic commentaries of the celebrated medieval commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitsh.aqi (Solomon ben Isaac) of Troyes, better known as Rashi (1040–1105). Blondheim was a particularly fine editor, and I have often been impressed by the exceptional accuracy of his work. Here we must also mention Louis Brandin, who in 1905, along with Mayer Lambert, published an edition of a Hebrew-French glossary owned by the Bibliothe`que nationale de France.9 This volume was one of the first to make the major genre of the medieval Hebrew-French glossary available to a wide modern public, even if the glossaries themselves, of which several survive today, had already been studied to some extent by scholars such as Darmes¨ sterreicher, and Leopold Zunz. teter, Joseph O In the mid- and late twentieth century, major researchers in the field of Judeo-French studies included Menahem Banitt, Hiram Peri (formerly Heinz Pflaum), and Raphael Levy. Menahem Banitt (born Max Berenblut) edited with great skill and meticulousness a number of Jewish texts in French, among them two major glossaries, Le glossaire de Baˆle and Le glossaire de Leipzig, and various shorter works. He engaged in extensive historical, linguistic, and graphic analysis of these texts and others and explored issues such as the Judeo-French dialect question and the use of the vernacular in medieval Jewish education. Peri’s contributions to the field include a fine edition of two Jewish hymns in Old French and a survey of Jewish prayer in the vernacular. Levy is most famous for his edition of the aforementioned Comencement de sapience and for his lexicographical work. Levy’s lexicographical and other linguistic studies of ‘‘Judeo-French’’ were criticized by Banitt as selective and non-scientific.10 Nonetheless, they are valuable resources for the modern scholar, who, for example, can use Levy’s Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs

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franc¸ais au moyen aˆge or Contribution a` la lexicographie franc¸aise selon d’anciens textes d’origine juive to identify attestations of particular Old French words in Jewish texts. Other twentieth-century scholars who have made important contributions to the field include Moche´ Catane (born Paul Klein; 1920– 1995) and Joseph Greenberg, who published editions of Rashi’s Old French glosses, and who studied glosses by Joseph Kara and Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), respectively, as well.11 Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Jewish texts and glosses in French. Scholars Daniel Fano and Yona Bar-Maoz, working on the Miqra’ot Gedolot ‘‘HaKeter’’ project in Israel, have performed meticulous comparative analysis of Old French glosses found in manuscripts of medieval commentaries in Hebrew, in many cases correcting transmission errors. This makes the Miqra’ot Gedolot ‘‘HaKeter’’ series the most reliable source available to scholars wishing to study the glosses of the northern French commentators in full context. Cyril Aslanov has published selected Old French glosses from commentaries on Ezekiel by Joseph Kara and Eleazar of Beaugency, and I have published the glosses from Kara’s commentary on Isaiah and glosses from fragments of his commentary on Psalms, as well as analysis of Kara’s Job glosses, and studies of one Hebrew-French wedding song and the Troyes elegy. Jordan Penkower has prepared editions of glosses from the commentaries of Rashi and pseudo-Rashi. Marc Kiwitt and Stefanie Zaun have both worked extensively on a Hebraico-French medical treatise from the late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century, and Kiwitt has also worked extensively on glossaries. The importance of the Hebraico-French corpus is perhaps best illustrated by the fascination it engenders in scholars in related fields. These include Samuel Rosenberg and Wendy Pfeffer, specialists in medieval French literature, and Susan Einbinder, specialist in medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish history, who have all written studies of individual Hebraico-French poetic compositions. The specialized knowledge of medieval French and Jewish history, literature, and music that these scholars possess gives their studies a freshness and originality that I have found stimulating, and like them, I strive always to study Hebraico-French texts in their larger social, cultural, and historical context. Despite these many contributions to the study of Jewish literature in French, this corpus is sometimes ignored or deemphasized by modern scholars. To be fair, this is not without reason: it is far smaller and more limited in terms of genre than the corpus of medieval Jewish texts in Hebrew or of

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8 introduction

medieval French texts in the Latin alphabet. Marius Sala estimates the number of Hebraico-French manuscripts at at least one hundred.12 Although I believe the actual number is somewhat higher, most are Hebrew manuscripts that contain only words in French. (See Appendix 1.) Moreover, the Hebraico-French texts that we do have tend to be short, often containing fewer than ten lines. Only eleven Hebraico-French poetic works are known, including a mere couplet in a longer Hebrew text. Aside from Hebrew-French glossaries, only one full-length Hebraico-French text is known—this is the aforementioned medical treatise.13 It is nonetheless striking that from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Hebraico-French poetry was often mentioned in surveys of Old French literature, such as Lajard’s Histoire litte´raire de la France, or the surveys written by Paul Zumthor and Urban T. Holmes.14 In more recent general works, these poems are typically not mentioned. Jewish studies scholars have remained more or less conscious of Hebraico-French texts and glosses ever since Darmesteter brought the Troyes elegy to the public’s attention. Nonetheless, the Hebraico-French corpus often seems to be overlooked by scholars studying medieval Jewish literature in Hebrew and Arabic. Chaim Rabin, contrasting the abundance of JudeoArabic texts with the (relative) absence of Jewish vernacular texts in continental Europe, asserts, ‘‘In France, pre-1290 England, and Germany, mishnaic Hebrew was the language for all written purposes, including religious poetry (there being no worldly poetry in that society).’’15 Norman Golb writes of medieval Normandy during the Angevin period, ‘‘[Hebraic culture] was all embracing, including the study and practice of Jewish law, religious worship, the formulation of communal and regional enactments, and personal written expression, all taking place in Hebrew rather than in Latin or French.’’16 That Hebraic culture embraced Jewish life in medieval France cannot be denied; and on almost every occasion that a medieval French-speaking Jew put pen to parchment, it was indeed to write in Hebrew.17 But if Hebrew culture was all-embracing in some respects, then vernacular culture was all-embracing in others. The vernacular was the mother tongue and the spoken language par excellence for all ages and both genders. Hebrew was indeed the language of Jewish law, worship, communal enactments, and a host of other matters, but discussion of these was carried on not only in Hebrew but also in the vernacular. The content and structure of Hebrew-French biblical glossaries, for example, suggest that the study and teaching of the Hebrew Bible was accomplished through the medium of the spoken language. Evidence also

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suggests that in addition to the written, Hebrew Bible, the Jews of medieval France had an oral, vernacular version, called by Banitt the Old French Vulgate.18

Limits of This Study This study focuses on the relationship between language, history, and identity, and at its core are Hebraico-French and Hebrew-French texts that survive in medieval Jewish manuscripts, some published previously, some newly edited for this project. This core determined which of the many threads that make up the linguistic culture of medieval French-speaking Jews would be taken up here, and which I would leave for other scholars or future studies. The focus on Hebraico-French texts has led me to pursue topics such as influences on the genesis of Hebraico-French writing, even when it led away from the French Middle Ages into earlier times and other lands; the roles of French and Hebrew in texts and in daily life; the evolution of HebraicoFrench textual production; the narrative structure and themes of the HebrewFrench wedding songs; and the distinctiveness of the written and spoken French of medieval Jews. The discussion in Chapter 2 about the Blois incident of 1171 focuses on several texts written in Hebrew, not French, but these texts illuminate verbal, vernacular interactions between Jews and Christians. As we have already seen from the discussion of Judeo-French language and literature as a field of inquiry, much of the research already done on Hebraico-French textual production has focused on individual texts and glosses. While some scholars, notably D. S. Blondheim, Hiram Peri, and Pnina Nave`, have taken a comparative approach and considered HebraicoFrench texts within the larger context of Judeo-Romance,19 there has not yet been a concentrated attempt to place Hebraico-French texts within the context of Old French textual production in general or the history of the Jews in France. One of my goals has been to consider these larger issues, a task facilitated by the fine work on individual manuscripts, texts, and glosses published by other scholars. The geographical boundaries of this study are determined by the location of Jewish settlements known to have produced Hebraico-French texts, as well as the extension of the French-speaking area during the medieval period. The second is easier to establish, and I will do so here in broad terms. Today’s France covered three main linguistic regions during the Middle

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Ages. In the north, most of the population spoke dialects of French (langue d’oı¨l), while in the south, which falls outside the boundaries of this study, most people spoke dialects of Occitan (langue d’oc). A large pocket in the east was the domain of Francoprovenc¸al. Other languages were also represented within this territory. For example, the north was home to pockets of Breton, Flemish, German, and Walloon speakers, and the south to speakers of Basque and Catalan. The use of French extended into today’s Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, not to mention various courts where French served as a language of culture.20 Outside the continent, French was spoken in Norman Sicily (1060–), Lusignan Cyprus (1192–), the crusader states of Outremer, and especially England. The Normans who invaded England in 1066 brought their dialect of French with them, and while many of the inhabitants of England remained Anglo-Saxon speaking, the Jews of England, for the most part of Norman heritage, spoke primarily in French.21 Some knew English as well.22 At least one prominent Anglo-Jewish family, that of Elijah Menahem ben Moses of London, came from the Rhineland,23 and descent from Rhenish families, combined with cultural contacts between the Jews of England and those of the Rhineland, would have led to some exposure to German among English Jews, even if it was not spoken in the AngloJewish community itself. Where did Jews compose Hebraico-French texts? In most cases, we are not able to assign a precise geographical origin to Hebraico-French texts or to the Hebrew manuscripts that contain them. According to Colette Sirat, only 3 percent of medieval Hebrew manuscripts contain a precise indication of this sort.24 Nevertheless, in a number of cases, we are able to determine the region, and occasionally the town, where particular Hebraico-French texts or sets of glosses were composed or copied. First, limiting ourselves to the territory belonging to today’s France, we know of Hebraico-French texts originating or written in the dialects of Champagne (e.g., Rashi’s and Joseph Kara’s glosses), Lorraine (several poetic compositions), Normandy (glosses), Picardy (sermon fragments), and the Loire valley (an incantation), among others.25 The colophon of a Hebrew-French glossary to the Bible held by the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma states not only the name of the scribe (Jehiel ben Eleazar) but also the date he completed the manuscript (16 Av 5039 [1279]) and the place, Delsberg, today Delemont of the Swiss Jura (formerly Thalisperc).26 The author of the Troyes elegy seems to have been from Lorraine, as both his name, Jacob bar Judah of Lotra (Lotharingia), and the dialect of the elegy indicate.27 In fact, the number of Hebraico-French texts in the

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Lorraine dialect (Lotharingian) is significant enough to win for Lorraine the title of Hebraico-French textual center. It is notoriously difficult to ascertain whether certain Hebrew manuscripts were produced on the continent or in England,28 but one Hebraico-French text of certain English provenance is a glossary of bird names edited by Menahem Banitt from ms. Valmadonna 1. We can also mention the Old French glosses of Moses and Elijah of London. The present study focuses on the heart of Hebraico-French textual production, the region that medieval Jews called Tsarefat, which we can roughly translate ‘‘northern France,’’ although its borders reached beyond northern France and especially into the Rhineland. When I refer to ‘‘France’’ in this book, I usually mean Tsarefat.29 Cultural and linguistic boundaries among medieval French, English, and German Jews were porous, and in some sense they formed a single culture, that of Ashkenaz.30 Eleventh- to twelfth-century French Jewish scholars such as Rashi and Joseph Kara studied in German-speaking lands, and in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Rhenish Jewish scholars like Meir of Rothenberg and Ephraim of Regensburg studied in northern France. The Tosafist commentators of France and Germany and the English rabbis cited each other’s scholarship.31 French, German, and English Jewish scribes all used the same basic script style.32 There is, however, reason to distinguish among these groups, as medieval Jews did themselves: for example, Aryeh Graboı¨s has commented on the medieval Jewish differentiation between the Rhine basin, Lorraine, and northern France.33 In a study like the present one, in particular, it makes sense to study the Jewish communities of medieval France apart from others in Ashkenaz. The Jews living in English- and German-speaking milieus belong, by definition, to other speech communities—a fact that is reinforced by the distinction between the terms la‘az (literally, ‘‘a language other than Hebrew,’’ but generally used by medieval exegetes to refer to French) and leshon ashkenaz (‘‘language of Ashkenaz,’’ i.e., German). The multilingual situation of England raises its own problems and complications, as has been discussed by Robert C. Stacey. Jews there primarily spoke French, and this increasingly set them apart after the Anglo-Norman period as English gained importance as a mother tongue for all non-Jews, regardless of social class or family origins.34 The terminus a quo of the present study is relatively straightforward, determined by the earliest known Jewish glosses in Old French in the eleventh century. The terminus ad quem is more difficult to establish. Philip Augustus’s expulsion of the Jews from the royal domain in 1182 did not end

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the Jewish presence in medieval France. Their exile was relatively short-lived (in 1198 he announced that they could return); and the royal domain at that time consisted, in the words of William Jordan, only of a ‘‘more or less narrow strip of territory, not entirely uninterrupted, running from the Beauvaisis in the north to Bourges in the south.’’35 It was the late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that would prove catastrophic to Jewish settlements in England and France. The Jews were expelled from England by Edward I in 1290 and from the French royal domain during the reigns of Philip IV the Fair (1306), Charles IV the Fair (1322), and Charles VI the Mad (1394). (Whether there was a formal edict of expulsion in 1322 is unclear.)36 After 1322, according to Jordan, the presence of Jews in the French royal domain (whose area had increased significantly since Philip Augustus’s ascension to the throne) was negligible.37 Some Jews remained in French-speaking borderlands, such as the Franche-Comte´, but they were hardly more welcome there, and soon after the expulsion from the royal domain in 1322, they were expelled from the Franche-Comte´ as well. As reported by Jordan, they are believed to have returned there ‘‘relatively quickly’’ as Capetian influence diminished.38 We do have two late bilingual Hebrew-French documents from the Franche-Comte´, but they date from before the expulsion of 1322: these are two account books prepared by an association of Jews based in Vesoul, located in today’s France not far from the German and Swiss borders. The earliest date in the account books is 1300, and the latest 1318.39 Jews expelled from the French royal domain also moved into areas such as Flanders in the northeast, and Savoy, the Dauphine´, Comtat-Venaissin, and Provence, all beyond the Rhoˆne. Some moved even further east or south, contributing to the significant number of Hebraico-French texts preserved in libraries and archives in northern Italy, Switzerland, and Germany. Others settled in the Iberian kingdoms.40 French-speaking Jews continued to copy and perhaps even produce Hebraico-French glosses and texts in their postexpulsion homes until Hebraico-French textual production waned and died with the death of the expulsion generation or soon after. The bilingual wedding song beginning ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, discussed in Chapter 4, was copied sometime between the late fourteenth century and second decade of the fifteenth, apparently in a German-speaking (or bilingual French-German) environment. A recipe for h.aroset with ingredients in French (see Chapter 3) was copied in northern Italy in 1470. It seems probable that even at this relatively late date, an undeterminable number of descendents of northern French Jews

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in northern Italy and elsewhere were continuing to speak and even occasionally to write in their ancestral tongue.41

Vernaculars and Literary Languages The mobility of individual Jews and entire Jewish communities, by choice or by force, has led Malachi Beit-Arie´ to call them ‘‘agents of cross-cultural contacts and influences and intercultural confrontations.’’42 Set Jewish mobility against the backdrop of the already multilingual Middle Ages, and the result is a complex linguistic web woven of threads of many colors. The literary languages Hebrew, Latin, and Aramaic contribute many strands, for written languages can be adapted to different styles, from lofty to most humble. The threads representing medieval vernaculars, of which there were many, split and merge according to geography, social class, and time period. And languages can be mixed: vernacular speech might be interspersed with words or phrases in the learned tongue, a learned text might incorporate vernacular glosses, or a poet might compose a hybrid text, drawing from two or more linguistic and literary traditions at once. Even the lowliest and least educated Jew born in northern France during the Middle Ages came into contact with a number of different languages in his or her lifetime, of which the most important to Jewish identity and culture would have been French, the mother tongue, and Hebrew, which we might call the father tongue, since it was generally transmitted from fathers and other male authority figures to sons and was based outside the home in the male domains of the yeshiva and synagogue.43 (Note that study and worship would often have taken place in the same physical space, one that may have been used for other purposes as well.) Hebrew, this father tongue, the holy tongue, was also what we call a literary language by virtue of its conservatism, the relative stability with which it was used over vast stretches of space and time, and its transmission through texts.44 That it was conservative does not mean it was frozen, and we can identify at least three varieties of Hebrew to which educated Jews in the medieval period would have been exposed: biblical, rabbinic, and medieval. Biblical Hebrew is the language of the Hebrew Bible, with modern scholars distinguishing between the language of early biblical poetry, that of pre-exilic prose writings, and that of the latest, post-exilic writings. Rabbinic Hebrew is the language of the texts created by the Jewish sages called the Tannaim (c.

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20–200 c.e.) and Amoraim (c. 220 to 360–370 c.e. in the Land of Israel, c. 220–500 c.e. in Babylonia) and is properly divided into Tannaitic and Amoraic Hebrew, with the Amoraic period stretching into the Middle Ages. The Hebrew in which European medieval Jews composed their commentaries, poetry, and other texts grew out of rabbinic Hebrew,45 and though medieval Jews using Hebrew wrote in an array of styles, we can classify them together as medieval Hebrew.46 Two other literary languages of great importance to medieval French Jewish culture were Aramaic and Latin. Medieval Jews encountered Aramaic, a Semitic language closely related to Hebrew, when studying the Gemara, particular sections of the Bible (Gen. 31:47, Jer. 10:11, Dan. 2:4–7:28, Ezra 4:8–6:8 and 7:12–26), Targumim (Aramaic translations or paraphrases of the Bible), and various other texts. Aramaic also influenced Amoraic and medieval Hebrew vocabulary, morphology, and syntax. Among all the languages of the world, ‘‘Aramaic is closest but not quite equal in status to that of Hebrew,’’ Steven Fraade has stated, summing up an idea found in rabbinic sources. It is both ‘‘a revealed language’’ and ‘‘a language of revelation.’’47 If French and Hebrew, the latter accompanied by and sometimes mixed with Aramaic, can be considered the Jews’ mother and father tongues, then from approximately the eighth or ninth century on, Latin, so important in Christian thought and worship, might be called the ‘‘other tongue’’ and the ‘‘language of the other.’’ One of the four languages, along with Hebrew, Aramaic, and Arabic, in which the Torah was given, according to the Midrash, it, too, was a language of revelation.48 Prior to the eighth and ninth centuries, when Romance speakers in Gaul still considered their speech Latin, and Latin texts could be read aloud so that even the uneducated could understand, Latin was not yet the language of the other for Jews living in northern and southern France—it was their mother tongue, as it was for their Christian neighbors. This claim is common sense, although we are hard-pressed to find written evidence for it.49 Few Jewish manuscripts from any region, even fragmentary, survive from that period; the oldest Jewish codices from Latin Europe date from the eleventh century.50 Jewish inscriptions in Latin dating from the eighth century or earlier have been found in Auch, Bordeaux, Narbonne, and perhaps Avignon,51 but not apparently in the north of France. That Jews living in what is now France once had Latin as their mother tongue is perhaps best reflected by particular words of popular Latin origin that are attested in Hebraico-French texts and glosses but that are not attested or are attested only rarely in other medieval

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French documents. It is possible that these words were used by Jews and nonJews alike in Latin Gaul but that they gradually fell out of use among nonJews.52 By the period that concerns us most here, the eleventh to the fourteenth centuries, Latin was no longer a living language, and learning it required formal study. Although some Jews in northern France studied Latin, it seems that most did not and that Latin study among Jews was greater in Spain, Provence, and Italy, all of which are known for the production of translations of Latin works into Hebrew.53 We can name specific Spanish, Occitan, and Italian Jews, such as Moses of Palermo (thirteenth century), Immanuel of Rome (b. c. 1261, d. before 1335), and Le´on Joseph de Carcassonne (fourteenth to fifteenth century), who are known to have become proficient in Latin. Gersonides (Levi ben Gershom or Gerson, or Le´on de Bagnols, 1288–1344) may have known Latin as well, though he wrote exclusively in Hebrew, with Occitan glosses, and there is no textual evidence that he consulted non-Hebrew sources.54 In contrast to the situation in Spain, Occitania, and Italy, evidence regarding the Latin proficiency of individual Jewish scholars from northern France is scarce. It is known that Joseph of Orleans, also known as Joseph Bekhor Shor (mid- to late twelfth century), learned Latin in order to read Christian texts,55 and David Berger has stated in more general terms that Jewish authors concerned with the Jewish-Christian polemic ‘‘surely read Latin.’’ Berger also writes, ‘‘When Jewish works . . . refute Christological interpretations that are found only in Christian commentaries and not in polemics, we have reason to suspect that the Jewish authors got the information from a literary source, and a systematic investigation along these lines may well prove rewarding,’’ and he mentions a section, ‘‘probably interpolated,’’ in the Munich manuscript of the Nizzah.on vetus on Psalms that refers to Christian translations and glossa in a way that suggests that the Jewish author had read the texts.56 All too often, however, evidence regarding the Latin knowledge of individual Jewish scholars is ambiguous or altogether lacking. Take the case of Samuel ben Meir, known as Rashbam (c. 1085–1174). Rashbam engaged in discussion with Christian scholars, and it has been claimed that he knew Latin based on his discussion of Exod. 20:13 and the commandment ‘‘You shall not murder.’’57 Rashbam asserts that the verb r-s.-h. ‘‘always . . . refers to unjustified homicide.’’ He contrasts it with h-r-g and m-w-t, which ‘‘sometimes refer to unjustified homicide . . . and sometimes to justifiable homi-

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cide,’’ then continues: ‘‘I offer this explanation as an argument against the heretics and they admitted that I was right. Even though in their Latin books [i.e., the Vulgate] the same verb is used to translate the verb [m-w-t] in the phrase (Dt. 32:39) ‘I deal death [amit] and I give life,’ and the verb [r-s.-h.] in this verse, their translations are inaccurate.’’58 The verb that the Vulgate uses in both verses is occidere. Martin Lockshin, from whose work the above translation of Rashbam’s commentary comes, correctly asserts that this passage does not prove that Rashbam knew Latin. Rashbam may simply have discussed this issue with Christians and so learned that the Vulgate uses the same verb in its translations of Deut. 32:39 and Exod. 20:13. Rashbam may have known Latin, but as Lockshin emphasizes, we know with certainty only that he engaged in discussions of biblical exegesis with Christians, even in cases such as this one where the passage was not central to Jewish-Christian polemics. In the miracle story De l’enfant resuscite´ qui chantoit Gaude Maria by Gautier de Coinci (1177/78–1236), a Christian boy sings, ‘‘Erubescat Judeus infelix qui dicit Cristum ex Josef semine esse natum’’ (May the unfortunate Jew who says that Christ was born from the seed of Joseph be ashamed; ll. 148–49) in the street of the Jews—referred to in the text as the rue des gaingnons (street of the curs)—before a large impromptu audience of clergymen, knights, lay folk, and Jews.59 This verse so enrages one of the Jewish listeners that he kills the boy. Gautier was not the first to relate this story, although his version is both better known and more elaborate than any of the earlier ones.60 I have argued elsewhere that Gautier based his comments about Jews more on tradition than personal experience, and we must therefore exercise caution in drawing conclusions about Jewish culture in medieval France based on Gautier’s writings.61 We might ask, is the opening premise of De l’enfant resuscite´ qui chantoit Gaude Maria plausible? Would a Jewish man in Gautier’s time have understood the Latin words sung by the boy? This question is more complicated than it appears. Although I believe that proficiency in reading and writing Latin was rare even among literate Jews living in northern France, it is likely that many Jews learned isolated Latin words and phrases that were current in the surrounding environment, and given repetition, context, and cues such as tone of voice, facial expressions, and audience reactions, the overall intent of the verse sung by the boy might have been clear to nearly any Jew witnessing such a scene. As evidence that Latin literacy among medieval northern French Jews was not commonplace, we can first cite the general absence of Jewish writings

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from northern France or England in Latin or Latin script. (The aforementioned Comencement de sapience, translated by Hagin le Juif, but written down by Obert de Montdidier for a Christian patron, is an exception.) Further evidence comes from the fact that legal transactions often required two scribes, one to compose a document in Hebrew, and the other to compose one in Latin, the alternative being one scribe proficient in both. Thus we find English and Norman legal documents written in Latin and accompanied by a full or shorter version of the record in Hebrew, and sometimes only an endorsement or signature.62 Latin literacy was of course also limited among Christians. The assumption that most Jews of medieval northern France, including those who were relatively well educated, did not learn Latin is further strengthened by the introduction to the thirteenth-century Desputoison du juyf et du crestien with which this introduction began. Let us examine the text here in greater detail. As the debate begins, the Christian is intoning a hymn about one of the mysteries of his faith, the virgin birth, in Latin. Listening is a Jew: [christianus]

Omnis credencium letetur populus: Nostra redempcio, natus est parvulus. Carnem induitur in alvo virginis Et carne tegitur maiestas numinis. (ll. 1–4) (The nation of all believers rejoices, Our redemption, a child is born, He puts on flesh in a virgin’s womb, And is clothed with flesh, glory of the God-head.)

The Jew does not understand. ‘‘Speak to me in French,’’ he says, ‘‘and explain your words!’’ The Jew means this at a basic level: he wants the Christian to

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explain the sense of the Latin words. But the Christian misunderstands and attributes the Jew’s lack of understanding to his being Jewish. Such a reaction on the part of a Christian might well have been commonplace: Jews were frequently accused of being stupid, unable to understand the Christian mysteries of faith. At around the same time the Desputoison was written, Gautier de Coinci wrote, following a long Christian tradition, that the Jews are ‘‘Plus bestial que bestes mues’’ (Stupider than the speechless beasts) and that ‘‘Li dyables leur dort es testes, / Qui bestı¨aus les fait com bestes’’ (The devil sleeps in their heads, making them stupid like beasts).63 He complained that Jewish reading of Scripture was akin to chewing on the shell of a nut without realizing what is inside, a well-known Christian image for the Jews’ purported inability to understand Scripture figuratively—an image, moreover, that the Christian uses in the Desputoison itself.64 The dialogue might have ended here, except that the Jew persists. It is not the content that is difficult for him, he explains, but the language, and the Christian should translate all that he has just said into French. [judaeus] [christianus] [judaeus] ([Jew]

[Christian] [Jew]

Ne t’entent pas, por ce c’oscurement paroles. Parole a moi franc¸ois et espon tes paroles! N’est pas gieus a entendre ainsi oscure chose. Ce que diz en latin, en franc¸ois le me glose! (ll. 5–8) I don’t understand you, because you are speaking in an obscure way. Speak French to me and explain your words! A Jew can’t understand a hidden thing like this. Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin!)

Even if the author of this text had other reasons to switch from Latin to French (namely, to make the work understandable to a broad Christian audience, including the less educated), the specific way in which he frames the switch here suggests that even educated Jews did not typically know Latin well and that Christians were aware of that fact. From this exchange, and from the other evidence, both positive and negative, available to us, we can infer that the typical French-speaking Jew did not know Latin well, whether he or she was literate in Hebrew or not. Although here and there individual medieval French-speaking Jews like Joseph Bekhor Shor studied Latin, on a communal level, Latin remained the language of the Christian other.65

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Returning to the debate, the Christian obliges the Jew’s request and begins to explain the mystery in French. Ge paroil du filz dieu qui ci nasqui en terre; S’ooille avoit perdu qu’il est venuz requerre. Il est nez de la virge come d’espine rose. Issuz est de sa chanbre parmi la porte close: Si entra et oissi du ventre de la feme Que sa virginite´ n’i perdi onc la dame, N’i ot corrupcı¨on ne avant ne arriere. Au concevoir, au nestre et enpre´s fu entiere. Si con puet par le voirre et issir et passer Li soleus, sanz le voirre maumetre et dequasser, Ensement et encor par plus soutil maniere Entra diex en la virge et s’en rissi arriere. (ll. 9–20)66 (I speak of the son of God who was born here on earth; He had lost his flock and came to seek it out. He was born of the virgin like a rose on its thorn bush. He emerged from her womb through its closed door: He entered and emerged from the belly of the woman, In such a way that the lady never lost her virginity, Nor was defiled before or after. During conception, during the birth, and afterward she remained whole. In the same way the sun can pass through glass Without damaging or shattering it, In a similar way, but even more adeptly, God entered into the virgin and afterward came out again.) If the Christian thinks he has stumbled across a fool, the Jew declares, he most assuredly has not (ll. 35–36)! How could a virgin give birth? How could God, so great that the whole world cannot contain him, be enclosed in the belly of a woman? How could the One who has always existed have had a beginning? How could one God be three? Speech follows speech, with the eloquence of the Christian matching that of the Jew. The turning point comes when the Christian interprets for the Jew the prophecy of Isa. 11:1–2: ‘‘A shoot shall come out from the stump of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots. The spirit of the Lord shall rest on him, the spirit of wisdom

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and understanding’’ (NRSV). The Christian explains, ‘‘La verge c’est la virge; par la flor doiz entendre celui qui en la virge daigna por nos descendre’’ (ll. 385–86) (The branch is the virgin; by the flower you must understand the one who deigned to come down for us in the virgin). Other verses from Isaiah and Jeremiah are offered by the Christian and, finally, a paraphrase of Moses’ words in Deut. 28:66, which medieval Christians commonly understood as referring to the Jews’ failure to recognize Christ.67 Sez que dit de sa mort Moy¨se´s, vostre maistre[s]? ‘‘El fust verras ta vie devant tes ieus pendue. Ta vie ert devant toi, ne par toi n’ert creu¨e.’’ Cil qui fu mis en croiz, cist estoit nostre vie Qui pendoit devant vos et nel creu¨stes mie. (ll. 419–23)68 (Do you know what Moses, your teacher, said about His death? ‘‘You will see your life hanging before you on the cross. Your life will be before you, but you will not believe it.’’ The one who was placed on a cross, He was our life, Which was hanging right before you, and yet you did not believe.) The Jew, finally convinced of the Christian’s authority, proclaims that the Messiah has come and says, ‘‘ge me vo[i]s baptoier et ma mauvaitie secte gerpir et renoier’’ (ll. 429–30)69 (I am going to get baptized and forsake and renounce my wicked sect). The Christian has the last words: ‘‘Bien est; bien ai tendu a ce que j’ai mene´, puis que j’ai un juy¨f a creance amene´’’ (ll. 431–32) (Good. Rightly I persevered in accomplishing my task, for I led a Jew to faith). We might add: in French.

Hebrew-French Diglossia The characteristics of the use of Old French versus Hebrew among medieval French-speaking Jews fall into a classic pattern that scholars call ‘‘diglossia.’’ Diglossia is the stable and widespread use of two or more distinct codes (styles, dialects, languages) in a culture, each with specific functions. Traditionally, it has referred to the use of two related languages or dialects, a usage established by Charles Ferguson using such examples as the coexistence of Standard French and Haitian Creole in Haiti.70 Here I assume the broader

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interpretation of diglossia introduced by Joshua Fishman that covers the coexistence of unrelated languages, each with separate functions.71 In a diglossic situation, high (H) linguistic varieties are prestige tongues, generally learned through formal education, and low (L) varieties are mother tongues, acquired by infants. Among medieval French-speaking Jews, Hebrew was the high linguistic variety and a regional variety of French the low one. This diglossic situation was set in a larger society that was itself diglossic, with the high variety being Latin and the low one again regional varieties of French. Drawing on Fishman’s work, within a diglossic culture, the high linguistic variety (1) typically has greater prestige than the low variety; (2) has a rich literary heritage, which often includes the liturgy and sacred texts; (3) is learned in formal settings; (4) is highly codified, with fairly established rules of grammar, spelling, pronunciation, and so on; (5) is used for most written and formal spoken purposes; and (6) is generally not used for ordinary conversation. All of this is true of Hebrew during the period in question. Hebrew’s prestige was great. It was believed to be the language in which God’s finger wrote the tablets of the covenant given at Horeb (Deut. 9:10).72 Its rich literary tradition stretches back to antiquity. It was transmitted through formal education, whether in the home or outside it, and its spelling and grammar were standardized to a great extent, even if, to quote Angel Sa´enz-Badillos, the Romance-speaking Jews who wrote in Hebrew sometimes used ‘‘poor style, dubious morphology, and questionable syntax.’’73 Within a descriptive, rather than prescriptive, linguistic framework, these irregularities of style and grammar are best viewed less subjectively. Sara Japhet and Robert Salters ask, ‘‘are they not rather the result of various forces brought to bear on the language, giving it new direction?’’74 We have already seen that medieval French Jews used Hebrew for most written purposes. It is impossible to know how often they used Hebrew in conversation, but the times at which Jews spoke Hebrew to one another would have certainly been outnumbered by their interactions, with each other and with Christians, in their mother tongue, French.

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Linguists beginning with Ferguson have shown that two languages in a diglossic relationship often interact in similar ways. Lexical borrowing from the high variety into the low one is common. Words are also borrowed, though less often, from the low variety into the high one. Both types of borrowing took place in medieval French Jewish society. Hebraico-French texts regularly feature Hebrew or Aramaic borrowings, for example, h.atan (‘‘bridegroom’’), kallah (‘‘bride’’), and ‘asqer (‘‘engage in study of the law’’). (This last example bears a French infinitival suffix.)75 The opposite is also amply attested: for example, Hebrew texts written in response to the martyrdom of over thirty Jews in Blois in 1171 incorporate the Old French words peau (skin, hide), vaire (pale, mottled; made of squirrel or miniver), and golier (debauchee), as do many other medieval Hebrew documents produced in France, most famously the commentaries of Rashi of Troyes. Low linguistic varieties typically exert a phonological influence on high varieties, and often a grammatical influence as well. In medieval northern France, the pronunciation of Hebrew was influenced by French, as were its morphology and syntax.76 Although these phenomena generally fall beyond the scope of this book, I note a few examples here. In the documents relating to the Blois massacre of 1171 invoked above, the gender and form of the Hebrew masculine noun ‘or (hide) is adapted to the gender of its French counterpart, peau, resulting in feminine ‘orah, which seems to be a hapax legomenon.77 In a Hebrew-French glossary of bird and animal names in a miscellany owned by the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, discussed in Chapter 3, the gender of the Hebrew possessive suffix is sometimes influenced by the vernacular translation of the Hebrew word to which it refers. Thus, the masculine noun ‘atalef (bat), translated into Old French as feminine pie (magpie), is described as ‘‘the bird [‘of, m.] that is wrapped [me‘ulaf, m.] in her wings [bi-knafeyha].’’ The last word bears a third-person singular feminine suffix. We have already pointed out that high linguistic varieties tend to be used for formal, written purposes, and low linguistic varieties for informal, conversational ones. While this is essentially true, we must also heed the words of scholars such as Jan Ziolkowski, who, writing about the Latin Middle Ages, has warned against distinguishing between ‘‘oral and literate . . . or popular and learned’’ too sharply.78 French may have been used by medieval Jews primarily for oral purposes, but this book would not have been written if they had not sometimes put it in writing. Hebrew was fundamentally a written language, but this did not prevent an oral culture from growing up

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around it.79 Even illiterate Jews spoke Hebrew aloud while praying or reciting benedictions. They sang in Hebrew, too. Hebrew or Aramaic borrowings almost certainly made their way into the Jews’ spoken French, just as they infiltrated their written French and oral performances. In short, two languages in a diglossic relationship may occupy separate functional spaces, but these spaces can and do overlap, and the languages do as well. Diglossia is about groups, not individuals, and so it does not matter if some Jews had little or no Hebrew knowledge. The culture as a whole was diglossic because certain functions were associated with Hebrew and others with the vernacular. In a similar way, medieval Christian culture has often been termed diglossic, with the high variety Latin and the low variety the local vernacular. It does not matter that many, if not most, Christians were illiterate or that even ‘‘as the age of print neared, many peasants, burghers, and even aristocrats remained essentially within oral-aural culture,’’ as Brian Stock observes.80 Literacy was not a prerequisite for inclusion in the Latinlanguage community, which, following Stock, refers to the textual community formed by Christians, both litterati and illiterati, who lived lives centered around Latin texts or literate interpreters of them.81 Diglossia is not bilingualism.82 Scholars seem to agree that most Jewish men in late medieval Europe, and specifically twelfth- to thirteenth-century northern France, learned to read and write Hebrew to varying degrees.83 Of course, the ability to read texts did not entail the ability to write them. One could learn to read Hebrew well and sign one’s name without learning to write it fluently, a skill that Sirat identifies with certain professions, such as those in law and education. Jewish boys in France were initiated into the study of Hebrew and Torah, and hence into the male sphere, as early as age five or six.84 Prior to this they spent most of their time in the care of their mothers and other women.85 The association between maleness and learning was made clear in a number of early childhood rituals, beginning with naming and circumcision in infancy, and culminating with a boy’s initiation into schooling.86 In England, literacy among male Jews appears to have been similarly common.87 Jewish communities sometimes assumed the responsibility of paying for the education of boys from poor families through charity, but not universally.88 Ephraim Kanarfogel has demonstrated that the education of poor children did sometimes suffer as a result of the financial situation of their parents. In the region roughly corresponding to today’s Germany and northern France, teaching was generally done by a melammed (tutor), hired by the

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child’s father or a group of fathers. In the absence of money to hire a melammed, a child had to rely on charity, which was not always available, or on his own father, who was not always willing or able to teach him.89 Similarly, Irving Agus, drawing on responsa literature, has argued that in Germany, Jews living in ‘‘small and isolated communities,’’ of which there were many in France as well,90 were less likely to attain high learning.91 Jewish girls and women were exposed to Hebrew and learned Hebrew prayers, but their education was generally a practical one not involving formal study of Hebrew or Hebrew texts.92 Exposure to prayer in Hebrew may have helped them develop a basic familiarity with the language, but it would not have enabled them to become proficient. Unlike Jewish men, women were not obligated to study the Law, and it is specified in the Talmud that a Torah scroll, tefillin, or mezuzot copied by women are pesulim, or invalid.93 Most evidence for a lack of Hebrew proficiency among Jewish women is indirect. The Mishnah allows the translation of certain religious texts and prayers into the vernacular for the benefit of those who do not know Hebrew, and religious authorities of many places and periods have reiterated this, including Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi (eleventh century), Moses Maimonides (1135–1204) in Hilkhot Tefillah (Laws of prayer), Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi (c. 1200– 1263), Isaiah ben Elijah di Trani (d. c. 1280), Asher ben Jehiel (c. 1250–1327), and his son, Jacob ben Asher (d. 1340).94 One rabbi who put this into action was Solomon Ha-Qadosh of Dreux or Rouen (twelfth to thirteenth century),95 who is said to have recited the Passover Haggadah in French (bela‘az)—only up to the end of the four questions—so that even women would understand.96 Another is Jacob ben Judah of London, author of Ets H . ayyim (Tree of life; c. 1286), who is said to have translated the entire Haggadah into the vernacular, presumably French, again so that women and children would understand.97 At Passover, on the seventh day, it was customary, according to the Mah.zor Vitry, to translate the Parashah and the Haftarah readings in the synagogue into the vernacular; however, women are not specifically mentioned there as benefiting from this practice.98 The aforementioned Spanish scholar Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi observed that in his own time, Jewish women everywhere, including in France, prayed in the vernacular rather than Hebrew.99 It is possible to be proficient in Hebrew and yet choose to pray in another language. However, the custom among women of praying in the vernacular rather than Hebrew, even in the synagogue, is more readily understood if they were less proficient in reading and understanding Hebrew than were Jewish men.

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In various places, Jewish women’s lives and educations reflected trends found in the larger, non-Jewish milieu. Many Christian women of medieval Europe became famous as writers, and while their numbers were smaller and their fame less, a few exceptional medieval Jewish women from the Rhineland and probably also France left writings as well, as Sirat shows. A women named Hannah copied a manuscript of Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil’s Sefer Mitsvot Qatan (Small book of commandments) in the late fourteenth century, probably in or near Cologne. A Bible copied in France or the Rhineland in the twelfth or thirteenth century bears the signature of a female owner, Sarah, as well as corrections and notes in her hand that demonstrate a profound understanding of biblical grammar.100 Finally, many Jewish women in medieval France must have had basic record-keeping and arithmetic skills in order to engage in financial pursuits, such as moneylending, as a significant number of medieval Jewish women in northern France are known to have done.101 We have seen that in the multidimensional linguistic environment of Tsarefat, the linguistic point of contact between Christians and Jews was French. French was the mother tongue of Christians and Jews in the communities treated here. It was acquired by children, whereas Latin and Hebrew had to be learned. But what French? All languages are dynamic systems, and in the next chapter we explore how medieval Jews might have used French in different social contexts, and what French might have meant for them.

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chapter 1

Language and Identity

‘‘I am a Hebrew’’ Near the end of the first millennium, it is told, a Jewish apostate from Blois named Seh.oq ben Esther Israeli made his way to a city on the edge of Tsarefat, where he hid his apostasy, married, and pursued all manner of wickedness.1 Not satisfied with being ‘‘ruler and judge’’ in his wife’s home,2 Seh.oq plotted to take over the property of a pious Jew who lived nearby, hiring twelve Gentile men to kill him. The chain of events that ensued nearly destroyed the Jewish community. If this ‘‘terrible tale’’ (ma‘aseh nora’ ), as Abraham Berliner calls it, reports historical truth, it is a truth obscured by literary symbols and conventions. Kenneth Stow analyzes the evil protagonist’s name as a reminder of the ambiguities and dangers of converts: ‘‘He is .seh.oq [sic], joke, or even a gamble; ben esther, the fictionalized heroine, but one who had to deny her Jewishness to play the role—and whose identity, therefore, remained and still remains always in doubt; yisraeli, perhaps a play on the much debated question of Verus Israel. Did that title belong to the Jew or the Christian? Seh.oq obviously tried to be both.’’3 (We might also translate Seh.oq as ‘‘Laughter’’ or ‘‘Laughingstock’’; Verus Israel refers here to the Christian church’s claim of being the new and only true Israel.)4 The name of the protagonist is unvocalized in the manuscript, and in) also admits a second interpretation: triguingly enough, its spelling ( Shah.uq (‘‘Rubbed out,’’ ‘‘Pulverized’’). The two interpretations (Seh.oq: ‘‘Laughter,’’ ‘‘Laughingstock’’; Shah.uq: ‘‘Rubbed out’’) encapsulate two of the most important aspects of the Purim holiday: laughter and obliteration.

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Seh.oq is a new Amalek, a Haman, and the proposed second reading recalls the blotting out of Haman’s name with noise during the public reading of the Book of Esther on the feast of Purim, in accordance with Deut. 25:19, which enjoins the Jews to blot out the memory of Amalek.5 In 2 Sam. 22:43, the root sh-h.-q is used to refer to the obliteration of enemies. As for Seh.oq’s matronym (ben Esther), it evokes Haman’s nemesis, suggesting well before the plot unfolds that this enemy of the Jewish people will be thwarted. Biblical allusions in the story serve as reminders of other brushes with mass destruction. The pious Jew is of the house of Levi, like Moses (Exod. 2:1), and God stiffens Seh.oq’s heart as he did those of Pharaoh and the men Joshua fought, against terrible odds, in conquering land for Israel.6 Seh.oq identifies himself to the Jewish communities he visits with words from Jonah, which in this context evoke God’s eleventh-hour pardon of Nineveh: ‘‘He went from there to the towns with Jewish communities that he found. He stirred them with deceitful words, saying to them, ‘I am a Hebrew’ [Jon. 1:9]. The house of Jacob felt compassion for him, and they provided for him according to their custom in every town that he visited.’’7 Seh.oq convinces the Jews he visits that he is one of them by his words ‘‘I am a Hebrew,’’ identifying himself with a linguistic or ethnic, rather than religious, term. Christians and Jews alike studied Hebrew during the Middle Ages,8 but only the Jews formed a Hebrew textual community. Hebrew and Jewishness were such close associates that in Latin, Old French, and many other languages (including modern English), words meaning ‘‘Hebrew’’ come also to mean ‘‘Jew,’’ and saying ‘‘I am a Hebrew’’ is—or should be—tantamount to saying, ‘‘I am a Jew.’’ But Seh.oq is a deceiver. Sociolinguistics is concerned with language variation, of which we perceive two major sorts in the story of Seh.oq ben Esther and in the picture of medieval French Jewry sketched in the introduction. The first is variation between individuals or groups. The Jews of medieval northern France inhabited a multicolored linguistic environment in which the mother tongue was most often a variety of French and the father tongue Latin or Hebrew, depending on one’s religious community. French speakers were conscious of regional, situational, and social variation within their own language (see below). Some came into contact with native speakers of other languages. The second type of variation at least implicit in the story of Seh.oq is highly individual. Modern sociolinguistic research has shown that individuals change the way they speak depending on topic, audience, and setting. They may use language, consciously or unconsciously, to resemble their audience

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more closely and to build or reinforce alliances; they may even use language to do the opposite.9 Sarah Bunin Benor, for example, has shown that American Jews who have chosen to become Orthodox dynamically construct and maintain their orthodox identity through many behaviors, including linguistic ones. They may acquire Hebrew and Yiddish loanwords and distinctly Jewish syntactic constructions, phonological processes, and intonational contours.10 Keeping in mind that Seh.oq may be a fictional character, we can assume that in convincing Jews he met that he was one of them, it was not only what he said that was important but also how he said it. As Gabrielle Spiegel has observed, certain pre- and post-structuralisms have viewed language ‘‘not as a window on the world it transparently reflects, but as constructing that world, that is, as creating rather than imitating reality.’’11 If we wish to explore whether and how medieval French Jews’ spoken language helped construct their world and their identities, it is crucial first to determine how they spoke and whether their speech ever identified them as Jews, setting them apart from Christians. Only then may we ask whether and how the Jews’ vernacular contributed to the shaping of their identities and affected the way they presented themselves and were perceived by each other and by others, and, to return to Seh.oq ben Esther, what speech characteristics such an apostate might have adopted so as to construct and reinforce the illusion that he was an observant Jew.

‘‘Une langue fantoˆme’’? Robert Le Page and Andre´e Tabouret-Keller have stated the uncontroversial but sometimes overlooked truth that ‘‘everybody’s (layman’s and scholar’s) theories and suppositions about language and society are powerfully conditioned by the culture and tradition within which he/she works—conditioned, that is, either positively or negatively.’’12 Sara Japhet has located the strongest conditioning factors in ‘‘the unconscious, psychic empathy of the scholar with the object of his research.’’13 Current research on the vernacular of the Jews of medieval northern France inevitably builds on the work of two European-born Jewish men whose contributions to our understanding of the issue have been among the most extensive, lasting, and influential: Max Weinreich (b. 1894 in Latvia, d. 1969 in New York) and Max Berenblut, better known by the name he took after making aliyah to Israel, Menahem Banitt (b. 1914 in Antwerp, d. 2007 in Tel Aviv).14

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In discussions of Jewish languages, scholars often take a comparative approach, and it is worth noting that the hypothesis that there was a distinctively Jewish variety of French in the Middle Ages, often referred to as ‘‘Judeo-French,’’ has been especially well received among scholars who work on Jewish languages more generally.15 It is reasonable to suppose that experience with, or an interest in, a Jewish proclivity to Judaizing local dialects in other parts of the Diaspora, such as North Africa, the Iberian peninsula, and Central and Eastern Europe, may predispose scholars to look favorably upon the hypothesis that the same happened in France, particularly given the Jews’ long presence there (it is believed that Jews first settled in Gaul in Roman times).16 Skepticism about Jewish linguistic varieties or a particular linguistic variety, on the other hand, could have the opposite effect. There is a correlation between Weinreich’s and Banitt’s attitudes toward Yiddish and their opinions regarding the existence or nonexistence of a distinctive medieval Jewish dialect of French that should make us take pause. Weinreich, who grew up in a German-speaking family, learned Yiddish as a teenager and went on to devote his scholarly career to the language.17 The four-volume Geshikhte fun der Yidisher Shprakh (History of the Yiddish language) is considered his magnum opus.18 Weinreich viewed Jewish linguistic difference positively and, as we shall see, sought out evidence of it in medieval France. Banitt, whose published remarks suggest that he looked on Yiddish with scorn, argued that the Jews’ medieval French was pure and downplayed ways in which it differed from that of non-Jews. Banitt was strongly influenced by another west European scholar of roughly the same generation, Louis Rabinowitz (b. 1906 Edinburgh, d. 1984).19 In The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France (1938), Rabinowitz famously declared, ‘‘apart from the purely religious life, there was an almost complete social assimilation of the life of the Jewish community [in medieval northern France] to that of the general community. In their language, their names, their dress, they were indistinguishable from non-Jews.’’20 The reality was more nuanced, as even a reading of Rabinowitz’s own work makes clear.21 We may wonder whether these words reflect wishful thinking for a happier and more peaceful Jewish past; they seem also to express the heartfelt concern with the integration of oppressed minorities and convictions about human equality and worth that were to become increasingly visible in Rabinowitz’s later life, especially in his forceful criticisms of apartheid policies in South Africa. The scholars of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement from the

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first half of the nineteenth century to World War I also displayed an interest in the fluency of medieval Jews in the languages spoken around them, artifacts of which include the numerous vernacular glosses in commentaries. Many of the studies Rabinowitz and Banitt relied upon were written by men associated with that school—Abraham Geiger, Samuel Poz´nanski, and Leopold Zunz, for example. Wissenschaft des Judentums was driven by a specific political agenda: portraying the Jewish intellectual heritage as equal to the non-Jewish one and the Jews therefore deserving of rights equal to those of non-Jews. Not surprisingly, Wissenschaft des Judentums scholars ‘‘consciously avoided’’ the issue of Jewish national identity, as Japhet reports,22 and they preferred to emphasize the linguistic integration of the Jews of medieval northern France rather than explore evidence of their difference. Weinreich described Jewish linguistic distinctiveness in heroic terms and portrayed language and community as inseparable. He described Yiddish as a living work of Jewish genius deliberately constructed out of pieces from Hebrew, German, and other vernaculars—among them medieval Jewish French. (Weinreich preferred the term Western Loez, which he defined as ‘‘Judeo-French,’’23 so that it might be studied in its own right and not suffer from comparison with French.) Arriving in areas where variants of German were spoken, the Jews created their own language. This language preserved fragments of Hebrew— frequently in greatly modified form—and also elements of the vernaculars that had been brought along. It incorporated parts of the language of the coterritorial population, but the stock material was so transformed that it became indigenously Jewish. And when the major part of the Yiddish-speaking community moved many hundreds of miles away it took along the language, developed it, and later even transported it overseas. This scattered and dispersed handful was not swallowed by the majority, and thus for over a millennium a language was in the making, which must be considered—the reference here is to language itself, not its literature—among the highest achievements of the Jewish national genius.24 Weinreich was not alone in associating Jewish linguistic distinctiveness with national genius. In The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry (1969), Polishborn Irving Agus argued that the majority of twentieth-century Ashkenazic Jews descended from five to ten thousand extraordinarily resilient ancestors.

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‘‘What were the special characteristics of these five to ten thousand persons,’’ he asks, ‘‘that enabled them to achieve such outstanding success in the struggle for existence? What natural qualities did they possess, what advantages of background and forms of inner organization, what special educational and cultural traditions that enabled them successfully to control their very difficult and very hostile environment and eventually to emerge as numerically the largest, culturally the most creative, and politically the most significant, branch of the Jewish people of the twentieth century?’’25 For Agus, the ‘‘style of living, system of education, great brotherly devotion, and unusually progressive form of organization’’ of medieval Ashkenazi Jewry resulted from rigorous Darwinian-style selection in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages (second century b.c.e. to third century c.e. and fourth to eighth century c.e.).26 It is little wonder that when it came to language, he preferred to believe that the medieval French spoken by Jews in northern France was highly distinctive.27 Yiddish, considered by Weinreich one of ‘‘the highest achievements of the Jewish national genius,’’ was often stigmatized as a corrupt dialect of German and dismissed as a ‘‘jargon’’ by Jews and non-Jews alike.28 In 1699 Johann Christoph Wagenseil wrote, ‘‘The Jews have dealt with no language as ‘sinfully,’ as one says, as with our German language. They have given it a totally foreign intonation and pronunciation. They have mutilated good German words, they have tortured them, they have inverted their meaning as well as invented new words unknown to us. They have mixed innumerable Hebrew words and turns of phrase into German.’’29 ‘‘What a German!’’ Friedrich Engels declared in the nineteenth century, referring in the same context to the ‘‘peddler Jews, their lice and their dirt.’’30 For non-Jews opposed to Jewish emancipation in the nineteenth century, Yiddish epitomized the vulgarization that Jews would bring with them into society. For modernizing Jews, Yiddish was a barrier to greater social and cultural assimilation. Early on, Moses Mendelssohn’s (1729–1786) translations of books of the Bible into German and his writing of a modern commentary were central to the modernization effort. Steven Aschheim describes in his book Brothers and Strangers how many Jews of western Europe viewed east European Jews as ‘‘culturally backward creatures of ugly and anachronistic ghettoes’’ and how this served as ‘‘a symbolic construct by which they could distinguish themselves from their less fortunate, unemancipated East European brethren.’’31 Yiddish, stigmatized as a corrupted form of German, came to be associated by many west European

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Jews—many of them speakers of Yiddish themselves—with the purported degeneracy and backwardness of east European Jewish culture. In tsarist Russia, the Maskilim and Jewish intelligentsia embraced Hebrew and Russian, respectively, and although most knew Yiddish, they dismissed it as a jargon. ‘‘Only at the turn of the century,’’ David Fishman writes, ‘‘primarily under the influence of the Jewish labor movement and its political arm, the Bund, did a segment of the Jewish intelligentsia change its attitude towards Yiddish, and begin to view it as a valued cultural medium or as a national cultural treasure.’’32 Regarding Jews hostile to Yiddish, Sander Gilman hypothesizes: ‘‘in order to deal with their real fear of being treated as a Jew, they accept the qualities ascribed by the reference group to their own language.’’33 Without acknowledging the ideological underpinnings of his own position, Agus saw clearly that many of his predecessors had been driven by a desire to believe that ‘‘Rashi and his contemporaries were much more ‘modern’ than Polish-Russian Jews of the turn of the twentieth century.’’34 Those Polish-Russian Jews were overwhelmingly speakers of Yiddish: in the 1897 census of the Russian Empire, which included the Polish provinces in the Pale of settlement, over 97 percent of Jewish respondents identified their daily language as Yiddish.35 It is against this backdrop that we must read Banitt’s arguments against the notion of a Judeo-French dialect. Banitt associates Yiddish with a long and dismal history of Jewish oppression, describing it as the language of Jews who lived ‘‘on the margins of Christian society,’’ ‘‘eternal refugees in their wretched ghettos and their ill-fated Judengassen.’’36 He understands ‘‘JudeoFrench’’ to mean substandard or deformed French.37 He calls D. S. Blondheim’s notion of Judeo-French (characterized especially by loanwords from Hebrew) ‘‘a sort of amorphous and heterogeneous language that does not even deserve the name ‘language,’ a koine, whose evolution across time and space seems indiscernible, one ‘Jewish dialect’ among so many others.’’38 He continues: Tout porte a` croire . . . que les Juifs de France, avant leur expulsion a` la fin du xive sie`cle, parlaient la langue, le dialecte et le patois de ceux au milieu desquels ils vivaient, et ne parlaient que cela: le caennnais a` Caen, l’orle´anais a` Orle´ans, le troyen a` Troyes, son patois bourguignon particulier a` Brinon. Les formes picardes et les expressions provenc¸ales du champenois (ou lorrain) Colin Muset, les latinismes du Psautier de Metz, les formes provenc¸ales et les archaı¨smes dans Aucassin et Nicolette, ont-ils

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jamais fait penser a` quelqu’un que leurs auteurs parlaient une ‘‘langue vulgaire’’, un charabia panache´?39 (Everything points to this: that the Jews of France, before their expulsion at the end of the fourteenth century, spoke the language, the dialect, and the patois of the people among whom they lived, and they spoke only that: the dialect of Caen in Caen, the dialect of Orleans in Orleans, the dialect of Troyes in Troyes, and in Brinon, its own special variety of Burgundian. The Picard features and the Provenc¸al expressions of the Champenois (or Lorraine) [poet] Colin Muset, the Latinisms of the Metz Psalter, the Provencal elements and archaisms in Aucassin and Nicolette—did they ever make anyone think that their authors spoke a ‘‘vulgar tongue,’’ a motley gobbledygook?) Banitt was not blind to the Hebrew borrowings in medieval Jewish texts in French, as his mention of regionalisms in other medieval French works indicates, but he objected to calling attention to them through the use of a special name, Judeo-French. This opinion is justifiable (though we must point out that speaking geographical dialects does not exclude the possibility of speaking them in distinctive ways). What shocks is the phrase ‘‘un charabia panache´’’ (motley gobbledygook) to describe a variety of French marked by Hebrew loanwords, archaisms, and other nonstandard elements. The implication is that Banitt saw Yiddish, too, as a ‘‘motley gobbledygook,’’ and that his stance on Jewish linguistic distinctiveness in medieval France (i.e., that there was none) was colored by his attitudes toward Yiddish. ‘‘German Jews,’’ Aschheim writes, ‘‘were never able to forget that they shared a common border with the unemancipated Eastern ghetto masses,’’40 a reality reinforced by Germany’s status as a destination and conduit for east European Jews migrating westward. Banitt was born in Antwerp, Belgium, but it is perhaps worth noting that two circumstances led to a highly visible east European Jewish presence there in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which may or may not have influenced Banitt’s views: its status as a major gateway for east Europeans heading toward America and its thriving diamond industry. Simon Schwarzfuchs reports that in 1920–21, 23,656 emigrating Jews passed through Antwerp’s port and that from 1900 to 1939, its Jewish population increased almost sevenfold, from 8,000 to 55,000.41 Scholarly writing should be dispassionate, and the emotional engagement revealed by Banitt’s remarks about the Jews’ French is reason enough

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to reconsider his evidence against medieval Jewish linguistic distinctiveness in northern France. Preferring an idyllic vision of medieval Franco-Jewish integration and stability, Banitt argued that French-speaking Jews in the Middle Ages (1) were not segregated, (2) were fully assimilated into Christian society, and (3) tended to remain in one locale, deliberately focusing on three factors commonly cited as contributing to the rise of Jewish languages— segregation, lack of assimilation, and migration.42 In arguing that the Jews were fully assimilated into Christian society, Banitt rightly emphasizes the small size of most Jewish communities but goes too far when he declares, ‘‘Paris never had more than one hundred Jews.’’43 Even Rabinowitz, whom Banitt cites in this discussion and whose own study must be consulted with care,44 puts the Jewish population of Paris in the hundreds, noting that the number of adult taxpayers numbered 121 and 85 in 1292 and 1298, respectively, according to rolls published by Isidore Loeb.45 Other scholars have given even higher estimates, as discussed later in this chapter. In order to emphasize the dialectal purity of Jewish speech, Banitt dwelled on the tendency of many medieval French Jews to stay within seigniorial domains. But while there were certainly real barriers to Jewish movement into and out of lordships, it did exist, even before the first expulsion of the Jews from the royal domain in 1182.46 Banitt wrote that the Jews prayed in French and that certain unnamed offices were performed only in French.47 Jews prayed in French at times, but existing medieval French- and Ashkenazi-rite prayer books are written almost exclusively in Hebrew, as he certainly knew. Much of Banitt’s article is devoted to a seemingly meticulous presentation and refutation of ‘‘Judeo-French vocabulary’’ directed primarily against the work of Raphael Levy, who included many common Old French words in his studies (for example, kant [‘‘when’’]) because he was interested in the totality of the Jews’ French lexicon, not just distinctive vocabulary items.48 Banitt says little about the most distinctive lexical items in medieval Jewish texts in Old French, some of which are discussed below, dismissing them as few in number and unimportant.49 In arguing against Levy, Banitt occasionally explains words from Levy’s studies in cavalier fashion, including asseser, which he relates to assesser through the noun asseseance and defines as ‘‘ ‘raffermir’ sa voix, quand on est bruˆle´ vif ’’ (‘‘strengthen’’ one’s voice, when burned alive). Banitt does not note that this is a definition that he himself invented based on the word’s context in the Troyes elegy and that assesser’s attested, unrelated meaning is ‘‘assess, value; assess for tax purposes.’’ (I have since argued that the word in the elegy is properly read as assenser [‘‘instruct’’].)50

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Banitt titled his diatribe against the notion of a Jewish French ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme: Le jude´o-franc¸ais.’’ The adjective phantom can mean imaginary or nonexistent; the noun refers to something with no physical reality as well as something dreaded or despised. Judeo-French was indeed one of Banitt’s phantoms. Whether it was a phantom language depends entirely on what we take ‘‘Judeo-French’’ to mean. Medieval Jewish texts in French were written for and by Jews in Hebrew letters, and they contain distinctive lexical items, most of them from Hebrew. According to definitions of ‘‘Jewish language’’ put forward by various scholars, the Jews’ medieval French is one.51 Although some scholars may prefer more stringent definitions that disqualify the Jews’ medieval French from being called a Jewish language, it will be shown below that, based on the written evidence we have, calling the Jews’ medieval French ‘‘identical’’ to or ‘‘indistinguishable’’ from the medieval French spoken and written by Christians is untenable. When east and west European Jewish scholars born near the turn of the twentieth century confronted the question of Jewish linguistic distinctiveness in medieval France, they often did so having already taken some sort of a stand on Yiddish, even if only a private one. For those who associated Yiddish with crowded and dirty ghettos, a lack of cultivation, and marginalization and persecution, the proposal that Jews living in France in a time before ghettos also spoke a distinctly Jewish vernacular may have been an uncomfortable, even intolerable one. Specifically, I have raised the possibility that Banitt’s rejection of the idea of a distinctively Jewish way of speaking medieval French was influenced by associations like these, and perhaps also by the emphasis of the earlier Wissenschaft des Judentums movement on Jewish integration. Scholars relatively unfettered by these biases were sometimes held by ideological agendas of their own. Claiming that great scholars like Rashi did speak a distinctly Jewish variety of Old French might be said to play a redemptive role, raising the stature of all Jewish languages; focusing on differences between Jewish languages and co-territorial non-Jewish languages reinforces Jewish unity. We have seen that Weinreich associated Yiddish with genius, and that Agus, another defender of Judeo-French, exalted Jewish difference in other, non-linguistic realms. When one assimilates the views of other scholars without considering the forces that helped shape them or subjecting them to critical analysis, one risks becoming handicapped by their biases and prejudices even without sharing them. Recent scholarship on medieval French-speaking Jews and their literature has frequently cited Banitt’s article ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme’’ as

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the last word on the question of whether the Jews’ French was distinctive. As we have seen, however, the many flaws in Banitt’s argument require us to step back and consider this question anew. Yes, the Jews of France generally spoke French. But they used it in a distinctively Jewish way—writing it in the Hebrew script and incorporating Hebrew and other Jewish lexical items. In the rest of this chapter I put aside the question of whether the Jews spoke ‘‘Judeo-French’’ or a ‘‘Jewish language,’’ because any answers we might propose would depend on our definitions of these terms. Instead, referring to the Jews’ French simply as ‘‘French,’’ but recognizing that languages are dynamic systems and that linguistic variation is the norm rather than the exception, I focus on ways in which the components of medieval Jewish identities asserted themselves through language, especially the vernacular. I also consider whether the Jews’ French might have differed structurally from that of non-Jews and, if so, to suggest avenues for future research.

Religious Difference, Linguistic Difference The Jews of medieval France lived and worked among Christians: Rigord (d. c. 1209), self-identified chronicler of the kings of France and author of the Gesta Philippi Augusti, mentions Christian servants in Jewish households and relationships between Christians and the Jews who loaned them money or who bought grain and animals from them.52 But their religion ensured a certain level of social distinctiveness. Dietary laws meant that observant Jews bought meat from Jewish butchers and took wine and meals with other Jews, not Christians. They had their own educational system and their own means of administering justice. They often clustered together in residential streets or neighborhoods that were nevertheless not exclusive, and they tended to marry within the group.53 Can a distinctive dialect or way of speaking arise or be maintained under such conditions? Studies of language variation in modern populations have shown that it can,54 and they harmonize with broader findings about the influence of close-knit social networks on language variation and change.55 To take only two examples, Charles Boberg finds significant differences between the vowels produced by English speakers of Ashkenazic Jewish, Italian, and Irish descent who have grown up in Montreal,56 and he relates them to residential patterns as well as to the minority status of English there. Concentrations of Jews in particular neighborhoods encourage the creation and maintenance of close social networks that both

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reinforce shared elements of linguistic difference within the group and resist assimilation to patterns of linguistic variation outside the group.57 Perfect homogeneity is not a prerequisite: the Jewish neighborhoods of Montreal are no more exclusive than the medieval rues des Juifs and juiveries. Clive Holes, citing ‘‘religious cleavage,’’ shows that Sunni and Shi’ite Muslims in Bahrain have spoken dramatically different dialects for one hundred fifty to two hundred years despite living in close proximity to one another. Sunnis and Shi’is are segregated: they often live with others of their faith, they socialize among themselves, and they tend to marry within the group. Sunnis and Shi’is also differ from each other in education level, the kinds of employment they engage in, and social custom. All of these also held true for many, though not all, medieval French-speaking Jews. That Jews generally married within the group, that they worshiped and studied in a Jewish environment, and that they had specifically Jewish customs, even if these were sometimes influenced by their Christian surroundings, are well accepted. More delicate is the claim that Jews often lived among others of their faith. Scholars have rightly emphasized that there were no Jewish ghettos during the Middle Ages58 and that many medieval settlements probably had only one or a few Jewish families.59 Nonetheless, archaeological and documentary evidence suggests that particularly in urban settings, Jewish households often clustered together in what Louis Rabinowitz calls ‘‘selfappointed Ghettoes’’—Jewish neighborhoods and streets.60 Consider Paris’s Ile de la Cite´. At the beginning of Philip Augustus’s reign, approximately one-fifth of the population of the Cite´ (perhaps one thousand residents) may have been Jewish, with many of these Jews concentrated in at least one Jewry.61 Jewish neighborhoods were not exclusive (Paris tax lists of 1292, 1296, and 1297, a little over a century later, show scattered non-Jewish families living on Jewish streets),62 but as William Jordan has observed, ‘‘Even if . . . not all the people living in the Ile de la Cite´ jewries were Jews, there is enough evidence to suggest that most of them were and that a large number of Jewish residences were scattered about the tiny island.’’ Rigord, he adds, ‘‘paints a picture that is completely receptive to [this] demographic sketch . . . [he] waxes hot about the Jews controlling half of Paris before Philip Augustus expelled them.’’63 The Jewish neighborhoods of Paris, of which the Juiverie de la Cite´ was only one,64 and Jewish neighborhoods in other major centers including Rouen, Troyes, and London would have fostered the creation and maintenance of social ties between their Jewish resi-

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dents just as modern ethnic neighborhoods do. These, in turn, are known to contribute to linguistic distinctiveness. The role of differences in types of employment in fostering segregation is similarly delicate. During the first part of the Middle Ages, Jews exercised many of the same professions as Christians, but by the twelfth century circumstances had pushed them into engaging primarily in commerce and trade, especially lending at interest.65 This hardly eliminated Christian-Jewish interactions, though it possibly diminished their variety. Concerning the Jews’ social segregation, the rise of guilds, from which Jews were usually excluded,66 is potentially more significant. Migration is a major contributor to linguistic distinctiveness.67 A major feature of some dialects of Judeo-Arabic is the presence of ‘‘migrated or displaced’’ dialectal features—linguistic features that are found in Arabic dialects from other regions, but not in the Arabic dialect spoken in the immediately surrounding territory.68 Children of Jews expelled from France who grew up speaking French at home, never having lived in French-speaking lands, could hardly be expected to have spoken precisely the same French dialect as the Christian neighbors their families once had.69 There is little doubt that such children existed. French-speaking Jews living in the Rhineland after the 1306 expulsion seem to have mourned their dead in French, as suggested by prayers discussed later in this chapter. According to Bernhard Blumenkranz, French was still being used by displaced Jews in Budapest in 1433.70 And Jews continued to copy bilingual Hebrew-French texts into the late fifteenth century: a recipe for h.aroset with ingredients in French was copied around 1470 in northern Italy by a scribe whose family originated in Tours (see Chapter 3). Scholars working on Hebraico-French texts have expended a great deal of effort identifying dialectal features of texts so as append a neat geographical provenance to them. But inventories of dialectal features in their studies are rarely exhaustive, and the possibility of migrated or displaced dialectal features has been neglected. Many earlier studies have treated Jewish linguistic distinctiveness as an all-or-nothing phenomenon, but the linguistic situation of medieval Jewish communities was as complex as their social one, even if it is relatively undocumented in comparison. Medieval Jewish commentaries, responsa, chronicles, and other texts teach us much about Jewish social structures. They tell us little or nothing about the Jews’ spoken French, as Blondheim was careful to point out almost a century ago.71 Copyists’ errors and attempts at correction sometimes obscure the original forms of French words or render them

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irrecoverable; French glosses were frequently deleted altogether.72 The French spellings of Jewish scribes are generally uninfluenced by Latin etymologies,73 but they cannot be equated with modern-day phonetic transcription. Smallscale phonological differences such as those involving vowel height, backness, and rounding are not necessarily reflected in spellings, and so absence of evidence cannot be taken as proof that pronunciation differences did not exist. Moreover, the individuals who recorded texts do not represent the medieval Jewish speech community as a whole. Most notably, data about the language of women, children, and uneducated or less educated adult males are missing. William Labov has observed that adolescents of approximately nine to eighteen in the United States today speak ‘‘the most consistent vernacular,’’ attributing this to their relatively homogeneous and close-knit peer groupings. As they move into adulthood they ‘‘inevitably [acquire] a greater ability to shift towards the standard language and more occasions to do so.’’74 By extension, the medieval Jewish boys who attended yeshivot (others were educated at home by a melammed), along with their teachers, may well have spoken French in a more distinctively Jewish way than other members of the community. Based on our knowledge of modern speech communities, we can also hypothesize that Jews displayed fewer Jewish speech characteristics in conversations with outsiders.75 In both cases, however, our ability to draw firm conclusions from the existing data is limited. In the remainder of this chapter I sort through some of this data, addressing Jewish linguistic distinctiveness first from the Gentile perspective and then from the Jewish one. We may not be able to gauge the extent to which Jewish French speech in medieval Tsarefat was distinctive, but perhaps we can assess ways in which it was distinctive.

The Gentile Perspective In order to put into perspective the question of whether the Jews spoke a Jewish variety of French during the medieval period, let us consider a variety of French known to have been distinctive: Picard. Picard’s distinctiveness is apparent from the linguistic features attested in Picard texts and the testimony of medieval writers. Conon de Be´thune, born to an illustrious family of Artois, in Picardy, complained toward the end of the twelfth century about the negative attention his ‘‘mos d’Artois’’ (Artesian words) were attracting at court.

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Encoir ne soit ma parole franchoise, Si la puet on bien entendre en franchois; Ne chil ne sont bien apris ne cortois, S’il m’ont repris se j’ai dit mos d’Artois, Car je ne fui pas norris a Pontoise.76 (Although my speech is not French The French speakers can certainly understand it; And they are neither well-brought-up nor gracious If they have reproached me for using words from Artois,77 For I was not raised in Pontoise.) This text and a host of others make clear both that Picard was highly distinctive and that by the late twelfth century, the dialect of the Ile-de-France had begun to emerge as the standard for good French. Writers of the period concern themselves more and more with linguistic difference, and their descriptions of individuals real and fictional sometimes include observations about how closely their French resembles that of Paris or Pontoise.78 As with the comments of Agus and Banitt on Judeo-French, these linguistic descriptions often promote a particular ideology, in this case the intellectual and cultural superiority or centrality of Paris. Had a distinctly Jewish way of speaking Old French existed during this period, non-Jewish writers might have been expected to note or even mock it, as Roger Bacon, Bartholomaeus Anglicus, and others call attention to Picard, or the author of the Roman de Renart makes fun of the way English and Italian speakers spoke French.79 They do not, despite a significant concern with Jewish otherness. In the present context, however, there is particular reason to avoid making conclusions based on negative evidence. For medieval Christian writers, Jewish difference was located especially in their religious beliefs and customs, their approach to religious texts, and history, and their portrayals of Jews are often based on tradition and hearsay rather than personal experience.80 One such writer was Gautier de Coinci (1177/78–1236), a northern French monk and writer of miracle stories and lyric poetry known for his hatred of the Jews and love of the Virgin Mary. In D’un Archevesque qui fu a Tholete, Gautier declares, ‘‘Jez bruı¨roie toz ensanble’’ (I would burn them all together),81 and in a song to Mary, ‘‘Tant les het mes corages, je ne le puis nı¨er, / S’iere rois, jes feroie tous en un puis nı¨er’’ (My heart hates them so

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much, I cannot deny it, that if I were king, I would have them all drowned in a well).82 As genuine as this hatred seems, Gautier’s anti-Jewish storylines and themes can be traced to Latin sources, and he seems to have written about the Jews not so much because they belonged to his society but because they were the example, par excellence, of the blind unbeliever, Augustinian witnesses to the truth of Christianity, and because their intellectualism and familiarity with Scripture threatened Christian souls.83 His miracle stories tell us little about how the Jews of his time lived and interacted with Christians. Miri Rubin traces the evolution of one story—that of the Jewish boy in the oven—from its Greek origins in the sixth century or before (Evagrius Scholasticus of Antioch, c. 536–600, recorded it in his Historia ecclesiastica) through the fifteenth century in France, England, Germany, and elsewhere, in literature and art.84 Details change in these adaptations (one is by Gautier),85 and some of them may indeed reflect realities of particular times and places. Nevertheless, the Jews in this and other stories are types, constructed and elaborated for specific didactic and polemical purposes, not reliable representations of living Jews. Two examples from later centuries are instructive. By the fifteenth century in Germany, Yiddish was well established, yet non-Jewish writers of the period rarely give examples of distinctively Jewish expressions in literary texts such as religious folk plays. Instead, ‘‘Jews are ridiculed through chanting or shouting meaningless syllables, presumably Jewish prayer [in Hebrew].’’86 In pre- and post-Revolutionary France, few writers apart from the abbe´ Henri Gre´goire dwelled on the many regional varieties of French and Occitan. ‘‘Language differences are real,’’ David Bell writes, ‘‘but their extent, and the extent to which they matter, lie at least partly in the ear of the listener.’’87 Whereas in modern scholarship, asserting or denying medieval French Jewish linguistic difference (likewise, asserting the linguistic diversity of early modern France, as David Bell has shown) has served at least two particular ideological agendas, it is not clear that discussing distinctive features of the Jews’ French—for example, Hebrew loanwords, if Christians were aware of them, and a Jewish ‘‘accent,’’ if one existed—would have served medieval Christian writers. If the distinctive features were subtle, involving phonological features like vowel height and rounding, those same writers might not even have been capable of commenting on them. Medieval Tsarefat was a land of great linguistic diversity. Portraying a Jew as speaking French with a slightly idiosyncratic pronunciation would not have been an effective way of calling at-

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tention to his or her otherness in a land where there was no standard language.88 Gentile writers do call attention to the Jews’ use of Hebrew. In Rutebeuf ’s Miracle de The´ophile (thirteenth century), Salatin conjures the devil with nonsense words. Bagahi laca bachahe´ Lamac cahi achabahe´ Karrelyos Lamac lamec bachalyos Cabahagi sabalyos Baryolas Lagozatha cabyolas Samahac et famyolas Harrahya. (ll. 160–68)89 Salatin is not obviously Jewish, but his predecessors in earlier versions of the story by Gautier de Coinci and Adgar are. Vincent de Beauvais also portrays Theophilus’s helper as Jewish.90 The nonsense words from Rutebeuf ’s version are not really Hebrew, but popular audiences probably understood them to be. After Salatin pronounces these words, the devil asks him not to torture him anymore, ‘‘Ne en ebrieu ne en latin’’ (in Hebrew or Latin; l. 203).91 In a medieval mystery play, Jews address Pilate with real and imitation Hebrew mixed with Latin: ‘‘chodus, chados, adonai sebaos, sesim, sossim, chochun yochun or nor yochun or nor gun yinbrahei et ysmahel ly ly lancze lare uczerando ate lahu dilando, sicut vir melior yesse ceuia ceuca ceu capiasse amel.’’92 Jordan gives a number of vivid examples of the fear and loathing inspired by Hebrew writing, particularly in England, though the situation seems to have been similar in France. His analysis of ‘‘ecclesiastical legislation against loud chanting by Jews in synagogue or actions in procession to burials’’ is striking: ‘‘the cultic signs were wrong, the sounds were wrong.’’93 Judaism was an inverted form of Christianity and Hebrew a devilish foil to Latin. The mid-fourteenth-century Book of Sir John Mandeville, which circulated in the British isles and on the continent, portrayed Hebrew as dangerous.94 Odo, author of Ysagoge in Theologiam, believed that Hebrew could be used to draw Jews to the Church,95 but others believed the opposite: when the Dominican

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cleric Robert of Reading became a Jew in the late thirteenth century, some blamed the seductive powers of Hebrew.96 We cannot discount the possibility that what Gentiles heard as Hebrew was sometimes a mixture of Hebrew and French, its imagined ancestor the mixed Hebrew and Latin of the Jews addressing Pilate seen above. Again, examples taken from other contexts are instructive. In 1596 Thomas Platter of Switzerland visited Avignon and noted that the women’s synagogue was ‘‘underground, a veritable cellar, getting its light from a room above through an opening. A blind rabbi preaches there to women, in bad Hebrew, for the dialect of the Jews of Avignon is mixed with Languedocean words. In the room above, however, they preach to men in good Hebrew.’’97 The ‘‘dialect of the Jews of Avignon’’ was not Hebrew at all but rather Shuadit (JudeoOccitan), a Romance language with many Hebrew loanwords. But Platter reverses the matter, considering it a Hebrew corrupted by lexical borrowing from the local Occitan dialect. Yiddish is sometimes called ‘‘Hebrew’’ by people who do not know any better, and sometimes even by those who do. The Jewish-born Christian Gerson, baptized a Christian in 1605, claimed to know real Hebrew, as opposed to Yiddish.98 Wagenseil wrote that a Christian ‘‘who hears [the Jews] speak German [!] must conclude that they speak nothing but pure Hebrew, for practically no single word comes out intelligible.’’99 This said, the writings of medieval Christian observers concentrate Jewish linguistic difference in the use of Hebrew for scholarship and worship, and not in day-to-day conversation. An exception is a mid- to late thirteenthcentury account of the ritual crucifixion of Adam of Bristol, discussed by Robert Stacey: ‘‘God the Son . . . startles the Jewish perpetrators of Adam’s murder by addressing them in Hebrew, a language unknown to any Bristol Christians (according to the tale), and therefore utilized by the Jewish characters for secret communications between themselves that they did not want their Christian neighbors to understand—in this case, of course, for their plans to murder Adam of Bristol.’’100 Even here, we must ask to what the ‘‘Hebrew’’ of the Jews’ secret conversations really corresponded: was it more or less pure, or did it have a substantial French component? To return to the story of Seh.oq ben Esther, Seh.oq’s self-identification as a ‘‘Hebrew’’ makes him appear Jewish. His actions reveal that he is a Christian: ‘‘He abandoned His Torah and His laws and statutes that He had commanded Moses His servant. And he served the god of the Gentiles and the idols of the sons of Esau that neither see nor hear nor eat nor smell [Deut. 4:28]; he clung to these, serving them and bowing down to them, and of God, our fortress,

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he had no understanding.’’ There is a kernel of truth in Seh.oq’s words, ‘‘I am a Hebrew’’: brought up in the Jewish faith, we assume that he received some sort of Jewish education. He is a ‘‘Hebrew,’’ a member of the Jewish textual and cultural community, even if he is not a ‘‘Jew.’’ In the way Seh.oq joined forces with Gentiles to hurt the Jews, he resembles historical figures like Nicholas Donin, who in the first half of the thirteenth century denounced particular talmudic passages to Christian authorities and opposed Jewish scholars in the Talmud trial of 1240.101 Seh.oq and Donin, two ‘‘serpents,’’ as medieval Jewish writers call them using conventional language, both visited communities in Tsarefat—Seh.oq out of curiosity or a desire for profit, Donin because he had been asked by the Church to investigate his allegations further. They also used their knowledge of Hebrew to get ahead. For Seh.oq, Hebrew was part of his self-identification; for Donin, it was a weapon to be used against the Jews. They were both slanderers, and even when their words were directed against individuals, they harmed the entire Jewish community. (The danger posed by the Jewish malshin [‘‘slanderer, informer’’] looms again in the Blois incident, discussed in the next chapter.) Hebrew is the foundation on which the authority of the Jewish convert to Christianity rests.102 Its potential as a weapon comes from the importance of Hebrew texts and all they hold to the Jews and to Jewish identity. In the next section we turn to Jewish linguistic distinctiveness from the perspective of the Jewish community itself, drawing on evidence from glosses and Old French texts written in Hebrew letters. Appropriately, it was Hebrew that left the most lasting mark of difference of the written records of the Jews’ French.

Acts of Identity The relationship between speech and self is at the heart of much sociolinguistic research. For Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, linguistic behavior is made up of deliberate ‘‘acts of identity,’’ choices that individuals make about language so as to resemble or be unlike certain people or groups, depending on whether they wish to be identified with or distinguished from them.103 Paul Wexler considers distinctive features of Jewish languages ‘‘voluntary acts of linguistic creativity’’ and their fusion of Jewish and non-Jewish elements ‘‘part of the group’s desire for independent linguistic expression.’’104 We could interpret the distinctive Jewish features of Hebraico-French texts as

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evidence of a distinctively Jewish dialect of Old French, but as we have already seen, such an approach is highly dependent on definitions of technical terms, with assessments of the same sets of objective linguistic data differing radically depending on scholars’ theoretical constructs. Instead I would like to build on the work of Le Page, Tabouret-Keller, Wexler, and others and propose that instantiations of medieval Franco-Jewish linguistic distinctiveness represent ‘‘voluntary acts of linguistic creativity’’ that alternately reveal, reinforce, or actively construct a consciousness of Jewish difference.105 In contrast, though the French language also contributed to the identity of medieval French Jews, speaking French was not itself an active choice; it was imposed on them by the environment. A child does not choose his or her mother tongue. (Writing in French, rather than the more usual Hebrew, was an active choice, an idea I return to in Chapters 3 and 4.) Medieval Jewish communities in Tsarefat were embedded in a larger, French-speaking community made up of Jews and non-Jews. For the Jews of England and Jewish communities near linguistic frontiers (for example, French-German, French-Occitan), the situation was even more complex. This was reflected in the way Jews used language and particularly in the alternation between Hebrew and French in medieval Jewish manuscripts that we can call ‘‘code-switching.’’106 The choice to switch from one language to another carries social meaning, and the languages themselves reflect aspects of the identities of both participants or sets of participants in the discourse, regardless of whether that discourse is oral or written.107 The subject matter of medieval Hebrew-French manuscripts assures the writers, themselves Jews, of a primarily Jewish readership or, in the case of texts intended for oral performance, audience. In such contexts, where the two languages reflect salient aspects of both participants’ (writer’s and reader’s/audience’s) identities, it is the overall pattern of using two languages that carries social meaning rather than particular instances of code-switching.108 The existence of code-switching between Hebrew and French is one of the clearest illustrations that medieval Jewish writers belonged simultaneously to two linguistic communities. The most common type of code-switching in Jewish texts in Old French involves isolated Hebrew words. Many of the same words occur in other Jewish languages and can be considered symbols of unity between far-flung Jewish communities. Many have no apt vernacular translation, but many do (for example, rasha‘ [‘‘wicked’’], mizrah. [‘‘east’’], sha‘ah [‘‘hour, time’’]), suggesting that the Hebrew words served both practical and stylistic purposes. Most of the Hebrew words in Jewish French texts come from the religious

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sphere, denoting, for example, people and other beings (e.g., h.atan [‘‘bridegroom’’], kallah [‘‘bride’’], kohen [‘‘priest’’], qadosh [‘‘martyr’’], mal’akhim [‘‘angels’’]),109 texts (e.g., torah),110 ritual objects (e.g., shofar [‘‘instrument made from the horn of a ram or other animal’’]),111 concepts (e.g., galut [‘‘(Jewish) exile’’], qedushah [‘‘sanctification, martyrdom’’], teshuvah [‘‘return, repentance’’], zekhut [‘‘right, merit’’]),112 or the Temple, its parts, and the items found there (lo mishkan [‘‘the Temple’’] [lo is French], dukhan [‘‘platform’’]).113 In the written documents that have come down to us, it is Hebrew-French code-switching, including the use of Hebrew vocabulary items (regardless of their frequency or limitations on contexts in which they were used), that renders medieval Jews’ French most distinctive. In Hebraico-French poetry, the mixing of occasional Hebrew words creates a ‘‘poe´tique des contrastes,’’ a linguistic texturing considered by Paul Zumthor a fundamental tendency of medieval literary aesthetics.114 In this stanza from a hymn for Rosh Hashanah in Old French, avot (‘‘fathers’’) is used instead of Old French peres; shofar, which has no true equivalent in Old French, designates the ritual ram’s horn sounded during the service for the new year.

Les anfanz des avot sages i apris, bian anseneiz, A tocher do shofar ce setein mais cheke an sont peneiz; Roi de rainc¸on, remanbr[e] l’amor d’anci[a]nz: ver soi eteiant adoneiz; Lus anfanz si acreis[s]e come e´teiles de ciel, plus ne seiant mal meneiz.115 (The well-taught children of the wise and learne`d forefathers take pains to sound the shofar in this, the seventh month, each year; King of Redemption, remember the love of the Ancients: they dedicated themselves to you; multiply their children like stars in the heavens, may they not be harassed anymore.)

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Jews writing in Old French regularly called the bride kallah and the bridegroom h.atan, as in the final stanza of the wedding song beginning El giv‘at ha-levonah (To the hill of frankincense) (see Chapter 4), and it can be argued that these have no real vernacular equivalents, because they denote a specifically Jewish bride and bridegroom.

et shen sela‘ ha-eitan tu ve[n]ras ja eiproveir el tokh ginnat ha-bitan Ou li h. atan fu livreiz he-h. atan qolo natan Il a dit a seis priveiz Bia chanteir einuie ce saveiz Le h. atan e la kallah an la cheire sus leveiz!116 (The tooth of the hard rock You will come to experience it In the middle of the palace garden Where the bridegroom was turned over, The bridegroom gave forth his voice He said to his attendants ‘‘I’m bored by this fine singing, you know.’’ Raise the bridegroom and the bride upon the throne!) This stanza is remarkable for another reason: the Hebrew preposition el (‘‘to’’) in the third line seems out of place, but it may have passed unnoticed by speakers of Old French, who would have heard Old French el (‘‘in the’’), making el tokh ginnat ha-bitan linguistically hybrid. Not all of the special terms in Hebraico-French texts come from He-

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brew. Melder (‘‘study, meditate on [a text]’’), originally from Greek (μελετω) through Latin (meleta¯re), was fully integrated into the Jews’ French, as demonstrated by its participation in phonological and morphological processes. Its phonological shape changes in accordance with regional phonological processes such as /l/-deletion in Lotharingian, and its inflections in accordance with its grammatical context.117 While Christian-authored texts contain prefixed forms of Latin meleta¯re, it seems that from the Middle Ages onward, unprefixed cognates occur almost exclusively in Jewish texts, whether Greek or Romance (French, Italian, Provenc¸al, Portuguese, Spanish).118 H . aldrube (‘‘camel’s hump,’’ ‘‘hunchback’s hump’’), cognate with Classical Arabic h.a´daba and modern Spanish joroba and apparently borrowed into French from Hispano-Arabic, is given as a French term in numerous contexts, including the glosses of Rashi, Joseph Kara, and pseudo-Gershom, and the Hebrew-French glossaries of Basel, Leipzig, and Paris.119 Another word that appears in multiple contexts is the bird name herupe, which is given as the Old French translation of Hebrew dukhifat (an unclean bird sometimes translated into English as ‘‘hoopoe’’) by Rashi, as well as in brief glossaries in ms. Valmadonna 1 and Cod. Parm. 2342 (on the latter, see Chapter 3) and in the much more extensive Basel, Leipzig, Paris, and Parma (Cod. Parm. 2924) glossaries.120 Herupe, which may be onomatopoeic, is not, to my knowledge, attested in non-Jewish texts in Old French, which call the hoopoe hupe or huhud.121 Note that the existing evidence shows only that h.aldrube and herupe existed in a French Jewish scholarly register, although either might have potentially been used in non-scholarly contexts as well (in the case of h.aldrube, presumably only with the sense ‘‘hunchback’s hump’’). In many Jewish texts in Old French of diverse geographic provenance, the word for ‘‘God’’ is Ge´.122 The more typical Old French oblique forms Die´ and De´ are also attested, even in manuscripts from the same regions.123 Deriving Ge´ (pronounced [dzˇe] and later [zˇe]) from Latin De˘us or Old French Die´ is straightforward,124 and so it is likely that Jews were not alone in pronouncing the name of God thus some of the time. The solemn significance of the name meant that its spelling was particularly bound to the Latin one in Christian-authored texts. Indeed, we know from Ch. The´odore Gossen’s study of Picard that even when medieval French speakers’ pronunciations of the word for ‘‘God’’ varied, their spellings rarely did.125 But Jewish scribes, relatively free from spelling conventions based on Latin, were free to use a distinctively Jewish graphie. Hebrew words for cardinal directions also seem to have infiltrated the

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Jews’ French to some extent. In at least two Hebrew-French glossaries, Hebrew ha-qadmoni (‘‘the Easterner’’; Joel 2:20) is glossed into French using a hybrid Hebrew-French term, ber mizrah. (‘‘man of the east’’),126 and mizrah. is attested as a French Jewish word for ‘‘east’’ elsewhere as well.127 A glossary once held in Turin glosses yemin ha-‘ir (2 Sam. 24:5; ‘‘the right/south side of the city’’) as a darom de la vile (‘‘to the south of the city’’), with Hebrew darom used instead of French sud to translate Hebrew yamin (‘‘right hand; south’’).128 The Paris glossary edited by Lambert and Brandin translates ruah. ha-yam (Ezek. 42:19; ‘‘the west side’’) as le ongle de ma‘arav (‘‘the west corner’’).129 W. Bacher, in his review of that edition, considers the small number of instances where Hebrew is used in translating other Hebrew terms as evidence of the purity of the Jews’ French,130 but one might ask, in a text whose purpose seems to be the translation of Hebrew words into the vernacular, why use Hebrew in the glosses at all? In each case, the Hebrew word used in the so-called vernacular translation is different from the one it translates, and I suggest that the use of Hebrew terms highlights the near synonymy of darom and yamin (‘‘south’’), qadmon and mizrah. (‘‘east’’), and ha-yam (‘‘the sea’’ and thence ‘‘west, westward,’’ from the position of the Mediterranean relative to Palestine), and ma‘arav (‘‘west’’). At the same time, the occasional use of Hebrew terms asserts the Jewish identity shared by glossator and reader without impeding understanding. We might add that the glossator’s French and Jewish identities are both salient, making code-switching an unmarked choice.131 Still another example of the use of Hebrew direction words in the Jews’ French comes from the Troyes elegy. One of the thirteen martyrs is called lo qadmeneis, with qadmeneis formed by adding a French suffix to the Hebrew root qadmon (‘‘east’’), as discussed below. Medieval Jewish texts in Old French also contain hybrid words created by combining pieces from both Hebrew and French. Composers of macaronic poetry from the early sixteenth century onward, including Teofilo Folengo, sometimes added Latin endings to vernacular roots and words for a burlesque effect,132 but in medieval Jewish texts, the roots tend to be from the learned tongue and the endings from the vernacular, and the intent is not burlesque. They are more akin to borrowings in any number of languages that participate in derivational and inflectional processes—an example is French je sunbathais (‘‘I was sunbathing’’). The root sunbath- (from English) bears the French first-person singular imperfect ending -ais.133 The Troyes elegy preserves two such words: ‘asqer (‘‘to study the law’’) and qadmeneis (‘‘Easterner’’).134 Qadmeneis combines a Hebrew root (qadmon

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[‘‘eastern’’]) with the Old French adjectival suffix –eis (mod. Fr. –ais; ‘‘belonging to, originating in’’). Qadmon also means ‘‘ancient, primeval,’’ and cultural contacts between French- and German-speaking Jews were close, so for some French speakers, qadmeneis would have evoked a presumable form akin to modern Yiddish kadmoynish (‘‘ancient, primeval’’).135 The martyr described as lo qadmeneis in the elegy seems to have been both an Easterner and an old man: he approaches the fire with particular dignity and the poet declares, de bone ore fu nez!, a double entendre meaning both ‘‘it is fortunate that he was born’’ and ‘‘he was born at a good hour, i.e., early’’ (cf. mod. Fr. de bonne heure [‘‘early’’]).136 Qadmeneis occurs in the rhyme, and it may be a literary flourish, the result of one individual’s linguistic creativity. (It also occurs in a list of the martyrs’ names from the Mainz Memorbuch,137 but we cannot discount the possibility that the writer of that list knew the elegy.) Even so, the author’s use of qadmeneis implies a belief that at least part of his intended audience would understand it and perhaps even derive pleasure from his linguistic creativity. ‘Asqer (‘‘to study the law’’) is built from the Hebrew-Aramaic root ‘-s-q and the French infinitival ending -er.138 Like melder (‘‘study’’) (discussed above) in the line before it (medeient, 3pl imperfect), it is fully integrated into the sentential syntax of the following stanza. Embedded as it is in the middle of its line, it cannot be a poetic response to the exigencies of rhyme.

Troblee eit notre joie e notre deduit D’[i]sos qui medeie[n]t la Torah e l’aveie[n]t en lor co[n]duit. Os ne fineie[n]t d’‘asqer e lo jor e la nuit.139 (Our joy and pleasure are troubled By those who studied Torah and had it in their safekeeping. They did not stop studying the law by day or by night.) As is often the case in mixed-language poetry, the exceptional words—here medeient and ‘asqer—depart in a fundamental way from the author’s lexical choices in other parts of the text.140 The elegy’s French vocabulary has been described as ‘‘courtly’’ by Susan Einbinder,141 and the passage given above

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begins with a phrase that would be at home in romances such as Thomas of Britain’s Tristan or Chre´tien de Troyes’ Clige`s, where suffering accompanies and intensifies emotional and physical joy, and vice versa. Joie e deduit is a common doublet used to express joy in the romance genre. Equally common are the words describing pain and suffering in the elegy: sofrir (suffer), dolor (grief ), poine (pain).142 Meder (melder) and ‘asqer, in contrast, belong to a semantic field concerned with Jewish study, and their use contributes to a ‘‘poe´tique de contrastes.’’ I have come across at least one possible example of the opposite kind of hybridity. Eight manuscripts of Joseph Kara’s (b. 1050–1055, d. 1120–1030) commentary to Jeremiah gloss Hebrew we-hitpalleshu (‘‘and roll yourselves [in dust, etc.]’’ Jer. 25:34) as velopu/volopu, which seems to consist of the Old French root velop-/volop- (cf. infinitive veloper, voloper; ‘‘envelop’’) and a Hebrew plural suffix. (The expected reflexive pronoun is missing.) It is possible that all eight manuscripts reflect an earlier copying error. It is equally possible, however, that Kara wished the morphological structure of the French gloss to mimic that of the Hebrew, possibly to call attention to the fact that, in the second-person plural imperative, Hebrew makes a distinction between masculine (hitpalleshu) and feminine (hitpalleshnah) that French does not.143 Words like ‘asqer, qadmeneis, and volopu may represent the coupling of Hebrew and French in medieval Jewish texts at its most intimate, but medieval texts in both Old French and Hebrew offer many more examples of switching from one language to the other for practical or stylistic reasons. In medieval Hebrew texts, French words are sometimes set off by linking expressions such as (she-)qorin (‘‘[that] they call’’), (she-)lo‘azin (‘‘[that] they render in French,’’ or lit. ‘‘a language other than Hebrew’’), or be-la‘az (‘‘in a language other than Hebrew,’’ i.e., French). At other times the words are fully integrated into the Hebrew syntax, preceded by the Hebrew definite article prefix ha- (‘‘the’’) or prepositional prefixes meaning ‘‘to’’ or ‘‘in,’’ or the conjunction we- (‘‘and’’). The Mah.zor Vitry contains many examples of this kind.

(They wash their hands and they say the blessing ‘‘ ‘Al netilat yadayim’’ [i.e., the blessing recited upon washing the hands]. And they

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present the bowl filled with herbs and take some of the chervil [Old French cerfueil] and he says the blessing ‘‘Bore’ peri ha-adamah’’ [i.e., the blessing recited over products of the soil].)144 Old French cerfueil (‘‘chervil, wild thyme’’) is prefixed with the Hebrew definite article ha- and governed by the preposition min (‘‘from’’). In the next example, two French nouns are conjoined with the Hebrew conjunction we- (‘‘and’’).

(over [things made from] the five kinds of cereals, such as pasties and biscuit [oblees we-chantel] . . . they say the blessing ‘‘ha-mos. i’ leh. em [min] ha-ares. ’’ [i.e., the blessing recited over bread].)145 In his commentaries, Joseph Kara sometimes weaves Hebrew and French together into a single piece of grammatical fabric. The final word of his Old French gloss on Isa. 6:8, Des (‘‘God’’), is written clearly. It is in the nominative (subject) case. Its verb is Hebrew omer (‘‘says’’).

Des o[mer] et mi eshla[kh]? (God says whom shall i send?)146 In his comments on Isa. 66:18, Kara begins a sentence in Old French, ending with the past participle of the verb doner (doneid), ‘‘give.’’ He could have followed it with the Old French subordinating conjunction que (‘‘that’’) but instead uses the Hebrew equivalent, she-, and completes the sentence in Hebrew.

ba’ah. be-l[a‘az]: c¸o me fera avenir e tu m’a[s] doneid she-aqabbes. et kol ha-goyim we-ha-leshonot u-va’u we-ra’u et kevodi

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(‘‘ba’ah’’ [coming; Isa. 66:18]. In french: That will make me approach; and you have allowed me to gather [lit. that I will gather] all nations and tongues, and they will come and see my glory)147 In these two examples, Kara switches from one language to the other with no apparent didactic or illustrative purpose. Not so in the next, where the Hebrew preposition el intervenes between a third-person singular French verb (future tense) dirad (‘‘will say’’) and a French noun phrase, ta virtance (‘‘your faithfulness’’). In Hebraico-French texts, function words are often run together. It is nonetheless striking that there is no space between the preposition and possessive article here, coming as they do from two different languages. This phrase glosses Hebrew yodia‘ el-amittekha (‘‘declare your faithfulness’’; Isa. 38:19).

dirad el ta virtance be-l[a‘az] (will say to [i.e., will declare] your faithfulness in french)148 French dire (‘‘say’’) normally would not take a preposition in this context, but the Hebrew verb it glosses (yodia‘: ‘‘will make known’’) does. So that the gloss might reflect word for word the structure of the Hebrew original, Kara incorporates the Hebrew preposition. The thirteenth-century Hebrew-French wedding song beginning El giv‘at ha-levonah, from the New York manuscript of the Mah.zor Vitry, contains another example of the weaving together of Hebrew and French through syntactic government. The Hebrew noun phrase et shen sela‘ ha-eitan (‘‘the tooth of the hard rock’’) is the object of a verb, as shown by the presence of the accusative particle et. The governing verb is not Hebrew, but French: the infinitive eiproveir (‘‘try, put to the test, experience’’).

et shen sela‘ ha-eitan tu ve[n]ras ja eiproveir (You will come to experience the tooth of the hard rock.)149

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The Hebrew-French wedding songs, discussed in greater detail in Chapter 4, stand as proof that medieval Jews mixed Hebrew and French in their oral artistic culture. Another artifact of the Jews’ oral culture is an Old French sermon fragment remarkable for the occasional use it makes of Hebrew for concepts easily expressible in the vernacular, such as sha‘ah (hour, time) and rasha‘ (wicked). Not so surprisingly, Hebrew is also used for proper names like yeh.ezqel (Ezekiel), nevukhadne’s..sar (Nebuchadnezzar), and mis.rayim (Egypt), as well as words identifying the beginnings of Bible verses, such as wayyassev (and he led; Exod. 13:18), and words denoting culture-specific figures, objects, and concepts such as kohen (priest), kohen gadol (chief priest), and par‘oh (Pharaoh). The syntax of the French is also heavily influenced by that of Hebrew. We read, for example: Parole ansanble les anfanz de Yisra[’el] e retornerount e pozerount devant Pi hah. irot antre Migdol i antre la mer devant Ba‘al s. efon ancountre lui pozerez sur la mer.150 (Speak with the children of Israel and they will turn around and encamp before Pi-hah. iroth between Migdol and the sea, in front of Ba’al Tsefon; you will camp opposite this place, on the shore.) Old French antre (between) is repeated here, not in accordance with French grammar but rather to copy the syntax of the Hebrew bein . . . u-vein: bein Migdol u-vein ha-yam. The Hebrew element is balanced by the use of French for Bible verses that a highly literate Jew would have learned also in Hebrew, as well as by decidedly non-Jewish turns of phrase like notre Sire (our Lord) and mer ruve (Red Sea): we might have expected to find De´ or Ge´, words for God found in other Hebraico-French texts, or mer des roseaux (Sea of Reeds), the literal translation of the Hebrew yam-suf.151 Fure[n]t tous os d’au[n]cetrie152 de Efra’im, portanz tarjes e vesias d’armures e lances. Os, os. Ce fure[n]t les os ses que avija notre sire os par la mein de Yeh. ezqel la proufete an la plenure de Dura. E de

(They were all of the lineage of Ephraim, carrying round shields and containers of weapons and spears. Bones, bones. These were the dry bones that our Lord resurrected by the hand of Ezekiel the

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c¸os os etiant le henas que buvoyt an os Nevukhadne’s. s. ar le rasha‘. I an la sha‘ah que avija os notre sire par la mein de Yeh. ezqel la profete eteiant hurtanz a ce rasha‘ sor sa boche.

prophet on the plain of Dura [cf. Ezek. 37:1–14]. And the goblets that Nebuchadnezzar the wicked used to drink from were made from these bones. And at the time at which our Lord woke them by the hand of Ezekiel the prophet, they were striking this wicked person on the mouth.)

The genre and linguistic hybridity of this Old French sermon demands comparison with macaronic sermons discussed by Siegfried Wenzel. These have Latin as their matrix language, but the Middle English element is so strong that the two languages sometimes reach a balance, with a string in one following a string in the other.153 Wenzel calls the sermon writers ‘‘functionally and fluently bilingual’’ and argues that the sermons were actually delivered in macaronic form. They would have been meaningful to an educated audience, perhaps one composed of both clergy and learned laity.154 The use of English to supplement Latin, which Wenzel characterizes ‘‘as the natural result of written discourse by fluent bilingual speakers,’’ assumes the nature of a rhetorical device, and in a turn reminiscent of Wexler’s treatment of distinctive features of Jewish languages as ‘‘voluntary acts of linguistic creativity,’’ Wenzel asks whether macaronic Latin-English sermons ‘‘represent an attempt to create a mixed language made for special bilingual audiences, a language that with its combined virtues of lucid expository prose and heightened rhetorical appeal was well suited for delivery from the pulpit.’’155 Indeed, as linguists have shown, code-switching grammars have many ‘‘languagelike’’ properties.156 The shift from Old French to Hebrew adds texture and contrast to the Jewish sermon as well and may serve a particular rhetorical purpose. The Jewish sermon writer’s knowledge of the Hebrew verses demonstrates that he was probably also bilingual. However, the use of isolated Hebrew words on their own does not entail fluent and functional bilingualism, and the treatment of Bible verses in the Jewish sermon fragment suggests that at least some members of the Jewish audience understood French much better than Hebrew, in contrast to the audiences of the sermons studied by Wenzel, who probably understood both English and Latin. The code-switching seen in the Latin sermons analyzed by Wenzel exists through bilingualism; the

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code-switching seen in our corpus exists independently of it. We cannot be certain that uneducated Jews used Hebrew vocabulary when speaking French, but because doing so does not require Hebrew fluency, they could have. I suspect that there was a range of styles, with some Jews employing Hebrew terms more frequently than others or employing them more frequently in some situations than others. Let us close with a prayer for the dead published by Siegmund Salfeld in Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches. Hebrew translations of the French words stand above them in the manuscript, highlighting the foreignness of French for at least some intended readers. (For clarity, I translate ploni ben ploni as ‘‘so-and-so,’’ though it literally means ‘‘so-and-so son of so-andso.’’)

Rememer De´ spirtene de-ploni ben ploni coume spirtene de-avraham yis. h. aq we-ya‘aqov qui ad layeis kakh we-kakh la-veit ha-qevarot pour amour qui fezis [sic] cil le memred ‘im s. addiqim ba-gan ‘eden amen.157 (Just as [God remembered] the soul of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, may God remember the soul of so-and-so, who bequeathed such-andsuch to the cemetery. For his sake,158 He will remember him [i.e., the deceased] with the Righteous Ones in the Garden of Eden. Amen.) This prayer is followed by one that is almost identical but that, according to Salfeld, is written in a younger hand. We might speculate that the second one represents an attempt to correct regionalisms, archaisms, or perceived errors in the first. Here is a transliteration: ‘‘Remambre De´ l’epris de-ploni bar ploni coume l’epris de-avraham yis. h. aq we-ya‘aqov pour qu’il a lase´ kakh we-kakh la-veit ha-qevarot pour l’amour qui fai il remambre ‘im s. addiqim ba-gan ‘eden amen.’’

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Were we able to listen to medieval French-speaking Jews at worship, we might hear a mixture of Hebrew and French of this sort. More so than any other bilingual Hebrew-French text, these two brief prayers suggest that in some contexts, Hebrew and French reached such a balance in Jewish writing or speech that we must speak of a hybrid language, a Jewish French. It is ironic that the prayers appear to have been copied by Jews no longer living in France.

Conclusion Linguists emphasize that the two languages of a diglossic culture have specific and distinct functions, and this is generally true of Hebrew and French in medieval France, as seen in the introduction to this volume. However, Hebrew and French did not occupy separate spaces. Most medieval Jewish scholarly texts are written in Hebrew, but French was used in teaching and commenting on them. Hebrew was the primary language of Jewish worship, but liturgical hymns were sometimes translated or even composed in French. French was the spoken language, but Jews would have said Hebrew prayers, blessings, proverbs, and biblical verses out loud, and the thirteenth-century account of the crucifixion of Adam of Bristol analyzed by Robert Stacey and discussed above suggests that some wary Christians believed that Jews used Hebrew in conversation, whether or not they really did. Bilingual HebrewFrench texts and poetic compositions were meaningful to their writers and intended audience, regardless of the language that predominated. Jewish linguistic distinctiveness in medieval Tsarefat lay especially in the mixing of Hebrew and French, certainly in writing and probably in speech as well. Although a few non-Hebrew terms, such as melder, also contributed to Jewish linguistic distinctiveness, it was especially located in the figurative space where French and Hebrew overlapped, as schematized in Figure 1. When Jews in northern France interacted with each other, the Jewish and non-Jewish components of their identities, along with the languages associated with them, were both salient. Their overlapping led to the creation of a distinctively Jewish linguistic space characterized by the mixing of Hebrew and French, not necessarily in equal doses. Moreover, the Hebrew elements found in medieval Jewish texts are not random: they tend to come from Jewish culture and religion. Mixing Hebrew and French like an insider did not require thorough knowledge of Hebrew, but it did require familiarity

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Old French

Jewish register

Hebrew

Figure 1. Hebrew and French: overlapping and separate spaces.

with Jewish life and worship. Hebrew-French code-switching of this sort was generally, therefore, a reliable marker of Jewish identity, a strategy individuals presumably used for reinforcing Jewish aspects of their identity and for creating and reinforcing solidarity with other Jewish speakers. Hebrew-French code-switching might also have been exploited by Seh.oq-like figures to construct and reinforce the illusion that they were observant Jews. In day-to-day interactions with non-Jews, a Jewish speaker’s Jewishness may have been no less salient; however, emphasizing it through language would have emphasized the confessional and cultural gulf between the conversation’s participants instead of building solidarity. It is therefore unsurprising that evidence of this mixed Hebrew-French linguistic space is scarce in Christian-authored texts. Scarce, but not absent: we have seen that Christian authors sometimes portray Jews as speaking Hebrew, and in the case of a mystery play, even a Hebrew-Latin mixture. The Jews of medieval France spoke French. Of this there can be no doubt. Moreover, most Jews spoke the same dialect of French as the nonJews who lived alongside them. In large, closely knit Jewish communities, such as in the Ile de la Cite´, Jewish speech may have been characterized by small-scale phonological differences of the sort attested in modern Jewish communities but rarely visible in spelling,159 and the French of Jews living in exile outside Tsarefat might have been even more distinctive. But I believe that Banitt was right to reject the idea of a monolithic Jewish French dialect that spanned regions and centuries. To say that the Jews spoke the same language as their non-Jewish neighbors is not to say that they spoke it in an identical way. Some and possibly most observant Jews engaged in code-mixing, incorporating Hebrew or other ‘‘Jewish’’ terms into their speech, particularly when associating with other

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Jews. The size of the Hebrew-Aramaic and ‘‘Jewish’’ vocabulary component in the Jews’ medieval French is disputed, but even if relatively small, it would have contributed to Jewish linguistic difference. Previous studies of the Jews’ French have focused on the question of whether the Jews spoke a distinct Judeo-French dialect or language. In answering it affirmatively or negatively, scholars have generally not sought a middle ground, that the Jews of medieval France spoke the same dialect as their Christian neighbors, but that smallscale differences existed as a result of social stratification, or that the Jews’ French was subject to situational variation, with the Hebrew vocabulary component active or dormant depending on the situation. Individuals represent themselves to others in many ways, but one of the most fundamental is through the patterns of their linguistic behavior. Through distinctive elements in their speech and writing, and through their use of the Hebrew alphabet for writing French, the Jews of medieval France set themselves apart from French-speaking Christians. The interweaving of French and Hebrew in a single piece of textured cloth, seen in a number of texts analyzed here, including the Mah.zor Vitry, Joseph Kara’s commentary on Isaiah, and the fragment of a Jewish sermon in Old French, symbolizes the union of French and Hebrew, non-Jewish and Jewish in medieval Jewish culture.160 Another analogy for the dual identity of medieval Jewish culture is the word Tsarefat (‘‘France’’) itself. Tsarefat (Zarephath) occurs once in the Bible, in Obad. 1:20: ‘‘And that exiled force of Israelites [shall possess] what belongs to the Phoenicians as far as Zarephath, while the Jerusalemite exile community of Sepharad shall possess the towns of the Negeb’’ (NJPS). Removing its final suffix, a tav, we are left with tsade, resh, and peh (here with the phonetic value /f/). In medieval Jewish texts in French, n is often omitted in syllable codas, and Tsarefa- (s.rf-) is thus a near perfect anagram of France (fr[n]s.).161

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chapter 2

Speech and Silence, Male and Female in Jewish-Christian Relations Blois, 1171

There are six things that the Lord hates, seven that are an abomination to him: haughty eyes, a lying tongue, and hands that shed innocent blood, a heart that devises wicked plans, feet that hurry to run to evil, a lying witness who testifies falsely, and one who sows discord in a family. —Prov. 6:16–19 (NRSV)

The Blois Martyrdom of 1171: A Case Study in Linguistic Attitudes All seven things given in Prov. 6:16–19 as being abominations to the Lord appear in the initial Hebrew account of the so-called Blois incident of 1171. The account, known as the Orleans letter, does not refer to Prov. 6:16–19 explicitly, but it is possible that the letter writers leaned on it as they attempted to find meaning in the needless deaths of over thirty innocent Jews who were burned on May 26 (20 Sivan 4931 in the Hebrew calendar) under the jurisdiction of Count Thibalt V of Blois.1 What set off the tragedy? A Christian servant claimed to have seen a Jew, Isaac b. Eleazar of Blois, dumping a child’s corpse into the Loire. No corpse was ever found; according to Jewish accounts, there was none. Nor is there any indication that a child went missing at that time. These facts set the case

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of Blois apart from those of Norwich (1144), Pontoise (1163), and Gloucester (1168), where Jews had also been accused of murdering children but where, as Robert Chazan has written, ‘‘it is clear that at least a death had taken place.’’2 Two of the abominations named in the verses from Proverbs involve speech directly: a lying tongue and a lying witness who testifies falsely. But in the Jews’ description of the events in Blois and their aftermath, speech and its counterpoint, silence, play an even more visible role, inviting a linguistic analysis. In this chapter, I examine documents written after the Blois incident, focusing on the Orleans and three other letters that were copied with it in a collection of historical materials gathered by the Jewish community of Speyer.3 I begin by considering the Orleans letter, arguing that it was intended to serve both as a report and an explanation of what happened in Blois. Next, I argue that speech and silence in the letters give clues regarding speakers’ intentions and beliefs, clues that must be interpreted in their situational context, with the social distance between Jews and Christians of various ranks taken into consideration. Secret, private conversations among Gentiles raise red flags, while a Gentile’s desire to speak openly implies, at least superficially, that he is trustworthy. I move from speech and silence to interactions between language and gender, arguing that the Blois incident highlights systematic differences between linguistic channels available to medieval Jewish men, represented by the letter writers and delegations, and women, most visibly represented by the Jewish woman Pucelline, in their attempts to influence political events. The chapter closes with a methodological question: what can be learned from the study of texts written in Hebrew that describe events that unfolded in the vernacular? In offering a preliminary answer, I refer in particular to the Hebrew and French Troyes elegies, which describe the martyrdom of thirteen Jews in Troyes in the county of Champagne in 1288.

Sources and Previous Research The events in Blois were described in a letter written by Jewish leaders of Orleans to their brethren in other communities, including Paris. Soon afterward, Jewish leaders of Paris and Troyes produced letters about the incident, as did Nathan b. Meshullam,4 who had been selected to negotiate with the influential archbishop William of Sens (Guillaume-aux-blanches-mains), no

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stranger to politics, for the release of prisoners and forced converts. For convenience, I refer to these texts as the ‘‘four letters,’’ and they serve as the primary focus of this chapter because of their detail, the probability that they were written soon after the Blois incident,5 and their concern with speech. Another contemporary, Ephraim ben Jacob of Bonn, writing about twenty years later, commemorated the Blois incident in his account of twelfthcentury persecutions, Sefer Zekhirah; his account enters into the analysis in the second part of this chapter. Other primary texts written in response to the Blois incident include a letter by Obadiah ben Makhir, two lists of martyrs’ names, and seven poems.6 Robert de Torigny mentions the incident in his chronicles.7 The events in Blois have been addressed by numerous scholars, but the most detailed analyses have come from Robert Chazan, Susan Einbinder, and Kenneth Stow.8 Chazan, the first to recognize the value and immediacy of the four letters, has analyzed the Blois incident in terms of Jewish community relationships and organization. Einbinder has discussed the imposition of literary conventions on portrayals of Jewish martyrs, including the Jewish woman Pucelline, in three prose texts (the Orleans letter, the account of Ephraim of Bonn, and a Renaissance version by Joseph Ha-Cohen) and examined the vision of the ideal martyr presented in the Orleans letter and poems. Stow has gone further than any previous scholar in questioning the historicity of the letters. The letters appear to have been written in 1171 or soon afterward and refer to major figures—Jacob Tam, Louis VII, Thibalt V of Blois, Henry I count of Troyes, and William of White Hands—who were active at that time. William is referred to as William of Sens, as our dating of the letters would lead us to expect: first elected to the episcopal seat of Chartres in 1165, then Sens in 1168, William would later become Archbishop of Reims (1176) and then cardinal (1179).9 Jacob Tam, who died after, but in the same year as, the Blois incident, is referred to as if still alive. The first of the letters, the Orleans letter, served as the primary source for Ephraim of Bonn’s (d. 1196) account of the Blois incident.10 The letters refer to other murder accusations against the Jews, mentioning Richard [ryyrt] of Paris (the double yod used for writing the voiceless palato-alveolar affricate /tsˇ/ in Richart [ryyrt] ‘‘Richard’’ is common in eleventh- to twelfth-century Hebraico-French glosses),11 an unconfirmed incident in Janville, and a rumor about E´pernay, repeated by Henry.12 If modern scholars have never been able to find evidence that such

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a murder took place in E´pernay, it is perhaps because it was never more than what Henry calls it—a rumor. Chazan and Einbinder have studied Ephraim of Bonn’s use of the Orleans letter in some detail, demonstrating that while he indeed used it as his main source, he changed and added many details. Both Chazan and Einbinder have stressed the need for the modern scholar to recognize that such manipulation took place. As Einbinder has written, ‘‘A new awareness of the literary features of historical texts allows us to read them with greater sophistication.’’13 In the words of Chazan, ‘‘An awareness of this free use of sources has important implications. . . . It means that the presence or absence of occasional details must not be overemphasized.’’14 Other modern scholars, including Stow, have shown an equally keen awareness of the manipulation of details and facts in medieval chronicles and other texts for literary or theological purposes.15 That not all of the facts are grounded in reality makes them no less a part of truth or of history, as the chronicler understood it; fictions reported by the chronicler are as essential to the text’s meaning as facts. Just like other historical texts, the four letters were composed by writers who belonged to a particular society and culture, with its own conventions, symbols, and languages. Furthermore, the four letters have not come to us in their original form; they were compiled by someone and their content possibly manipulated. Stow has emphasized that the sole manuscript in which they are preserved was copied in 1453 in Treviso, Italy, nearly three hundred years after the Blois incident itself.16 The letters are not without creative embellishment: the authors record conversations to which they could not have been privy, place biblical phrases in the mouths of the speakers, and develop motifs that tell us as much about their own values and sensibilities as they do about events that transpired.17 Chazan considers repetition from one text to another as corroboration of certain details, but it is worth adding that repetition also highlights the details that the letter writers and perhaps their compiler considered most important.18 It is therefore telling that many of the repeated details in the Blois letters involve linguistic behaviors—silence, invitations to speak out loud, prohibitions on speaking out loud, and so on, even when they seem tangential to the unfolding of events. The pervasiveness of the concern with speech makes me think that it was present in the four original letters, but it is also possible that a later editor developed it so as to shape a more cohesive and harmonious whole.

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When Christians Are Silent According to the Orleans letter, one Thursday evening, Isaac b. Eleazar of Blois went to the river to water his horse. In his lap was a pale animal skin, an edge of which could be seen peeking out from under his cloak. Unbeknownst to Isaac, a Christian servant was also coming to give his horse water, but upon glimpsing the paleness of the dangling hide, that horse took fright and reared. The Christian left without a word and went to relate the story to his master. A cruel metamorphosis took place on the way from truth to tale. The whiteness of the hide became the pallor of a dead child’s skin, and the Jew had not merely been watering his horse, according to the servant, but disposing of a corpse in the river. The authors of the Orleans letter refer to the pale hide with a hybrid Hebrew-French phrase, ‘orah vaire (gray or mottled hide).19 The noun vair and adjective vair(e) can refer also to two-toned squirrel or miniver fur; it is possible that the skin was of this sort. Hebrew ‘orah (f.) is a rare term, perhaps even a hapax legomenon, derived from the more usual masculine form ‘or, which in the Bible refers to both animal hides and human skin. Peau, which is feminine, is ambiguous in the same way, and its interference arguably triggered the creation of feminine ‘orah.20 Although not cited in the Orleans letter, we can bring in the following words from Job 2:4: ‘‘skin for skin’’ (‘or be‘ad-‘or). In both Hebrew and French, a single form (in Hebrew ‘or ⬃ ‘orah, in French peau) is given two interpretations, one by the Jews, one by Christians. This difference in interpretation set the Blois events in motion. That Christians and Jews often interpreted words differently was well known by educated Jews living in the twelfth century, and a Christian master and ruler would surely accept the interpretation of the man of his faith.21 The writers of the Orleans letter place special emphasis on the silence of the servant who observes Isaac at the river. Consider the following passage (emphasis mine), in which the servant is referred to using a French word, golier. I have more to say about this word below. A certain golier also came to water his horse, and when he came, the golier’s horse saw the whiteness of the hide and reared, and he was unable to bring him to the water. He did not cry out or say anything until he came to his master and said: ‘‘Do you know, I encountered so-and-so the Jew throwing a dead child in the water. It was dark, and the horse

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bolted out of fear and carried me off without drinking.’’ And his master said to him: ‘‘Be silent, you.’’ The servant’s silence is emphasized by the juxtaposition of two nearly synonymous verb phrases: ‘‘He did not cry out or say anything’’ (we-lo’ .sa‘aq we-lo’ dibber me’ummah). The servant maintains this silence until he reaches his master, to whom he describes the encounter, already transformed. After hearing the servant’s tale, the master immediately commands him, ‘‘Be silent, you’’ (hah.aresh atah), reverting him to a state of silence. In this context, ‘‘Be silent, you’’ is not a reprimand but an instruction on how the master and servant must proceed, as is clear from the continuation of the master’s speech: ‘‘Be silent, you. This is the day I have waited for. Such-and-such did that Jewess say, and thus-and-thus will I do, too. Just as she did evil to me, so will I do evil to her.’’ This is only one of many instances in the four letters where the Jews’ enemies are portrayed as deliberately and treacherously silent, as opposed to the Jews and their friends, who speak openly. The French word golier referring to the servant recurs frequently enough in the Blois documents so as to appear significant. It is always incorporated seamlessly into the narrative, as if it were being used as a French loanword, rather than juxtaposed beside a Hebrew word, as a vernacular gloss would be. The most common meanings of golier in Old French texts are ‘‘drinker’’ and ‘‘coarse or debauched person.’’ Golier may also have referred to a type of snake.22 In addition to using the term as an insult, the letter writers may have wanted their readers to make either or both of these associations. We can certainly liken the Christian servant’s behavior at the river, observing, then sneaking away unseen, to that of a snake, to whom stealth comes naturally. The words of the master reveal an important detail about events that contributed to the Blois incident. He appears to have considered the servant’s story a means of revenge on a particular Jewish woman and on the Jewish people as a whole, as indicated by the phrase ‘‘This is the day I have waited for’’ (Lam. 2:16). In Lamentations, Judah, Zion, and Jerusalem are personified as a woman, once great, now fallen low, whose friends have become her enemies (1:1–2) and who suffers because of her transgressions (1:5). All Israel suffers along with her. According to this account, the entire Jewish community of Blois would suffer because of enemies made by a single Jewish woman, precisely because the conflict between her and her enemies is part of a larger one between Christians and Jews. Who was this woman, who died with her two daughters? Her name is

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listed with two variant spellings in the Nu¨rnberg Memorbuch, romanized by Siegmund Salfeld as Pucellina and Pulcellina.23 Although the name may strike the modern reader as ‘‘picturesque,’’24 to quote Cecil Roth (pucelle almost always means ‘‘virgin’’ in modern French, although in medieval French it often referred simply to a maiden or maidservant), the related name Pucellita is attested in the seventh-century Cartulaire de l’Eglise de N.D. de Chartres. The Jew Elijah Menahem bar Moses of London named one of his daughters Pucelle in the thirteenth century, and the name Pucelle (or Puelle) also appears as a woman’s name in an act of Louis VII from 1168.25 This name probably comes from Latin *pullicella, best considered a derivative of Latin puella (‘‘girl’’); the form pulicella occurs in a Merovingian document from the sixth century.26 Most scholars have considered Pucelline Count Thibalt’s paramour, and indeed, this is how her character was developed in the Renaissance account of Joseph Ha-Cohen.27 However, it is never stated explicitly in the earlier texts (the letters and Ephraim of Bonn’s account) that Pucelline was the count’s lover. Leaving room for the possibility that she was, Einbinder has argued convincingly that Pucelline was a moneylender, a profession that many Jewish women, particularly widows, pursued.28 Lending money would have created many opportunities for Pucelline to make enemies from various strata of Blois society, particularly if, as the Orleans letter states, ‘‘She was hard as a rock with her town-people, by virtue of [her power with] the ruler, and dealt harshly with all who approached her. The ruler loved [or favored] her, but she lorded it over the ruler’s wife and her nurse.’’29 The encounter between the Christian servant and Isaac, the Jew at the river, led to a murder accusation against him and the other Jews of Blois. To compensate for the lack of witnesses or other evidence that a murder had taken place, Count Thibalt put the Christian servant on trial by ordeal, and, as the Orleans letter states, they ‘‘found the wicked innocent, and the righteous guilty.’’ It appears that thirty-two Jews, including Pucelline and Isaac, were killed on the pyres.30 As a further outrage, the remains of the martyrs were left unburied, and other Jews, it appears, were held captive.31 Historians consider the Blois incident remarkable in many respects. First, the count of Blois acted on the witness’s report, without physical evidence that a murder had taken place. Why did the count accept the word of a single man? William Jordan has speculated that resentment toward Pucelline led members of the Blois community to pressure the count to act against the Jews. Perhaps a change in his relationship with her poisoned his attitude

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toward the Jewish community as a whole.32 Thibalt’s treachery is particularly striking alongside the tolerance that the ruler of France, Louis VII, is known to have shown the Jews,33 especially when we consider Thibalt’s close family and political ties to the king. As the husband of Thibalt’s sister, Adela of Champagne, and father (by his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine) to Thibalt’s wife, Alix,34 Louis VII was both Thibalt’s brother-in-law and father-in-law. Furthermore, since 1154 Thibalt had held the important post of seneschal of the royal household and by his loyal service won the title of Count Palatine, interpreted by one contemporary as making him second in importance only to the king.35 Jean Dunbabin describes Thibalt as an ‘‘amiable, fairly popular man and noted patron of poets,’’ a man ‘‘highly regarded for his learning in the law.’’36 Historians discussing the reasons behind the Blois incident appear sometimes to have been puzzled by what Einbinder has aptly called ‘‘a strange digression’’ in the Orleans letter.37 The community of Loches announced before the disaster that they got away safely, and that the slanderer alone was seized. I, Barukh b. Meir, will inform you how the event came about. A young man, who came from Loches, desired a certain maiden and asked her father and relatives for her. They replied to him: ‘‘We would drown her in water before we gave her to you.’’ The young man proceeded cunningly, and married the girl before witnesses, and came to her father and said: ‘‘Have we not coupled together in spite of you all?’’ The father replied: ‘‘You will derive no benefit from the shameful deed you have done.’’ Then the young man went before the ruler and slandered them so that they were seized.38 Stow considers the apparent digression a separate letter altogether, calling it the ‘‘Letter from Loches,’’ and he writes that it has nothing to do with the county of Blois: in 1171 Loches was ‘‘in Angevin (English), not French Capetian, hands.’’39 The fact remains, the passage was compiled with the rest of the material on the Blois incident. Why? Even if it has nothing to do with Blois, someone clearly felt it had something to do with the events that unfolded there. One part of the answer may be, as argued by Stow, that the passage points to the dangers inherent in dealing with kings (or other Christian rulers).40 I believe that the Loches passage indeed belongs to the Orleans letter and that the letter writers or compiler included it because, in their eyes, the

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Loches incident formed part of the explanation for why the Blois tragedy took place. First, it is important to understand what the text is describing. The young man is Jewish, and he is explicitly called a malshin (‘‘slanderer’’), whose root, l-sh-n, also gives the word lashon (‘‘tongue, language’’). Already in this word we have an indication that the Loches incident, like many of the other components of the Blois incident, is ultimately about speech and malicious use of it. In reporting that he and the girl coupled together in spite of her family, the malshin is referring to a biblical law by which consummation creates a de facto marriage.41 Told by the girl’s father that he would ‘‘derive no benefit’’ from this ‘‘shameful deed,’’ the malshin—whose direct and skillful speech got him nowhere with the girl’s family, fellow Jews—went before the ruler or prince (ha-sar) and slandered them. What he said we do not know. But the letter writer does tell us that the ruler released the family, ‘‘praise to God, but [the young man] has not been released yet. Nor do we know, Heaven forbid, whether this disaster has disgraced them or not.’’42 This curious passage is immediately followed by the detail that the Blois victims were not permitted burial ‘‘because of our many iniquities’’ (be-‘awonoteinu rabbim), a standard phrase with which the community accepts blame instead of placing it on God. Regardless of the identity of the ‘‘ruler’’ to whom the young man of Loches complained and whether or not this incident influenced Count Thibalt’s behavior, it appears that the writers or compiler of these letters considered (or wished to portray) the young couple’s sexual union and the young man’s bad behavior to be among the community’s ‘‘many iniquities’’ that brought about the tragedy of Blois. Communal guilt is accepted in other passages, as well, such as these words of the martyrs reported in the Orleans letter: ‘‘Guard yourselves, lest your hearts be tempted [Deut. 11:16]. Be strong in the fear of our Creator, so that our death will atone for our iniquities. For they are the sins of the Jewish community and make atonement for all Israel.’’ The writers share in these sins, stating that these terrible events happened because of ‘‘our wicked transgressions and sins’’ (asher be-pesha‘einu kol zo’t we-h.atto’wteinu).43 If we return to Prov. 6:16–19, with which this chapter began, armed with our reading of the section of the Orleans letter that deals with Loches, we have now seen all seven of the things that are an abomination to the Lord: the ‘‘haughty eyes’’ belong to Pucelline, the ‘‘lying tongue’’ to the wicked servant, the ‘‘hands that shed innocent blood’’ to Thibalt, ‘‘a heart that devises wicked plans’’ to the servant’s master (or perhaps to a priest discussed below), ‘‘feet that hurry to run to evil’’ and ‘‘a lying witness who testifies

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falsely’’ again to the servant, and ‘‘one who sows discord in a family’’ (literally, ‘‘among brothers’’) to the young man of Loches. For Jews seeking to understand why God permitted the Blois tragedy to take place, we might speculate that Prov. 6:16–19—never adduced openly—provided a possible answer. These verses link the Loches passage with the preceding narrative, unifying what has traditionally been considered the ‘‘Orleans letter.’’ If we care only about cause and effect, then the Loches incident has little to do with the Blois tragedy. However, for the compiler or compilers of these texts, and perhaps even for the original letter writers, what happened in Loches serves as part of the explanation for what transpired in Blois.44

‘‘Do Not Speak Except Out Loud!’’ A King Builds Trust As we have just seen, one reason historians consider the Blois incident remarkable is that Count Thibalt reacted so violently to a flimsy charge. Another reason, developed by Chazan, is the way it united Jewish communities and set into motion energetic, communal efforts to help the Jews of Blois and safeguard other communities. According to the letters, two Jewish men from the county of Blois approached Thibalt directly and unsuccessfully attempted to ransom the imprisoned Jews. Jewish leaders in Paris approached Louis VII on behalf of their brethren in Blois and other communities where such accusations had been made, and they obtained verbal support and reassurances regarding their safety. Jews also approached Count Thibalt’s brother, Count Henry I (the Liberal) of Champagne, in Troyes. He, too, lent his support. The Jews also selected a skilled negotiator, Nathan b. Meshullam, whose two main tasks were to secure burial for the dead and to redeem the captives by speaking and offering money to Thibalt’s other brother, William, archbishop of Sens. In his own account, written after the negotiations, Nathan does not mention burial, but he successfully obtained redemption for the captives, as well as permission for Jewish children forcibly converted to Christianity to return to Judaism and a pledge from Thibalt that he would never again accuse the Jews falsely. In light of all this, speech and verbal interactions between Christians and Jews are central to the letters’ construction of the Blois incident. We have already examined the silence of the Christian servant at the river, and the silence and secrecy in which he and his master set the machinations of revenge into motion. Secret discourse must have taken place again between

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Count Thibalt and a priest, identified as Satan in the Orleans letter, who advised Thibalt behind the scenes to bring the Christian servant in as a witness and test him by putting him in ‘‘polluted’’ water, Christian holy water. If the servant—referred to in this section of the letter as ha-golier ha-ra‘ (the wicked wretch)—sank, he was telling the truth. If he floated, he was not. In his narrative, Ephraim of Bonn aptly ‘‘inverts the nature of the water ordeal,’’ reporting just the opposite, as recognized by Stow, because the Christians judging the Jews of Blois inverted wicked and good, guilty and innocent.45 Before putting the Christian witness on trial, it seems that Count Thibalt tried negotiating with the Jews for ransom money. But Thibalt was dissatisfied with the amount that the Jewish negotiators, Barukh b. David Ha-Cohen and Isaac b. Judah, proposed, and he turned again to the priest. The trial by water of the Christian witness confirmed the Jews’ guilt in the ruler’s eyes, and the burning followed. The silence of the Jews’ enemies is contrasted with the openness and honesty of the Jews’ friends, the townspeople who witnessed the burning and related what they saw so that the Jews might spread the word to other Jewish communities. At one point in the Orleans letter, we read: ‘‘It came to pass that as the fire rose [the martyrs] sang as if with a single mouth and raised their voice in melody. The Gentiles came and said to us: ‘Which of your songs has this melody? For we have never heard anything so sweet as this.’ ’’ The song is the ‘Aleinu prayer; its Hebrew words praise the Creator, ‘‘for he has not made us like the nations of the lands.’’ In a scene of suffering that must have been unbearably ugly, the martyrs raise their voices in song, a song that not only accepts and rejoices in Jewish difference but that sets, in the words of Amnon Linder, Jewish worship, ‘‘the sole true worship, over against the false rituals of the ‘nations of the earth’ who worship the null, the void, and the idols,’’ a prayer that by the twelfth century, functioned as ‘‘an antiChristian invective.’’46 Sympathetic Christian onlookers cannot understand the words but find the melody beautiful. Soon after this, to establish authority, as medieval writers so often strive to do, the letter writers explain that one of their sources for the detailed information they have regarding the burning was non-Jews: ‘‘These matters were related to us by our fellow townsmen and by acquaintances of ours present at the event.’’ That these townspeople were Gentiles is indicated by the following statement that a Jew, Barukh b. David Ha-Cohen, also witnessed some of the terrible events that day but did not watch the burning itself out of fear that the mob gathered there would hurt him.47

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The Paris letter describes how the Jews of Paris and other localities called upon Louis VII in Poissy. The Jews portray Louis as sympathetic to the Jews’ cause, taking special pains to hear the delegation before a large audience composed not only of the king and whoever happened to be with him at the time but also servants called deliberately into his presence from elsewhere in the castle. These are their words: ‘‘Seeing that he greeted us peaceably, we told him that we would like to speak with him in private [literally, ba-h.asha’i (‘in whispers’)]. And he answered us: ‘Do not speak except out loud [i.e., ‘‘Speak openly’’]!’ And he himself called all his servants stationed in the castle and said to them, ‘Listen all of you to what the ruler Thibalt did—may he and all his seed be uprooted this year.’ ’’48 We have already seen examples of how the letter writers or editors allowed themselves some freedom in relating the story of the Blois incident, reporting, for example, the conversation between servant and master although no Jew witnessed it, and placing biblical phrases in the mouths of various characters. As Ivan Marcus notes in his analysis of Jewish narratives about the 1096 crusader riots, writers made active choices about which details to report, incorporating some and leaving others out: ‘‘The events actually reported qualify for inclusion only when they fit the narrator’s pre-conceived religious-literary schema.’’49 We might question whether the Jews really requested that Louis speak with them ba-h.asha’i (in whispers), but the answer is less important than the fact that the letter writers saw fit to include this troubling detail. Were they imputing to the Jews the same deviousness implied by whispering and secret discussions in the description of the master and his servant? What purposes might the Jews’ request to speak with the king in whispers serve? Beginning with the second question, I propose that the Jews’ request serves three direct purposes in the text. First, it is a contrastive device that directs attention to Louis’s command, ‘‘Do not speak except out loud!’’ Second, the term ba-h.asha’i creates, for the educated, an association with passages in Targum Psalms and Qohelet that bring certain aspects of the Blois incident into sharper focus. Finally, together with Louis’s command to speak ‘‘in a loud voice,’’ the request to speak ‘‘in whispers’’ highlights the letter writers’ concern with speech. The Paris delegation, in calling upon Louis VII, were not visiting a close friend with whom they might have a teˆte-a`-teˆte but rather placing themselves before the curia regis, the king’s personal court, in which he heard disputes and made pronouncements. The court was attended by a constantly changing group of people that in addition to the king might include ‘‘his family, the

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household officers, great barons and prelates, lesser knights and clerics, and local officials through whose territory the court was passing,’’ as John Baldwin reports.50 Although Thibalt of Blois, as the king’s seneschal and an important baron in his own right, would have been welcome in the curia regis, it does not appear from the letters that he was in attendance this time. The curia regis was already public, in the sense that it was made up of the king and other individuals. In commanding the Jews to speak ‘‘out loud’’ and summoning ‘‘all his servants stationed in the castle,’’ Louis ensures that the Jews will be heard by as large a public as possible. Contrasting these actions with the Jews’ request that the king speak with them ‘‘in whispers’’ calls attention to Louis’s apparent openness and to his desire that the Jews tell their story before as many people as possible. This, in turn, suggests that he will deal with them fairly. According to the letters, Louis not only hears the Jews before a large audience; he also makes his decision public by signing a charter. It was not uncommon for the decisions of the curia regis to be put thus in writing, although since the court did not maintain records, many of the charters do not survive.51 The Paris letter reads: ‘‘And now all the Jews in my land should know that I have no suspicion about this, and that even if the Gentiles found a murdered Gentile in town or field, I would not say anything about it to the Jews [i.e., I would not hold them accountable for it]. Therefore, do not fear this matter.’’ But we are still not able to go there [to Blois]. And now, praise be to God, the king signed a charter to be sent throughout his land, that the Jews might live in quiet and tranquility, and that all the officials might treat Jews with respect, and guard Jewish life and property more than they have until now, and much more [was said] than we have written to you. Praise and thanksgiving to the great king.52 Stow expresses doubt that Louis would have advocated respect for Jews as strongly as these words suggest,53 but we must keep in mind the setting, a royal court, and the way in which verbal interactions, regardless of whether the speaker was subject or king, were governed by protocol. The meeting between the Jews and king is summarized in the Troyes letter, whose scribe reports that he and his colleagues no longer have the Paris letter in hand because it has been sent on to another community. ‘‘I write from memory,’’ he tells us. One of the details he remembers and sees fit to

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repeat is the king’s desire to hear and speak with the Jews: ‘‘When the king saw [the Jews], he greeted them, and they greeted him back and rejoiced in their hearts. They said: ‘Our lord king, we wish to speak privately.’ He said: ‘Not privately will I speak with you, but openly say that Thibalt sinned in his soul [i.e., has committed a mortal sin]. It grieves me, and I am troubled by [lit. afraid, in awe of] him.’ ’’ Repetition of information using different words is a technique familiar from the Bible and oral literature, and one of its purposes is to ensure that the audience seizes important details. Here, the decision to repeat the description of the king’s openness demonstrates how much such openness meant to the Jewish community. Varying the words in which the encounter is described allows them to multiply the biblical allusions that are made, providing further information about cultural conventions regarding verbal interactions and, in this case, specifically those between Jews and king. The Paris letter opposes the Jews’ request to speak ba-h.asha’i (‘‘in whispers’’) with the king’s command to them to speak out loud, be-qol ram— literally, ‘‘in a loud voice.’’ In the Troyes letter, the Jews ask to speak ‘‘in secret’’ (ba-seter), and the king answers that he will not speak with them in secret but openly (ba-galui). Let us consider the resonances of some of these terms in Jewish texts. Ba-h.asha’i, an Aramaic term, appears in Berakhot 15b, where it refers to calumny,54 as well as the Targum of Psalm 41:8 (41:7) and Qohelet 10:11. The NJPS translates the Masoretic text (Hebrew) of Psalm 41:8 thus, but the sense of the Aramaic text is the same: ‘‘All my enemies whisper together against me, imagining the worst for me.’’ This message about the dangers of secretive speech—a major theme of the Blois letters—is clear. Qohelet 10:11 is more complex, and its relevance to the Blois incident is multifaceted. Peter Knobel translates it thus: ‘‘When fiery serpents are stirred up to bite and to cause harm in the world, it is on account of the sins of Israel who do not occupy themselves with the words of Torah quietly [bah.asha’i]. And also there is no advantage for a slanderer who speaks with a third tongue for he will be burned in the fire of Gehenna.’’55 In evoking this passage, the letter writers reinforce the convictions, already stated, that the Blois tragedy is related to the Jews’ own sins and shortcomings but also that the architects of the Blois massacre (including the Jewish slanderer of Loches) are treacherous, like snakes, and cause evil through slanderous speech. They will be punished. Here ba-h.asha’i modifies ‘‘occupy themselves with Torah’’ and so does not itself bear negative connotations. Instead, it indicates rever-

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ence, and the Jews’ request to speak with the king ba-h.asha’i can also be interpreted as a sign of reverence. Ba-seter (also ba-sater), the phrase in the Troyes letter, is often—though by no means always—associated with sin and deception.56 At least twice the word is used in the Hebrew Bible to set up a contrast with God, who does deeds in the light of the sun: ‘‘You acted in secret (ba-sater), but I will make this happen in the sight of all Israel and in broad daylight’’ (2 Sam. 12:12) and ‘‘I did not speak in secret (ba-seter), at a site in a land of darkness; I did not say to the stock of Jacob, ‘Seek Me out in a wasteland’—I the Lord, who foretell reliably, who announce what is true’’ (Isa. 45:19). In Psalm 101:5, secrecy is linked with slander: ‘‘He who slanders his friend in secret (ba-seter) I will destroy. I cannot endure the haughty and proud man.’’ These allusions further bolster the proposal made here that among the Jews of northern France in the twelfth century, secret conversation among Gentiles was specifically feared as potentially slanderous. Public conversations were conducive to truth, secret conversations to deception. Stow elaborates a connection between ba-seter (secretly) and Judg. 3:15– 57 22. In this passage, Ehud tells King Eglon he has a secret message (devarseter) for him. King Eglon sends his attendants away (note that this is the opposite of what Louis VII does in the letter) and then Ehud kills him. Secrecy and treachery are again close associates. Furthermore, although not a direct association, ba-galui (in the open), from the Troyes letter, recalls Prov. 26:26, which contains a verb with the same root, g-l-h (uncover): ‘‘His hatred may be concealed by dissimulation, but his evil will be exposed (tiggaleh) to public view,’’ still another passage that contrasts secret wickedness with the truth and justice of public view. Above I asked whether the Jews’ asking the king to speak with them ‘‘in secret’’ and ‘‘in whispers’’ imputes to them the deviousness implied by whispering and secret discussions among Gentiles in the letters. In answering this, consideration of context, including the identity of the speakers and the setting (a king’s court), is essential. While slander and gossip are unacceptable, there is much evidence that medieval Jews considered speaking in whispers or not at all a positive trait of other Jews. The Sefer H . asidim (Book of the pious), probably compiled in the Rhineland in the thirteenth century but begun earlier by Judah the Pious (d. Regensburg 1217), a contemporary of the Blois incident, contains a number of indications of this sort.58 The following passage associates silence and a soft voice before a king with reverence.

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In the fullness of silence there is reverence. He who fears God, obeys Him, sees Him, knows Him and searches for Him and is silent because of his fear, is the one who adds to (His) reverence. But if he heightens and raises his voice he diminishes reverence, for he forgets that he stands before God as a blind man who stands before a king. He multiplies words without fearing him, because he does not see whom to fear. He who increases silence because of reverence will not soon come to sin.59 In light of this passage, the Jews’ request that the king speak with them ‘‘in whispers’’ or ‘‘in secret’’ can be interpreted as reverence rather than deviousness. This interpretation is also suggested by the passage from Targum Qohelet discussed above. There is a double standard, easy enough to understand. The Jews trusted each other more than they trusted non-Jews, and accepted silence and secrecy on the part of Jews even as they denounced it in Christians. Given Stow’s analysis of irony in the Blois letters and the parallels between the Jews’ meeting with the king and the story of Ehud and King Eglon in Judges, we can go further. The ‘‘real message’’ of the Blois letters, writes Stow, is that ‘‘in their zeal for the faith, kings were dangerous, and their pious and punitive initiatives were threatening.’’60 In the letters, the king appears to deal fairly with the Jews, wanting to speak with them ‘‘openly’’ and ‘‘in a loud voice,’’ details highlighted by the Jews’ request to speak ‘‘in secret’’ or ‘‘in whispers.’’ But only the most naive Jew would take this apparently honest dealing at face value, particularly in a court, where interactions were governed by rigid protocols and selfish motives were rife. As a medieval French proverb puts it, ‘‘A la cort le roi chascuns i est por soi’’ (At the king’s court, everyone is out for himself ).61 The Jews of the letters, able and astute, respond to the king’s apparent, but perhaps feigned, openness by taking up linguistic behaviors exploited by the Gentile villains of their account. In other words, having the Jews ask the king to speak with them ‘‘secretly’’ and ‘‘in whispers’’ can be interpreted on two levels. On one, it is a sign of reverence, as elaborated above. On the other, it suggests that the letter writers were indeed imputing to the Jews the deviousness already associated with silence and secrecy in the early portions of the text. For the Blois ‘‘letters,’’ though plural, were indeed combined into a single text, and a concern with speech and silence constitutes one of its strongest unifying threads. In this tightly constructed series of letters where words and phrases have been carefully chosen for their surface meaning or allusive power or both, the

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power and significance of speech and silence are given special place. The authors contrast secretive, private discourse, which is conducive to deception and destructiveness, with open, public statements. The servant and his master and Thibalt and the priest engage in the first; the Jews and kind townspeople engage in the second. There is a twist: Louis VII also appears to speak openly, but the letter writers are aware that his open, public discourse may have concealed secrets and silences. Regardless of appearances, the speech of Christians in power could not be trusted, a conclusion also reached by Stow through analysis of different aspects of the texts.

‘‘Lest She Change His Mind,’’ or the Perils of Women’s Speech A notion common to several different social theories, including Antonio Gramsci’s ‘‘cultural hegemony,’’ Pierre Bourdieu’s ‘‘symbolic domination,’’ and Michel Foucault’s ‘‘subjugated knowledges,’’ is that control of discourse arises through social interactions, which are located within institutions.62 At the time of the Blois incident, these institutions, Christian, Jewish, or secular, were entering a phase of coalescence and innovation. This would only accelerate with the ascension of Philip Augustus to the throne, affecting and leading to the creation of communes, guilds, clerical schools, and noble courts. Ties between Jewish communities throughout northern France were becoming more solid, with one manifestation of this the exchange of letters between the Jews of Blois and Orleans and their brethren in Paris, Troyes, and elsewhere.63 The content of the letters demonstrates how carefully the Jews planned their response to the incident in Blois: the powerful men with whom they met—Louis VII, William of Sens, and Henry the Liberal—were closely allied with Thibalt of Blois, and Thibalt with them (William and Henry were his brothers). If anyone had the capacity to intervene successfully with Thibalt on behalf of the Jews, it would be one of them. So far we have read the letters about the Blois incident for what they tell us about verbal interactions between Jews and Christians during a time of crisis. Jews favored open discourse with Christians in public spaces because it was more likely to be truthful, but one still had to be wary—openness could be feigned. Secret discourse in private spaces was even more suspect, because it could foster deception and slander. Maintaining a linguistic and historical approach, it is also possible to read the letters and other documents related to the Blois incident for insights

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into relationships between language, gender, and institutional and communal structures. The Blois incident highlights systematic differences between the linguistic channels available to medieval Jewish men, represented by the letter writers and the delegations, and women, represented by Pucelline, in their attempts to influence political events. The linguistic dimension of the story of Pucelline is highlighted by a detail first given in the Orleans letter and repeated by Ephraim of Bonn and Joseph Ha-Cohen: Pucelline was given special treatment in prison and was generally allowed to speak with whomever she wished. However, she was prevented from speaking with the count, even though she had apparently already fallen out of favor with him, ‘‘lest she change his mind.’’ Here are translations of the relevant passages from the Orleans letter, the account of Ephraim of Bonn, and the account of Joseph Ha-Cohen. (This last is presented only for the sake of comparison; it was written after the period dealt with in this study.) The emphasis is mine. Orleans Letter She was caught but not tied up, for they did not bring her in chains. But she was arrested at the castle, together with the entire community. She was allowed to speak her mind, but not to talk with the ruler. She kept trying, for in her heart she could not believe that the ruler would be evil to her, as his love for her had always been strong: how could it change now? Ephraim of Bonn When [Thibalt] heard, he burned with anger, and he took all the Jews that were in Blois, and he put them in prison. And Madame Pucelline encouraged everyone, for she had faith in the favor of the count who had loved her greatly until now, but Jezebel his wife, the rival wife incited him, for she was also an enemy of Madame Pucelline. And all were put in iron chains except for her, but the servants of the count watching over her did not allow her to speak with the count herself, lest she change his mind. Joseph Ha-Cohen He [Thibalt] became very angry and took all the Jews, about forty people, and put them in prison. Then Pulcellina spoke to encourage them, for she trusted in the lord’s love for her, for she was a woman of valor.

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But she could do nothing, because his wife diverted him with all her skilful speech, and spoke hatefully of the Jews. Then the woman [Pucellina] was not pleasing to him [anymore], and he hated her greatly. He commanded the guards lest they permit Pulcellina to come inside to speak with him, for she alone was not fettered.64 Ephraim of Bonn and Joseph Ha-Cohen do not display the same degree of sensitivity to linguistic matters as the letter writers, but they follow the Orleans letter in emphasizing Pucelline’s forced silence in prison. This silence reflects a broader silencing of women in medieval Hebrew literature, in which they rarely speak in authentic voices, in part because they were not writers.65 Silencing is subjugation, and by refusing to let Pucelline speak with the count, the guards take away the only means by which she might have defended herself and her people—her tongue. We cannot forget that the Orleans letter and account of Ephraim of Bonn emphasize Thibalt’s favor or love for Pucelline, and that later, in Joseph Ha-Cohen’s account, Pucelline is explicitly portrayed as Thibalt’s paramour. Pucelline might have played Esther to Thibalt-Ahasuerus, but because she was silenced, she never had a chance.66 Instead, it is the Countess Alix (Alize) who intercedes with Count Thibalt, undermining the Jews’ cause with her cunning speech. In Ephraim’s account, she is called ‘‘Jezebel.’’67 The letters of the Hebrew spelling of Alize—alef, lamed, yod, and zayin—are all to be found in ‘‘Jezebel.’’68 Both women are royal; both are Jew-haters. Alix’s Christianity parallels Jezebel’s Baal worship. Alix urges the count to act against the Jews, just as Jezebel incited her husband, Ahab, to murder: ‘‘Indeed, there never was anyone like Ahab, who committed himself to doing what was displeasing to the Lord, at the instigation of his wife Jezebel’’ (1 Kings 21:25). If we carry the comparison between Alix and Jezebel to death, Ephraim’s use of the name ‘‘Jezebel’’ suggests divine retribution: Alix-Jezebel will be punished. One of Thibalt’s crimes was that he left the bodies of his Jewish victims unburied, and this evokes the prophecy of 2 Kings 9:10: ‘‘The dogs shall devour Jezebel in the field of Jezreel, with none to bury her.’’ Joseph Ha-Cohen refers to Alix’s power to persuade and instigate more explicitly: ‘‘his wife [Alix] diverted him with all her skilful speech, and spoke hatefully of the Jews.’’69 It seems likely that the preoccupation in the Orleans letter, Ephraim of Bonn’s account, and the account of Joseph Ha-Cohen with women’s clever and persuasive speech was influenced by contemporary

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stereotypes that often reduced women to speaking in two voices—that of the nag and that of the beguiler, both equally threatening.70 Though women in medieval literature often use their persuasiveness to pernicious ends, this was not always true. Alix herself may have been familiar with the histories of two earlier countesses of Blois, remembered in subsequent generations for the positive persuasive power they exercised over their husbands: Ermengard of Auvergne (d. c. 1048), wife of Count Odo II (d. 1037), and Adela (c. 1067– 1137), wife of Stephen-Henry, count of Blois, Chartres, and Meaux (b. late 1040s, d. 1102). Ermengard repeatedly encouraged her husband to show generosity toward the Benedictine abbey of Marmoutier, near Tours, and was written into legends about the abbey’s origins. Adela advised her husband, acted and appeared on official occasions with him, and encouraged him to rejoin the First Crusade. As documented in detail by Kimberly LoPrete, ‘‘Adela legitimately exercised the powers of comital lordship’’ during Stephen-Henry’s lifetime and after his death.71 Before proceeding to the rest of our analysis of what the earliest texts about the Blois incident reveal about the relationship between language and gender in Jewish society in late twelfth-century France, let us place the letters, their writers, and their audience in their gendered context. Although over half of the Blois victims were women,72 the Jewish communal response to the incident was essentially a male one, or at least it appears so. This is directly related to the structure of Jewish religious and governmental institutions, in which men held the positions of greatest visibility and public influence, as was generally true in Christian society as well. While we do not know the identities of the authors of the Orleans, Paris, and Troyes letters, we assume them to be men, for many reasons. The letter writers’ focus is on men, the only ones to be referred to by name. While Pucelline and the countess’s wife, Alix, are considered players of some importance in the Orleans letter, their names come to us from other sources, Pucelline’s from the Nu¨rnberg Memorbuch and the account of Ephraim of Bonn, Alix’s from other historical sources. In Ephraim’s account, as we have seen, Alix is referred to symbolically as Jezebel. The Jews named as having witnessed the events or participated in the delegations or letter writing are all men. Baruch b. David Ha-Cohen and Isaac b. Judah negotiated unsuccessfully with Thibalt for the Jews’ release. Baruch b. David Ha-Cohen was still in Blois at the time of the burning, and the letter writers of Orleans used his testimony in preparing their report. The incident of the young couple of Loches is reported by a certain Baruch b.

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Meir, who refers to himself in the first person, as if he wrote or dictated that section of the Orleans letter. Nathan b. Meshullam directed his letter to Rabbi Yom Tov. And Joseph Ha-Cohen is described as speaking with ‘‘the ruler,’’ perhaps Thibalt. (As we shall see below, Joseph Ha-Cohen’s words are taken from the Book of Esther and imply that his interlocutor is a new Haman. Thibalt is also compared to Haman in Obadiah ben Makhir’s letter.)73 Both the focus on male participants in the Blois incident and the language of the letters—Hebrew—indicate that their audience was equally male, even though it represented the entire community, male and female. Similarly, as discussed by Susan Einbinder, the seven poetic works that commemorate the Blois incident focus on the male martyrs, and they were primarily aimed at two male audiences. She writes, ‘‘One was the larger lay male community of Jews, who would have been impressed by the dramatic imagery of the poetry even if they did not understand the erudite allusions of the texts. Yet a second audience was the circle of Tosafist scholars and students who could decode the poetic texts. For these men, the reflection of their own image in depictions of heroic martyrdom reinforced a sense of their own importance.’’74 The letters, too, contain allusions that require decoding, and full appreciation of their message requires more than a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew, as well as extensive familiarity with the Bible and other Jewish texts. The use of masculine pronouns and verb forms contributes to the sense that the letter writers and recipients are male. Even when used generically or to refer to groups of mixed gender, masculine morphology has the effect of making women disappear from the text or fall silent.75 The Troyes letter specifically refers to ‘‘we the men’’ to describe the fasting with which the community will commemorate the Blois martyrdom. Contrast this with the use of the phrase ‘‘men and women alike’’ in a pledge not to wear silken garments for three years (emphasis mine). We the unworthy ones of Troyes have taken it upon ourselves and upon our communities to have only our townspeople at weddings, but if there is no prayer-quorum, to supplement it from elsewhere. We have also forbidden ourselves to wear silken garments for three years, men and women alike. And we the men [anah.nu ha-anashim] have subjected ourselves to fasting on Mondays and Thursdays until the New Year and do you establish it throughout the land of Lotharingia.76

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Although women are not explicitly excluded from the fast, it is presented as something taken on by men alone. In this fast, men represent the community as a whole. This is particularly striking given the participation of Jewish women in some fasts.77 Women’s participation in public and private ritual practices, however, was sometimes criticized or restricted.78 In the same way, the Jewish delegations to Christian men of power described in the letters, the letter writers, and the letters’ recipients are also male, representatives of the entire Jewish community, male and female. Our knowledge of male and female roles in medieval Jewish communities, including the observation that men were more likely than women to be proficient in Hebrew and to know the Bible well enough to make the allusions so central to the style of the letters, solidifies the idea that the public Jewish response to the events in Blois was a male one. The first half of this chapter contrasted open versus secret and public versus private discourse during the Blois incident. Applying this dichotomy to a contrastive analysis of Pucelline versus the Jewish men would be problematic: the men’s discourse, spoken and written, as reported in the letters, was certainly public, but we do not know whether Pucelline’s interactions with the count took place in public or private. We can appeal instead to formality and informality. Following Judith Irvine, ‘‘Formal occasions invoke positional and public, rather than personal, identities,’’ and formal discourse tends to display ‘‘additional or elaborated structuring.’’79 Examples of this structuring most relevant to the present study include the use of special syntax, lexical items, and fixed-text sequences. Another aspect of formality isolated by Irvine is focus of attention. In large gatherings, formal discourse is more likely than informal conversation to engage and be directed at the whole group. Imagine a room where a large number of people have assembled to hear a speaker. Before the speaker begins, pairs and small groups of people might be engaged in individual conversations ‘‘not meant to concern the gathering as a whole,’’80 but when the speaker appears onstage, he or she becomes a focus of attention. The Blois texts with which we have been most concerned—the letters and the account of Ephraim of Bonn—exemplify formal discourse. The letter writers compose not as private individuals but as representatives of the Jewish community. Ephraim of Bonn also assumes the persona of a public figure, writing about events that concern the Jewish community as a whole. These texts, like the others produced in response to the Blois incident, also display much linguistic code-structuring. We have already seen numerous examples

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of Hebrew and Aramaic words and phrases that evoke biblical passages, lending greater authority, solemnity, and meaning to the writers’ words. Repetition of details from one letter to the next or from the Orleans letter to Ephraim’s account is another formal device, used both to emphasize certain details and to multiply biblical allusions. All of the conversations reported by the writers—for example, those between the master and servant and between King Louis and the delegation of Jews from Paris and other localities—took place in French. But the writers chose to put them into Hebrew. This is another example of special structuring, even though Hebrew was the usual choice for medieval Jewish writers in northern France. Translation into Hebrew makes possible a particular type of institutionalized creativity: alluding to the Bible and other texts through particular strings of words, thereby adding additional layers of meaning to the text. Here is a particularly striking example: ‘‘But it is true that the ruler said to Joseph Ha-Cohen: ‘I heard that the Jews curse me.’ Ha-Cohen answered and said: ‘My lord, do not believe this, for such a thing never occurred to anyone. Who would dare to do so (ummi asher mela’o libbo la‘asot ken)?’ ’’81 ‘‘Who is he, and where is he, who dared to do so (mi hu’ zeh we’e-zeh hu’ asher-mela’o libbo la‘asot ken)?’’ is the question Ahasuerus asks in Esther 7:5, following Esther’s moving petition. Esther’s answer: Haman. Pucelline might have echoed Esther’s words had she been allowed to speak. On the second day, the king again asked Esther at the wine feast, ‘‘What is your wish, Queen Esther? It shall be granted you. And what is your request? Even to half the kingdom, it shall be fulfilled.’’ Queen Esther replied: ‘‘If Your Majesty will do me the favor, and if it pleases Your Majesty, let my life be granted me as my wish, and my people as my request. For we have been sold, my people and I, to be destroyed, massacred, and exterminated. Had we only been sold as bondmen and bondwomen, I would have kept silent; for the adversary is not worthy of the king’s trouble.’’ Thereupon King Ahasuerus demanded of Queen Esther, ‘‘Who is he and where is he who dared to do this?’’ ‘‘The adversary and enemy,’’ replied Esther, ‘‘is this evil Haman!’’ (7:2–6; NJPS) The ruler, presumably Thibalt, is unaware that in their proper context, Joseph Ha-Cohen’s soothing words actually single him out as a new Haman, confirming, not refuting, his fear that the Jews hate him.82 At the same time, Joseph Ha-Cohen’s words indicate that contemporary Jews considered the

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Blois incident a failed Purim, in which Esther (Pucelline) was silenced and Haman (Thibalt) triumphed. The last aspect of formality mentioned above concerns focus of attention. The conversations between the Jewish negotiators and Thibalt, the Jews and King Louis, the Jews of Troyes and Henry the Liberal of Troyes, or between Nathan b. Rabbi Meshullam and William of Sens are all centralized conversations that serve as the focus of attention of a formal gathering of individuals. Such conversations are typically governed by special rules or customs. As Irvine explains, ‘‘it may be that only certain persons have the right to speak or act in the main sequence, with others restricted to the side sequences. In the main sequence, speech is governed by constraints on topic, continuity, and relevance that do not apply (or not to the same extent) in the side sequences.’’83 One challenge of pursuing sociohistorical linguistic analysis is shortage of data, but even in the highly formal and conventionalized language of the Blois texts, we perceive constraints and special code-structuring that come into play in the conversation between the Jews and the king. The Paris letter states, ‘‘For we went to the king in the village of Poissy in order to fall at his feet because of this matter. Seeing that he greeted us peaceably we told him that we would like to speak with him in private.’’ The Troyes letter, although ostensibly a summary of the Paris letter, adds new information, indicating perhaps that the letter writers were familiar enough with the etiquette and routine associated with calling upon the ruling class that they could add such details with confidence. (Alternatively, a later editor might have condensed and moved text.) Here is a translation of the relevant section of the Troyes letter, with the new information in italics:84 ‘‘This is what our brethren in Paris wrote us, though their letter is not in our hand. . . . When the king came from Flanders the [Jewish] dignitaries of Paris and other places went out to welcome him, and they asked the king’s servants if they could talk with the king. They said to them: ‘Come.’ When the king saw them he greeted them, and they greeted him back and rejoiced in their hearts.’’85 The formality of the Jews’ appeal to the king is emphasized by certain actions and words. They went to ‘‘fall at his feet’’ but first had to ask permission to appear before him. They allowed the king to greet them first, only then returning his greeting. Speaking to the king without first gaining permission from his servants or greeting him before he welcomed them would have been to go against established rules of etiquette that determined, to a certain extent, word choice, order of events, and turn taking. The king’s response, both spoken and written, was probably equally governed by custom and etiquette.

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We know little of Pucelline’s interactions with Count Thibalt, and it would be naive to assume that they were purely informal. Count Thibalt’s rank and the fact that he was a Christian would have created barriers that led to formalization of some aspects of their interactions and discourse. However, we can contrast the ‘‘positional and public’’ identities invoked by the men with the personal relationship, whether financial or amorous, between the count and Pucelline, a relationship paralleled first by that of Ahasuerus and Esther in the Bible, and ultimately Haman and Esther. Communally selected groups, including the letter writers and the delegations that approached Louis VII, had a certain power. The male leaders of the Jewish community, despite belonging to a sometimes demonized minority, were nonetheless able to speak with Christian authorities, such as Louis VII, Thibalt V of Blois, Henry I of Troyes, and Archbishop William of Sens, with some success. According to the letters, the Jews obtained verbal support, reassurances, and some concrete concessions, such as redemption of the Jewish captives. They were not limited by personal relationships. There is no suggestion, for example, that the Jewish negotiators and delegations had personal relationships with the king, counts, or archbishop, or, if they did, that they used these relationships as leverage. In some cases, Jews bought help through bribery, a technique that, in the words of Chazan, is ‘‘well documented for the period,’’86 for Christians and Jews alike, and that can be considered a structured activity, one directly related to the formality that marked the interactions between the Jewish men and the Gentile authorities. The Jewish men’s intervention served their community and was sanctioned by it. Pucelline also managed—if only for a time—to exercise power and influence through her relationship with the count. For a while, this relationship may have served the Jewish community. Chazan writes, ‘‘This type of special power in courtly circles, whether flowing from an affair of the heart or of the purse (as was more usual), normally provided an effective tool for the Jewish communities.’’87 Pucelline and other women could appear before the court to ask for the intercession of the king or one of his barons,88 but only as individuals. Jewish men could do so either as individuals or as community representatives. We do not know if Pucelline’s interactions with Count Thibalt were public or private, but we do know that her influence with him depended on personal, favorable relations between them, and that she acted in her personal identity, rather than in a positional, public one. Evidence for this is the personal resentment she generated in the court of Thibalt and,

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more generally, in Blois, among Jews and Christians alike. The Jewish letter writers say little about her. It is notable that they do not defend her. The letter writers use the Jewish men’s Hebrew names. It is striking that the letters do not identify Alix or Pucelline by name at all and, moreover, that the name Pucelline appears in the list of Blois martyrs in the Nu¨rnberg Memorbuch—a list in which all the male martyrs are identified by their Hebrew names. This suggests that Pucelline may not have had a Hebrew name at all. Many medieval Jewish women did not.89 One framework that modern sociolinguistic and anthropological research provides for articulating the relationship between language and gender is political economy, which involves allocation of material and nonmaterial resources.90 One such resource is language, and we have already seen that Jewish women’s access to Hebrew was more limited than that of men. In fact, though many Jewish women certainly acquired the basic reading and writing skills necessary for private or professional bookkeeping, their exclusion from scholarly study was more dramatic than that of Christian women. A number of medieval French Christian women became famous as writers, but no medieval French Jewish women did. Women’s more limited access to a Hebrew education resulted not only in lower oral and written proficiency in the language. It also meant that women did not acquire the formal styles associated with Hebrew. Not all Jewish men became literate, but enough did that generally speaking, Jewish men had the potential to draw on a broader range of linguistic styles than Jewish women and to move more fluidly from one situation, formal or informal, to another. Jewish women’s more limited access to Hebrew simultaneously reflected and reinforced the roles assigned to them by the culture. Despite the tragic denouement of the story, Pucelline and other women like her were neither powerless nor silent, even if the letter writers’ focus on male voices gives that impression. Instead, women like Pucelline chose their channels of influence and forms of discourse strategically so as to work around the linguistic limitations imposed on them by religious and other social structures and best exploit the opportunities available to them. Private, face-to-face discourse between two people with a personal relationship, such as that between Pucelline and Count Thibalt, need not be any less effective than formal discourse in a public setting or letters sent to multiple communities. On the contrary, it can be highly effective, and Pucelline clearly won for herself power and influence, at least for a time. However, the situation of the men, as representatives of Jewish communities, had advantages. Letters al-

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lowed them to communicate effectively across large distances, whereas Pucelline seems to have been dependent on physical proximity. The male delegations were not at the mercy of personal relationships, whereas Pucelline’s influence with the count was very personal, subject to human whims of favor and friendship. Pucelline and Thibalt’s other victims, both male and female, were silenced by death on the day of the burning in Blois. The larger Jewish community, however, was not silenced, and it speaks to us, even today, through male-authored texts.

‘‘An Honest Tongue’’ Although the authors of the letters regarding the Blois incident do not refer explicitly to French except by incorporating a few Old French words (peau, vaire, golier), the events themselves clearly took place in Old French, the mother tongue of everyone or virtually everyone involved. Likewise, the discussion among the Jews involved in writing the letters must have taken place at least partly in the vernacular. Our ability to reconstruct verbal interactions from texts is always limited. Reconstructing vernacular, verbal interactions between Christians and Jews from Hebrew-language texts is especially difficult, and much remains hidden. We can certainly speak of manipulation of details in the letters about the Blois incident and other medieval historical accounts—regardless of their language. In the case of texts like the letters examined here, we must attribute some of this manipulation to the process of translation from French to Hebrew, one that is accompanied by a shift in the system of symbols and references available to the writers. This shift has already been seen in Arse`ne Darmesteter’s and Susan Einbinder’s comparisons of the Hebrew and French Troyes elegies.91 These two elegies memorialize thirteen innocent Jews who were burned to death in Troyes, in the county of Champagne, in 1288. The Hebrew elegy is a cento, built almost entirely out of phrases from the Bible. Though it communicates much the same information as the Old French elegy, as Einbinder has demonstrated, this information is always mediated through the language of the Bible, alluding to historical details with biblical language, for example, instead of stating them directly. Neither the Hebrew nor the Old French elegy can be treated as a work of objective history, but the Old French elegy, at least, gives the impression of describing the martyrdom as it actually happened, going so far as to place realistic words in the martyrs’ mouths. ‘‘Haro!

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j’ar tos!’’ (Help! I am burning up!) says the youngest of the martyrs. His brother comforts him, saying, ‘‘a paradis seras tot, je te acrant’’ (you will soon be in Paradise, I promise you). A brief comparison of the Hebrew and Old French Troyes elegies with the Blois letters highlights the sheer normalcy of the use of Hebrew for writing about historical incidents. The Old French elegy of Troyes (Mont sont a mecheif ) is the only work of its type. No other medieval Jewish elegies in French have survived; perhaps it was always one of a kind. Biblical language served the poet of the Hebrew elegy, the writers of the Blois letters, and other Jews writing in Hebrew as a vehicle for reporting, as well as for explaining and interpreting, the tragedies that befell them. Jewish poems, or lines of poetry, in Old French are never constructed in the same way. Mont sont a mecheif is not a cento, as its Hebrew counterpart is. Neither are the HebraicoFrench hymns edited by D. S. Blondheim or Hiram Peri. And the French lines of the wedding songs discussed in Chapter 4 seem to have been created from scratch, rather than taken from existing sources, as the Hebrew lines were. The authors of these texts clearly knew Hebrew well, and they had developed a profound familiarity with the biblical text that enabled them to select phrases whose content and context would contribute meaning to the new composition. They were presumably fully capable of combining Hebrew words into novel phrases and sentences, but to do so would have meant giving up the allusive power of the cento. Vernacular texts did not have the authority of the Hebrew Bible, and so it was only logical that writing in the vernacular was regarded differently and that it became a different kind of intellectual exercise, one that required a different kind of creativity and that was not dependent, even in part, on word combinations already found in a particular canon. We know that Christians and Jews spoke with one another on a daily basis and that in twelfth-century Blois, they did so in French. But the many conversations in French that took place during the Blois incident and its aftermath, whether between Jews, Christians, or Jews and Christians, are preserved only in the Jews’ formalized, Hebrew record. An awareness of linguistic features of the text and the letter writers’ concern with speech is essential to an understanding of the Jews’ reactions to the event. First, hidden in the Jews’ own report of the event we discern an explanation for it, drawn from Prov. 6:16–19. Second, words and phrases used in the Hebrew record subtly demonstrate that even if words exchanged between Christians and Jews were civil, and even when the Jews appeared to place their trust in the

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Christian authorities, there were undercurrents of suspicion. Jews were too scarred by experience to take the words of a king at face value, but they treated him respectfully and showed him due reverence. They were justifiably distrustful of Christian silences and secretive speech, because these could indicate plotting. In the Blois letters, references to these become a literary device that calls attention to the precarious situation of the Jewish community of Blois and their imminent danger and that contributes to deft, concise portraits of individuals such as the servant and his master. The concern of the letter writers with speech, though clear enough from the passages examined above, is sealed in the final words of the Troyes letter, which mention truth and falsehood, and specifically an honest tongue: ‘‘May the Rock of Israel bring you good tidings and words of peace, love of righteousness and hatred of evil; desiring truth, forsaking falsehood. An honest tongue, adherence to reason, abstinence from anger.’’92

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chapter 3

Texts of Two Colors

The Choice to Write in French The corpus of Jewish literature in Old French is similar in many respects to the set of oldest texts written in French. From the ninth century, we have only two Old French texts: the Oaths of Strasbourg and the Sequence of Saint Eulalia. The tenth century has left us with three: fragments of a bilingual sermon on Jonah, a Passion, and the Life of Saint Leger, the last two in the same manuscript.1 Of these five early texts, four are of a religious nature. All were probably performed: the Oaths were uttered aloud, whether in the version we have of them or something fairly close;2 the Jonah fragments were written in preparation for a sermon; and the remaining three texts, all in verse, were intended to be read or sung aloud. The vocabulary, orthography, and manuscript context of these and other early Old French texts underscore the close but unequal relationship between literature in Latin and the written use of the vernacular during the ninth to eleventh centuries, a relationship in which the vernacular was perceived as inferior. The manuscripts that contain the five earliest texts are almost entirely in Latin, and the Jonah text (which survives in the binding, rather than the body, of a manuscript, Valenciennes MS 521) is itself bilingual. The Passion and the Life of Saint Leger were added in blank spaces of a ninth- or tenth-century Latin manuscript.3 It is likely that the first draft of the French and German sections of the Oaths was written in Latin;4 the manuscript containing the Old French Sequence of Saint Eulalia contains a parallel Latin version; and the Life of Saint Leger and possibly the Passion were inspired by Latin originals.5

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So it is with the Hebraico-French corpus. Most Hebraico-French texts and glosses occur in religious commentaries, prayer books, or miscellanies. Many served a liturgical, celebratory, or religiously didactic purpose; others reflect religiously based folk practices. Most can be linked to performance, though we usually do not know how they were performed: the wedding songs discussed in the next chapter were sung by merrymakers during Saturday evening wedding festivities; the Troyes elegy may have been recited on Yom Kippur; the other known poetic compositions were recited or sung during other Jewish holidays—Rosh Hashanah and Passover.6 The portion of the ceremony of h.alis.ah in Old French presented below may have been pronounced aloud; magical formulae and incantations almost certainly were. Even Old French glosses and glossaries can be linked to orality: Menahem Banitt has argued that the French words in biblical glossaries were used in class discussions about the meanings of the Hebrew and Aramaic texts.7 Finally, most Hebraico-French texts are preserved in Hebrew manuscripts. Like the Passion and Life of Saint Leger, Jewish texts in Old French were often inserted by later hands in margins or in blank spaces, with examples being the wedding song El giv‘at ha-levonah, verses from a Parma prayer book, and the Parma and Valmadonna Hebrew-French glossaries of bird names.8 The Troyes elegy is preceded in its manuscript by a parallel Hebrew version. When Jewish texts in Old French, such as the Troyes elegy or the wedding song beginning ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, occupy a full folio, it is often toward the end of the manuscript, a symbolic position that reflects the perceived inferiority of the vernacular text vis-a`-vis the Hebrew compositions ordered before it. The Sefer H . asidim (Book of the pious) relates the story of a person whose Pentateuch was covered with hide that bore writing in the vernacular about worldly matters: ‘‘[A] righteous man came, tore it and removed it.’’9 In the same paragraph, the author forbids one to place a volume of Talmud on top of a Bible. Uniting these two elements is the belief that the physical arrangement of texts must reflect their relative importance. In this chapter we will encounter a diverse set of Hebraico-French texts, all of which illustrate the generalizations just made—that like the earliest texts in Old French (ninth to eleventh centuries), most Hebraico-French texts copied from the thirteenth to the fifteenth century are of a religious nature; they often record words that were spoken or sung aloud, or intended to be; and they often occur in margins and other spaces originally left blank or at the end of their manuscript. (Exceptions will be discussed in due course.) Moreover, Hebraico-French texts were preceded by glosses, just as

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texts in the Romance vernaculars were. Why do we find such similarities between the Hebraico-French and early Christian Old French traditions? After all, the Jews were immersed in Christian vernacular culture. We might have expected the Jewish vernacular textual tradition to develop more or less simultaneously with the co-territorial Christian one and for Jews to have experimented in French with some of the vernacular literary genres that became important in the twelfth century and beyond, such as poetry on worldly themes or vernacular prose historiography. There is no evidence that they did, at least as Jews writing for Jews. On the other hand, the little evidence that exists regarding Jewish poets who wrote or performed for a larger audience raises the possibility that there may have been others. We know frustratingly little, for example, about Mathieu le Juif, a poet considered to have been a convert to Christianity. Twice Rutebeuf writes of a third-rate jongleur named Charlot or Challot, and although some scholars, like Anatole de Montaiglon and Gaston Raynaud, have questioned his Jewishness altogether, considering the epithet ‘‘le Juif ’’ appended to Charlot’s name in the title of one of the pieces to be an insult, multiple lines in the other (Desputaison de Charlot et du Barbier de Melun) suggest that Charlot, like Mathieu, was indeed born a Jew.10 The bilingual texts presented in this chapter clarify to some extent the similarities between the Jewish and early Christian vernacular traditions but do little to explain their differences. In order to understand these I turn to the work of Erich Auerbach and the notion of a literary public. Medieval French Jewish communities recorded and copied Hebraico-French texts, of which the only true literary works known are the poems already mentioned— the Troyes elegy, two bilingual wedding songs, five hymns—and a roughly hewn poem of wine and love (for this last one, see below); but these poems were probably most often apprehended orally. Countless scholars, including Dante in De vulgari eloquentia, Joachim Du Bellay in Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, and many from our own day, have grappled with the means by which the Romance vernaculars might—and eventually did—come to hold their own against Latin. The corpus of Hebraico-French texts (see Appendix 1 for a list), which includes thousands of glosses (primarily single words), approximately eleven poems or couplets (the poems mentioned above, plus one rhymed colophon and a couplet from the story of Alexander that will be discussed below), one fulllength fever treatise, various glossaries and dictionaries, two account registers, magical formulae and incantations, translations of Hebrew passages, prayers,

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and fragments of prose, is far smaller than the corpus of texts in the medieval Romance vernaculars. But in addition to being part of the priceless material legacy left by medieval French Jewish communities, this corpus is valuable for the contrast it offers to the better-known corpus of medieval texts in the Romance vernaculars. Studying these Jewish texts is like entering a parallel universe where many of the same tensions—spoken and written, humble and lofty, male and female—played out on the page, in short, another experiment with writing the vernacular. I have organized this chapter roughly by genre and by the roles played by French in bilingual texts, turning in the first section to texts where French corresponds to speaking aloud. Presented in this section are magical texts, words from a ceremony of h.alis.ah, and a couplet from a Hebrew version of the story of Alexander. The second section explores glossing and offers brief analyses of recipes and a short glossary of bird and animal names.11 I then turn to reading publics and the Jewish and non-Jewish Old French textual traditions. Here I present two more Hebraico-French texts, the rhymed colophon and poem on love and wine. While it made sense to group the texts addressed in this chapter by genre and the functions associated with French, this obscures the fact that many of the texts come from one manuscript and its continuation. For clarity, Table 1 lists the texts treated in this chapter according to their manuscript. Shelfmarks, folio numbers, dates, and geographical provenance are noted there (to the extent that they are known) for easy reference.

Speaking Aloud Let us begin by examining examples of Hebraico-French texts that were realized or intended to be realized by voices. Occasionally the voice is specifically female, as with a translation of words from the ceremony of h.alis.ah or a couplet from the Roman d’Alexandre. In other cases, the voice’s gender is male or unspecified.

Magical Texts The first text, which I call by its incipit, Sarei bedolah. (Figure 2), comes from Cod. Parm. 2342, a miscellany compiled in the late thirteenth century and written in Ashkenazic semi-cursive script, probably in northeastern France or thereabouts. Cod. Parm. 2342 is continued in Cod. Parm. 2295, and in both,

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Table 1. Manuscripts and Texts Treated in This Chapter Text identified by description or incipit, folio no(s).

Manuscript Cod. Parm. 2924 (Richler 689), French glossary to the Bible, Delsberg (Delemont), Switzerland, 1279

Celi qui a ´ecrit cete lic¸on, 216v

Cod. Parm. 3000 (Richler 1063), Mah.zor, French rite, France, ca. 1300

Alo[n]s nos colcher, fol. 47r

Cod. Parm. 1902 (Richler 1069), Siddur, French rite, northern Italy, 1470

Recipe for h.aroset, fol. 90r

Cod. Parm. 2295 (Richler 1541), a collection of various works that is a continuation of Cod. Parm. 2342, France (?), late thirteenth century

Passage from ceremony of h.alis.ah (get h.alis.ah), fol. 40v

Cod. Parm. 2342 (Richler 1542), collection of various works, France (?), late thirteenth century

a. Glossary of bird and animal names, fol. 108r b. Sarei bedolah. (Princes of crystal), fol. 262r c. Instructions for the man who wants to see his wife in a dream, fol. 262r d. Instructions for opening the heart and mind, fol. 262r e. Instructions for someone who cannot menstruate, fol. 263r f. Instructions for curing hemorrhoids, fol. 285r

Munich cod. hebr. 419XX, fragment of a Hebrew narrative about Alexander the Great, thirteenth century

Or se peut bien vanter, fol. 2a

French is occasionally used to supplement or translate texts in Hebrew or Aramaic. Both manuscripts also contain scattered Old French words. Sarei bedolah. appears in a section dedicated to magic and ritual, as do three other texts examined here. It belongs to the body of hekhalot literature,12 named for the ‘‘the heavenly ‘palaces’ or ‘halls’ through which the mystic passes to reach the divine throne.’’13 Hekhalot literature ‘‘revolves around the relationship between God, the angels that surround him, and man’’ and is dominated by the belief that through knowledge of names of power and the proper words, human beings can successfully summon angels, such as the Sar-Torah (Prince of Torah) or Sar ha-Panim (Prince of the Coun-

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Figure 2. Sarei bedolah. (Princes of crystal). Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342, fol. 262r. Image published courtesy of the Ministero per i Beni e le Attivita` Culturali.

tenance), to obtain knowledge.14 It is perhaps this textual tradition, passed down through small groups of Jews throughout the Middle Ages,15 that the original author of the miracle of Theophilus had in mind when he portrayed Theophilus’s Jewish acquaintance as a conjurer, able to summon demons and devils for counsel (Chapter 1). Ephraim Kanarfogel discusses how, from the second half of the twelfth century through the thirteenth, Jewish scholars in France, Germany, and England developed a strong interest in mystical and magical practices, including the use of names of power.16 The other magical texts in this collection are diverse, ranging from short directives on how to bring a man from afar, restrain menstrual blood, or stop a child from wetting the bed.17 The scribe seems to have assigned to Sarei bedolah. a special significance, placing it at the head of the section and writing its first two words in larger letters. It proposes to help the reader summon angels in order to learn ‘‘the truth of the thing.’’ The text begins with a series of divine names. Some, like YYY’ S.eva’ot (Lord of Hosts), come from the Jewish tradition, in this case, the Hebrew Bible.18 Immanuel (‘‘God is with us’’) is a messianic phrase, also from the Hebrew Bible: ‘‘Assuredly, my Lord will give you a sign of His own

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accord! Look, the young woman is with child and about to give birth to a son. Let her name him Immanuel’’ (Isa. 7:14; NJPS). It is difficult not to think of the Christian interpretation of this phrase and of its realization in the New Testament, especially when we consider another of the names listed: Alpha et Omega, a Christian designation for God and Jesus, the ‘‘first and last’’ (Isa. 44:6), the beginning and end and everything in between. In Rev. 1:8, the Lord declares, ‘‘I am the Alpha and the Omega.’’ After listing these names, the author makes his request in French, using the name Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh (I AM WHO I AM; Exod. 3:14). Following are directions, in Hebrew, to repeat this formula three times into the ear of a young boy and to write ’wgglyh with olive oil on a crystal. I suggest this is Greek γγελ α (‘‘message, tidings; messenger [f.],’’ and so ‘‘female angel’’).19 The double gimel of the Hebrew spelling reflects the double gamma of the Greek; it may have been pronounced as a velar nasal consonant. (Below I render this word Aungelia.)20 The text concludes with the words one should say to take proper leave of the angels so summoned, again in Hebrew. Boldface in my transliteration of the text replaces the original overlining, which is sometimes used in Hebrew manuscripts to identify divine names.

1

Sarei bedolah. . Yomar YYY’ S.eva’ot Elohim El(h) Ely,21 S˘WMTW IMMANUEL, Alpha et O[mega], YYY’ DG’H. Je te pri que tu m’a[n]vois trois aungiles de la toe part qui me die[n]t a 4 la font la verite´ de la chose. E veis trois je vus conjur par

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Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh que vus me dieats a la fant la verite´ de la chose que nus dema[n]doms. Wa-yomar ba-ozen ha-na‘ar 3 pa‘amim ve-ketov ‘al ha-bedolah. mi-shemen zayit Aungelia. Ul-be-sof omer [!] lekhu le-shalom beyni uveyneykhem. (Princes of crystal. He will be called Lord of Hosts, God, God of Israel,22 S˘WMTW, Immanuel, Alpha and Omega, Lord DG’H. I beg that you send me three angels in your name so that they might tell me at the fountain the truth of the thing. And three times I conjure you by ‘‘I Am Who I Am’’ that you tell me at the fountain the truth of the thing that we are asking. And say in the ear of the boy three times and write on the crystal with olive oil, ‘‘Aungelia.’’ And at the end say ‘‘Go in peace between me and you.’’) What is ‘‘the truth of the thing’’ that the adjurers seek here, perhaps for the boy into whose ear they whisper? It is perhaps understanding of Torah, attainable through magical means if one can overcome the resistance of the angels.23 This gift of understanding enables one to serve God better and, paradoxically, also makes God one’s servant. Peter Scha¨fer writes, ‘‘The Torah consists not only of commandments, but in a deeper, and in later mysticism a self-evident sense, of letters and names. He who ‘possesses’ the Torah in its entirety is ruler of the world, the order of the cosmos, and thereby of God as well. Through the names revealed by God, man has God at his disposal, as a result he has been given precisely the means by which he becomes master of the earth and heaven.’’24 The author-scribe of the Sarei bedolah. text seems to have considered names of power pronounced in learned tongues more efficacious than those in the vernacular. This is seen more generally in the frequency of the Old French words for God (De´, Ge´) in Hebraico-French texts, which contrasts with the avoidance of the tetragrammaton, the representation of the ineffable name of God in the holy tongue, by means of graphic substitutes.25 The majority of the appellations for God in the Sarei bedolah. text—YYY’ S.eva’ot (Lord of Hosts), Elohim (God), El(h) Ely (see discussion of this sequence immediately below), Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh, and Immanuel—are Hebrew. Alpha et Omega is Greco-Latin. (The conjunction et here is Latin, not French—

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again and again we find that Jewish scribes write e for Old French ‘‘and.’’) The language of SˇWMTW and DG’H is not clear; however, neither seems to be French. Such ‘‘partly intelligible, partly unintelligible names’’ are common in the hekhalot literature.26 The ritual instructions ‘‘And say in the ear’’ and ‘‘And at the end say’’ are in Hebrew, as are the words with which the reader/ user will dismiss the angels. The sequence YYY’ S.eva’ot, Elohim, El(h) Ely is nearly identical to a sequence in Psalm 59:6: YHWH-Elohim S.eva’ot Elohei yisra’el (Lord God of Hosts, God of Israel), and a slight variation occurs in 1 Chron. 17:24: YHWH S.eva’ot Elohei yisra’el Elohim le-yisra’el (Lord of Hosts, God of Israel, [is] Israel’s God).27 Thus, noting that the he of El(h) that I have placed in parentheses seems to be deliberately effaced, it seems likely that the text was intended to read: Yomar YYY’ S.eva’ot Elohim Elohei yisra’el (He will be called Lord of Hosts, God, God of Israel), with Ely an abbreviation for the exact series found in Psalm 59:6 and 1 Chron. 17:24, Elohei yisra’el (God of Israel), and the preceding El(h) an anticipatory dittography. I translate it thus above. The French is concentrated in ll. 2–6, ‘‘Je te pri que tu m’anvois trois aungiles de la toe part qui me die[n]t a la font la verite´ de la chose. E veis trois je vus conjur par Ehyeh Asher Ehyeh que vus me dieats a la fant la verite´ de la chose que nus dema[n]doms,’’ to be said out loud. The correlation between French and direct speech is a common one in Hebrew texts that have a French element, and I do not believe it is coincidental here. However, there is another example of direct speech at the end of the text, in Hebrew: ‘‘Go in peace between me and you.’’ The correlation between direct speech and the vernacular is never absolute. Magical texts like this one are generally written in Hebrew, although at least one magical text written entirely in French survives, an incantation edited and published by Banitt.28 We may speculate why these magical texts happen to use French when so many others do not. Was the author-scribe experimenting with the vernacular to test its effectiveness? Was this formula prepared for someone with a poor command of Hebrew? Was its intended user a woman? We can ask these and other questions, but we have little evidence with which to answer them. None of the other magical or medical texts in Cod. Parm. 2342 contains substantial passages in French like Sarei bedolah.. The contrast between the presence and absence of French highlights the centrality of Hebrew in written contexts. While French dominated the Jews’ oral culture, Hebrew dominated their written one.

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The next text presented here, from the same folio, gives instructions for seeing one’s wife in a dream. Two of the names of power, Temator and Semniator, bear the agentive suffix –tor reflective of scholarly Latin influence. They may even have been modeled on particular Latinate words: semniator resembles se¯men (‘‘seed, semen’’) and related words. Temator resembles Latin temerator (m.), ‘‘one who defiles or violates,’’ used in a specific sexual sense.29

(For the man who wants to see his wife in a dream. He shall say these names before his bed: NEQATIR, TEMATOR, SEMNIATOR. [after this] Where are you [O ez vus]? 30) As in Sarei bedolah., the shift from reading of ritual instructions to words that must be spoken aloud is accompanied by a shift in language. ‘‘O ez vus?’’ the reader-user should ask. ‘‘Where are you?’’ And as in that text, the switch from Hebrew to French may be gendered, or it may simply reflect everyday reality: the man who uses this magical formula directs his words to his wife, with whom he would speak the vernacular. Had the words been directed at a male friend, they might easily have been in the vernacular, too.

Words from a Ceremony of H . alis.ah We will return to Cod. Parm. 2342 below, but now it seems appropriate to bring in another example of French used to render direct speech. Cod. Parm. 2295 (late thirteenth century), the continuation of Cod. Parm. 2342, contains a phrase in Aramaic from the ceremony of h.alis.ah, followed by an Old French translation.31 This brief text exemplifies the way vernaculars were pressed into the service of learned languages, which themselves could be understood and misunderstood, and calls attention to the association between the vernacular and direct speech. The ceremony of h.alis.ah frees a widowed Jewish woman from levirate marriage (yibbum), described in Deut. 25:5–10.32 If the woman’s husband dies without leaving any offspring, the Torah states that the woman (the yevamah) should marry the deceased man’s brother (the levir or yavam) and that the first son born to them should take the dead brother’s name. Should the brother refuse to undertake yibbum, the Torah describes the process by which

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this obligation might be dissolved: ‘‘his brother’s widow shall go up to him in the presence of the elders, pull his sandal off his foot, spit in his face, and make this declaration: Thus shall be done to the man who will not build up his brother’s house! And he shall go in Israel by the name of ‘the family of the unsandaled one’ ’’ (Deut. 25:9–10; NJPS). Rabbinic sources specify that the prescribed words from Deuteronomy must be uttered in Hebrew.33 According to Maimonides, ‘‘The judges should then make her recite, So shall it be done unto the man that doth not build up his brother’s house. And his name shall be called in Israel, ‘The house of him that had his shoe loosed.’ . . . All this should be recited in the holy tongue [Hebrew], for it is said, So . . . [Deut. 25:9–10], implying in this same tongue.’’ He describes how the woman and the levir should practice their words before the ceremony until they are fluent in them.34 Medieval Jewish women could refuse to undertake yibbum, and the extent to which h.alis.ah versus yibbum took place varied from place to place. For centuries, as discussed by Jacob Katz, rabbinic authorities disputed which one, h.alis.ah or yibbum, should have priority. Deut. 25:5–10 suggests that yibbum should be preferred over h.alis.ah,35 but in medieval France, many rabbinic authorities preferred h.alis.ah over yibbum, and eventually this opinion came to prevail, not only in France but also in Germany, where in the eleventh century yibbum had been customary.36 In medieval Spain, in contrast, the great rabbinic authorities, including Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi, Maimonides, and Nahmanides, favored yibbum.37 Rashi of Troyes’ opinion was particularly favorable to women: she could undergo yibbum if she wished, and if she did not, her brother-in-law must give her h.alis.ah.38 Our text begins, ‘‘be-get h.alis.ah’’ (in a writ of h.alis.ah). It is followed by five words in Aramaic (the first two are written together), which come most directly from the eleventh-century midrash Leqah. Tov (Good instruction) by Tobias b. Eleazar and ultimately the Babylonian Talmud (Yevamot 39a–b). The Aramaic is followed by a translation in French, which I propose we read as face moi dechalcer devant vos son pei devers deitre (‘‘may he cause me to unshoe his right foot before you’’). Aramaic ’tl‘, translated below as a secondperson singular imperative, ‘‘incline,’’ is understood by the medieval translator as referring to the action of removing someone’s shoe. (The same root, with the sense ‘‘take off, remove,’’ occurs in Targum Ruth 4:7–8.) Both Aramaic ly[h] (‘‘to her’’ but interpreted here as ‘‘to me’’) and the French word moi (‘‘me’’) that is used to translate it are written attached to the verbs that govern them (such attachment of function words to content words is com-

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mon in Hebraico-French texts, but as already noted, the two Aramaic words should be written separately). Aramaic qdmykwn, ‘‘before you (pl.),’’ is translated devant vos (‘‘before you’’) and apparently refers to the rabbis before whom the procedure is carried out. Finally, French son pei devers deitre (‘‘his right foot’’) translates Aramaic rygly[h] dymyn’.39

(Incline to her before you [pl.] his right foot [sic]. In French: May he cause me to unshoe his right foot before you [Face moi dechalcer devant vos son pei devers deitre].) The Aramaic, which seems to have been miscopied (see notes), is not straightforward. Because of this, and because this passage is unrelated to material surrounding it in the manuscript, pinpointing its purpose is difficult. It seems clear, however, that the French words are offered as a translation of the Aramaic and that the translator treats the Aramaic passage as a statement made by the widow, although it seems originally to have been a directive by the rabbis to the man. (More specifically, our passage seems to conflate two separate statements in Leqah. Tov. In the first, the narrative says to the rabbis, ‘‘He shall incline [lytl‘] to her before you [qdmykwn] his right leg.’’ The second expresses what the rabbis actually say to the brother-in-law: ‘‘Incline [’tl‘] to her your right leg before us [qdmn’].’’)40 As in the texts we have already examined, the vernacular is associated here with direct speech, and in this particular case, direct speech by a woman. It is possible that the choice to translate this particular phrase was motivated by an awareness that Jewish women’s exposure to Aramaic was even more limited than that of men, coupled with a desire to help the yevamah understand her own role in the proceedings.41 Ironically, the translator’s own knowledge of Aramaic, or at least of the Aramaic source texts, was imperfect. Questions raised by the text include whether it was written down in conjunction with an actual ceremony of h.alis.ah and whether the words were actually spoken aloud. A learned tongue and a vernacular, understanding and misunderstanding, and gender and language all come together in this brief passage from a get h.alis.ah. It illustrates the way in which writers could use vernaculars to help others understand texts written in learned languages and demonstrates

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that the knowledge of those same writers was sometimes imperfect. The female ‘‘voice’’ of the French is absent from the Aramaic it attempts to translate; whether these French words were ever spoken aloud at all remains an open question.

Speech in Literature: Fragment from the Story of Alexander Gender and direct speech come together in another bilingual text, this time a thirteenth-century fragment of the story of Alexander. The text reports that Roxane, at the end of her elegy, said (uve-sof kinatah amrah):42

Or se peut bien vanter, sire, sainz paradis Que onque e[n] autel si bon ote ne ot mis. (Now blessed Paradise can boast That never on an altar was so good a sacrifice placed.) The rest of the text, or what we have of it, is written in Hebrew. This, the only passage in French, is a close paraphrase of a couplet from Branch IV of Alexander of Paris’s Roman d’Alexandre that is part of a speech delivered not by Roxane, or indeed by any woman, but by Caulus Menalis, a king’s son who had left Greece to serve Alexander. Anquenuit se porra vanter sains Paradis C’onques en son ostel tel oste ne fu mis. (This very night blessed Paradise will be able to boast, That never before on its altar was such a sacrifice placed.)43 Both couplets play with the polysemy of o[s]te/o[i]ste: ‘‘sacrifice,’’ ‘‘sacrificial victim,’’ ‘‘communion host,’’ ‘‘guest.’’ Alexander, noble sacrifice, is now a guest in Paradise. Gender seems to have played a role in determining the writer’s choice to give this couplet in French, rather than Hebrew: like the words in French from the h.alis.ah ceremony, these are a woman’s words (at least here), spoken by Alexander’s widow, Roxane. But gender was not the only determining

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factor. The contrast offered by the use of French heightens the emotional power of Roxane’s eloquent speech, and those who knew the Old French Roman d’Alexandre may have derived pleasure from the injection of familiar language at this crucial turn. French-speaking members of an audience hearing the Hebrew text read aloud may even have momentarily joined in the oral delivery. That the words are uttered by an unexpected character renews and enlivens the scene. Moreover, the use of French allows the writer to preserve the multiplicity of meanings of Old French oste, which place the symbolic import of Alexander’s death in full view. Women rarely speak in medieval Hebrew literature outside the wedding songs and the concluding kharjas of the Andalusian muwashshah.at, or ‘‘girdle poems.’’44 The kharjas, verses in colloquial Arabic or Old Spanish, are not from the same world as the Roman d’Alexandre and this Hebrew version, but they serve as further evidence of the association between the female and the vernacular in medieval Jewish culture. The yevamah and Alexander’s mourning queen have more in common than widowhood: in manuscripts written primarily in Hebrew, they speak in French, a reflection of the reality that medieval Jewish women, more so than Jewish men, lived lives that were closely bound by the vernacular.45 Even more so than gender, however, the texts examined so far highlight the relationship between the vernacular and orality. In medieval Hebrew manuscripts, individual and collective male voices sometimes speak in Old French, at times, perhaps, because they are addressing themselves to individual women, as with the man who wants to see his wife in a dream, but not necessarily so. Old French was not a woman’s language; it was the language of the entire community, and poets and singers seem to have turned to it often during the communal celebrations that accompanied weddings and holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Passover, as seen by texts edited by D. S. Blondheim and Hiram Peri. The corpus of premodern Hebraico-Provenc¸al literature is similarly centered upon communal celebrations and rituals, especially weddings, the feast of Purim, and circumcisions.46 Poets also turned to the vernacular to help their communities deal with tragic events. Through oral performance, the Old French Troyes elegy helped transform the martyrdom of thirteen Jews in spring 1288 from current event to collective memory.

Glossing In Christian society in all the Romance-speaking lands, texts in the vernacular were preceded by lexical glosses in Latin or Romance that served to make

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Latin-language texts more comprehensible to readers. Sometimes these glosses were textual annotations given in the margins or between lines; sometimes they were compiled in lists. The late eighth-century Glossary of Reichenau (Gallo-Romance) explains words from the Vulgate in Latin, but a Latin that is very different from Jerome’s. For example, vespertiliones (‘‘bats’’) is glossed by calvas sorices, which has become, in modern French, chauves-souris. Some of the glosses are Latinized borrowings from Germanic. The late eighthcentury Glossary of Kassel (perhaps Gallo- or Rhaeto-Romance) resembles a traveler’s phrase book. The most important early glosses from Spain are the Glosses of Silos and San Milla´n.47 The earliest known attempts by Jews to write French in the Hebrew alphabet also took the form of lexical glosses, a major purpose of which was to clarify difficult words in the Bible or Talmud. Rashi (1040–1105) is the most famous of the early French-speaking glossators: he incorporated more than three thousand Old French glosses in his biblical and talmudic commentaries.48 From this early period we must also name Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome, who incorporated approximately 550 Italian glosses in his Arukh, an encyclopedic dictionary probably composed in the last quarter of the eleventh century.49 The tradition of translating the Bible into the spoken language of a community began in antiquity with the Aramaic translations of the Bible, and the earliest Jewish glosses in Old French originated sometime before Rashi, although we do not know precisely when. The Old French glosses to which I refer are primarily glosses in a narrow sense—to quote the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘‘A word inserted . . . as an explanatory equivalent of a foreign or otherwise difficult word in the text,’’ but some are glosses in a wider sense: ‘‘a comment, explanation, interpretation.’’50 In Jewish manuscripts, they are most often integrated into the text, often preceded or followed by be-la‘az (‘‘in [French]’’; written in full or abbreviated) or preceded by she-qorin (‘‘that are called’’) or an equivalent phrase, rather than placed between the lines or in the margins, as Christian glosses often are. Scholars once attributed the earliest Jewish glosses in Old French to Gershom of Metz (950/60–1028), ‘‘the Light of the Exile.’’51 Various early scholars mentioned or quoted Gershom’s commentaries on the Babylonian Talmud, beginning with Nathan ben Jehiel in the Arukh.52 These commentaries contain approximately 130 glosses, almost all of them in French. It has since become clear that the commentaries attributed to Gershom are compilations consisting of various layers, at least one of which dates from the beginning of the twelfth century.53 As for the glosses, it is generally accepted that most do not come from Gershom. Many of them may indeed be old:

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Epstein proposed that they were added by scholars of Mainz working in the second half of the eleventh century.54 One of them is cited by Rashi in Gershom’s name; perhaps it did originate with the Light of the Exile himself. Isa. 46:1 begins, ‘‘Bel bows down, Nebo stoops,’’ and Rashi translates it into French as acropid sei Bel, conchied [sic] sei Nebo.55 In attributing this gloss to Gershom, Rashi makes it clear that his use of Old French glosses continued an older tradition—that of the poterim, Jewish scholars who translated words from the Hebrew Bible into the vernacular.56 The focus in modern scholarship on the Old French glosses contained in biblical and talmudic commentaries may create the false impression that they were limited to the exegetical genre. In fact, they are found in virtually every kind of prose text written by French-speaking Jews, including compendia of prayers and ritual instructions like the Mah.zor Vitry, treatises like the Sefer H . asidim, correspondence such as the letters written in response to the burning of Jews in Blois in 1171, responsa, including those of Rashi, and, as we shall see below, recipes of various sorts.57 In addition, the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries saw the copying of large Hebrew-French glossaries, apparently from older exemplars. Six full-length glossaries survive today, as well as various fragments; two glossaries held in Turin were destroyed by fire in 1905.58 A translator both communicates the meaning of the source text and displaces it by the second. This results in a well-known paradox: even the translator striving for optimal fidelity to the original becomes an interpreter. In the Middle Ages, translation often went beyond the usual sense of the term to include writing or rewriting, and thus the amount of interpretation involved in translation could be very great.59 Glossing individual Hebrew words with Old French ones does not displace the Hebrew text in the way that a full translation would, particularly since the Hebrew word is typically preserved alongside the French one. Old French glosses nonetheless affect the way the user understands the original text. The connection between translation and interpretation is particularly evident when the vernacular voice encourages the reader to view the Bible through vernacular eyes. For example, Joseph Kara, in his commentary on Isaiah, translates Hebrew pe’erim, ‘‘headdresses, turbans’’ (Isa. 3:20), with Old French velos, ‘‘velvet (garment),’’ inviting the reader to see these as being made of velvet and suggesting that Kara did the same. He translates re‘alot, ‘‘veils’’ (Isa. 3:19), with both guinple, ‘‘wimple,’’ and molechin, ‘‘a fine oriental fabric (mousseline); the garment made from it (also veil),’’ leading the same reader to envision a medieval headdress, and specifically a wimple, made of mousseline. Along with Rashi,

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he translates battei ha-nefesh, ‘‘perfume boxes,’’ as nosches, brooches or clasps used to fasten a garment, or perhaps ‘‘bracelets, necklaces’’ that according to Rashi’s description of them in Shabbat 62a held a perfumed balm. H . aritim (Isa. 3:22), perhaps originally a word for bags or purses, is glossed by Kara as porceins (‘‘aprons worn by noblewomen when they ride horses’’). Rashi, in his commentary on Exod. 28:4–7, also uses this word, describing the aprons in detail and explaining that women wear them when they ride on horseback. Finally, Kara uses Old French listes to gloss Hebrew gilyonim (Isa. 3:23). Whereas the Hebrew word may have referred to transparent garments, Old French liste refers to borders and embroidery used as decoration on garments and even painted or sculpted borders in architecture and bands of velvet or other fine materials hung on church walls. Kara’s glosses for the items of clothing and jewelry mentioned in this chapter of Isaiah create a precise and vivid image of biblical women dressed in medieval garb.60

Recipes Many medieval Hebrew texts contain individual French words that stand on their own and for which no Hebrew equivalent is given. Although these are not true glosses according to the definition given above, they are profitably analyzed alongside them. One example can be found in a recipe in Hebrew and Aramaic for opening the heart and mind to Torah to help a child develop his memory and understanding.61 The recipe begins la-petih.at lev (‘‘for the opening of the heart’’), the heart having once been considered by Jews the seat of intellect. The petih.at lev ritual for enhancing memory was common, in part because of the importance of memory in ancient Jewish culture, and manuscript versions of it are ‘‘remarkably uniform,’’ to quote Michael Swartz.62 As with many magical recipes, the text lacks a clear organization. After giving the purpose of the recipe, the scribe instructs the reader/user regarding the writing surface: a virgin egg. We later learn that the egg must be roasted and peeled,63 and that it should have been laid by a fowl that has never laid an egg before. The writer emphasizes ‘‘as if [we would have said] a first-born (bekhorah) egg.’’ Bekhor(ah) (‘‘first-born’’) normally applies to offspring formed in the womb, such as children, lambs, calves, or kids, and not to eggs,64 but the writer has chosen this word deliberately to ensure that the reader/user understands what a virgin egg is, because correct ingredients are essential to the working of the charm. The adjurer directs the adjuration to the names PPYWT H . YL PPYWT, asking them to act on his behalf. Then he turns directly to the three angels Zgiga, Prince of Torah, Glitsor, Prince of the Uncovering of the Meanings of Torah, and Yfifyah, Prince of the

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Countenance, adjuring them ‘‘in the name of YH YH YH, Lord of Hosts.’’ (YH is a familiar name of God.) The writer’s final instructions contain a lone word of Old French, safran (‘‘saffron’’; compare Hebrew karkom or ze‘afran): the egg should be eaten with this spice, a common ingredient in magical recipes in the Middle Ages. Although safran is not preceded by be-la‘az, as French words in Hebrew texts often are, it is set apart from the Hebrew words that surround it by overlining (rendered in my translation with boldface), a strategy used elsewhere in this text (as well as in Sarei bedolah.) for setting off divine names.

(To open a heart [to Torah] write on a virgin egg: PPYWT H . YL PPYWT, ye the holy names, open the heart of so-and-so, son of so-and-so, to Torah, Amen, Amen, Selah. And I adjure you, ZGYG’ Prince of Torah, and GLITSOR [Prince of] the Uncovering of the meanings of Torah. And I adjure YFYFYH, Prince of the Countenance, in the name of YH YH YH, Lord of Hosts, Amen, Amen, Selah. And afterwards you will roast it and peel it, and it will be well-cooked. write on it what I wrote above. Explanation of a virgin egg. [It is an egg laid by] a fowl that never before laid an egg and laid that certain egg first, as if it were a ‘‘firstborn’’ egg. And afterward may you write them, names and oaths, upon it [and] eat [it] with saffron. The end. Words of wise men are truth.) French hardly comes into this text. One might even argue that it is not used at all, because safran seems to be used here as a Hebrew word. Only the overlining (here boldface) hints at its difference. The next text also contains a single word of Old French: vernace, an Anglo-Norman form found also in Middle English that describes ‘‘an expen-

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sive variety of strong, sweet wine, probably from Italy.’’65 Although it is attested as garnache in continental Old French, its initial consonant here could have been influenced or taken from medieval Latin vernachia, vernacia (cf. Classical Latin vernagium) or Italian vernaccia, and need not be taken as evidence of an Anglo-Norman origin. Drinking this wine and eating fish, associated with fertility, will cure the woman who cannot menstruate.66

(For whoever cannot menstruate. Let them eat fish and give [them] a beverage to drink. In la‘az it is vernace [expensive sweet wine]. A specific item from the vernacular culture must be given a vernacular name, because no Hebrew word describes it unambiguously. We see the same need for the vernacular in yet another text from Cod. Parm. 2342 containing an Old French word: favege (‘‘brooklime’’).67 Like many other medieval Jewish texts containing glosses, this one also gives the word in another language, this time Middle High German (bornekerse, borne kerse ‘‘watercress’’) as indicated by the words leshon ashkenaz (‘‘language of Ashkenaz’’). Metathesis in the first word of this compound led to the Middle High German form brunne (Modern German Brunnen), but the unmetathesized form Born is also attested.68

(For hemorrhoids, take an herb called favege in French and bornekerse in German. It grows beside springs. Take the herb with its roots and fresh lard, and cut it up finely and put all of it in a pan on the fire, and afterward, put it between two cloths, and place it hot on the back, against the orifice, as long as you can stand it, many times. Tried and tested. Borne kerse for a man, [use] the red; for a woman, the white.)

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The final words indicate that the plant comes in two varieties and that the red should be used by a man, the white by a woman. The use of French for naming and defining is seen again in a recipe for h.aroset found in a French-rite siddur (prayer book), Cod. Parm. 1902. The first half of the manuscript, which includes our text, was completed in 1470—over seventy years after the final expulsion of the Jews from France. This makes it the latest Hebraico-French text discussed in this study, but even if the manuscript dates from the late fifteenth century, the recipe may be older. The scribe of the first half of the manuscript identifies himself as Perets b. Solomon Cohen Tournois, who is also known to have copied Paris ms. he´breu 422 in Soncino in 1478.69 Tournois means ‘‘from Tours,’’ a city in the heart of France, part of the old royal domain.70 It is possible that Perets was a Tournois by birth—a small number of Jews, mainly converts, remained in France after the expulsion71—but it is more likely that his father or grandfather was. Perets was not the only Jew to retain the name of a French city as part of his patronym, a poignant reminder that his ancestors had been uprooted from the land of their birth.72 Cod. Parm. 1902, which contains prayers for the entire year, is densely written and contains commentaries and halakhic material both in the margins and in the main text. According to Malachi Beit-Arie´’s description in Richler’s catalog, this halakhic material comes from various sources, ‘‘mainly codes of law (Tur, Mordecai, Semak, Tashbez., etc.) and Mah.zor Vitry.’’ The recipe occurs in a section devoted to the Passover Haggadah, and nearby folios also contain ‘‘selections from laws of Passover from Mah.zor Vitry and other sources.’’73 The recipe, below, is given in the margin.

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One must put in h. aroset species of fragrant spices such as spices in remembrance of the sand that is in mud [or clay, used to make bricks], 4 and the chaff called paillole [straw] and meiche [mace],74 peivre [pepper], gi[n]gembre [ginger], caneile [cinnamon], l’onique [a fragrant spice],75 nos muscade [nutmeg],76 greinat [pomegranate],77 8 greine paradis [cardamom],78 girofle [clove], citoas [zedoaries],79 apples and nuts; and he who wishes to add, let him add [i.e., let him add additional ingredients if he wishes to]. there are twelve ingredients here. These represent the four cups of redemption, the four cups of poison to be given to the nations to drink, and the four cups of comfort and salvation in the messianic era and the herafter.80)

(1

Ten of the twelve ingredients (mace, pepper, ginger, cinnamon, onique, nutmeg, pomegranate, cardamom, clove, and zedoaries) are given in French and two (apples and nuts) in Hebrew. In addition, ‘‘chaff ’’ is translated into French using the word paillole (‘‘straw’’). The number twelve is itself symbolic, with the number of ingredients corresponding to twelve cups: the four cups of redemption (the name given to the four cups of wine drunk during the Passover seder), the four cups of poison to be given to the nations to drink (Gen. Rabba 88:5), and four cups of comfort and salvation.

Glossary of Words from Leviticus A final example of a text that attests to the usefulness of the vernacular for glossing Hebrew technical terms comes from the same manuscript as the text beginning Sarei bedolah.. It is a single-folio Hebrew-French glossary of bird and animal names (with a heavy emphasis on the former) mentioned in Lev. 11:13–19, Deut. 14:12–18, and tractate H . ullin. The glossary itself includes at least one term of potential significance for the study of its dialect.81 Hebrew ‘orev in this glossary is translated not as korbe´y, as in the Paris glossary, or as corbel, the predecessor of modern corbeau (‘‘crow’’), but as corbol or crobol (the r is written above the initial qof and meant to be inserted; what I have transcribed as b could also be transcribed v). Corbou, which a writer might well have rendered corbol, appears in Philippe Mouskes’s Chronique rime´e. (Philippe Mouskes was born in Ghent in the early thirteenth century.)82 The Hebrew-French glossary of Cod. Parm. 2342 calls to mind a similar

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text in ms. Valmadonna 1 that also deals with bird names. The text in ms. Valmadonna is less elaborate: it contains only fourteen glosses, compared to our text’s twenty-four, and it does not offer etymological explanations. The existence of these two glossaries of bird (and animal) names and the lack of similar texts glossing sets of words from other, similarly specific and short portions of the Bible suggest that the glosses pertaining to clean and unclean birds were the subject of special inquiry, for practical reasons. Many of the birds whose Old French names are given in Cod. Parm. 2342 and other glossaries indeed made their way to medieval tables. The Viandier of Taillevent presents recipes for heron, bittern, and cormorant, all of which are glossed in our text.83 Banitt singles out the names of pure and impure animals in Lev. 11:16–30 as a case where ‘‘no description would do.’’ Glossing took on special importance.84 The Hebrew-French glossary in Cod. Parm. 2342 lacks any sort of prologue that might contextualize it. The author begins by giving names of animals mentioned in Leviticus 11, Deuteronomy 14, and tractate H . ullin (dayyah, anaqah), almost all of them birds, first in Hebrew and then in French. The author then endeavors, in Hebrew, to provide semantic explanations based on etymologies for the Hebrew names and, in one instance, the French (the ¸coete, a type of owl, is so called because it cries out—s.o‘eqet—at night). In another instance, he links the French name of a bird to one of its characteristics, also in French: buzart (‘‘buzzard’’) is phonetically similar to muzart (‘‘deceitful, unfaithful’’).

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nesher [eagle], aigle [eagle]; peres [bird of prey], ostoir [(gos)hawk, bird of prey]; ‘ozniyyah [bird of prey akin to vulture, osprey?], grifon [griffin, bird of prey]; ha-ra’ah [bird of prey, perhaps kite], escofle [kite] 2 ha-ayyah [hawk, falcon, or kite], mue´ [bird, probably hawk, that has molted];85 dayyah [bird], cormarant [cormorant]; nes. [hawk, falcon, bird of prey], esperever (or esprever) [sparrowhawk]; bat haya‘anah [daughter of the ostrich], of d’ostroize [ostrich egg] 3 tah. mas [male ostrich], buzart [buzzard]; ha-shah. af [seagull or tern], moisson [sparrow]; ha-kos [the owl], butor [bittern]; shalakh

(1

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[bird of prey, prob. cormorant], heiron [heron]; yanshuf [unclean bird inhabiting deserts], ¸coete [tawny owl] tinshemet [animal of uncertain identification], chalve soriz [bat]; qa’at [pelican?], erondele [swallow]; rah. am [vulture], rosinol [nightingale]; ha-h. asidah [stork], ¸cogine [stork] ha-anafah [heron], huhn [hen];86 ha-dukhifat [hoopoe], herupe [crested bird]; ‘atalef [bat], pie [magpie]; ‘orev [raven], corbol (or crobol) [crow]; ha-anaqah [ferret], chuine [stork]; tinshemet [animal], talpe [mole]; h. oled [weasel], mostle [mostoile; stone marten, weasel]; now I will explain the reasons [for the names]. nesher, aigle [eagle], because it is king over the fowl. It is written first, as it is said, ‘‘beginning with the greatest’’ [Gen. 44:12]. peres is ostoir because it comes from the eastern land [play on Paras ‘‘Persia’’] that they call Ostriche. ‘ozniyyah is grifon [bird of prey], because he has the strength [‘oz] of a beast and the strength [‘oz] of a bird; the ra’ah [kite, vulture] is escofle [kite] because it sees [ro’eh] very well. The ayyah is mue [gull] because it dwells in the islands and coastlands [iyyim] of the sea. dayyah is cormarant [cormorant] because [she] says, ‘‘The entire world is enough [day] for me,’’ because she is zealous for her companions. nes. [bird of prey] is espervier [falcon] because he casts off his plumage [nos. ato] in a cage that [in French] is called a mue [mew] and then they place it on the sail [nes].87 tah. mas [male ostrich] is buzart [buzzard] because he does violence [h. amas] in [his] friendship, with the vernacular name showing that [he is] muzart [deceitful, unfaithful] or boged [unfaithful] to his companions. An owl [kos], butor [bittern], goes up in the name of the groom, and it is a sign of the poison of the world, and when they are captured, a symbol of the lecher [lecher, debauched one].88 shalakh [bird of prey] is heiron [heron] that draws out [sholeh] fish from the sea. yanshuf [unclean bird] is ¸coete [owl] and it cries out [s. o‘eqet] at night. qa’at [pelican] is erondelle [swallow] because it vomits [qa’ah] and despises her companions.

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17 rah. am [vulture] is rossignol [nightingale] because it is created to sing,89 to comfort, and to have mercy [li-rh. om] on [God’s] creatures. h. asidah is ¸cog(o)ine [stork], 18 who does acts of kindness [h. asidut] with her friendship. The anafah [heron] is huhn [hen] and it is called bad-tempered, so that all 19 the fowl hate her. dukhifat [hoopoe], herupe, this is the undomesticated tarngol (cock)90 20 [and is so called] because his crest is bent [kefufah]. ‘atalef [bat] is the bird who is wrapped [me‘ulaf] in its wings.) Although this text begins as a simple glossary, with French equivalents proposed for Hebrew words, the author seems most concerned with the semantic explanations that follow. These purportedly govern the associations between Hebrew and French words, which are driven by paronomasia, or phonetic similarities between words. For example, Hebrew ‘ozniyyah is glossed as Old French grifon, a kind of bird of prey but also a mythological creature that is both beast and bird. Playing on the first syllable of ‘ozniyyah, the glossator writes that the grifon has the strength (Heb. ‘oz) of both a beast and a bird (ll. 8–9). The ra’ah sees (3sg present ro’eh) very well (ll. 9–10), and is glossed escofle (‘‘kite’’). The bird called ayyah in Hebrew is said to be scattered over the islands and coastlands (iyyim) of the sea (l. 10); ayyah and iyyim share the consonants aleph and yod. The dayyah, glossed as ‘‘cormorant,’’ says that the world is enough (day) for her (ll. 10–11). The bird called tah.mas (‘‘buzzard’’) in Hebrew does violence (h.amas) in her friendship (l. 13). Rah.am (vulture) is rossignol (nightingale) because it is has mercy on God’s creatures (lirh.om ‘al haberiot), a common rabbinic phrase (l. 17).91 The dukhifat (hoopoe) has a crest that is bent (kefufah) (ll. 19–20). The h.asidah does kindness (h.asidut) with her friendship (ll. 17–18). In all of these instances, the name of the bird is phonetically similar to a word used in its description. In some instances, the correspondence between consonants in the name of the bird and a word in its description is not exact. The nes., or falcon, which the author links to the biblical Hebrew word for plumage (nos.ato, ‘‘its plumage’’; we need not point out that all of the birds in the text have feathers), is placed in a cage on the sail (nes) (ll. 11–12). Though the final consonants of nes. and nes are different (tsade versus samekh), they were both pronounced /s/ by thirteenth-century French-speaking Jews. (Originally, tsade represented /ts/ in Hebraico-French texts. However, in the thirteenth century, /ts/ simplified to /s/ in Old French, and because the Jews’ pronuncia-

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tion of Hebrew letters was influenced by their pronunciation of French, tsade came to have the phonetic value /s/.)92 The shalakh (‘‘bird of prey’’) draws out fish from the sea (l. 15), with its name phonetically similar to the verb sholeh (draws out). The qa’at (‘‘pelican’’) vomits (qa’ah) and detests or despises her companions (l. 16). The ‘atalef (‘‘bat,’’ but translated in this text as pie, ‘‘sparrow’’) is the bird who is wrapped (me‘ulaf ) in its wings (l. 20). Of (‘‘egg’’) is a creative way of dealing with the Hebrew word bat (‘‘daughter’’), which precedes ha-ya‘anah (‘‘ostrich’’), and the Hebrew word for egg, bes.ah, is phonetically similar to bat (‘‘daughter’’), especially considering the simplification of /ts/ to /s/ in thirteenth-century Old French noted above and the Ashkenazi pronunciation of tav, the last letter of bat, as /s/. That the name of a being expresses its essence is a common assumption in the Bible. The first adam (‘‘man’’), whose name was also Adam, was made from the earth, adamah in Hebrew (Gen. 2:7). H . avah (Eve) means ‘‘life’’ (Gen. 3:20). Examples like these abound. Consider, for example, Gen. 5:29 on Noah (Noah.), related to yenah.menu (‘‘he will comfort us’’), 17:5 on the renaming of Abraham, the father of a multitude of nations (av-hamon goyim), 25:25 on Esau, the hairy infant whose name shares two consonants with se‘ar (‘‘hair’’), and 25:26 on Jacob (Ya‘aqov), whose name is related to ‘aqev (‘‘heel’’), because in birth, and in a sense, later life, Jacob advanced by grabbing on to his brother’s heel. Interpretations based on paronomasia are common in midrash,93 and even the peshat scholars who rejected midrashic readings exploit it to various extents.94 Christian scholars do, too, and some, like Isidore of Seville, do so systematically. In the twelfth century, as Mariken Teeuwen states, etymologia, which traditionally had been concerned with the origins of words, ‘‘became the discipline of the interpretation of words (explicatio or expositio) based on the similarities between the sounds of a word, its syllables or letters (litteratum similitudo) and its (deeper) meaning (proprietas rei).’’95 With the exception of French ¸cuete (‘‘owl’’), which our author relates to the Hebrew verb .so‘eqet, the French glosses in our text are not phonetically similar to the Hebrew words they explain, nor to the Hebrew words associated with the birds’ attributes. Instead, the Hebrew name of the bird is associated with particular attributes, whether actual or mythical, and these attributes lead to the association between the biblical bird and one that inhabits the medieval world. While many of the birds mentioned in the text are mentioned by Isidore or Hugh of Fouilloy (in his twelfth-century Aviarium) or appear in medieval bestiaries, their purported natural and mythical traits,

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taken all together, do not seem to come from any identifiable source. Moreover, the bestiaries aim to teach moral or religious lessons through their descriptions of birds, animals, and other elements of the natural world, but our text seeks especially to identify. The thirteenth century, during which our text was copied, was ‘‘the great period of the medieval encyclopedia’’96 in both Christian and Jewish culture. In Christian culture, many encyclopedias were written by churchmen (Bartholomeus Anglicus, for example, was a Franciscan, and Thomas of Cantimpre´ and Vincent de Beauvais were both Dominicans) and were intended for use by preachers. Over the years, many scholars have demonstrated that Jews were influenced by Christian culture, whether in their literary and artistic production, religious thinking, or even rituals and way of life.97 The glosses offered by the author of the glossary of bird names in Cod. Parm. 2342 and the way in which they are expressed, with accompanying etymological explanations, may reflect the influence on Jewish scholars of medieval Christian encyclopedia culture.

Reading Publics and the Jewish and Christian Old French Textual Traditions At the beginning of this chapter we noted a number of similarities between Christian and Jewish circles with respect to the Hebraico-French and early Old French textual traditions. Of the five earliest Old French texts (ninth to tenth centuries), four are of a religious nature. All were probably read or sung aloud; the Oaths of Strasbourg may instead be an after-the-fact recording of an oral performance. The vocabulary, orthography, and manuscript context of all the early Old French texts underscore the close relationship between literature in Latin and the written use of the vernacular during the ninth to eleventh centuries. These observations are generally true of the HebraicoFrench textual tradition as a whole, even though surviving texts date from a significantly later period, from the eleventh to the fifteenth centuries. Furthermore, vernacular glosses preceded vernacular texts in both traditions. Why do we find such similarities? That both early Old French texts and Hebraico-French texts tend to be of a religious nature is not surprising. Literacy and religion went hand in hand in both Jewish and Christian culture. Nor is it surprising that early Old French texts and Hebraico-French texts are both tied to oral performance. After all, a vernacular language is by defi-

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nition a spoken tongue. Ties between vernacular literature and oral performance were not limited to the early period, although that link weakened as vernacular literature intended for silent, individual reading was written and distributed. Many or most medieval manuscript texts, whether written in the vernaculars or in Latin, were realized—murmured, chanted, sung, pronounced, or read aloud—by voices.98 What is striking is that in the thirteenth to fifteenth centuries, immersed in a Christian society that was producing not only religious texts and texts intended for oral performance but also worldly poetry and prose works in the vernacular, intended for distribution and for reading in small groups or by individuals (for example, the Prose Lancelot and Villehardouin’s and Robert de Clari’s accounts of the Fourth Crusade),99 Jewish communities in France appear not to have done the same. We cannot know for certain, however, given the number of medieval manuscripts that have not survived to our day. As Erich Auerbach has argued, literary developments in the thirteenth century, and particularly the rise of vernacular prose, indicate that an Old French reading public had come into being. In contrast, I propose, the types of Hebraico-French literary texts that survive today suggest that there was never a Hebraico-French reading public. Existing Hebraico-French literary works are exclusively poetic, and the most accomplished ones, it seems clear, were intended for performance, whether recital or singing. Other HebraicoFrench poems are informal and personal, also not intended for distribution to a reading public. One is a colophon in a Hebrew-French glossary, dated 5039 in the Jewish calendar (1279 c.e.). It was copied in the town of Delsberg, now Delemont, in the Swiss Jura.

Celi qui a e´crit cete lic¸on: Vivant de Belley e´te´ son non: Qui a la filye Dan Salmon [———]: A la cleir[e] fac¸on. (The one who wrote this manual, Vivant de Bellay was his name.

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He has [as wife] the daughter of Don Solomon Who is fair of face.)100 This personal poem would make no sense were it to be copied and distributed apart from its manuscript; it was clearly not intended for widespread consumption.101 (As an aside, I do not believe this poem was ever finished. The scribe, Vivant de Bellay, punctuated each line with two dots arranged vertically. In lines 1, 2, and 4, the dots come immediately after the last word. But in line 3, he left a large space between the name Salmon and the punctuation, enough space to insert an additional word there, such as espouse´, ‘‘wed.’’ We might speculate that Vivant had not yet married the daughter of Don Solomon and planned to complete the poem when he did.) Someone scrawled the following verses in a beautifully executed prayer book manuscript from the same library.102

Alo[n]s nos colcher car je tant mengai

e bui come a corage,

Je su[i] ivre come un[e] sope

Je a escole trovai ma cope.

Alo[n]s cotsier car nos avons cru, mei e vou. (Let us go to bed because I have eaten so much, and drunk as if to my heart’s content; I am as drunk as a piece of bread soaked in wine—I found my cup at school. Let us go to bed because we believed, you and I.) Whether composed on the fly by a reader of the manuscript or written down from memory, its situation in the margins of a wholly incongruous matrix text—a prayer book—indicates that as presented here, the text was not intended for distribution.

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It is important to qualify what I said above about a lack of a reading public for Old French texts written in Hebrew letters. Some HebraicoFrench texts seem to have been intended for private study, most famous among them a lengthy tractate on fever.103 But this manuscript’s uniqueness is precisely what has made it famous: no other book-length Hebraico-French text in either poetry or prose exists. The Hebrew-French glossaries, while long and containing a heavy French component, cannot be said to have been intended for reading in the same way. A priori, we might have expected Jews to have begun writing in the vernacular earlier than Christians, and a Hebraico-French literary public to have come into being earlier than a secular or Christian French one because Hebrew and French come from different language families, whereas French is descended from Latin, the primary written language in that society before the advent of vernacular French texts. Until the Carolingian educational reforms around the turn of the ninth century, which included the imposition of an archaizing pronunciation of Latin, it is probable that some Latin texts (such as the New Testament), when read aloud according to the custom of the region, were intelligible to those who spoke Romance,104 and this is considered a major reason why an Old French literary tradition did not begin earlier. Roger Wright offers the example of the Latin words virgen, virginem, virgine, and virgini, which a literate French speaker during the seventh century might have pronounced [vjεɾdə] or [viɾdə], with the inflectional endings not distinguished in pronunciation. This situation is paralleled in modern French, where chante, chantes, and chantent are pronounced alike despite the survival of different inflectional morphemes in the spelling, to use Wright’s own example. In contrast, no amount of phonetic acrobatics can make Hebrew intelligible to a monolingual speaker of French. Wright has hypothesized that the ninth-century reform of Latin pronunciation, which made spoken Latin incomprehensible to the Romancespeaking masses, stimulated the birth of Old French writing. This is supported by two sets of evidence. First, vernacular writing developed earlier in Germanic-speaking than in Romance-speaking lands.105 Second, the centers of Latinity in Romance territory first hit by the reforms were also the first to produce vernacular texts. The Sequence of Saint Eulalia (c. 880–82) was probably written at or near the abbey of St. Amand, one of the main centers of scholarship at the time, in Wright’s words, ‘‘a centre of expert Latinity.’’ Only a few years before, in 798 and 799, St. Amand had hosted Alcuin, author of De Orthographia, and Wright considers it ‘‘inconceivable’’ that its

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school might have taught anything but the reformed pronunciation of Latin.106 It is probably no accident that the Jonah text is also from St. Amand. Another center, Fleury on the Loire, known to have promoted a pronunciation of Latin very close to Alcuin’s own, was home to manuscripts of three of the earliest Romance compositions, in Occitan, Boecis (eleventh century), the Chanson de Sainte Foi d’Agen (perhaps 1060–80), and a two-line refrain written down as early as 1000. Coincidence? Unlikely.107 Hebraico-French texts do not seem to predate the earliest Christianauthored texts in Old French, despite the vast structural and lexical differences between Hebrew and Romance. The eleventh-century glosses of Rashi, though early, are still later than the earliest Old French texts written by Christians. Not until the tumultuous thirteenth century does HebraicoFrench literature seem to gain momentum, with the appearance of HebraicoFrench literary texts. We must take care in how we interpret the existing data, because the proportion of medieval manuscripts that survived to modern times is so small. One estimate offered by Colette Sirat is that out of perhaps one million Hebrew manuscript books (which, she acknowledges, is itself a conservative estimate), approximately 45,000 to 50,000 survive.108 Nonetheless, let us assume for the present that Old French literature indeed developed more slowly among Jews than among Christians, as textual evidence seems to suggest. If the incomprehensibility of Latin when spoken or sung aloud after implementation of the Carolingian reforms stimulated the development of Old French literature among Gentiles, and the differences between Latin and the Germanic tongues helped jump-start the development of Old English and Old High German literature even earlier, why not Old French literature among Jews? Tradition, education, prestige, and practicality all tilted the balances in favor of Hebrew. But Latin had these, too. What was different about medieval Christian and Jewish societies that might explain why Jews seem to have begun recording vernacular literature so much later than Christians? Part of the answer may lie in conditions, beyond the implementation of the Carolingian reforms, that facilitated the development of an Old French literary tradition but that were absent from the Jewish Hebrew experience. The Old French literary tradition did not spring out of nothing. The Latin style of early medieval writers like Caesarius of Arles (d. 542), Gregory the Great (pope 590–604), and Gregory of Tours (d. 594) already tended toward the vernacular, to different degrees, and intentionally so: the Romance tint of their Latin, including a Romance-like syntax, helped make it

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more intelligible to less scholarly readers.109 Reading Latin aloud with a Romance pronunciation prior to the implementation of the Carolingian reforms, and even to a certain extent afterward, helped the masses understand Latin, as did the tradition of sermo humilis (‘‘humble speech’’ or ‘‘low or lowly style’’), which deliberately strayed from classical Latin rhetoric and style and incorporated elements from spoken language.110 The Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, written in the third century and intended for a broad audience, is written in a Latin that Erich Auerbach calls ‘‘unliterary, naı¨ve, almost childlike.’’111 Yet the text is riveting, moving, inspiring. Augustine recommended a simple style for instruction and commentary.112 A simple style even characterized the Christian scriptures.113 Later, the same tradition can be said to have helped stimulate the creation of didactic or otherwise edifying religious compositions in Old French. Just as the Church in older times saw a place for a lowly Latin style, later on, when French was recognized as a language in its own right and not simply a variety of Latin, the clergy recognized the value of vernacular texts of a certain sort, such as miracle stories. There could be no such thing as a gradual vernacularization of Hebrew into French, and beyond the insertion of vernacular glosses, Hebrew texts could not be given a Romance tint so as to make them more easily understood by French speakers. Medieval Jews writing in Hebrew sometimes applied the grammatical rules of their Romance vernaculars unconsciously and sometimes perhaps even consciously (see discussion in the introduction) or inserted vernacular glosses, often for technical terms, but this did not make the texts intelligible to readers who did not already know Hebrew. The creation of an exclusively Jewish vernacular literary tradition in Hebrew letters possibly seemed less urgent, in part because Hebrew literacy seems to have been more widespread among medieval Jews than Latin literacy among medieval Christians, even if it is difficult to quantify this difference.114 Both Judaism and Christianity are considered text-based religions, but Jewish practice, with its emphasis on adherence to Jewish law, demanded a much more thorough knowledge of religious texts among the laity than medieval Christianity did. Jews also had access to Christian-authored texts in French. By the thirteenth century, when the earliest surviving Hebraico-French poetic texts were copied, Old French literature already had a growing literary public, and it included Jews. A certain Rabbi Judah frowned on the practice of reading war stories in French, probably chansons de geste or romans, on the Sabbath,115 just as some Christian clergy members complained that their flock followed

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the exploits of Roland and Olivier more avidly than the story of Christ.116 Rashbam refers to the jongleurs, calling them meshorerim, in his comments on Song of Songs 3:5.117 Allusions in a Hebrew-French wedding song suggest that its composer was familiar with the Roman de la Rose,118 and the Hebraico-French Troyes elegy contains a reference to the dance known as the carole and, as I have argued elsewhere, alludes to the Chanson de Roland.119 The availability of vernacular texts, even if they were written in the Latin alphabet and grounded in the Christian tradition, may have reduced the Jews’ desire or need to record vernacular texts in the Hebrew alphabet. This is speculation; we cannot make conclusions based on negative evidence. The tardiness of medieval Jewish forays into vernacular literature—we might wonder whether in some cases it was actual resistance—is parallel in some ways to the late adoption of the codex by Jews in earlier times. In both cases, we are dealing with what David Stern has called ‘‘the emergence of a new type of literary space in Jewish literature,’’ of which Hebraico-French texts are certainly an example. Stern writes: As many have noted, the adoption of the codex by the Jews as late as the seventh or eighth centuries [sic] is astonishing because nearly everyone else in the Late Antique Greco-Roman and Mediterranean worlds seem [sic] to have accepted the codex as the normative book-form by the fourth century. Exactly why the Jews resisted the codex for so long is unclear. Part of the reason probably had to do with the innate conservatism of rabbinic Judaism; their resistance may also have stemmed in part from a desire to differentiate themselves and their sacred scripture from the Christians and their Old and New Testaments.120 The general lines of this explanation may fit the medieval French Jewish context as well. The Jews of medieval France were conservative in a way that much of medieval culture was. Peter Haidu has described medieval literature as ‘‘a literature of convention, of re-cognizable forms, in which difference is disguised by the forms of sameness.’’ He continues: ‘‘It looks like a literature of overt submission to rule, the rule of audience, the rule of patronage, the submission to the reign of the same.’’121 In northern French Jewish culture, writing in Hebrew was the convention, and the Hebrew-language textual tradition was part of Jewish identity. But the Jews’ religiously defined, textbased communities were immersed in a particular linguistic environment that they called home and that produced oral and written literature that they

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enjoyed and appropriated. It may be no accident that a Hebraico-French literary tradition (I refer here to the emergence of poetry in Old French) seems to have begun to take shape during the thirteenth century, when specific episodes like the burning of thirteen innocents in Troyes and a general climate of persecution challenged the Jews’ place in France like never before, culminating in the great expulsion of 1306. Asserting the French aspects of their identity took on a new but futile urgency, and one way they did this was to compose French-language poetry like the Troyes elegy and the wedding songs explored in the next chapter.122 Steven Fraade has described bilingual texts that alternate between Hebrew and Aramaic as being, in a sense, ‘‘written in two colors, or two scripts, so as to distinguish its layered voices.’’123 While the color of the ink and the script used for writing Hebrew and French in our manuscripts is the same, the French portions stand out because they often make greater use of pointing and because letters occur with different frequencies in different positions. Fraade has also discussed generalizations one might make about differences in function between Hebrew and Aramaic in certain texts. Hebrew is generally the language of teaching, be it in the form of a baraita or a saying of an amoraic sage, or even of an amora of the later generations, while Aramaic is the language of debate, question and answer, as well as the editorial connecting and framing structures. . . . Similarly, texts of aggadah, whether talmudic or midrashic, often switch languages as they shift from a story frame to its contained dialogue, sometimes with the frame being in Aramaic, sometimes in Hebrew, depending on the text.124 In the manuscripts whose Hebrew-French texts we have examined here, French appears much less frequently than either Hebrew or Aramaic in the texts referred to by Fraade. But we can make limited observations about the functions of language shifting. French, as the vernacular tongue, is understandably often associated with spoken language, seen above in the magical texts, words from the ceremony of h.alis.ah, and the excerpt from the Hebrew Alexander romance. It is also used for defining Hebrew terms (in many texts, Hebrew is used for this purpose as well) or naming things with no obvious equivalent in Hebrew. The use of French for glossing ancient texts like the Bible sometimes had the result of presenting the biblical text through the lens of vernacular culture: objects, clothing, birds, and animals that were

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surely different from those of the medieval world were nonetheless given medieval French names, leading Jews to see the Bible through vernacular eyes. We can hear the vernacular voices of medieval Jewish communities only, as it were, by reconstructing them from texts. Bilingual texts, ‘‘texts of two colors,’’ allow us a partial glimpse of the interplay of Hebrew and French in the scholarly, religious, legal, and other contexts where both were used. The spoken language literally seeps through the cracks, as glosses, in the margins, and on blank folios. Like the radical vernacular of Proto-Romance graffiti on Roman walls, they serve as reminders that voices in this culture generally spoke in a language different from the one most often recorded in texts. A comparison of Jewish texts in Old French, including the bilingual texts examined here, with early Old French texts from Christian circles led me to propose that a medieval Jewish literary tradition in French never fully came into being and that Old French texts in Hebrew letters remained bound to their Hebrew context. To say that there was never a full-blown Old French literary tradition in Hebrew letters is not to say that there were no literary texts, and in the next chapter we will examine two Hebrew-French songs that were sung during Jewish wedding festivities.

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chapter 4

Hebrew-French Wedding Songs Expressions of Identity

The historian Gabrielle Spiegel has written, ‘‘All texts, to the degree that they formed part of the oral culture of lay society or entered into it by being read aloud, enjoyed a public, collective status as vehicles through which the community reaffirmed its sense of historical identity.’’1 This is perhaps especially true of texts that were transmitted orally as part of public rituals. Rituals and customs, such as the recitation of the sheva‘ berakhot (seven benedictions) during the Jewish marriage ceremony or the performance of specific qinot (elegies) to mark sorrowful anniversaries, often have their origin in a community’s shared past. Through them, community members honor and recall that shared past, all the while reaffirming and making visible shared values, beliefs, and attitudes.2 Though merry and humorous, two bilingual Hebrew-French wedding songs beginning El giv‘at ha-levonah notre h.atan eit ariveiz (To the hill of frankincense our bridegroom has come) and ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie (Arise, come toward me, beautiful one, noble and worthy bride) were the products of Jewish communities living through the crises and changes of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Customarily performed during the festivities following Jewish weddings, in the presence of men and women, young and old, they can be studied much like other rituals and customs for insights into the values, beliefs, and attitudes held by the communities that performed them. Partially in French, they may also provide clues regarding the communities’ perceived vernacular historical identity. This chapter is structured as follows. After describing the two songs and

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their manuscript context, focusing on what that might reveal about the milieu in which they were performed or preserved and about the performances themselves, I then turn to questions like the following: What influences, Jewish and non-Jewish, are discernible in the songs’ language and structure? How do the songs use Hebrew and French to express and define their relationship to larger, linguistically or religiously defined communities? How did the songs’ historical contexts influence the meaning they held for the Jews who performed them or heard them performed?

The Texts The earlier of the two Hebrew-French wedding songs, El giv‘at ha-levonah (To the hill of frankincense), is preserved in the copy of the Mah.zor Vitry now owned by the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.3 (See Figure 3.) The Mah.zor Vitry, which exists in multiple manuscripts, is a compilation of prayers and liturgical rules begun by Simchah of Vitry (d. before 1105), a student of Rashi.4 According to Israel Ta-Shma, it was put into writing for the first time at the end of the first third of the twelfth century, apparently in Vitry, in Champagne.5 The scribe of the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript was Eleazar bar Samuel, and a marginal note suggests he may have been working on it in Jewish year 4964 (1203–4).6 D. S. Blondheim believed that the wedding song, part of a larger section devoted to the wedding ritual, was added to the manuscript by a later hand. It seems, in fact, to be written in two different hands, each with its own color of ink—one brown, one nearly black.7 Blondheim’s hypothesis that the song represents a later addition to the manuscript may explain why it has not been found in any other version of the Mah.zor Vitry, even though, as Daniel Goldschmidt has noted, the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript may be closest to the original version.8 Most versions of the Mah.zor Vitry, including this one, were redacted in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries and contain additions that are not old or original to Simchah.9 The Mah.zor Vitry contains indications besides the wedding song that in medieval northern French Jewish culture, Hebrew and Jewish elements coexisted with non-Jewish ones and were sometimes inseparable from them. Though written almost entirely in Hebrew, the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript also contains many Old French glosses, as do some other manuscripts of the Mah.zor Vitry and many manuscripts of French-rite prayer

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Figure 3. Hebrew-French wedding song. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America MS 8092, fol. 160v. Image provided by the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Published courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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books more generally.10 The manuscript is decorated with numerous pen drawings, including a fleur de lis, knights on horseback, a musician, and a peafowl feeding its chick (Figures 4–6), signs of the Jews’ immersion in the surrounding non-Jewish culture. (‘‘Fleur de lis’’ is even attested as a Jewish woman’s name in medieval Ashkenaz.)11 Other illustrations, including the name of the scribe, Eleazar bar Samuel, followed by the words h.azaq wenith.azzaq (be strong, and let us be courageous) from 2 Sam. 10:12, in micrography (Figure 6), are tied to the manuscript’s Jewish origin. Executed in silhouette and accompanying a catchword, the fleur de lis, with its characteristic three petals, is particularly significant from the standpoint of identity.12 It seems likely that the artist was either the Jewish scribe or one of the Jewish users of the manuscript; the drawings in the manuscript do not appear to have been commissioned from a professional artist, whether Christian or Jewish. Although the religious symbolism of the fleur de lis began to develop in the late thirteenth century, the emblem itself already appeared on the king’s banner during Philip Augustus’s reign and may have been used even before 1180 during the reign of Louis VII. And although fleurs

Figure 4. Fleur de lis. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America MS 8092, fol. 52v (detail). Image provided by the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Published courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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Figure 5. Knight on horse. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America MS 8092, fol. 76v (detail). Image provided by the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Published courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

de lis had a robust existence apart from the Capetian dynasty during the thirteenth century (William Hinkle writes, ‘‘they not only appeared in a variety of heraldic colors on the escutcheons of the nobility and on the borders of the royal Scottish coat of arms, but also on the seals of the Norman peasantry, and they were likewise chosen as the insignia of towns and cities, notably Florence and Lille’’), they were considered first and foremost the sign of the king of France.13 The drawing of the fleur de lis thus embodies the consciousness of medieval French-speaking Jews that they belonged to a French linguistic and cultural community as well as a Jewish religious one. The second wedding song, ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, occurs toward the end of its manuscript (ms. Heid. 51) in a section of piyyutim, including some for the end of Sabbath.14 (See Figure 7.) Jewish weddings in eastern France and the Rhineland often began on Friday and concluded on Saturday night, which explains the presence of a wedding song in such a context.15 The song is followed by the piyyut Mas.or ba’tah ha-‘ir (The city came under siege) by Menahem bar Jacob bar Solomon (see discussion below), calendrical calculations, and a blessing for the new moon.16 It is signed in acrostic ‘‘Moses’’ (stanzas 2–4), with subsequent stanzas beginning with the words yedidi (‘‘my beloved’’) and h.azaq (‘‘be strong!’’). Taking into consideration the initial qof

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Figure 6. The name of the scribe, Eleazar bar Samuel, in micrography above various drawings. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America MS 8092, fol. 139r. Image provided by the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Published courtesy of the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary.

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Figure 7. Hebrew-French wedding song. Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, Ms. Heid. 51, fol. 212v–213r. Image provided by the Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich. Published courtesy of the Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich.

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of stanza 6, Joseph Prijs, in his catalogue of Hebrew manuscripts in the Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, suggests that the poet may have been called Moses Yedid Q[atan]. Given the common linkage of the epithet Yedid with Moses, another possibility is that the poet Moses simply added Yedid to his name in piyyutim, making Moses Yedid a pen name of sorts.17 The manuscript containing ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah is a miscellany containing, inter alia, excerpts from works by or attributed to Meir ben Baruch of Rothenberg, Nachshon Gaon, Jacob Weil, Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil, Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, and Abraham ben David of Posquie`res, as well as an excerpt from the Sefer H . asidim (Book of the pious). Dates and information on the calendar appear throughout the manuscript. We also find prayers and piyyutim by figures such as Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol, Isaac Nakdan, Judah Al-H . arizi, and Jacob Tam, legal prescriptions, incantations, and remedies for illness. These other texts all precede the section of hymns in the manuscript, permitting us to wonder whether the binder deliberately placed the section of hymns containing the wedding song last, and if so, whether it crossed his mind that in so doing, he ensured that the vernacular text would follow the Hebrew prose works in the preceding sections. The manuscript appears to be composed of two or three parts. Prijs discerned the hands of two main scribes among the several hands represented in the manuscript.18 The main part of the manuscript was written in 1439, but the beginning and end are undated. According to Benjamin Richler, whom I consulted about the manuscript and who was able to examine the microfilm held in the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, ‘‘these undated parts seem to be a sort of scrapbook or notebook in which entries were entered from time to time and not copied during one short period.’’ On folio 159v someone noted that a gezerah (persecution) took place in Breisach, on the Rhine near Alsace, in 1380, but information on this gezerah has proven elusive. Could the date written in the manuscript be miscopied from —1349? Sources mention a persecution that took place in Breisach in 1349, during the period of the Black Death,19 and on folio 160r we find calculations of the number of weeks between Christmas and Shrove Tuesday containing references to the years 1348–49. On folio 168r, beneath a calendar and in the same hand as the calendar, someone noted that the year was then 5162 (1401–2). Immediately following the section of hymns for Saturday night are calendrical calculations on the mean conjunction of sun and moon, or molad, of the month of Tishri,

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beginning with Jewish year 5171 (1410–11). The wedding song, however, is in a different hand. From various details, Prijs suggests that the largest portion of the manuscript was written between 1402 and 1439, and although I have not been able to date the wedding song more precisely than this, it seems likely that it was copied before the aforementioned calculations for the molad, and thus in the early fifteenth century or late fourteenth. The presence of German or Yiddish in the manuscript suggests that the wedding song was copied in a German-speaking environment, perhaps by a northern French refugee or the descendant of one. At the top of fol. 154, a marginal note explains, ‘‘Nisan is Merz, Nisan is marz, leshon ashkenaz [German] Merz,’’20 with marz possibly Old French mars. On fol. 172, the scribe lists the Hebrew months, then the signs of the zodiac in Hebrew, and then the months in Middle High German. A note above the third column explains, ‘‘These are the months in leshon ashkenaz.’’ The scribe goes on to list their names as he knew them: januar, hornu[n]c, meirtze, abril, meie, broekht, ho¨umonat, augeste, volemonat, heirvest, wi[n]tremonat, leistmonat.21 On fol. 200v there is a short text in Yiddish or German in Hebrew letters. The manuscript also contains dates in French according to the Christian calendar and scattered glosses in French and German or Yiddish. The vernacular portions of the manuscript are written in the Hebrew alphabet.

Public Ritual and Collective Identity The earlier of the two Hebrew-French wedding songs, El giv‘at ha-levonah (thirteenth century), was copied immediately following a paragraph that describes the recitation of the seven benedictions over wine and ends with a reference to the song Yismah. he-h.atan ba-kallah (‘‘The groom will rejoice in the bride’’), said to have been performed after the wedding ceremony and the completion of the Saturday evening service.22 A similar paragraph appears in Hurwitz’s printed edition of the Mah.zor Vitry, ending with the additional detail that after the afternoon and evening services, the bride and bridegroom were made to sit on chairs (qathedra’ot) facing each other, while men young and old together (bah.urim u-zeqenim yah.daw) danced around them, playing music skillfully and singing joyful songs.23 It seems likely that both Hebrew-French wedding songs were performed under similar circumstances, and so, while they survive as texts on a page, they once belonged to a community’s oral culture.

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The conception of the wedding songs as accompaniments to dances performed in honor of the bride and bridegroom is supported by the closing words of El giv‘at ha-levonah: ‘‘Raise the bridegroom and the bride upon the throne!’’ (Le h.atan e la kallah an la cheire sus leveiz!).24 It seems from this that at song’s end, the bride and groom were placed on a special chair or ‘‘throne’’ that reflected the special, almost royal status enjoyed by bride and groom on their wedding day.25 Where were the women when these songs were being performed? The words describing the dancers in the Mah.zor Vitry, ‘‘men young and old together,’’ seem to paint the dancing as a gendered activity. However, this phrase comes from Jer. 31:13 and possibly gives only a partial idea of who took part in the dancing: ‘‘Then shall maidens dance gaily, young men and old alike. I will turn their mourning to joy, I will comfort them and cheer them in their grief.’’26 The verse from Jeremiah does mention maidens; furthermore, if the bride were indeed seated at the center of the merrymakers, modesty would have required other women to be present, whether they joined in the dance or not. The wedding songs performed were thus public rituals in which diverse members of the society participated. Like other such rituals, they reflect certain elements of a shared, collective identity, aspects that may be less easily discerned from other sorts of texts, particularly those aimed at a narrower audience. The authors of the Hebrew-French wedding songs were themselves highly literate, as seen by their skillful deployment of allusions to the Bible and other Jewish texts, which are explored in published research on El giv‘at ha-levonah and in Appendix 2 for ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah. They may even have belonged to the upper echelons of scholarly society or perhaps what Ephraim Kanarfogel has called a ‘‘second-tier elite.’’27 But the wedding songs, like other Hebraico-French texts such as the Troyes elegy, can be read for insights into values and attitudes shared by all members of the community, educated and uneducated alike. Sociolinguistic research has demonstrated that various aspects of spoken and written discourse, often subsumed under the term ‘‘style,’’ are strongly influenced by audience.28 Sociolinguists have also explored the relationship between style and identity, with Robert Le Page calling utterances ‘‘act[s] of identity towards an audience.’’29 The HebrewFrench wedding songs might also be considered acts of identity toward a particular audience: the Jewish men, women, and children who participated in their performance or were present at it. The public, collective nature of the wedding songs’ performance is un-

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derscored by communal aspects of Jewish marriage in the late Middle Ages. Although the ceremony directly united two people and was to some extent an individual affair,30 the marriage affected a wider circle. The heads of the bride and bridegroom’s families generally played a greater role in making the match than the bride and bridegroom themselves; other members of the community, such as the rabbi or professional matchmaker, frequently also participated in the matchmaking and profited from it.31 Wealth, in the form of pledges, dowries, and gifts, changed hands between the parties.32 A community found itself increased by one family unit. In the later Middle Ages, the celebration of the Jewish marriage ceremony took place increasingly in community spaces, the marriage hall or synagogue, a move associated with sacralization of marriage.33 Even if both wedding songs were public, collective performances, not all members of the audience apprehended their meaning fully or in the same way.34 In El giv‘at ha-levonah, as I have argued elsewhere, explicitly sexual humor is especially concentrated in the Hebrew lines, fully accessible only to those who had learned Hebrew well enough to understand their vocabulary and syntax and even to recognize their biblical source. Some of the lines from El giv‘at ha-levonah also occur in the Hebrew ‘‘Piyyut for when the bridegroom sleeps with the bride,’’ and Samuel N. Rosenberg wonders if they belonged to ‘‘a traditional stock of phrases that composers of off-color poems could dip into at will.’’35 We might imagine older boys teaching them to younger boys, thus perpetuating a tradition of humor that has women and sex as its main objects and Jewish men as its main audience. Scholars Eugene Vance and Tova Rosen have compared particular medieval French and Hebrew texts to extended sexual jokes, developing ideas put forward by Freud in ‘‘Jokes and their relation to the unconscious.’’36 Vance writes that although society censors ‘‘the telling of raw sexual jokes,’’ even in exclusively male company, ‘‘pleasure can be obtained when the resources of verbal wit are brought into play.’’37 In the case of the wedding songs, these ‘‘resources of verbal wit’’ are of at least two kinds. One is the Hebrew language itself. Another is euphemisms that allow the author to describe marital sex—something the Jewish tradition looks upon very favorably—without mentioning it directly. ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, while similar in many respects to El giv‘at ha-levonah, differs from it in distributing sexual innuendo more evenly between the French and Hebrew lines. Even so, full appreciation of the song requires proficiency in both languages, as well as familiarity with the Bible and other Jewish texts.38

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A narrated joke’s success is usually measured by the amount of laughter it produces in the audience. I believe that like a successful joke, the wedding songs also generated laughter, and that the more intense the laughter, the more satisfying the songs were to perform. However, because decoding the songs’ allusions requires such a high level of Hebrew knowledge, knowledge that has to be deployed on the fly unless one has been previously exposed to the songs (which might often have been the case), the use of Hebrew potentially becomes a limiting factor. One can easily imagine that under certain circumstances, the humor in an exclusively Hebrew wedding song like ‘‘Piyyut for when the bridegroom sleeps with the bride’’ (fifteenth century), in which ‘‘every stanza concludes with an obscene pun on a biblical verse,’’ as Dan Pagis observes,39 could fall flat if too many members of the audience lacked the linguistic skills necessary for decoding it. The use of French in the two Hebrew-French wedding songs broadens their potential audience, as does the use of other vernaculars in bilingual or even trilingual wedding songs from other communities.40 Those proficient in Hebrew can still take pleasure in decoding the learned allusions of the Hebrew lines and delight in its exclusivity. Because sexual innuendo in El giv‘at ha-levonah is concentrated in its Hebrew lines, women were especially likely to ‘‘miss the joke,’’ to borrow words from Shoshana Felman,41 even though they must have realized it was there. In ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, however, the sexual innuendo and humor spill out into the vernacular portions. Language is not so drastic a limiting factor. Anyone sophisticated enough to seize the allusions becomes complicit in the joke, and women can laugh along with the men. Broadening the audience of the joke through the use of the vernacular adds yet another communal aspect to the songs. The wedding welcomes bride and groom into the set of married people; the bride and groom’s participation in the discourse of marital love offered by the songs brings them into the community of married people and anticipates the shared experience of physical love within the couple. Because access to Hebrew was largely gendered in this society, this is possible only because of the vernacular.

Learned and Vernacular Influence in the Wedding Songs The Hebrew-French wedding songs bring together not only two languages but also two cultures, a point emphasized by Rosenberg in his analysis of El giv‘at ha-levonah. Disentangling Jewish and non-Jewish influences in the

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songs is sometimes difficult. Devices like alliteration and rhyme are common to both the Hebrew and the French poetic traditions, as are erotic imagery and the mixing of spoken and learned languages in poetry.42 In some ways, however, it is possible to distinguish Jewish and non-Jewish influences. The overall structure of the Hebrew-French wedding songs is highly reminiscent of wedding poems from the Hebrew tradition. With their blend of praise of bride and bridegroom with erotic imagery, the Hebrew-French wedding songs straddle the divide between panegyric and epithalamium, a major feature of Jewish wedding poems in general.43 Like many other Hebrew wedding poems, the songs are essentially dialogues between a fictional bride and bridegroom and a third party or chorus.44 The bride of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah tells the bridegroom: ‘‘Don’t be shy, my gentle lord. Land that is worked bears best before frost or snow’’ (Taire qui eit laboreie porte mues enz gel o neie, stanza 7, l. 4) and ‘‘Please look at me gently and graciously, there is really nothing wrong in it!’’ (Je te pri car me chozi, dossemont e deboneire, n’i a mesaise pas a veire! stanza 5, ll. 3–4). These comments recall other medieval Hebrew wedding poems, in which the bridegroom is often bashful and in need of encouragement and even instruction on how to behave with his bride.45 Analysis of individual lines suggests that the Hebrew lines are essentially the expression of Jewish knowledge and tradition, whereas the French lines showcase vernacular cultural influences. With the exception of the words kallah (‘‘bride’’) and h.atan (‘‘groom’’), which, it is generally accepted, were borrowed into the spoken French of medieval French-speaking Jews,46 hemistichs or lines (depending on how we treat them) in the Hebrew-French wedding songs are exclusively French or Hebrew. We see this in the opening stanza of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah.

‘uri liqra’ti yafah, Arim nissi ba-mis. peh, Al tir’i, ah. oti, ni vara ton bernage,

gentis kallah einoreie! por en feire ma penseie. paseir ti covien par ci; tu lairas issi ton gage!

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(Arise, come toward me, beautiful one, noble and worthy bride! I will raise my banner on the watchtower, to accomplish what I intend. Do not be afraid, my sister, you must pass this way; your noble strength will be of no avail, you will leave your pledge here!) We might contrast this with a fourteenth- or fifteenth-century bilingual Jewish wedding song from Occitania edited by Moshe Lazar. Macaronic in a narrow sense, lines mix words in Occitan and Hebrew, the latter in italics. El zaquen s’en va a colcar al rosh hamitah. La ne‘arah lo desperta / co gran gevurah. Lo zaqen l’en deu canas. ‘‘Tu, shotah, Sˇee´r ksuth n’auras, mas no pas ‘onah!’’47 (The old man goes to lie down at the head of the bed. The maiden wakes him up with mighty vigor. The old man strikes her. ‘‘You, fool, food and clothing you will have, but not sexual satisfaction!’’) (‘‘Piyyut nae´h,’’ stanza 2) The Hebrew lines of both Hebrew-French wedding songs are frequently taken from Bible verses, a common procedure in medieval Hebrew poetry. They allude wittily to the bride and groom’s first night together, as do many Hebrew wedding poems, like the aforementioned ‘‘Piyyut for when the bridegroom sleeps with the bride.’’ The construction of sexually charged epithalamia out of pieces of canonical texts has roots in antiquity, and while the Jews appropriated this genre, they were by no means the only ones to pursue it. Ausonius (fourth century) built his Cento nuptialis, a humorous, graphic account of a wedding and its consummation, using lines and phrases from Virgil.48 A cento is itself a poem pieced together from passages from another source; in their new context, the passages take on a new meaning. This description applies equally well to the Hebrew portions of El giv‘at ha-levonah, and less so to the Hebrew lines of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, which are somewhat less likely to be direct quotes from the Bible. (We have already remarked that the Hebrew Troyes elegy is also a cento.) The virgin bride of El giv‘at ha-levonah is a fortified city whose doors (Hebrew delatayim) will yield to the bridegroom.

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yavo’ dodi le-hillah. emah la bateile ne refuze, el ‘ir delatayim ve-h. omah halte riviere, vane, eicluze, ‘al afiqah ayil yis. ma’ (Let my beloved come fight may he not refuse the battle, to a city with doors and wall high river, sluice-gate, lock, the stag is thirsty for his stream.) (stanza 2, ll. 10–14) Delatayim, a grammatical dual, denotes the virgin’s sexual portal, which until now has been closed.49 It finds parallel images in the French words of the next line: vane, eicluze (sluice-gate, lock). The thirsty stag symbolizes the groom, and the stream, the bride, since water and moisture are also associated with women and sexual relations.50 Though the associations between woman and city and a woman’s sexual portal with doors may well be universal and occur in both the medieval Hebrew and French literary traditions,51 the use of Hebrew indicates that the writer was dipping specifically into the imagery of the Jewish tradition. Compare, for example: ‘‘We have a little sister, whose breasts are not yet formed. What shall we do for our sister when she is spoken for? If she be a wall [h.omah], we will build upon it a silver battlement; if she be a door [delet], we will panel it in cedar’’ (Song of Songs 8:9; NJPS). Vayikra Rabbah describes how the women of the desert generation, when they learned that they were forbidden to their husbands, immediately locked their doors (daltotehen).52 These connotations are not lost in Moses ibn Ezra’s poem Dadei yefat to’ar layil h.avoq (Caress a lovely woman’s breast by night), where he writes of knocking on a beautiful girl’s door after a night of pleasure.

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Immerse your heart in pleasure and in joy, And by the bank a bottle drink of wine. Enjoy the swallow’s chirp and viol’s whine. Laugh, dance, and stamp your feet upon the floor! Get drunk, and knock at dawn on some girl’s door. (Translation by Raymond Scheindlin)53 She‘arim (‘‘gates’’) also evokes the ‘‘doors’’ to the virgin’s body, and when the bridegroom of El giv‘at ha-levonah declares, ‘‘Then there will be war [lah.em] in the gates’’ (l. 30), his words recalling Judg. 5:8, he is relying on another metaphor for sexual relations: war or combat. Lah.em (war) also evokes leh.em (bread), a euphemism for sexual relations found also in l. 41, ‘‘Bread eaten in secret is sweet.’’ These words come from the foolish woman of Prov. 9:17 who stands in the doorway (this detail is itself significant),54 luring passersby inside with promises of bread and ‘‘stolen water.’’ (See also Prov. 6:26.) Bread or food (leh.em) and woman are also associated in the biblical story of how Potiphar’s wife tried to seduce Joseph. Potiphar ‘‘left all that he had in Joseph’s hands and, with him there, he paid attention to nothing save the food [leh.em] that he ate’’ (Gen. 39:6). Joseph, however, seems to understand that ‘‘leh.em’’ includes or designates the wife, and he tells her, ‘‘Look, with me here, my master gives no thought to anything in this house, and all that he owns he has placed in my hands [. . .] he has withheld nothing from me except yourself, since you are his wife’’ (Gen. 39:8–9).55 In stanza 4 of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, the bride or third speaker exhorts the bridegroom to ‘‘fill up the crack in the house,’’ an idiom that appears in 2 Kings 12:6, 7, 8, 9, 13, 22:5, and Ezek. 27:9. ‘‘House’’ (bayit) is a metaphor for wife, as in the following passage from the Mishnah presented by Cynthia Baker. For seven days before the Day of Atonement they separated the high priest from his house into the counselors’ apartment, and they made ready for him another priest in his place in case there should befall him some ineligibility. Rabbi Judah says, ‘‘Also another wife they made ready for him in case his own wife were to die, as it is said, ‘and he shall atone on his own behalf and on behalf of his house’; ‘his house’—that is, his wife.’’ They said to him, ‘‘If so, there would be no end to the matter!’’56

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Separating the high priest from his ‘‘house’’ meant moving him to the counselors’ apartments but also separating him from the ‘‘house’’ that is his wife’s body. Baker also presents the following excerpt from commentary on Prov. 24:27 in the Tosefta: ‘‘Solomon said, ‘Prepare your work without’—this is a house; ‘and make it ready for yourself in the field’—this means what it says [i.e., this refers to a field]; ‘after that you build your house’—this is a wife.’’57 Again the wife is a house, and ‘‘the taking of a wife is the building of a house.’’58 That this metaphor was present to the Jews that took part in the wedding songs is indicated by a poetic text presented in the marriage section of the Mah.zor Vitry that includes the line u-vayit yivneh (‘‘and he will build a house’’).59 We must also mention the gate motif in illuminated ketubbot (marriage contracts). Even if Ashkenazi examples illuminated with gates date from a later period than our songs,60 gates and houses are already associated with Jewish marriage and family in the Bible: see Ruth 4:11–12; Prov. 14:1, 31:31—all verses commonly found in ketubbot. The last also concludes the poem Eshet H . ayil (Woman of valor; Prov. 31:10–31). Returning to ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, the bride is both the means by which the crack in the house or household (bayit refers to both) will be filled and the house itself. The groom’s household is cracked or broken, incomplete, until he marries, because procreation is a positive commandment in Judaism, and to fulfill it, he needs a partner. The woman, too, is a house, one with a breach that the groom will repair.61 The presentation of the bridegroom as a knight or warrior places the wedding songs equally within the tradition of medieval French romance. Though analogies like the one between women and fortified cities addressed above exist in both medieval Hebrew and French literature, it seems that the link between the wedding songs and the vernacular French tradition would be tenuous without the French lines. In the first stanza of El giv‘at ha-levonah, the chorus declares to the bride:

Ton chatiei fai delivreir ki be-yado h. erev yonah

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se tu ne li vais livreir nus ne t’en poreit saveir lo’ yashuv el nedanah. (Surrender your castle! for in his hand is a wine-red sword; if you are not going to turn it over to him, no one could save you from it; it will not go back in its sheath.) By the end of the song, the bridegroom finds himself inside the castle, in ‘‘the middle of the palace garden’’ (el tokh ginnat ha-bitan) no less, with all the promise such a place holds of sensual delights, abundance, and fecundity. (Similarly, the banquet in the book of Esther is held ‘‘in the court of the garden of the king’s palace,’’ ba-h.as.ar ginnat bitan ha-melekh; Esther 1:5). Though the bridegroom claims he is tired of singing, he is perhaps only thinking of more enticing pleasures that await. The penetration of the palace or castle stronghold by a warrior seeking a woman has many parallels in medieval French literature. In Marie de France’s Yonec, a beautiful, noble wife is imprisoned by her much older husband in a tower, and a lover in the shape of a bird comes to her through a narrow window (‘‘une estreite fenestre’’),62 becoming a handsome knight once inside. In Chre´tien de Troyes’ Lancelot, le chevalier a la charette, Lancelot consummates his love for Guenevere after scaling the tower in which she is held and entering it through a fortified window. The theme of the woman in the tower can also be found in the Prise d’Orange and Floire et Blancheflor, among other texts.63 The association between towers and strongholds and women’s bodies is perhaps made most explicit in the Roman de la Rose where the male pilgrim arrives at a tower, kneels down with his phallic staff between its two beautiful, slender columns, lifts aside a curtain, and devoutly kisses the holy image he finds there before thrusting his staff through the narrow opening over and over again, ultimately plucking the rose.64 It is against this textual backdrop that the penetration of the castle in El giv‘at ha-levonah must be read. There is little doubt that its poet knew of Chre´tien’s work and of the Roman de la Rose. Concrete evidence of the Roman de la Rose’s influence on the poet of El giv‘at ha-levonah might be contained both in the proverb Bia chanteir enuie (One tires of fine singing) integrated

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into the text and in the analogy between sleeping with a woman and beating down a path, both of which can be found in the Roman de la Rose.65 Rosenberg considers the Roman de la Rose ‘‘very possibly the source of inspiration for the wedding song’s organizing metaphor.’’66 Sexual violence is a major trope in medieval French literature, and it is developed in the wedding songs, most particularly ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, where the bride’s wedding night is cast in terms of ambush.67 The bridegroom says aloud what the wedding party already knows: the bride will have to pass his way; in other words, the sexual experience she is about to have is inevitable. Whether she likes it or not, she will leave her pledge—that is, her maidenhead, or the physical evidence of her lost virginity—behind.

‘uri liqra’ti yafah, Arim nissi ba-mis. peh, Al tir’i, ah. oti, ni vara ton bernage,

gentis kallah einoreie! por en feire ma penseie. paseir ti covien par ci; tu lairas issi ton gage!

(Arise, come toward me, beautiful one, noble and worthy bride! I will raise my banner on the watchtower, to accomplish what I intend. Do not be afraid, my sister, you must pass this way; your noble strength will be of no avail, you will leave your pledge here!) (stanzas 1 and 8) In stanza 4, the bridegroom follows the gentle request harh. ivi meqom oholekh, je te pri ma doss’ amie (Make wide the site of your tent, I beg you my sweet beloved) with the potentially more sinister words ve-’al tashmi‘i qolekh, car ce sereit gront folie (do not let your voice be heard, for that would be great folly). He continues by making his intentions explicit:

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Yated be-maqom ne’eman po[r] avo[i]r ton pucelage.

metrai san delaiemont S’eit por mei[n]tenir l’usage!

(I’ll put a peg in a sure place without further ado to have your maidenhead—it is to uphold custom!) Though the threat that the bride’s noble strength will not be sufficient to save her (stanzas 1, 8) and the command for her not to shout (stanza 4) both evoke rape, it is not rape—at least according to some medieval legal definitions. It is rape only if the woman does everything in her power to prevent it.68 The bride, however, will give herself willingly to the bridegroom, and her shouting is not motivated by fear. In stanza 6, she tells him that she has desired him, that he should ride—ride her, it is clear—and not stop. In Hebrew she says, ‘‘I will give my body to those who strike me’’ (gevi le-makkim etten, Isa. 50:6), and even suggests that the bridegroom resort to abduction if she should resist: ‘‘Ceisse en por tote se retien’’ (Stop and carry me off if I hold back).69 The words of the bride in stanza 7 again evoke conquest through battle and her own willingness to undergo whatever awaits her.

Yedidi s. elah. rekhav! ‘al asher to’mar eshkav.

Ja n’avras nule defonse. No[n] en sais pas en dotanss[e]!

(Ride on, my love! You will never meet any resistance. Wherever you say, I will lie down. Don’t be afraid!) As in the medieval French texts analyzed by Kathryn Gravdal, sexual violence is romanticized. Regarding Chre´tien de Troyes, Gravdal writes, ‘‘[he] deftly conflates the themes of love and force so that male domination and female submission are coded as emotionally satisfying and aesthetically pleasing. . . . [S]exual violations, now romanticized, can scarcely be recognized as violent acts.’’70 The evocation of rape in the wedding songs is even a compliment to the bride’s nobility and beauty. In Chre´tien’s works, ‘‘female victims of assault or abduction are of noble birth’’ and ‘‘rape or raptus can be troped as an aesthetic marker of and testimony to physical beauty.’’71

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The bridegroom-warrior and noble bride of the wedding songs are indeed much more akin to the heroes and maidens of Chre´tien’s works and to the lovers of the Song of Songs than to depictions of Jews found in contemporary Christian sources such as miracle stories, mysteries, and chronicles. The Jews of miracle and mystery stories are almost exclusively male, often bookish and malevolent, and defined not just by their religious difference but by their religious hatred, which is often directed toward Mary or pious Christian children.72 The bridegroom—assertive, boastful, courageous, and highly skilled—seems concerned with war and love, not religious disputes. The bride is beautiful, noble, and pure, and in the words of Tova Rosen, discussing the bride of Hebrew wedding poems, ‘‘Her sexuality is legitimized in the eyes of God and men.’’73 ‘‘Mild men or wild men?’’ Elliott Horowitz has asked in a study on Jewish violence.74 The bridegroom is decidedly not mild. One has the impression that he would be unrecognizable as a Jew to many medieval Christian scholars, who often portray Jewish men as weak, idle, cowardly, and sometimes even womanish to the point of menstruation. Around 1221, Jacques de Vitry described Jews as ‘‘unwarlike and weak even as women, and it is said that they have a flux of blood every month.’’75 In a quodlibet from the University of Paris (c. 1300), Henry the German or Henry of Brussels called Jews ‘‘melancholics,’’ and continued, ‘‘Item, they are pallid, therefore they are of melancholic complexion. Item, they are naturally timid.’’76 Bernard of Gordon of the University of Montpellier, in his Lilium medicinae (c. 1303), also noted the Jews’ ‘‘idleness’’ and added, ‘‘they are generally in fear and anxiety.’’77 These perceptions of the Jews’ timorousness and claims that Jewish men suffered bloody fluxes, whether hemorrhoids or menses, have been explored by Sander Gilman, Irven Resnick, and Horowitz.78 The belief of many Christians in an inherent timorousness among the Jews has little to do with Jewish self-identification. Resnick has noted a lack of evidence that medieval Jewish men even knew that some Christians accused them of menstruating. The first explicit response known to him is from Spanish-born Isaac Cardoso or Cardozo (1604–1683), who emigrated to Italy in his forties.79 The descriptions of the thirteen Troyes martyrs in the Old French Troyes elegy, which evokes an extended comparison between their martyrdom and the destruction of Roland and the twelve peers at Roncevaux, suggest that medieval French-speaking Jews saw plenty of heroes in their own ranks.80 This is also made clear in the hymn ‘‘The city came under siege’’ (Mas.or ba’tah ha-‘ir) by Menahem bar Jacob bar Solomon that follows ‘Uri

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liqra’ti yafah in the Zurich manuscript.81 It commemorates the siege of Worms in 1201, an event mentioned by Eleazar ben Judah of Worms (c. 1160–1230) in the Rokeah.: ‘‘It happened once that great armies besieged Worms; then we allowed all Jews to carry their arms on the Sabbath.’’82 Jews were indeed fighters, in both spirit and action. From the perspective of medieval French literature, the bridegroomwarrior and noble maiden are far from mainstream because they are Jewish. In medieval French literature, particularly in the courtly texts to which we might compare the wedding songs, Christian religion is a standard, even if sometimes tangential, aspect of the warrior hero, both real and fictive. Charlemagne, Roland, Olivier, and the other peers of ‘‘sweet France’’ are Christian (Song of Roland), as are Lancelot, Perceval, and other heroes from the works of Chre´tien de Troyes. The Saracen queen Orable converts to Christianity for the hero Guillaume Fierebrace of the Prise d’Orange. In Marie de France’s Yonec, the noble woman is reassured when her lover magically assumes her form so as to take communion from a priest and recite the act of faith.83 We could name countless other examples from literature and history, including the Crusaders. As Colette Beaune has shown, Christian beliefs and the idea of France come together in countless medieval figures, shrines, festivals, and symbols, including the fleur de lis discussed above. At their center is the French monarchy and the ‘‘very Christian king.’’84 By depicting a hero and maiden who are very much like the figures in medieval French texts but who are Jewish, the wedding songs remove religion as an essential characteristic of the knightly hero and as the defining factor behind the imaginaire of France and of French identity. A Jew can carry a sword, conquer a city, or woo a woman as skillfully as a Christian—or better than one. Whereas the wedding songs and other medieval Jewish texts with a French component suggest that the Jews considered themselves both Jews and members of the larger Frenchspeaking community, however, their non-Jewish neighbors saw them especially as Jews.

Legitimizing Jewish Participation in Vernacular Culture The two Hebrew-French wedding songs were profoundly influenced by both Jewish and Old French literature, the latter evident in the portrayal of the bride and bridegroom as a noble maiden and bold warrior, in the analogy between woman and stronghold, and in the trope of sexual violence.85 At the

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same time, the figures in the wedding songs, particularly the bridegroom, adhere neither to medieval Christian stereotypes of Jews nor to medieval Christian conceptions of warrior heroes. The bridegroom is not timorous, malevolent, bookish, or mercenary, like Jews discussed by such Christian writers as Gautier de Coinci and Jacques de Vitry. Nor is he Christian, like the heroes of the Song of Roland, Chre´tien de Troyes’ Romans de la Table Ronde, or other texts discussed above. The two Hebrew-French wedding songs and perhaps others like them belonged to the customs surrounding Jewish matrimony. Like any oral, collective performance, they provided an opportunity for Jewish communities to reaffirm what they perceived as their historical identity and to actively create for themselves a historical identity that served their current needs or reflected their current preoccupations.86 One of these preoccupations was membership in a society that rejected them on many levels. However much Jews resembled their Christian neighbors, however many of them were befriended by Christians, the Jews were still outsiders, a point made clear again and again in texts and practice.87 For example, William Jordan describes the trend whereby newly ascended rulers engaged in displays of power, and how, from the twelfth to the fourteenth century in France, these displays regularly involved Jewish policy and sometimes harsh action against the Jewish community.88 At the time ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah was copied in the Zurich manuscript, many French-speaking Jews had been rejected from the society they perceived as theirs in a particularly vivid way—expulsion. At least in the beginning, however, the identity of the Jewish refugees was still closely bound to the culture whose language they shared—France. (I refer here to Jews of both langue d’oc and langue d’oı¨l.)89 The refrain of the poem beginning Yom mi-s.arefat yas.a’ti (When I left France) can be read in two ways. Ki lo’ aleman yisra’el means both ‘‘Israel is not forsaken’’ and ‘‘A [French] Israelite is not a German [Jew].’’ The pun revolves around aleman, which in Hebrew means ‘‘forsaken’’ and in French ‘‘German.’’ The following is based on T. Carmi’s translation of stanza 1.

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(When I left France and journeyed down to Germany, I found a people there as cruel as ostriches in the desert. Oh, Israel is not forsaken [or A (French) Israelite is not German!] What has chaff to do with grain?)90 In Salomon ibn Verga’s Shevet Yehudah, French Jews living in Aragon speak of returning to France, the land of their birth, ‘‘because she is our mother and the king is a good and just king.’’91 Roger Kohn notes the Jews’ sentimental attachment to the lands they and their ancestors inhabited for so long, and in his discussion of the royal ordinances of 1361 permitting Jews that had been expelled to return to the kingdom, he quotes the following words from a Christian source: ‘‘Et pour ce qu’il ont grant de´sir et volente´ de retourner habiter et demourer en nostredit et plus que a` nul autre Pays du monde, si comme il dient’’ (And because they have great desire and will to return to live and dwell in our said country more than in any other country in the world, as they say).92 Against this background, the allusion to Jer. 31:13 found in the Mah.zor Vitry’s description of the wedding festivities, introduced above, takes on special meaning. The full verse reads, ‘‘Then shall maidens dance gaily, young men and old alike. I will turn their mourning to joy, I will comfort them and cheer them in their grief ’’ (NJPS). The joy of the wedding celebration contrasted with the mourning felt in some other times; the gladness experienced by the bride and bridegroom, their families, and guests did not eliminate the memories of past and present sorrows.93 For French-speaking Jews, the thirteenth century, during which the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript of the Mah.zor Vitry was prepared, was a time of growing danger and instability.94 At its dawn, Jews living in the royal domain had to endure the stress of living under an unpredictable, unsympathetic ruler, Philip Augustus.95 During his reign and those of his successors, they experienced diminished privileges, financial exploitation, forced conversions, and physical violence, all culminating in the confiscations and Great Expulsion of 1306, with other expulsions to follow. During the final three-quarters of the thirteenth century the monarchy accentuated the Jews’ difference by requiring them to wear the rouelle. Though the decree that Jews and Saracens wear distinguishing dress had been declared by the fourth Lateran Council in 1215, it was first enforced during the reign of Louis IX (1226–1270), and then again during the reigns of Philip III (1270–1285) and Philip IV the Fair (1285– 1314).96 Popular attitudes toward Jews were mixed, but negative sentiments ran

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strong, as reflected in the popularity of anti-Jewish miracle stories, such as the Miracles de Nostre Dame of Gautier de Coinci (composed between 1218 and approximately 1228), which spread quickly and were readily adapted into other formats, including dramatic representations.97 Many Christians believed that the Talmud contained insults to Mary, and copies of it were seized in 1240, placed on trial, and burned publicly in Paris (1242).98 Another destructive belief held by some Christians, particularly from the twelfth century on, was that Jews practiced ritual murder of Christian children at Passover time.99 In 1306 the Jews were expelled from the royal domain. They were allowed to return in 1315, with the understanding that it would be for only twelve years.100 It is possible that they were expelled again in 1322, though no formal expulsion order has survived.101 During this short period (1315–1322 for some Jews, and perhaps 1315–1327 for others) they were ‘‘aliens, sojourners, and enemies,’’ as detailed by William Jordan. In 1361 the Jews were again allowed to return to France, and while scholars believe their numbers to have been extraordinarily small, they were expelled again in 1394–1395.102 Life was not always better outside the royal domain, even in the areas to which some of the persecuted royal Jews would flee. Soultz, one of the towns in which expelled Jews settled in 1306, had seen a ritual murder accusation against the Jews in 1303.103 In Metz, Jews appear to have been burned together with lepers in 1269, and during the same decade they were massacred in Colmar.104 Of the many episodes of violence against Jews that took place during the fourteenth century, those related to the Black Death stand out.105 Dauphine´ and Savoy saw some of the most intense violence against the Jews: in Yenne, in Aiguebelle, in Conflans, in Montme´lian; in Veyne in the Gapenc¸ais; in Sainte-Euphe´mie. Further episodes of violence against the Jews took place in Hainaut between 1349 and 1350. Jews left the Brabant. In 1349 it was decided that the Jews would be expelled from the Franche-Comte´, and although it is difficult to say how well the expulsion order was executed, the Jewish presence in Franche-Comte´ appears to have been minimal or nonexistent in subsequent years.106 As we have already seen, the manuscript containing ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah mentions that Jews were persecuted in Breisach. It is perhaps only an accident that Hebraico-French literary texts are first attested during a period in which French-speaking Jews were being not only marginalized but violently eliminated, whether massacred or expelled, from French-speaking lands. But just as Spiegel has related thirteenth-century upheavals in the social order to the rise of French vernacular prose historiogra-

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phy, we might consider the rise of Hebraico-French poetic works in the thirteenth century part of the northeastern Jewish response to their fears and anxieties and to the ways in which they were being singled or shut out from the society in which they had long dwelled. As Spiegel, drawing on sociolinguistic research, has argued, one way that social groups respond to anxiety about changes in their status is by creating new modes of discursive behavior—new types of literature.107 Does any of this historical contextualization offer new ways of reading the wedding songs? El giv‘at ha-levonah was copied sometime during the years leading up to the great expulsion of 1306, perhaps at the end of the thirteenth century. ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah was copied in the late fourteenth or early fifteenth century. Neither refers to exile though, as noted above, evidence in the manuscript of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah indicates that the song’s scribe may have been a French-speaking Jew living in German-speaking lands, perhaps a refugee or the descendant of one. In contrast, the Troyes elegy (c. 1288) does refer to migration in its final stanza. De atandre ta vanchance mot nos samble li jors lons, De te preer de cor anteir la o neissions e alons. (The day seems very long to us as we wait for your revenge, And as we pray to you with our whole heart, where we are born and where we go.)108 Even with their rhetoric of war, the two wedding songs do not express mourning or sorrow. In fact, they seem not to refer explicitly to their historical context at all. Instead, the bridegroom-warriors and noble brides of both songs recall in many ways earlier literary figures of the twelfth century, as we have already seen. The wedding songs’ refined language, with references to sexual union concealed by euphemisms and metaphors, characterizes the same body of literature.109 By the period in which the wedding songs were recorded and performed, the ‘‘twelfth-century chivalric conduct’’ on which they are founded was more ‘‘a class exercise whose archaic warlike function was becoming more an emblem or a sport than a form of direct political coercion,’’ as Eugene Vance observes.110 Moreover, even in the twelfth century, Jewish men were not knights. The literary figures the bridegroom recalls are Christians. This is the key: the bride and groom are not only imaginary figures; they

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also step out of an imaginary past. In depicting the bride and bridegroom as a maiden and her knight, the Jewish authors of these texts created for the Jews an aristocratic past, one grounded not solely in the Hebrew tradition but also in the French past. In doing so, they increased the perceived legitimacy of the Jews’ place within the larger culture—not necessarily in the eyes of Gentiles, who may or may not have known of these songs,111 but in the eyes of the Jews themselves. The wedding songs were performed before a diverse audience representative of the Jewish community as a whole. They were written partially in French, a language that all could understand. The aristocratic past they engendered therefore belonged to the entire community. Though listeners might have been well aware that this aristocratic past was a fictitious one, the nature of oral performance is such that it could have entered into their own perception of its history and identity.

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Epilogue

Most surviving Jewish texts from medieval Europe are written in Hebrew, although, in daily life, Jews spoke the vernaculars of their communities. The textual legacy of this vernacular existence is relatively small, but it is an essential component of the study of Jewish culture and identity. Taking medieval French-speaking Jewish communities in Tsarefat and their Hebraico-French texts and glosses as a starting point, this book has addressed two broad questions at the intersection of language and identity: To what extent did French Jews develop a separate linguistic identity from their Christian neighbors even when using a shared vernacular, and to what extent can the way in which these Jews used language inform us about Jewish identity during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries? Another major concern of this book has been language and gender, inevitable, perhaps, given the inclusiveness of the vernacular, and the focus here on vernacular texts. Most Jews living in northern France and England in the Middle Ages spoke French. They sometimes also wrote in French, but for the most part, they wrote in Hebrew. Jewish memories of episodes like the Blois incident of 1171 were written down in Hebrew although the events unfolded in the vernacular, with their representations of history mediated not only by language, in a generic sense, but also by a specific language—Hebrew—and its conventions. Only one Jewish text in medieval French commemorating a historical event survives: the Old French Troyes elegy. Jewish texts in medieval French remained, in a sense, captives of their Hebrew context, and there is no indication that they ever had an independent reading public. Almost all Jewish texts in medieval French are found in Hebrew manuscripts. Except for the Comencement de sapience, which was dictated by a Jewish translator to a Christian scribe, all are written in Hebrew letters. Old French words in Hebrew manuscripts are most often glosses of Hebrew ones; hymns from a British Museum manuscript published by D. S.

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Blondheim and hymns from the Heidelberg fragments published by Hiram Peri are translations from Hebrew originals. The Hebraico-French Troyes elegy follows a parallel Hebrew version, and the wedding songs are bilingual. Hebraico-French literary texts are often relegated to the end of their manuscripts, as with the elegy, hymns from the British Museum manuscript, and the two wedding songs. Hebrew and French occupied separate but overlapping spaces. Associated with different functions, they were also perceived differently, with Hebrew clearly enjoying much prestige and French little or none. In medieval Jewish manuscripts, the tetragrammaton, the ineffable name of God in Hebrew, is rendered by various graphic substitutes, whereas Ge´ and De´ are written out in full.1 Linguistic opportunities open to men and women were different. As a general rule, Jewish women’s lives in northern France were more closely bound to the vernacular and to the oral, and they had fewer opportunities to learn Hebrew formally. Anyone—male or female—who did not learn to read and write Hebrew found his or her ability to switch between languages and linguistic styles limited, and this affected his or her ability to participate in certain types of communal affairs. Regardless of whether a particular individual was proficient in Hebrew, he or she potentially learned Hebrew vocabulary items and used them in speech. Use of distinctively Jewish lexical items (including, but not limited to, Hebrew loanwords), code-switching between French and Hebrew, and use of the Hebrew alphabet for writing French perhaps represent deliberate and voluntary acts that revealed, reinforced, and actively constructed writers’ (and presumably speakers’) consciousness that, although French was their mother tongue and a local French-speaking community their home, they were also Jews. Particularly in contexts where participants or sets of participants (speakers, writers, readers) identified themselves as Jewish, the way these participants used language served to express a uniquely French-Jewish identity. I am reminded of words from Joachim du Bellay (d. 1560): ‘‘Si la Nature (dont quelque personnaige de grand’ renomme´e non sans rayson a doute´ si on la devoit appeller mere ou maratre) eust donne´ aux hommes un commun vouloir & consentement . . . l’inconstance humaine n’eust eu besoing de se forger tant de manieres de parler’’2 (If Nature [and a person of great renown has hesitated, not without reason, over whether one should call her a nurturing or cruel mother] had given to men a common will and consent

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. . . human inconstancy would not have needed to forge for itself so many ways of speaking). As another French writer, Michel de Montaigne (1533–1592), reminded his readers, the writer who chooses to use a vernacular risks limiting his or her message to the here and now: ‘‘J’escris mon livre a peu d’homes et a peu d’annees. Si c’eust este´ une matiere de duree, il l’eust fallu commettre a un langage plus ferme’’ (I am writing my book for a limited number of people and for a limited number of years. If it had been a subject destined to last, I would have had to commit it to a more stable language [i.e., Latin]).3 Most of the time, Jewish writers in northern France opted for the more stable language—Hebrew. Borrowing terminology from linguistics, for the Jews of medieval Tsarefat, French was the unmarked, or usual, choice when it came to speaking. They did not choose their mother tongue; it was dictated by the environment. Hebrew words and phrases were marked elements in a spoken French context, and when present, they would have rendered Jewish speech distinctive.4 In writing, the opposite was generally true. There, Hebrew was the unmarked, usual choice for Jews: most medieval Jewish texts from France and elsewhere are written in Hebrew. It is texts written in French in Hebrew letters that stand out as different and that demand explanation. In some cases, the explanation lies in full or in part with the purpose of French in the manuscript: for example, rendering direct speech; identifying things for which Hebrew words are unknown, lesser known, or nonexistent; and translating Hebrew, often for a didactic purpose. In others, and especially the small number of literary compositions recorded in French in medieval Hebrew manuscripts, the use of French was sometimes driven by the simple desire to be inclusive: a song fully or partially in the vernacular could be understood by all. But in at least some instances, the choice to write in French can also be considered a voluntary, creative act of identity, a declaration of Jewish membership in the vernacular community during a time when the Jews’ very presence there was threatened. As Montaigne noted, vernaculars are ephemeral. Once a vernacular text became incomprehensible, there was little need to preserve or copy it. Jews whose parents, grandparents, or other ancestors had been expelled from France understandably learned the languages of their own communities. We can relate the loss of French and of Hebraico-French texts to the larger issue of the survival of Jewish collective memory. Susan Einbinder observes that although the Jews exiled from France preserved some aspects of their French

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identity, such as distinctive surnames, ‘‘it becomes striking how little FrenchJewish writing about expulsion survives in traditional, commemorative genres, particularly liturgical poetry.’’ She proposes that one explanation is that the Jews who were expelled from France tended not to settle in large groups.5 A tendency among French refugees to settle in smaller numbers would also have contributed to the loss of the French language, which can be contrasted with the robust survival and development of Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish in other linguistic regions. How long did French survive as a living language among the Jews who were expelled from France? This remains an open question. Much remains to be done on the topic of the Jews’ use of French before and after their expulsion from France, and future research on the vernacular legacy of medieval French-speaking Jews will be greatly facilitated by the continued dissemination of detailed descriptions of Hebrew manuscripts containing words or passages in Old and Middle French. The discovery of further Hebraico-French texts would add greatly to our understanding of the beginnings and demise of the Hebraico-French textual tradition, the uses of French in Hebrew manuscripts, and the extent to which medieval Jews mixed the two languages in texts. Comparative analysis of medieval Jews’ French and other Jewish vernaculars stands to deepen our understanding of medieval French-speaking Jewish communities even further. Those French-speaking Jewish communities, we must remember, were found not only on the continent but also in England. Texts discussed throughout this book have pointed to close cultural contacts between Jews and Christians. Might future scholars uncover further evidence that Jews partook of vernacular literature or participated in it as writers or performers? Closer analysis of Hebraico-French texts and of the Hebraico-French textual tradition more generally may also shed light on such topics as Jewish influence on Christian writers and scholars. While the study of Hebrew texts has already revealed much about women’s place in Jewish society, both vis-a`-vis Jewish men and medieval society as a whole, these findings can be elaborated upon through the study of HebraicoFrench texts. Finally, the study of the Jews’ vernacular culture should include not only study of Hebraico-French texts but study of Hebrew texts as well. These, too, contain many clues to the Jews’ vernacular existence. Behind every medieval European text written in Hebrew, there is a vernacular voice.

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appendix 1

Hebraico-French Glosses and Texts

Here I have listed existing Hebraico-French texts from the fifteenth century and earlier, as well as major works that contain Hebraico-French glosses.1

Major figures whose works contain Old French glosses Menahem bar H . elbo, 1015–10802 Rabbi Shlomo Yitsh.aqi (Rashi), 1040–1105 Joseph Kara, b. 1050–1055, d. 1120–1130 Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam), c. 1085–1174 Eleazar of Beaugency, mid-twelfth century Joseph Bekhor Shor, mid- to late twelfth century Samson ben Abraham of Sens, twelfth to thirteenth century 3 Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, twelfth to thirteenth century 4 Moses of London, d. c. 12685 Elijah Menahem ben Moses of London (son of Moses of London), c. 1220– 1284 Judah ben Eleazar, fl. early fourteenth century 6

Also Pseudo-Gershom7 Pseudo-Rashi8

Selected texts containing Old French glosses in at least some manuscripts Mah.zor Vitry (begun by Simchah of Vitry)9 Sefer H . asidim (Book of the pious), probably compiled in the Rhineland in the thirteenth century, but begun earlier by Judah the Pious (b. Speyer c. 1140, d. Regensburg 1217)10

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Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne´, by Joseph ben Nathan11 Various French-rite prayer books

Major glossaries and dictionaries Basel, Universita¨tsbibliothek, MS A III 39; Basel 23 (Cat. Allony and Kupfer). Glosses from 1 Sam. 3:12 to the end of Amos, thirteenth century Leipzig, Universita¨tsbibliothek, MS 1099. Glosses from Genesis to the end of Esther, thirteenth or fourteenth century Oxford, Bodleian, Or. 135, thirteenth century Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, ms. he´breu 301. Glosses from Joshua to the end of Ezra, thirteenth century Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, ms. he´breu 302. Glosses from Genesis to the end of Chronicles, thirteenth century Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, ms. he´breu 1243, fourteenth century Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2780 (De Rossi 637). Glosses from Gen. 21:54 or 31:54 to Joel 4:7, thirteenth century Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2924 (De Rossi 60). Glosses from Gen. 31:36 to the end of Ezra, 1279 Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria A IV 13 (destroyed by fire), fifteenth century12 Turin, Biblioteca Nazionale Universitaria A IV 35 (destroyed by fire), fifteenth century

Shorter glossaries and fragments of glossaries Bologna, Archivio di Stato, ms. ebr. 46–47. Glosses from Isaiah and Job, fourteenth century Cambridge, University Library, Taylor Schechter Collection K 7.3–5, Old French glosses on Joshua 10:7-Judges 9:2413 Cremona, Archivio Curia Vescovile [2], French-Hebrew glossary on Samuel, thirteenth to fourteenth century Darmstadt, Hessische Landes- und Hochschulbibliothek, Cod. Or. 56 (Striedel 35). Glosses from Zephaniah, Haggai, and Zacharias, thirteenth century Hamburg, Staats- und Universita¨tsbibliothek, Cod. hebr. 182b. 126 in Steinschneider, Catalog der hebraeischen Handschriften in der Stadtbibliothek zu Hamburg, Hamburg, 1878. Glosses from Psalms, fourteenth century London, Valmadonna Trust Library, Ms. Valmadonna 1, fol. 143. Glossary of bird names; copying of manuscript was finished in 1189

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Moscow, Russian State Library, Ms. Guenzburg 258, fol. 260r–v. Glossary of Hebrew words with translations in French, fourteenth century New York, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS Lutzki 698. Glosses to the Bible, thirteenth or early fourteenth century (includes folios that were previously catalogued separately) Parma, cod. Parm. 2342, fol. 108r. Glossary of bird names, approximately late thirteenth century (see Chapter 3) Strasbourg, Bibliothe`que nationale et universitaire, MS 3950/24. Glosses from Jeremiah, Psalms, thirteenth to fourteenth century

Poems and songs (identified by incipit) Alons nos colcher (Cod. Parm. 3000, fol. 47r), c. 1300 (see Chapter 3) Celi qui a ecrit cete lic¸on, colophon by Vivant de Bellay (Jehiel ben Eleazar) (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2924, fol. 216v), 1279 (see Chapter 3) El giv‘at ha-levonah (New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS 8092, fol. 160v), Hebrew-French wedding song, thirteenth century (see Chapter 4) Mont sont a mescheif (Troyes elegy) (Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, ms. ebr. 322, fol. 189r–189v), c. 1288 Or se peut bien vanter, a couplet from an Alexander romance in Hebrew (Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 419XX, fol. 2a), thirteenth century? (see Chapter 3) Three hymns beginning Les anfanz des abot, Roi de poeir, La nuit de Pesah. (London, British Museum, Add. ms. 19, 664; Cat. Margoliouth II, no. 664, fol. 95a, 99a–b), 1291 or later (excerpt from the first in Chapter 1) Two hymns for Rosh Hashanah beginning Esaterai mon roi and Por lap . . . , with two short passages in prose (Heidelberg—Universitaetsbibliothek Cod. Heid. Or. 490), thirteenth to fourteenth century ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah (Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Heid. 51, fol. 212v–213r), Hebrew-French wedding song, fourteenth to early fifteenth century (see Chapter 4 and Appendix 2)

Medicine, magical formulae, adjurations, and recipes Fever Treatise (Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ms. or oct 512), thirteenth century H aroset recipe with words for ingredients in French (Parma, Biblioteca Palat. ina, Cod. Parm. 1902, fol. 90r), 1470 (see Chapter 3)

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Incantation beginning je te conjur bon malon de par sire ge´ and remedies with words in French (Paris, Bibliothe`que Nationale, ms. he´b. 633, fol. 149v–151r, 251v), thirteenth century Sarei bedolah. (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342, fol. 262r), thirteenth century (see Chapter 3)

Law and commerce Account registers from Vesoul with entries dated from 1300 to 1318 (Dijon, Archives de´partementales de la Coˆte-d’Or, cote´s B 10410 and B 10411) Line from h.alis.ah ceremony (Cod. Parm. 2295, fol. 40v), late thirteenth century (see Chapter 3)

Homiletic fragments Two homiletic fragments from Picardy (Engelberg, Switzerland, Library of the Abbey of Engelberg), date unknown (excerpt in Chapter 1)

Prayers Prayers for the dead in Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches (Chapter 1)

Also of interest Comencement de sapience, Old French translation in the Latin alphabet of Abraham ibn Ezra’s Beginning of Wisdom, dictated by Hagin le Juif and written down by Obert de Montdidier at the house of Henry Bate in Malines in 1273 (Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, fonds franc¸ais 24276; Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, fonds franc¸ais 1351). Yom mi-s.arefat yas.ati, a Hebrew poem with a French pun discussed in Chapter 4 (Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 1912, fol. 38v [fifteenth century]; Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, ms. he´b. 317 [fourteenth century])

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appendix 2

The Medieval Jewish Wedding Song ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie

The medieval Jewish wedding song ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, gentis kallah einoreie, discussed in Chapter 4, has never before been published. Until now, scholars writing about Jewish literature in Old French seem to have been unaware of its existence, echoing the assertion of D. S. Blondheim, who wrote of the wedding song beginning El giv‘at ha-levonah, ‘‘C’est la seule pie`ce de vers connue ou` l’on voit l’alternance du franc¸ais et de l’he´breu, et c’est la seule chanson [de la France me´die´vale] destine´e a` eˆtre chante´e a` un mariage juif.’’1 I offer an edition, transliteration, and English translation of the song here.

Transcription Conventions and Linguistic Features of the Text If we treat sin and shin as separate letters, seven Hebrew letters are not used for writing Old French in ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah: h.et, kaf, samekh, ayin, tsade, shin, and taw. Strict transliteration of the Old French portions is provided below, following such editors of Romance-language texts recorded in the Hebrew alphabet as Arse`ne Darmesteter, Samuel Armistead and Joseph Silverman, Giuseppe Sermoneta, and Marc Kiwitt.2 It has been carried out according to the table of equivalences in the front matter, with the following differences: letters containing a dagesh are written as capitals; bet and pe are transcribed as v and f when they bear a rafe and are transcribed as b and p elsewhere; and vowel diacritics (see the table in this appendix) have been transliterated in superscript for the French portions of the text, with long vowels differentiated from short vowels by means of a circumflex.

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a aˆ e eˆ i u uˆ o :

patah. qames. segol .sere h.ireq qibbus. shureq h.olem shewa*

* The Hebrew vowel sign called shewa may have no sound (silent shewa) or a slight sound (vocal shewa).

The Old French portions of the text appear to be written in the Lotharingian dialect, as are all the other independent Jewish poetic works in Old French published so far.3 This suggests that Lorraine was a major center of Jewish verse in French, that Jews there recorded their vernacular poetry more consistently than in other regions, or simply that manuscripts containing the poetry survived more often. Dialectal features include the following: 1. /ł/ has been deleted, rather than vocalized, before consonants:4 e.g., vara (1.4; 8.4), fat (2.2), ma (2.3), chevache (6.2), tote (6.3), dos (6.4; 7.3) for valra (valdra, vaudra); falt, faut; mal, mau; chevalche, chevauche; tolte, toute; dous. 2. n’r and l’r clusters have not developed to epenthetic ndr or ldr:5 tein[r]as (2.3) and vara (⬍valra) (1.4; 8.4). 3. ei for tonic free e: Class 1 infinitives end in the text in -yyr (e.g., paseˆyyr [paseir] 1.3) and feminine past participles and words derived from them in -yy’h (e.g., ’eyynworeeˆyy’:h [einoreie] 1.1). 4. taire 7.4, reflecting palatalization of a to e (spelled ai, ei, and e) before dentals, palatals, and sometimes r.6 5. Parasitic i, as in einoreie (1.1; 8.1). 6. Leie 3.4 ⬍ Latin lectus. Wartburg lists a number of similar forms from the northeast and east, including lye (Thaon), ley (Lorraine), le´e (Somme-Tourbe), leı¨e (Argonne).7 Other linguistic features of the text are as follows:

Graphic Features Simple vowels and diphthongs 1. Vowels are frequently represented twice, e.g., fat (pa’aˆt); tu (tuwuˆ) 2.2; chevache (cˇ:yywwa’acˇ:’) 6.2.

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2. Nasal [a˜] is sometimes represented by a waw or diacritic representing o, cf. gront (g:ro’:t) 4.2; delaiemont (d:yylayy:mwon:t) 4.3; dossemont (dwos:m:wn:t) 5.4; and po[n]ras (pwr’s) 7.1. Similarly, defonse (deyypwon:s:’) rhymes with dotansse (dwot:n:s) 5.1; 5.2. This seems to be a spelling carried over from Hebrew. In biblical Hebrew, qames. (a¯) is pronounced o in certain contexts, including usually in a closed syllable. In medieval Hebrew texts, scribes often render this qames. (called qames. h.atuf ) as oˆ (waw Ⳮ h.olem). 3. We occasionally find a for open e, as in atre (etre), 2.4 and t’arate (t’arete) 6.2. 4. Diphthongs are often represented by a double yod, e.g., mai (mayy) 2.2. Note also the class I infinitive ending –eir (yyr). The double yod functions as a single letter, generally taking a single diacritic. It can be seen in Figure 7 (Chapter 4) that this diacritic is centered beneath the double yod, as in bien (biyyeˆn) 3.3. 5. Vowel pointing is missing from 6.3 to 7.2. Consonants 6. f, represented by the Hebrew letter pe, is inconsistently distinguished from p by a rafe: feras (f:r’aˆs) 3.3 but feire (peˆyyr:’) 1.2. 7. v, sometimes represented by the Hebrew letter bet, is distinguished from b by the rafe: avras (’av:r’as) 3.2; a veire (’aveyyr:’) 5.4. 8. v is also represented by two waw: chevache (cˇ:yywwa’ac:’) 6.2; ne verras (n’wwr’s) 7.2. 9. We find repouzeie (r:yypuwzeˆyy’:h) for repousseie 3.1. The scribe may have deliberately chosen zayin alone to transliterate either Latin alphabet c or Latin x, both of which occur in Old French texts from Lorraine for ss. 10. We seem to have dalet for resh in 4.4 (por) and 5.1 (rekhav). The two letters, which resemble one another, were frequently confused by copyists. Morphology 11. Function words are frequently attached to content words, as is typical in Jewish texts in Old French, e.g. en feire (’:n:peˆyyr:’) 1.2; tu lairas (tuwlayyraˆ’s) 1.4.

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Graphico-phonetic Features Consonants 1. Preconsonantal etymological [n] and [m] are sometimes not expressed, e.g., mei[n]tenir (meˆyyt:niyr) 4.4. This may indicate that for the scribe, word-final and preconsonantal nasal consonants had already merged or were merging with a preceding nasalized vowel, a development that Mildred Pope places in the Middle French period.8 In a chanson de rencontre in the dialect of Lorraine edited by Samuel Rosenberg and Hans Tischler, chamin rhymes with foilli and mari, and in El giv‘at ha-levonah, anprins, antreprins, prins, and pris rhyme.9 2. Loss of word-internal, preconsonantal s: deitineie (deˆyytiyneyy’h) for destineie 3.2; fute (puwt:’) for fuste 3.4. 3. Loss of s before a pause (this is attested in the East only after the thirteenth century):10 fale (faille) rhymes with bales (bailles) 2.1–2; Hebrew dodi rhymes with Old French chozi (⬍ chosis) 5.3. Note also san (⬍sans) 4.3; mai (⬍mais) 2.2; and onto (⬍hontos [?]) 7.3.

Morphosyntactic Features 1. There is little opportunity to study the nominative-oblique distinction for masculine nouns and possessive adjectives in the text; note, however, that nominative case marking does not appear on the subject, ton bernage, in Ni vara ton bernage 1.4; 8.4. 2. Note ti covien for te covien; ti, analogical with mi ⬍ Lat. mihi, is commonly associated with Picard.11 Its appearance here may be due to scribal error.

Lexical Features 1. The Old French lines contain one Hebrew word, kallah (‘‘bride’’) (1.1; 8.1). 2. Certain phrases reflect what Pierre Bec calls an ‘‘aristocratisant’’ tendency:12 dos sire (6.4; 7.3), ma doss’ amie (4.1), gentis kallah einoreie (1.1; 8.1).

Versification and Structure The text of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah is divided into eight groups of four lines. The first four and the last four lines (stanzas 1 and 8 in the edition below), which

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are identical, may well have been a refrain that was repeated after each stanza. Refrains are common in both wedding songs and liturgical piyyutim meant for synagogue use; they facilitated the participation of guests or worshippers in the performance. Many medieval Jewish wedding songs, including El giv‘at ha-levonah, are dialogues, with each stanza associated with the groom, bride, or a third speaker or chorus. In ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, the groom seems to speak in what I have hypothesized is a refrain (stanzas 1, 8), as well as in stanzas 2 through 4. The bride seems to speak in stanzas 5 through 7. Refrain aside, there is thus a balance between the first three stanzas, which seem to belong to the groom, and the final three, which seem to belong to the bride. Each line is divided into two hemistichs, generally seven syllables each, not counting final, feminine e. Two contain only six syllables (Ni vara ton bernage, 1.4; Ja ne m’orras mot dire, 6.4) and others eight (Chose qui eit acotumeie, 2.4; Non saeis pas onto mis dos sire, 7.3; Pie ne fute onques sa leie, 3.4; N’i a mesaise pas a veire, 5.4). Such variation is normal in medieval Jewish poetry in French. It is possible that, some or all of these poems being songs, such metrical inconsistencies on the verbal level were made to disappear on the melodic level in actual performance. Christopher Callahan and Samuel Rosenberg prepared their edition of the songs of Colin Muset with this very idea in mind: ‘‘Nombre des difficulte´s me´triques rencontre´es par Be´dier se re´solvent avec le concours de la me´lodie.’’13 In the first three lines of each stanza, the first hemistich is in Hebrew, and the second in French. The fourth line of each stanza is entirely in French, thus: H F / H F / H F / F F. This pattern is somewhat different from the arrangement in El giv‘at halevonah, where stanzas 1–6 are composed of nine lines each, which can be schematized as follows: H F H F H F F H F. As in ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, the Hebrew and French units approximate heptasyllables. Only the final stanza of El giv‘at ha-levonah is structured like those of ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, although scholars writing about El giv‘at ha-levonah have not described the Hebrew and French units as hemistichs: H F H F H F F F . Returning to ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, in stanzas 3–7, the first two Hebrew hemistichs rhyme. In all stanzas, the first two French hemistichs rhyme, as do the last two. Finally, the Hebrew and French hemistichs of line 3 are linked through a shared rhyme in stanzas 1 and 8 (ah. oti; ci), 2 (salmah; ma), 3 (no’asˇ, pronounced no’as [see Notes to the Edition, directly below]; feras), and 5 (dodi; chozi). Dropping the final t of delaiemont (-mont ⳱

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-ment, -mant) in stanza IV enables us to add it to this list (ne’eman; delaiemont). Furthermore, while on the surface, the final syllables of etten and retien (stanza 6) do not seem to rhyme, it is possible that retien was pronounced retein, in which case they do. The Troyes elegy, which seems to be written in the same dialect as ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, as noted above, has bein for bien, devein for devien, and anteir for antier.14 Forms like these, with the reduction of ie to e that is common in Burgundian,15 are not out of place in Lotharingian texts. The only stanza in which the Hebrew and French hemistichs cannot be made to rhyme is 7 (le-tamid, sire), which may indicate that stanza 7 has been corrupted by one or more copying errors.

Strict Transliteration of Old French [f. 212voa] g˘:n:tiys kalaˆh ’eyynworeˆyy’:h pwor ’:n:peˆyyr:’ maˆ’p:n:seˆyy’: paseˆyyr tiyqowwiyyeˆn par:siy niwwaraˆ’ twon b:r:na’g˘:’ tuwlayyraˆ’s ’iysiyt twon ga’g˘:’

1.4

g˘:yyt:diy s:nuwl:’pal:’ mayytwoqwor:s:pa’aˆt:q:tuwuˆba’l:ys: n:tiyteˆyynˇ:’s: pa’aˆs ’amaˆ’h: cˇwoz:’ qiyy’eˆyyt ’aqwotuwmeˆyy’:h deˆyyt ’at:reˆ’ two’wt: ’wot:r:yyeˆ’: h

2.4

g˘a’aˆh nwon s:ra’as r:yypuwzeˆyy’:h ’av:r’as bwon:’h deˆyytiyneyy’h gar:D:’h biyyeˆn q:tuwf:r’aˆs niynwon feˆyyr’ pa’s mayyleyy’:h piyyaˆ’ n:puwt:’ ’won:q:s saleˆyy’:h

3.4

g˘:yyt:P:ryi’ ma’dwos: ’amiy’:h qaˆr s:yys:reˆyyt g:ro’:t pwoliy’:h meˆyyt:reˆyy s:’:n d:yylayy:mwon:t pwo[r] ’abwor twon puws:lag˘:’ seyyt: pwor meˆyyt:niyr luwza’aˆg˘:’

4.4

g˘a’aˆh naw:ra’s nuwl:’ deˆyyfwon:s:’ nwo’:n sa’ayy:s pa’s ’:ndwot:n:s g˘:yyt:p:riy’ qaˆr:’ meˆyycˇwozi[y] dwos:m:wn:t ’eyyd:bwoneˆyyr:’ niyyh miyysa’aˆyy:s’ pa’aˆs ’aveyyr:’

5.4

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[f. 212vob] g˘eˆyy’:t:nidwuˆ tar:’qeyyt:’ c˘:yywwa’acˇ:’ ’eˆyyn:tara’t:’ syy’s’n pwr twt’ srtyy’n g˘yyh lyytyyprwmys dws syr’ g˘’h nymwr’s mwt dyr’

6.4

pwr’s p’mh sy m’ry’h n’wwr’s ’ntpr’yyry’h no’sayy:’s pa’aˆs ’:wn:twomiys dwos: siyr:’ ta’yyr:’ qiy ’eˆyyt la’Bworeˆyy’:h pwor:t:’h muw’:s ’:n:seˆyyl:wneyy’:h

7.4

[f. 213r] g˘:n:tiys kalaˆh ’eyynworeyy’:h pwor ’:nfeˆyyr:’h ma’p:nseˆyy’:h paseˆyyr tiyyqwobiyyen par:siy niy wwaˆraˆ’ twon b:r:nag:’ twuˆlayyraˆs ’iysiy twon gaˆ’g˘:’

8.4

Transliteration of Hebrew with Romanization of Old French [f. 212voa] [Groom] ‘uri liqra’ti yafah, Arim nissi ba-mis. peh, Al tir’i, ah. oti, ni vara ton bernage,

gentis kallah einoreie! por en feire ma penseie. paseir ti covien par ci; tu lairas issi(t) ton gage!

1.4

[Groom] mikhlal yofi, sˇim‘i li. lo’ be-kesef tigga’elu, ‘arom mibbeli salmah, Chose qui eit acotumeie,

Ge te di, s[an] nule fale, mai ton kors fat que tu bales. ne ti tein[r]as pas a ma. deit etre tout otreieie.

2.4

[Groom] sˇa’ali ve-’ettenah. sˇe’er kesut ve-‘onah: Al to’mri no’asˇ, ni non feire pas maileie:

Ja ne seras repouzeie. Avras bone deitineie! garde bien que tu feras, Pie ne fute onques sa leie.

3.4

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[Groom] Harh. ivi meqom oholekh, ve-’al tasˇmi‘i qolekh, Yated be-maqom ne’eman po[r] avo[i]r ton pucelage.

je te pri ma doss’ amie, car ce sereit gront folie. metrai san delaiemont S’eit por mei[n]tenir l’usage!

[Bride] Yedidi s. elah. rekhav! ‘al asˇer to’mar esˇkav. Ah. alay yikkonu dodi! dossemont e deboneire,

Ja n’avras nule defonse. No[n] en sais pas en dotanss[e]! Je te pri car(e) me chozi, n’i a mesaise pas a veire! 5.4

[f. 212vob] [Bride] Qolkha dodi sˇama‘ti, Ki-dodeikh h. asˇaqti, gewi le-makkim etten, gie le te promeis dos sire,

j’ai e[n]tendu ta requete. chevache e ne t’arete! ceisse en por tote se retien; ja ne m’orras mot dire.

[Bride] H . azeq be[d]eq ha-bayit. ve-’az sˇamir va-sˇayit karmekha ‘olel le-tamid. Taire qui eit laboreie

Po[n]ras fame, si marie[s], ne verras en ta prairie, Non saeis pas onto mis dos sire. porte mues enz gel o neie. 7.4

[f. 213r] [Groom] ‘uri liqra’ti yafah, Arim nissi ba-mis. peh, Al tir’i, ah. oti, ni vara ton bernage,

gentis kallah einoreie! por en feire ma penseie. paseir ti covien par ci; tu lairas issi ton gage!

4.4

6.4

8.4

Notes to the Edition 1.3 Paseir ti covien par ci: In other words, this is an experience that the bride must have. 1.4 Issi(t): The t seems to be an error of anticipation; the next word begins with t. gage: In medieval French literature, the gage is

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frequently not just any security pledge, but specifically the vanquished party’s body or head. Here, it is the bride’s maidenhead. 2.1 Sa[n] (strict transliteration s:): San is again spelled with an initial shin Ⳮ shewa combination in 4.3. 2.3 No’asˇ/no’as: The final letter is shin [sˇ], but abundant evidence in medieval Jewish texts and glosses in Old French suggests that it was pronounced as [s] by medieval French-speaking Jews.16 The s may be silent here; see 3 under ‘‘Graphico-phonetic features’’ above. The nun of tenras appears to have an inverted circumflex over it, which in some medieval Jewish texts in French indicates a palatal nasal. I consider it likely, however, that the diacritic is a miscopied resh. If an earlier scribe had left off the resh inadvertently, he would normally have written it above the word, and it could have been mistaken by a copyist for a diacritic. 2.4 Chose qui eit acotumeie / Deit etre tout otreieie: This proverb appears in various forms in medieval French literature, including ‘‘La chose qui estre doit ne peut estre qu’elle ne soit.’’17 3.4 Ni non is written as one word and appears on the previous line in the manuscript. Feire, leie: the ink of these words is somewhat blurred. Pie ne fute onques sa leie (‘‘A magpie does not plunder its own nest [lit., bed].’’) This statement, perhaps a proverb, although I have not found it attested elsewhere, suggests that sexual conquest of the bride is not abduction, because she belongs to the groom (the magpie). The magpie is famous for its acquisitiveness. While I treat leie as a dialectal form from Latin lectus (see list of dialectal features above), it is also possible to read it as leie (laie) ⬍ Middle Dutch laeye (‘‘small box, chest’’):18 A magpie does not plunder its own chest. 4.3 Metrai san delaiemont: An alternative reading is Metrai san (seing) dele´ mont (‘‘I will put a mark beside the hill’’). 4.4 Po[r]: This word is written on the previous line (and I leave it there in the strict transliteration), but meaning and rhyme suggest it belongs here. 5.3 The diacritic representing the final -i of chozi is present, but the expected mater lectionis, yod, is missing. 5.4 Dossemont is written on the previous line. 6.1 The manuscript seems to have ’:t:nidwuˆ atenidu for atendu. I suggest that what appears to be a h.ireq (i) under the nun is an incomplete shewa.

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6.3 Chevache: The a vowel is marked twice, perhaps deliberately so as to fit the melody. Repeating the vowel gives the expected seven syllables to this line, which would otherwise have only six. The final syllable of this line is vocalized -rate, but I emend the vowel to ⬍e⬎ to rhyme with requete. 6.3 Ceisse en por tote se retien (tentative reading), literally ‘‘Stop for abduction/pillaging if I hold back,’’ rendered more loosely in the translation as ‘‘Stop and carry me off if I hold back’’: The letters of what I interpret as Ceisse en are written together without spaces, as is typical of sequences of content word plus function word (see 11 under ‘‘Graphic features’’). On tote for tolte, toute (‘‘abduction, pillaging’’), see 1 in the list of dialectal features. According to my interpretation, en (⬍ Lat. inde) refers back to the Hebrew root n-k-h [sic] (‘‘strike, smite’’), with sexual overtones, in the previous hemistich (this root sometimes has an iterative meaning): makkim is its masc. pl. hiphil participle. Se or si: The vowel is not indicated. Retien: If my interpretation is correct, we expect a reflexive pronoun. 6.4 Or ‘‘Ja n’i m’orras mot dire’’: Gie is written as the last word of the previous line. 7.1 Pa[n]ras, written po[n]ras: See 2 under ‘‘Graphic features’’ and 1 under ‘‘Graphico-phonetic features.’’ Forms of prendre with dissimilation of r (penr-) are common in the future and -roie form. Si marie[s]: see 3 under ‘‘Graphico-phonetic features’’ for loss of s before a pause. 7.3 [H]onto (tentative reading): It is possible that the scribe did not consider Hebrew letters h.et or he adequate Hebrew-alphabet equivalents for ⬍h⬎ and that this is why ⬍h⬎ is not indicated here. H . et was not used by medieval Jews in writing Old French words, and he in our text is used to represent vowels. 7.4 There is an error in the vowel-pointing of enz gel o nee.

Translation [Groom] Arise, come toward me, beautiful one, noble and worthy bride! I will raise my banner on the watchtower, to accomplish what I intend. Do not be afraid, my sister, you must pass this way; your noble strength will be of no avail, you will leave your pledge here! 1.4

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[Groom] Perfection of beauty, listen to me. I tell you, without a doubt, You shall not be redeemed with silver, but you will have to surrender your body. Naked without a garment, do not think you will be doing something wrong. Something that is customary must be granted freely. 2.4 [Groom] Ask of me and I will give it. You will never be turned away. Food, clothing, and conjugal rights: You will have a good destiny! Do not say ‘‘there is no hope,’’ be careful what you do, and do not fight: A magpie does not plunder its own nest. 3.4 [Groom] Make wide the site of your tent, I beg you, my sweet beloved, Do not let your voice be heard, for that would be great folly. I’ll put a peg in a sure place without further ado to have your maidenhead—it is to uphold custom!

4.4

[Bride] Ride on, my love! You will never meet any resistance. Wherever you say, I will lie down. Don’t be afraid! O that my beloved may be steadfast! Please look at me gently and graciously, there is really nothing wrong in it! 5.4 [Bride] Your voice, my love, I heard, I heard your petition. Since I have desired your love, ride and don’t stop! I will give my body to those who strike me, stop and carry me off if I hold back; I promise you, gentle lord, you will not hear me say a word. 6.4 [Bride] Repair the crack in the house. You will be taking a wife if you marry, and then you will see no more briars or thorns in your meadow,

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as you always thoroughly glean your vineyard. Don’t be shy, my gentle lord. Land that is worked bears best before frost or snow. 7.4 [Groom] Arise, come toward me, beautiful one, noble and worthy bride! I will raise my banner on the watchtower, to accomplish what I intend. Do not fear, my sister, you must pass this way; your noble strength will be of no avail, you will leave your pledge here! 8.4

Biblical References 1.1 Arise As a reference to Song of Sol. 4:16, it evokes young lovers. As a reference to Isa. 52:1–2 (Isa. 52:3 is quoted farther below), it compares the bride to the daughter of Zion and her marriage to a release from captivity. It is associated with celebration in Judg. 5:12. 1.2 Raise my signal (banner) Isa. 49:22. 1.3 Do not be afraid Although the same phrase occurs multiple times in the Hebrew Bible (Gen. 21:17, Gen. 35:17, Ruth 3:11, 1 Sam. 4:20, 1 Sam. 28:13, 1 Kings 17:13, Isa. 40:9, Isa. 41:14, Isa. 54:4, Joel 2:21, Zeph. 3:16), the poet may have intended it specifically as an allusion to Ruth 3, in which Ruth presents herself to Boaz, and perhaps also to Isa. 54:4. (Isa. 54:2 is alluded to in 4.1.) My sister Calling his beloved ‘‘my sister’’ recalls the Song of Songs and may also be a possible allusion to 2 Sam. 13:5, 11, where Amnon asks for his sister Tamar and lies with her. 2.1 Perfection of beauty Ps. 50:2. Similarly, Ezek. 27:3–4: ‘‘O Tyre, you boasted, I am perfect in beauty’’ (NJPS). Tyre seems to be alluded to in 7.1 as well, through the use of the word bedeq (‘‘seam’’)(see discussion below). The king of Tyre is described as having been perfect in beauty in Ezek. 28:12, and the daughter of Jerusalem in Lam. 2:15. 2.2 You shall not . . . silver Isa. 52:3. 2.3 Naked without a garment (salmah) Cf. Job 24:7: ‘‘They pass the night naked for lack of clothing (levusˇ)’’ (NJPS). 3.1 Ask Perhaps an allusion to 1 Kings 2:20: ‘‘Ask, Mother; I shall not refuse you.’’ I will give it Gen. 34:12.

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3.2 Food . . . conjugal rights Exod. 21:10. This verse is also evoked in a bilingual Jewish wedding song from Occitania, as seen in Chapter 4. 3.3 Do not say ‘‘there is no hope’’ Isa. 57:10, Jer. 2:25. 4.1 Make wide . . . tent Isa. 54:2. The sexual connotations of making a sleeping place wide are explicit in the reproofs of Isa. 57:8, where sex is a metaphor for idolatry, and the bed or couch (Hebrew misˇkav) is made wide: ‘‘Behind the door and doorpost you have directed your thoughts; abandoning Me, you have gone up on the couch you made so wide. You have made a covenant with them, you have loved bedding with them; you have chosen lust’’ (NJPS). 4.2 Do not let your voice be heard. Cf. Judg. 18:25, where, however, the 2sg jussive is masculine. Your voice Also Song of Sol. 2:14: ‘‘O my dove . . . Let me see your face, let me hear your voice (qolekh); for your voice (qolekh) is sweet and your face is comely.’’ 4.3 A peg in a sure place Isa. 22:23. 5.1 Ride on Ps. 45:5. Ps. 45 is itself a wedding song. The sequence of verbs used here (s.elah. [u-]rekhav!) is also an expression of good luck. 5.2 Wherever ‘Al asˇer is used with this sense in 2 Sam. 15:20, 1 Kings 18:12, Ezek. 1:20. 5.3 O that my beloved may be steadfast! A play on Ps. 119:5, which has derakhai (‘‘ways’’) instead of dodi (‘‘my beloved’’). The poet retains the plural inflection of yikkonu from Ps. 119:5, though its new subject (dodi) is singular. 6.1 Your voice, my love (qolkha dodi ˇsama‘ti) Song of Sol. 2:8, 5:2 have qol dodi. 6.2 Love (dodim) The poet means this in a physical sense. Cf. Song of Sol. 7:13 (NJPS; 7:12 in the NRSV). 6.3 I will give my body to those who strike me Isa. 50:6. In this line the verb is in the qal imperfect (future sense), whereas in Isa. 50:6 it is in the qal perfect (‘‘I gave’’). The NRSV and NJPS translate the noun gewi as ‘‘my back.’’ While the participle meaning ‘‘those who strike me,’’ with sexual connotations, is masculine plural (like the participle in the verse of Isaiah from which it comes), the bride is clearly being given to only one man. (5.3 is another instance where plural inflection is retained from a Bible verse, though its referent in the current context is singular.) 7.1 Repair the crack in the house 2 Kings 12:6, 7, 8, 9, 13; 22:5; Ezek. 27:9. The text appears to have b-z-q instead of b-d-q (‘‘fissure, crack,

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breach’’), but my restitution is supported by the similar phrases in 2 Kings (I refer here to the Hebrew; English translations vary). This refers both to physical love (the woman is the house) and to the incompleteness of a household without a wife. By marrying, the man repairs the crack (bedeq) and makes his household complete. 7.2 Briars and thorns Isa. 5:6. The hard work of the wife will ensure that the husband’s prairie will have no briars and thorns in it; thus, it will not be like the vineyard that the male lover planted in Isa. 5:1–2, which became overgrown. This line refers also to physical love, with the wife destined to be a well-tended field. It recalls the sentier batu of the fabliau of the same name, alluded to in El giv‘at halevonah.19 7.3 Gleaning (karmekha ‘olel le-tamid), with erotic implications. Each consecutive lamed (three in all) has a slightly different shape, but all three can be found in the text. The same noun and verb are found in Lev. 19:10, ‘‘You should not pick your vineyard bare,’’ and Deut. 24:21, ‘‘When you gather the grapes of your vineyard, do not pick it over again; that shall go to the stranger, the fatherless, and the widow.’’ Compare also Jer. 6:9, ‘‘Let them glean over and over [‘olel ye‘olelu], as a vine, the remnant of Israel. Pass your hand again, like a vintager, over its branches.’’ (All translations from NJPS.)

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notes

introduction 1. Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. franc¸ais 19152, fol. 107v–110v. I consulted the edition in Peri, ‘‘Poems of religious disputations,’’ verifying it against the facsimile in Faral, Le manuscrit 19152. The single correction I have made to Peri’s edition based on my consultation of the facsimile is explained in my notes, as are some of his emendations. 2. Curtius, European Literature and the Latin Middle Ages; Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public in Late Latin Antiquity and in the Middle Ages. 3. My definition of ‘‘identity’’ here is strongly influenced by D. Bell’s discussion of the meanings of ‘‘identity’’ and ‘‘nationalism’’ in ‘‘Recent works on early modern French national identity,’’ 89. 4. See Ayres-Bennett, A History of the French Language Through Texts, 11; Chaurand, Nouvelle histoire de la langue franc¸aise, 105–6; Posner, Linguistic Change in French, 16–19. Most of the Hebraico-French texts treated here were composed in the Old French period. 5. In choosing to use the term ‘‘Hebraico-French’’ as opposed to ‘‘Judeo-French,’’ I am following scholars such as Lazar (cf. the title of one of his articles beginning, ‘‘Epithalames bilingues he´braı¨co-romans’’) and Strolovitch, ‘‘Old Portuguese in Hebrew script.’’ Strolovitch offers valuable and insightful analysis of issues such as the use of the Hebrew alphabet for representing other languages and the challenges this presents for the editor of Hebraico-Romance texts. 6. Levy, The Astrological Works of Abraham ibn Ezra, 19–32, discusses Hagin’s French translation, reviews other scholars’ suggestions regarding the circumstances under which the translation was made, and reviews what is known of Hagin, Obert de Montdidier, and Henry Bate. See also Levy and Cantera, The Beginning of Wisdom. 7. On Mathieu, see, most recently, Rosenberg, ‘‘French songs in Occitan chansonniers.’’ 8. On Darmesteter, see materials gathered in Reliques scientifiques. A fascinating resource on the later life of Blondheim, who married Eleanor Dulles, is Mosley, Dulles, 85–88, 93–95, 104–6. See also the necrology for David S. Blondheim in Modern Language Notes, June 1934, p. 424. Because I am generally concerned in this section with the body

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176 n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 – 1 0 of work produced by particular scholars rather than selected achievements, the reader should generally look to the bibliography for this information, rather than to the notes. 9. Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 302. Marc Kiwitt (Heidelberg Academy of Sciences) is currently working on an edition and linguistic study of another Hebrew-French glossary: Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 301. 10. See especially the extensive discussion of Levy’s work in Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme’’; see also idem, Le glossaire de Leipzig, 4:§2.8.3, and book reviews cited there. 11. On Catane, I consulted C. Catane, ‘‘Moche´ Catane.’’ See works by M. Catane and Greenberg listed in the bibliography, as well as Catane’s study of the Old French glosses in Kara’s commentary of Job in Ahrend, Le commentaire sur Job de Rabbi Yose´ph Qara’. 12. Sala, ‘‘Die romanischen Judensprachen,’’ 386–87. 13. On all of these issues, see Chapter 3. 14. Zumthor, Histoire litte´raire de la France me´die´vale, §§298, 442, 511, 528; Holmes, A History of Old French Literature, 314–15. 15. Rabin, ‘‘Massorah and ‘ad litteras,’ ’’ 88. 16. Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy, 377. 17. Latin was to Christian society what Hebrew was to the Jews. For a summary of the role of Latin in worship, education, ecclesiastical administration, and scholarly affairs, see Chaurand, Nouvelle histoire de la langue franc¸aise, 95–97. Lodge, French: From Dialect to Standard, 13–15, 118–52, discusses Latin-French diglossia. 18. Banitt, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques,’’ 195–96, 199, 205 and passim; idem, Rashi, 4, 6–30; idem, ‘‘Une vue d’ensemble,’’ 193–94. 19. Blondheim, Les parlers jude´o-romans; Peri, ‘‘Prayer in the vernacular’’; Nave`, ‘‘Die romanisch-ju¨dischen Literaturbeziehungen im Mittelalter’’ and ‘‘Erla¨uterungen zum Thema der romanisch-ju¨dischen Literaturbeziehungen im Mittelalter.’’ 20. Vale, The Princely Court, 282–94. 21. Hyams, ‘‘The Jewish minority in mediaeval England,’’ 271; idem, ‘‘The Jews in medieval England,’’ 174; Stacey, ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England,’’ 341, 343–44. Mundill (England’s Jewish Solution, 28) goes so far as to write, ‘‘The majority of [English Jewish] males were probably trilingual in Latin, Norman-French and Hebrew.’’ He considers the Jews to have been able ‘‘to converse and write in both Latin and Norman-French.’’ 22. Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 279, recounts the following anecdote from G. Cambrensis, Itin. Camb. II, c. xiii that illustrates knowledge of English and French. We set forth thence towards Wenloch through a narrow and steep way which they call Malam plateam. Here it happened in our days that a certain Jew was journeying towards Shrewsbury with the archdeacon of the same place, whose name was Peche, and the deacon whose name was Dayville. When he heard the archdeacon by chance saying that his deaconry began at this place, which is called Malam plateam and

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 – 1 2 177 lasted until Bad-pass in Chester, considering and reflecting upon the name of the archdeacon and the name of the dean, he made rather a witty and neat remark. ‘‘It will be a wonder’’, said he, ‘‘if chance brings me back safe from this country whose archdeacon is sin, whose deacon is the Devil, which you enter by a Bad-Place and leave in a Bad-Pass.’’ 23. Roth, ‘‘Elijah of London,’’ 30. 24. Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 10. 25. On glosses from Normandy, see, e.g., Japhet, ‘‘The commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir,’’ 167, on glosses in Rashbam’s commentary on Job found in New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS Lutzki 778; Banitt, Le glossaire de Leipzig. On the sermon fragments, see Banitt, ‘‘Deux fragments,’’ 186–87. Banitt does not analyze the dialect of the fragments in detail, as future editors will undoubtedly want to do. On the incantation, see Banitt, ‘‘Une formule d’exorcisme.’’ 26. Cod. Parm. 2924, fol. 217r. See Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, 139; Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 5. 27. Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice.’’ 28. Beit-Arie´, The Only Dated Medieval Hebrew Manuscript, 1–7. 29. See Schwarzfuchs, ‘‘Etudes juives re´centes’’; Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, viii. Tsarefat occurs only once in the Bible (Obad. 1:20), and transliterations of it in modern scholarship vary (e.g., Zarephath, Zarfat, Tsarfat, Tzarfat, Tsorfat, Tsorfas). The accent called munah. appears next to the qamets in the initial syllable. If a meteg (bridle) were beside the qamets instead, the a (as opposed to o) in the first syllable would be more certain; however, my rendering of the vowels is consistent with both the NRSV and NJPS, which have ‘‘Zarephath.’’ 30. On Ashkenaz, see, inter alia, Weinreich, ‘‘The Jewish languages of Romance stock and their relation to earliest Yiddish’’; Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry; Hyams, ‘‘The Jewish minority in mediaeval England,’’ 271–72; idem, ‘‘The Jews in medieval England,’’ 179; Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society, especially 9–11; Chazan, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism, 1–18; Stacey, ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England.’’ 31. Hyams, ‘‘The Jewish minority in mediaeval England,’’ 271–72. 32. Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 29. 33. Graboı¨s, ‘‘L’exe´ge`se rabbinique.’’ 34. Stacey, ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England,’’ 341, 343. 35. Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, 3–5, 38, quote from p. 3. 36. See Brown, ‘‘Philip V, Charles IV, and the Jews of France.’’ 37. Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, 248. 38. Ibid., 325–26. 39. Dijon, Archives de´partementales de la Coˆte-d’Or, cote´s B 10410 and B 10411; Loeb, ‘‘Deux livres de commerce,’’ 164. 40. Assis, ‘‘Juifs de France re´fugie´s en Aragon’’; Jordan, French Monarchy and the Jews, 216–38, 247–50, with a map on p. 217; Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 264–75.

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178 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 – 1 6 41. Einbinder, No Place of Rest, is the most comprehensive study to date of the survival of French Jewish culture in exile. 42. Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 2. 43. Like Latin, Hebrew was ‘‘sex-linked,’’ to quote Ong, Orality and Literacy, 113. 44. In Literary Language and Its Public, 249, Auerbach identifies the essential traits of a literary language as ‘‘selectivity, homogeneity, and conservatism.’’ See also 249–52. 45. Japhet and Salters, The Commentary of R. Samuel ben Meir, 77: ‘‘Ashkenazi Hebrew of medieval northern France is generally regarded as a development of Rabbinic Hebrew abundantly interwoven with biblical elements and subject to the influence of the local vernacular, Old French.’’ 46. The description of biblical, rabbinic, and medieval Hebrew here follows Pe´rez Ferna´ndez, An Introductory Grammar of Rabbinic Hebrew, 1–2. 47. Fraade, ‘‘Rabbinic views on the practice of Targum,’’ 270. He cites primary sources in the text and in note 41. 48. Banitt, Rashi, 71. 49. Blumenkranz provides some. See his Juifs et Chre´tiens, 4–5. 50. Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 35–36. Similarly, see Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 14. 51. Reinach, ‘‘Inscription juive de Narbonne’’ and ‘‘Inscription juive d’Auch’’; Noy, Jewish Inscriptions, 1:263–72; Sirat, ‘‘Les manuscrits en caracte`res he´braı¨ques,’’ 251; BeitArie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 3. A bronze seal belonging to the Muse´e Calvet in Avignon is of unknown provenance. 52. Such words were the special interest of Blondheim. See Blondheim, Les parlers jude´o-romans et la Vetus Latina. 53. Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 3–5. 54. On Moses of Palermo, see EJ, vol. 12. On Immanuel of Rome, see Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 80; Brener, ‘‘Stealing wisdom.’’ On Le´on Joseph de Carcassonne, see Sirat, ‘‘Me´thodes de travail et liberte´ de penser,’’ 287–88. On Gersonides, see idem, ‘‘Le proble`me pose´ par les rapports entre Gersonide et le milieu ambiant,’’ 10–13. 55. See, e.g., the EJ entry ‘‘Bekhor Shor, Joseph ben Isaac.’’ 56. Berger, ‘‘Mission to the Jews,’’ 589–90 n. 68. 57. See Klausner, ‘‘Ha-parshan ha-loh.em shel yeme ha-benayim,’’ 201. 58. Lockshin, Rashbam’s Commentary on Exodus, 217–19. On possible contacts between Rashbam and other northern French exegetes and Christians—namely, those of the School of St. Victor—see Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages; Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars, 103–34 (especially 107, 111–13), 262; Signer, introduction to Expositionem in Ezechielem, xiii, xxi–xxxvii; Walfish, ‘‘An introduction to medieval Jewish biblical interpretation,’’ 3–12 (especially 5). 59. Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame, 4:42–72. 60. Dahan, ‘‘Les Juifs dans les Miracles de Gautier de Coincy,’’ 48. 61. Fudeman, ‘‘Gautier de Coinci and the literate Jew.’’

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 7 – 2 3 179 62. Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 3–5, with photographs; Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy, 351. 63. Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2:16, v. 278 and 2:14, vv. 233–34. 64. See l. 313 of the Desputoison; also Gautier de Coinci, Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2:13, vv. 216–17. Attestations of this image in Latin literature include Peter the Venerable (‘‘Rodis tu corticem, edo ego medullam’’), Adversus Iudeorum inveteratam duritiem, IV, l. 1102; Beatus de Liebana (‘‘Rodis corticem, et folium sicut Iudeus mandis’’), Eterius Oxomensis—Aduersus Elipandum libri duo, lib. 1, cap. 66, l. 1918; and Guibert de Nogent (‘‘Corticem et ossa rodentibus non bona, interiora carpentibus utilis utentibus que medulla’’), Contra iudaizantem et Iudaeos, 362, l. 1405. 65. Other sources on Jews’ knowledge of Latin are given in Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society, 169–70 n. 37. I will not systematically address the study of Hebrew among Christians or Christian attitudes toward Hebrew, both of which fall outside the scope of this book, though I touch on them in Chapter 1. 66. Peri expands diex to dieus (l. 20). 67. See, e.g., Hoving, ‘‘The Bury St. Edmunds cross,’’ 330–31. The Vulgate (see Weber et al., Biblia sacra iuxta vulgatam versionem) reads: ‘‘et erit vita tua quasi pendens ante te timebis nocte et die et non credes vitae tuae.’’ The NRSV has ‘‘Your life shall hang in doubt before you; night and day you shall be in dread, with no assurance of your life.’’ 68. My rendering of this passage reflects Peri’s emendations of la to sa (l. 419) and cel un to tes ieus (l. 420). The second emendation, though perhaps too extreme, concords with the meaning of the corresponding words in the Vulgate, ante te (before you). Peri has vostre vie instead of nostre vie (l. 422). The letters n and v are similar in the script of the manuscript, but I believe, based on my consultation of a facsimile (see note 1), that the original text has vostre, not nostre. 69. The text has baptizier, but I accept Peri’s emendation to baptoier for preservation of the rhyme. 70. Ferguson, ‘‘Diglossia.’’ 71. J. Fishman, ‘‘Bilingualism with and without diglossia,’’ 29–38; idem, The Sociology of Language. 72. Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 27. 73. Sa´enz-Badillos, A History of the Hebrew Language, 205. 74. Japhet and Salters, The Commentary of R. Samuel ben Meir, 78. 75. See discussion in Chapter 1. 76. Banitt, ‘‘Une vue d’ensemble,’’ 194; Japhet and Salters, The Commentary of R. Samuel ben Meir, 77–81. 77. This is discussed further in Chapter 2. 78. Ziolkowski, ‘‘Cultural diglossia,’’ 213. Similarly, see Ong, Orality and Literacy, 113; G. Spiegel, The Past as Text, 193 and references there. Teeuwen, in The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life in the Middle Ages, 92–94, discusses ‘‘litteratus’’ and ‘‘illiteratus.’’ 79. Similarly, see Ziolkowski, ‘‘Cultural diglossia,’’ 195. 80. Stock, The Implications of Literacy, 14.

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180 n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 3 – 2 5 81. This description is based on Stock’s definition of a textual community in The Implications of Literacy, 522. 82. Fishman, The Sociology of Language, 98–105. 83. For example, Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, 310–13; BedosRezak, ‘‘The confrontation of orality and textuality,’’ 543–46; Beit-Arie´, Hebrew Manuscripts of East and West, 80; Sirat, ‘‘Les manuscrits en caracte`res he´braı¨ques,’’ 241. 84. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 1, 25–26. 85. Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 87. 86. Ibid., 79, 87, 93–96; Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 25–33. 87. Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 124. 88. Benbassa, Histoire des Juifs de France, 57–58; Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society, 22–23. 89. Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society, 19–22. 90. See, e.g., Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 32. 91. Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, 315. 92. Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society, 11; Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 184; Fudeman, ‘‘They have ears but do not hear,’’ 547–49. 93. Babylonian Talmud, Gittin, 45b. Sirat, ‘‘Les femmes juives et l’e´criture,’’ 15. 94. Peri, ‘‘Prayer in the vernacular,’’ 428–30. 95. There is much confusion in manuscripts regarding the spelling of the placename associated with Solomon. It occurs as drwm and drws (with the final s represented sometimes by shin, sometimes by samekh). Neubauer, ‘‘Dreux et Gournay,’’ 155. Golb discusses R. Solomon in Toldot ha-yehudim be-‘ir Rouen, 105–19. 96. Or Zarua‘, vol. 2, Hilkhot Pesah.im, par. 256 (p. 119a in the printed edition). 97. ‘‘And thus R. J. of London did the entire haggadah in la‘az [the vernacular] so that women and children would understand.’’ Moses Isserlis, comments on Shulh.an Arukh, Orah. H . ayyim 473, par. 6. Jordan Penkower has also called to my attention a passage (par. 50) in the late thirteenth-century or early fourteenth-century work Kol Bo essentially stating that some translate the four questions and even their responses into the vernacular and approving of the custom. 98. Hurwitz, Mahz.or Vitry, 304; Peri, ‘‘Prayer in the vernacular,’’ 431. 99. Peri, ‘‘Prayer in the vernacular,’’ 429 n. 19; see also 433. The matter-of-fact way in which some medieval Jewish scholars associate Babylonian women with illiteracy may also serve as indirect evidence that the same situation held in medieval France. Rashi, writing on Megillah 21, states that the Aramaic Targum was written so that women and simple folk who did not know Hebrew could understand the Bible, Aramaic being the vernacular (la‘az) of the Babylonians. The same idea is expressed in the Sefer H . uqqei haTorah (thirteenth century). See Penkower, ‘‘Tahalikh ha-kanoniztsiah shel perush Rashi la-Torah,’’ 134, 138. 100. Sirat, ‘‘Les femmes juives et l’e´criture,’’ 18–19, citing Amsterdam, Rosenthaliana, mss. cat. 558 and Cambridge, University Library, Add. ms. 467 no. 20. 101. See Jordan, ‘‘Jews on top,’’ especially 53–56; Baskin, ‘‘Some parallels,’’ 42; Baskin, ‘‘Jewish women in the Middle Ages,’’ 114–15.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 6 – 2 8 181

chapter 1 1. Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. Parm. 2342, fol. 286v–287v. The manuscript dates from the late thirteenth century; this account was added by a later hand. See description of the manuscript in Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma, 460–61. The account has been published in Berliner, Otsar Tov, 49–52, and Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 11–15. Chazan offers an English translation of the text in Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 295–300. The translations in this chapter are my own and are based on Habermann’s text and the manuscript. The name of the city is given in Hebrew letters as l’mnyys and lymwnyys. My predecessors have read this as Limoges (see, e.g., Gross, Gallia Judaica, 308–9) or Le Mans (see Chazan, ‘‘The persecution of 992,’’ 218), and I would propose that a third possibility is Poitiers (Lat. Limonum or Lemonum). Chazan writes, ‘‘The Hebrew orthography [lymwnys] [sic] has been related to the Latin Lemovicum or Lemonicum, neither of which it really approximates. Moreover, the community describes its locale as ‘[lymwnys] the chief city, a small community of limited numbers, on the fringes of [Tsarefat].’ ’’ He goes on to explain that Tsarefat most likely refers to ‘‘the area of Francia, as opposed to the neighboring regions of Aquitania and Burgundia,’’ and that this would seem to exclude Limoges, located in central Aquitaine. Poitiers was also a ‘‘chief city’’ of Francia. Although it was in the French-speaking region, it was not far from Occitania. 2. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 12. 3. See Stow, ‘‘A tale of uncertainties,’’ 257–58; idem, Alienated Minority, 96. Other scholars who have dealt with the story include Chazan, ‘‘The persecution of 992,’’ 217–21; idem, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 12–15; Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds, 143–45. 4. See M. Simon, Verus Israel, 77–80, 169–73. 5. Haman was a descendant of Amalek; see Esther 3:1 and 1 Sam. 15:8–9. 6. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 12, ll. 26–27. On God’s stiffening of Pharaoh’s heart, see, e.g., Exod. 4:21. The phrase in the story of Seh.oq is structurally similar to Josh. 11:20. 7. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 11. 8. Studies addressing the study of Hebrew among Christian scholars include Goodwin, ‘‘Take Hold of the Robe of a Jew’’; Olszowy-Schlanger, ‘‘The knowledge and practice of Hebrew grammar among Christian scholars in pre-expulsion England’’; idem, ‘‘A Christian tradition of Hebrew vocalisation in medieval England’’; Olszowy-Schlanger and Grondeux, Dictionnaire he´breu-latin-franc¸ais de la Bible he´braı¨que de l’abbaye de Ramsey; Signer, introduction to Expositionem in Ezechielem, xxi–xxvii; Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 154–72 and passim. 9. The literature on this is extensive. Selected readings include Benor, ‘‘Second style acquisition’’; idem, ‘‘Do American Jews speak a ‘Jewish language’?’’; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, Acts of Identity; Mendoza-Denton, ‘‘Language and identity’’; Schiffrin, ‘‘Narrative as self-portrait’’; Schilling-Estes, ‘‘Constructing ethnicity in interaction.’’ 10. Benor, ‘‘Second style acquisition.’’

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182 n o t e s t o p a g e s 2 8 – 3 1 11. G. Spiegel, The Past as Text, 4. The chapter in which this quote is found is a revision of Spiegel, ‘‘History, historicism, and the social logic of the text in the Middle Ages.’’ 12. Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, Acts of Identity, 3. 13. Japhet, ‘‘Major trends,’’ 47, writing of scholarship in general, and not only scholarship on language and society. 14. A short biography of Banitt is given in ‘‘Window into medieval Jewish and French culture.’’ Weinreich’s dates are given in the prefatory material of his History of the Yiddish Language and in Schaechter and Baumgarten, ‘‘Weinreich, Max.’’ 15. In addition to Max Weinreich and D. S. Blondheim, whose views are discussed in this section, we can note that Paul Wexler and George Jochnowitz both remain open to the term or idea of Judeo-French. See, e.g., Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 104, 107, 112, 117, 118, 125; idem, ‘‘Reconceptualizing the genesis of Yiddish,’’ 137, 140–41; idem, ‘‘The term ‘Sabbath food,’ ’’ 461 n. 2; Jochnowitz, ‘‘Judeo-Romance languages.’’ 16. See, e.g., Benbassa, Histoire des Juifs de France, 17–20. 17. See Bloom, ‘‘The glories of Yiddish.’’ 18. Schaechter and Baumgarten, ‘‘Weinreich, Max.’’ 19. Sowden, ‘‘Rabinowitz, Louis Isaac.’’ 20. Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 23. Similarly, he writes, ‘‘apart from the purely religious life, the Jews lived in a state of complete social assimilation with their non-Jewish neighbors’’ (23); ‘‘The most cogent evidence . . . of the extent of social assimilation is to be seen in the fact that there is no doubt but that French was the language of the Jews’’ (238). 21. For example, see Rabinowitz’s discussion of Jewish names in The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 239–43. He writes that the Jews ‘‘adopted Christian names, indistinguishable from those of the Gentiles’’ (239) but goes on to include examples like ‘‘Hagin, Haguin, Haquin, or Haginet’’ and ‘‘Bele-assez’’ that were considered Jewish. Bele-assez (Bellassez, Belaset, etc.) was a Jewish equivalent for Rachel in medieval French, and scholars consider it to be a calque of yefat-to’ar (‘‘beautiful of form’’) in the description of Rachel in Gen. 29:17. (See, e.g., Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 94 n. 3.) 22. Japhet, ‘‘Major trends,’’ 49–50, 54. 23. Weinreich, ‘‘The Jewish languages of Romance stock,’’ 408 (see text and notes). 24. Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 2. 25. Agus, The Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, ix–x. 26. Ibid., x. 27. Agus, ‘‘The languages spoken by Ashkenazic Jews in the High Middle Ages,’’ 26. 28. D. Fishman, ‘‘The politics of Yiddish in tsarist Russia,’’ 157–58; J. Grossman, The Discourse on Yiddish in Germany; Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language; Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 103. 29. Quoted in Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 71. 30. Quoted in Gilman, ‘‘Karl Marx and the secret language of the Jews,’’ 287.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 1 – 3 4 183 31. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, 3. 32. D. Fishman, ‘‘The politics of Yiddish in tsarist Russia,’’ 158. 33. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 18–19. 34. Agus, ‘‘The languages spoken by Ashkenazic Jews in the High Middle Ages,’’ 22–23 n. 18. 35. Baron, The Russian Jew Under Tsars and Soviets, 192; D. Fishman, ‘‘The politics of Yiddish in tsarist Russia,’’ 155; Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 288. 36. Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 257: ‘‘en marge de la socie´te´ chre´tienne,’’ ‘‘ces e´ternels de´place´s dans leurs ghettos mise´rables et leurs Judengassen funestes.’’ 37. ‘‘Les ‘occupations’, les ‘souffrances’, les ‘e´tudes’ particulie`res aux Juifs du moyen aˆge, ainsi que leurs de´placements nombreux et fre´quents et ‘leur caracte`re conservateur’ qui, d’apre`s Blondheim, auraient tous contribue´ a` de´former leur franc¸ais en ‘jude´ofranc¸ais’, sont d’un autre aˆge.’’ Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 257. (Emphasis mine.) 38. ‘‘une espe`ce d’idiome amorphe et he´te´roge`ne, qui ne me´riterait pas le nom de langue; une coineˆ, dont l’e´volution dans le temps et les divergences dans l’espace seraient indiscernables, un ‘dialecte juif ’ parmi tant d’autres.’’ Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 253. 39. Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 253. 40. Aschheim, Brothers and Strangers, 5. 41. Schwarzfuchs, ‘‘Antwerp,’’ 250. 42. For discussion of these three factors, although not in the context of JudeoFrench, see Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 102–3. Wexler considers these neither sufficient nor necessary. He writes: ‘‘The reasons behind the rise and development of a Jewish language must be sought both in voluntary acts of linguistic creativity on the part of the Jews and in the differential impact of social factors upon the Jewish community’’ (103). 43. Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 255: ‘‘Paris n’avait jamais plus de cent Juifs.’’ 44. Rabinowitz’s work is a valuable source of information on various aspects of medieval French Jewish life; however, treatment of particular issues can be superficial or out-of-date, and some of his figures are inexact. For example, Rabinowitz (The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 32) puts the number of martyrs in the Blois massacre of 1171, discussed in Chapter 2, at only twenty-four. There were about thirty-two. 45. Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 31; Loeb, ‘‘Le roˆle des Juifs de Paris.’’ 46. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 8. Consider, for example, the early thirteenth-century movement of Anglo-Norman-speaking Jews out of England onto the mainland due to attacks by King John, many of them perhaps to Brittany and to ‘‘the domains of the count of Saint-Pol’’ (68–69). At about the same time, some Jews from the French royal domain fled, many of them probably to Brittany, to escape Philip Augustus’s oppressive policies (69). In 1288 the Jews of Gascony were expelled, and while some of them moved south into Navarre, or to French cities in the south, such as Toulouse and Carcassonne, many others moved north to cities such as Poitou. Indeed, so many Jews moved into Poitou from both Gascony and Anjou-Maine that authorities complained to Philip IV (182–83). In 1290 the Jews were officially expelled from England, and many of them moved to Normandy, with some moving on to Paris or smaller towns (183–84).

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184 n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 4 – 3 6 47. Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 256. 48. This point, which David Gold also makes in his review of Banitt’s article (Review of ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 195–96), is often missed by scholars (e.g., Banitt, Sala). Gold offers other criticisms of Banitt’s article while remaining open to its strong points. Close readings of Levy’s work make clear that one of his major objectives in documenting the Jews’ French vocabulary was to make the Jewish data available to Romance philologists, who might apply them, for example, to the study of etymologies or lexical semantics. 49. Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 257 n. 3, 263 (on hardouba), 292 (on melder). Banitt makes the curious claim, criticized by Gold (Review of ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 196–97), that some words in medieval Hebraico-French texts that seem to be truly Jewish, including Ge´ (‘‘God’’), bendir (‘‘bless’’), and melder (‘‘study the law, Jewish sacred texts’’), should be discounted because synonymous terms like De´, be´nir, and aprendre and penser are also used (292). Gold writes: ‘‘Applying his logic, we would have to reject Shabes as an Ashkenazic English word because Saturday and the Sabbath exist in this lect too (though not necessarily for all its speakers and not with the same connotations).’’ 50. Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 209; Banitt, ‘‘Une langue fantoˆme,’’ 283. 51. Hary, Multiglossia in Judeo-Arabic, 71–73, reviews various definitions of Jewish language. See also Blau, ‘‘Judaeo-Arabic in its linguistic setting,’’ 6; Rabin, ‘‘What constitutes a Jewish language?’’ 21; Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics’’; Stillman, ‘‘Contacts and boundaries in the domain of language,’’ 105–7; idem, ‘‘La rime dans le langage arabe des Juifs de Sefrou,’’ 99; idem, ‘‘Language patterns in Islamic and Judaic societies,’’ 47–50. Some scholars prefer not to use the prefix ‘‘Judeo.’’ See Birnbaum and Aslanov, ‘‘Jewish languages,’’ 302. 52. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 23–24. On Rigord, see Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 396 and sources cited there. 53. Sources that discuss aspects of Jewish integration and social distinctiveness include Baumgarten, Mothers and Children; Benbassa, Histoire des Juifs de France; Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law in the Middle Ages; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews (see also Jordan, ‘‘Why ‘race’?’’ 166); Kanarfogel, Jewish Education and Society in the High Middle Ages; Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France; Taitz, The Jews of Medieval France. 54. I discuss two studies here: Boberg, ‘‘Ethnic patterns in the phonetics of Montreal English,’’ and Holes, ‘‘Patterns of communal language variation in Bahrain.’’ See also Labov, Sociolinguistic Patterns, 171–77, on distinctive features of Jewish speech in New York City; Laferriere, ‘‘Ethnicity in phonological variation and change,’’ on Jewish speech in Boston; Benor, ‘‘Second style acquisition’’; idem, ‘‘Do American Jews speak a ‘Jewish language’?’’; and idem, ‘‘Towards a new understanding of Jewish language.’’ According to Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 103, ‘‘most Jewish languages were created when Jews had unimpeded access to the non-Jewish linguistic norms and were conversant in them.’’ 55. Milroy, Language and Social Networks; idem, ‘‘Social networks’’; Milroy and Gordon, Sociolinguistics.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 6 – 3 9 185 56. The requirements for participation in the study had to be relaxed somewhat for those of Italian descent. Some of them did spend their early childhoods (pre-schooling) in Italy. Many of the Jewish participants had parents who had also been born in Montreal. Ultra-orthodox and Hasidic Jews were excluded from the study (Boberg, ‘‘Ethnic patterns in the phonetics of Montreal English,’’ 547). 57. Boberg, ‘‘Ethnic patterns in the phonetics of Montreal English,’’ 561. 58. For example, Gruber, Rashi’s Commentary on Psalms, 10; Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars, 16; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 23; Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 103; Stacey, ‘‘The conversion of Jews to Christianity,’’ 264. 59. Chazan, ‘‘Jewish settlement in northern France,’’ 45; idem, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 32, 134. For the fourteenth century, see Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 52–54. 60. Rabinowitz, The Social Life of the Jews of Northern France, 34. Scholars who have discussed clusters of Jewish settlement (juiveries, rues des Juifs, etc.) include Roblin, Les Juifs de Paris, 12–18; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 6–9; Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy, 33–110. 61. Roblin, Les Juifs de Paris, 13, 19; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 9. 62. Chazan, ‘‘Jewish settlement in northern France,’’ 49. 63. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 9. 64. Roblin, Les Juifs de Paris, 12–18, discusses five Jewries of medieval Paris. They probably were not occupied simultaneously. 65. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 26–28. 66. Ibid., 27. 67. Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 103. 68. Hary, ‘‘Judeo-Arabic,’’ citing Fischer and Jastrow, Handbuch der arabischen Dialekte, and giving additional examples from Judeo-Italian of the same phenomenon. 69. Sala, ‘‘Die romanischen Judensprachen,’’ 372, considers Judeo-Spanish unique among the Judeo-Romance languages past and present in being spoken in regions where Spanish traditionally has not. However, we should not equate absence or paucity of documentation with an absence of history. 70. Blumenkranz, ‘‘En 1306,’’ 21. 71. ‘‘Nous n’avons que des textes e´crits, presque tous des traductions. Donc nous ne connaissons pas la langue parle´e des Juifs’’ (We have only written texts, almost all of them translations. Thus we do not know the spoken language of the Jews). Blondheim, Les parlers jude´o-romans, cxxxvi. 72. On the ‘‘correction’’ or deletion of glosses, see, e.g., Salters, ‘‘The medieval French glosses of Rashbam,’’ and Penkower, ‘‘The French and German glosses.’’ 73. The Troyes elegy contains the form poine, which has been considered an example of Latin influence on the Jews’ spelling of Old French (cf. Latin poena). In fact, poine is a dialectal spelling encountered in non-Jewish Lotharingian texts as well. See Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 195.

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186 n o t e s t o p a g e s 3 9 – 4 3 74. Labov, Language in the Inner City, 257. 75. Ibid., 257–58. 76. Aspland, A Medieval French Reader, 157–58. The translation is my own. 77. mos d’Artois: Conon de Be´thune is probably referring both to dialectal pronunciations and to regional vocabulary items. 78. Vale, The Princely Court, 285–86, gives several examples from Adenet le Roi in Berte aus grans pies, Philippe de Beaumanoir in Jean de Dammartin et Blonde d’Oxford, and Chaucer in the General Prologue to the Canterbury Tales. 79. For comments about Picard, see Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, 27–28. Roman de Renart: see Branches I and V. 80. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law; Kupfer, ‘‘Hebrew script and Jewish witness,’’ 100–111; Lipton, Images of Intolerance, especially 5 and ch. 3. 81. Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, 2:17, v. 316. See also 2:14, v. 232. 82. Ibid., 4:578, vv. 67–68. For a similar statement, see 4:556, vv. 255–56. 83. Dahan, ‘‘Les Juifs dans les Miracles de Gautier de Coincy,’’ 41–48, 59–68; Fudeman, ‘‘Gautier de Coinci and the literate Jew.’’ 84. Rubin, Gentile Tales, 7–27. On Evagrius Scholasticus, see 8. 85. See discussion in Rubin, Gentile Tales, 12–15, and more generally, 7–39. 86. Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 318–19. 87. D. Bell, The Cult of the Nation, 179. 88. I am reminded of Ayres-Bennett, Sociolinguistic Variation in Seventeenth-Century France, 30–32, where she addresses the hazards of using direct speech as portrayed in drama as an accurate reflection of spoken language. Noting that linguistic features that we might expect to find are sometimes missing from dialogues in theater, Ayres-Bennett points out that it may be because those linguistic features are not yet stigmatized or stereotyped: ‘‘Dramatists often work with stereotypes which have to be easily recognizable on stage’’ (30). 89. In the first line given here, Dufournet (Rutebeuf ) has bachabe´. I have gone with Frank’s reading (bachahe´; in Le Miracle de The´ophile), which creates a rich rhyme with achabahe´ in the next line. 90. Kelly, ‘‘ ‘The Prioress’s Tale,’ ’’ 79–80. 91. Dufournet, Le Miracle de The´ophile, 254–55; Adgar, Le Gracial, Miracle XXVI, 167–93, see especially 171; Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, 1:50–176, see especially 60–61. 92. Quoted in Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 24. 93. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 17. See also Stacey, ‘‘The conversion of Jews to Christianity,’’ 264–65. 94. Kupfer, ‘‘Hebrew script and Jewish witness,’’ 62–63; see also 88. Kupfer discusses a manuscript of Mandeville that was presented as a gift to King Charles V of France (r. 1364–1380) by his physician (60). 95. Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, 133. 96. Stacey, ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England,’’ 344–45.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 3 – 4 6 187 97. Platter, Journal of a Younger Brother, 81. 98. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 78. 99. Quoted in Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, 104. This is a continuation of the quote from Wagenseil given earlier in the chapter. I offer another example from personal experience: a tow truck driver once gave me a compliment in Yiddish, then told me it was Hebrew. 100. Stacey, ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England,’’ 345. 101. On Nicholas Donin, see Chazan, Daggers of Faith, 33–34, 38; J. Cohen, The Friars and the Jews, 60–62; Jordan, ‘‘Marian devotion and the Talmud trial of 1240.’’ Chazan, Church, State, and Jew, 224–28, has published translations of Hebrew and Latin reports about the Talmud trial. 102. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 25. 103. Le Page, ‘‘Projection, focussing, diffusion,’’ 9, 13; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, Acts of Identity, 181. Some speakers may use certain linguistic markers merely because others before them have done so. But even this can be seen as a choice—even if it is not a conscious one—to resemble those predecessors. Note also that speakers may choose to resemble more than one group. This comes into play in the discussion of code-switching. 104. Wexler, ‘‘Jewish interlinguistics,’’ 135. 105. Similarly, see Benor’s work on Jewish English, including ‘‘Second style acquisition,’’ ‘‘Do American Jews speak a ‘Jewish language’?’’ and ‘‘Towards a new understanding of Jewish language.’’ 106. Basic sources on conversational code-switching include Scotton, ‘‘Diglossia and code switching,’’ and Wardhaugh, An Introduction to Sociolinguistics, 10–15. On textual code-switching, see Ziolkowski, ‘‘Cultural diglossia,’’ and Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons. 107. Scotton, ‘‘Diglossia and code switching,’’ 403–4. 108. Ibid., 406. 109. h.atan: El giv‘at ha-levonah; Troyes elegy. kallah: ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah; El giv‘at halevonah. kohen: Troyes elegy; homiletic fragments edited by Banitt, ‘‘Deux fragments’’; ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 12, 6, edited by Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 418. qadosh: Troyes elegy. mal’akhim: ‘‘Esaterai mon roi,’’ 21, 1, edited by Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 410. 110. Troyes elegy. 111. ‘‘Les anfanz des avot sages,’’ edited by Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 37–45; ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 3, 7, in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 413. 112. galut: ‘‘Esaterai mon roi,’’ 8, 6; ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 15, 3, in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 406, 419; qedushah: Troyes elegy. teshuvah: ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 2, 7, in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 413. zekhut: ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 8, 7 in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 415. This word, feminine in Hebrew, is masculine in the French hymn: son zekhut. 113. mishkan: ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 12, 1, in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 417. dukhan: ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 12, 7, in Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 418. 114. Zumthor, ‘‘Un proble`me d’esthe´tique me´die´vale,’’ 587. Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons, often uses the word ‘‘texture’’ in discussing bilingual Latin–Middle English texts. 115. This hymn has been edited by Blondheim from London, British Museum, Add.

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188 n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 7 – 4 9 ms. 19, 664, fol. 99r. This passage is from Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 36–37. I have altered the spelling and punctuation of Blondheim’s romanization somewhat, and I have made a few corrections to his pointing based on a color photograph of the manuscript folio provided to me by the British Library. The translation is my own. The sequence yyn of the word ‘‘ancianz’’ is obscured by a hole in the manuscript. 116. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, MS 8092, fol. 160v. See also published sources identified in the notes to Chapter 4. 117. Medeient, 3pl imperfect: Troyes elegy, l. 6; maldanz, present participle, oblique plural agreement: ‘‘[Hymne Z],’’ 15, 7 (Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes,’’ 419). 118. Good starting points for studying meleta¯re, its history, its prefixed forms, and the various Jewish cognates are Blondheim, Les parlers jude´o-romans, 75–79 n. 92; Wartburg, Franzo¨sisches Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch, 6:660 (s.v. meletare); Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs, 151 (s.v. melder). See also Banitt, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques,’’ 210. All give further references. 119. Corominas, Diccionario crı´tico etimolo´gico castellano e hispa´nico (s.v. joroba); Darmesteter and Blondheim, Les gloses franc¸aises, glosses 574a, b, c (p. 80); Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses,’’ 169 (gloss no. 72); Levy, ‘‘El castellano ‘joroba’ y el judeofrance´s ‘haldrobe’.’’ This word occurs with a variety of spellings. 120. See also Fudeman, ‘‘Etymology, gloss, and pesˇat.’’ 121. T-L 4: cols. 1221, 1229–30; modern French huppe. Classical Latin has upupa. 122. It is attested in the Troyes elegy (Champenois or Lotharingian dialect, c. 1288) and the incantation from Chinon (thirteenth century) edited by Banitt (‘‘Une formule d’exorcisme’’). 123. Die´ or De´ is attested in Hebraico-French texts written in Champenois (the Old French glosses of Joseph Kara, eleventh to twelfth centuries), Lotharingian (hymns edited by Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes’’), and Picard (a sermon fragment, late thirteenth century; Banitt, ‘‘Deux fragments’’). 124. From De˘us: Latin short e diphthongized to /ie¸/ under stress, and /d/ palatalized before /i/ elsewhere in Old French (cf. Old French jor from Latin dı˘u˘rnum). Such palatalization is common in the world’s languages before high and mid-high front vowels, and we can note also that Old French gieres, giers ‘‘consequently’’ may come from Latin de¯ ea¯ re¯, with the addition of a final adverbial /s/ (on adverbial /s/, see Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §597). From Die´: the alveolar stop consonants /t/ and /d/ frequently become affricates in contact with /j/ or /i/. (Cf. the final d of did in the phrase did you . . . ?, which is frequently pronounced [dzˇ].) 125. Gossen, Grammaire de l’ancien picard, 55–58. 126. Cod. Parm. 2780 and Turin A IV 35. The latter was destroyed by fire. Darmesteter, Glosses [sic] et glossaires he´breux-franc¸ais, 33. On Cod. Parm. 2780 (690 in Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina), see Siskin, ‘‘A partial edition of a fourteenth-century biblical glossary’’ and ‘‘A medieval semiotics of translation.’’ 127. For example, dever mizrah. in the Paris glossary edited by Lambert and Brandin, Glossaire he´breu-franc¸ais, 101 (gloss on Ezek. 42:9).

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 4 9 – 5 2 189 128. When a person faces east, the south is to the right. The pronunciation of yamin changes to yemin when it used in the construct state. 129. Lambert and Brandin, Glossaire he´breu-franc¸ais, 101. Ruah. ha-yam: ruah. is literally ‘‘wind’’ and ha-yam ‘‘the sea.’’ But here the phrase means ‘‘the west side.’’ 130. Bacher, ‘‘A thirteenth-century Hebrew-French glossary,’’ 806. 131. Cf. Scotton, ‘‘Diglossia and code switching,’’ 406. 132. Forster, The Poet’s Tongues, 14; Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons, 2–3 and references there. 133. Example from Gardner-Chloros and Edwards, ‘‘Assumptions behind grammatical approaches to code-switching,’’ 109. 134. The elegy has been discussed in recent years by Einbinder, ‘‘The Troyes elegies’’; idem, Beautiful Death, ch. 5; Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice’’ and ‘‘ ‘These things I will remember’ ’’; Kiwitt, ‘‘L’E´le´gie de Troyes’’; Pfeffer, ‘‘Women stand strong’’; idem, ‘‘Yet another look at the Troyes Elegy.’’ A more complete bibliography can be found in Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice.’’ For a description of the manuscript, see Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Vatican Library. 135. This word is listed in U. Weinreich’s dictionary, s.v. kadmoynish. Although I cannot prove that this word was used by medieval Jewish speakers of German/Yiddish, they were clearly capable of creating and understanding it: it consists of Hebrew and Aramaic qadmon plus the Middle High German adjectival suffix -isch, -esch (Paul, Wiehl, and Grosse, Mittelhochdeutsche Grammatik, 87). 136. See Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 213. See T-L, vol. 6, col. 1215, s.v. ‘‘ore.’’ 137. Darmesteter, ‘‘L’Autodafe´ de Troyes,’’ 234–35. 138. See Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 205. 139. The d that should precede ‘asqer is faded and barely legible in my photograph of the manuscript folio. 140. Zumthor, ‘‘Un proble`me d’esthe´tique me´die´vale,’’ 580. 141. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 139. 142. Baldwin, The Language of Sex, 144–59. 143. This gloss and its reading are courtesy of the Miqra’ot Gedolot ‘‘HaKeter’’ Project, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. It will appear in their forthcoming edition of Jeremiah. The explanation for why Kara used a Hebrew suffix on a French root is my own. While it is not obvious to the modern reader why Kara would want to emphasize the masculinefeminine distinction in this particular context, we might speculate that the gloss reflects a specific class discussion in which Kara participated as teacher. Banitt (‘‘Une vue d’ensemble,’’ 194) has argued that the French words in medieval Hebrew-French glossaries were used in class discussions about the meanings of Hebrew terms. The same may be true of many of the vernacular glosses in commentaries. 144. Hurwitz, Mah.zor Vitry, 294, ll. 37–38, Schlessinger, Die altfranzo¨sischen wo¨rter im Machsor Vitry, 29 (no. 7). 145. Hurwitz, Mah.zor Vitry, 624, ll. 21–22, Schlessinger, Die altfranzo¨sischen wo¨rter im Machsor Vitry, 30–31 (nos. 10, 11).

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190 n o t e s t o p a g e s 5 2 – 5 8 146. From Kara’s commentary on Isaiah in New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, MS Lutzki 778, fol. 45r. On this manuscript, see Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses’’; Japhet, ‘‘The commentary of Rabbi Samuel ben Meir (Rashbam) on the book of Job,’’ 165–66. On the gloss, see Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses,’’ 166. The abbreviated forms of omer and eshlakh are typical of the manuscript. 147. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary, MS Lutzki 778, fol. 83r; Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses,’’ 174. 148. Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses,’’ 172. At the time that I was working on that article, I was only beginning to become aware of the phenomenon of bilingual glosses, which led me to incorrectly interpret the letter sequence ’lt’ (which represents Hebrew ’l followed by French ta) as a single French word, halte (‘‘high’’). This led me to read the entire gloss dirad halte virtance, translating ‘‘will declare great faithfulness.’’ This reading is unsatisfactory on two counts: first, in Kara’s time the h of halt(e) was still pronounced and he regularly indicates it in his spellings—not so here. Second, the diacritic under the final letter of ’lt’ indicates that it was pronounced as an a, not schwa as in halte. 149. Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘They have ears but do not hear,’ ’’ 550. 150. I follow the edition in Banitt, ‘‘Deux fragments,’’ making corrections as I believe necessary and making my own decisions about punctuation and capitalization. Banitt provides photographs of the fragments, but because the quality is poor, I do not feel that it is possible to give a Hebrew-letter transcription here. 151. Banitt, ‘‘Deux fragments,’’ calls attention to all of these features. 152. d’auncestrie: Banitt transcribes this do sitre. 153. Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons, 82. 154. Ibid., 112, 123–29. 155. Ibid., 127. 156. Gardner-Chloros and Edwards, ‘‘Assumptions behind grammatical approaches to code-switching,’’ 109–10. 157. Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches, 86–87. I thank Marc Kiwitt for calling my attention to these. Salfeld provides a romanization and notes, although the romanization here is my own. Note the use of the ayin, unusual in a HebraicoFrench text. These prayers are mentioned in Blumenkranz, ‘‘En 1306,’’ 20. The words in parentheses in the Hebrew-alphabet transcription are Hebrew glosses of the French. While I have not transliterated them, I took them into consideration when preparing my English translation. (See the next note.) 158. We can read this more literally as ‘‘For the sake of the one who did [this]’’; however, the form fezis seems problematic and may reflect a copying error; fesis is a second-person singular preterite (Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §§1012, 1013; Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle, §227). According to Salfeld (Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches), pour amour qui fezis is glossed with Hebrew ‘avur mi she-‘asahu (written with aleph instead of he in Salfeld): ‘‘for the sake of the one who did it.’’ 159. There is much work to be done regarding the phonology of medieval Jewish texts in Old French. Only some scholars have analyzed the dialectal features of individual

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 5 9 – 6 1 191 texts in detail. Without detailed studies of the spellings of medieval Jewish texts in Old French, it is impossible to know whether those texts attest to any specifically Jewish features. Another issue is geographical provenance of texts. Manuscripts containing Jewish texts in Old French rarely give any indication of where they were copied and by whom. Various poetic compositions have been identified as being written in Lotharingian. However, it is by no means certain that the texts were copied in Lorraine. Migrating Jews inevitably took their dialectal pronunciations with them. If communities of Jews preserved their Old French dialects in other linguistic regions (French speaking or not), the dialect of the transplanted community might have continued to evolve differently from the dialect left behind, leading to what indeed might be considered a Jewish dialect of Old French. 160. Other examples include the hybrid Hebrew-French expressions ‘orah vaire (‘‘pale or mottled hide’’ or ‘‘hide of miniver or squirrel’’) and golier ha-ra‘ (‘‘evil wretch’’) in the letters concerning the Blois incident of 1171 (see Chapter 2); ber mizrah. (‘‘man of the east’’) discussed above; and zeh ha-cure mi-carteine mi-Thesaurus Pauperum, Os. ar ha-‘Aniyyim (‘‘This is the cure [of] quartan fever from Thesaurus Pauperum, the Treasury of the Poor’’) (Kiwitt, Der altfranzo¨sische Fiebertraktat Fevres, 86). 161. Banitt makes this observation in Rashi, 141.

chapter 2 1. I have preferred the spellings Thibalt and Pucelline except in quotes from other scholars. Thibalt reflects the spelling of this name in the Hebrew accounts cited below, and Hebrew renderings of Pucelline end in a final alef, which in the Hebrew transcription of Old French words and names most often—but not always—indicates final e. For other historical figures mentioned here, however, it seemed wise to use forms most frequently encountered in American scholarship (e.g., Henry, Odo, William). 2. Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171,’’ 16. 3. According to Stow, Jewish Dogs, 256 n. 1: ‘‘The manuscript was once held in Jews’ College, London, MS 28 fol. 151–68, 1453, but it is now in private hands. A copy is housed in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary, New York.’’ I was fortunate to be able to consult that copy. The letters have been published in the following two volumes: Neubauer and Stern, Hebra¨ische Berichte, 31–35, and Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 142–46. The Orleans narrative and letter have been translated into English by Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 300–304. Stow, Jewish Dogs, appendix 2, presents an English translation of all the letters, minus the Orleans narrative. The translations presented in this chapter are my own unless otherwise noted. Stow (Jewish Dogs, 103, 198– 202) divides the letters (not counting the Orleans narrative) into as many as six or seven parts. The divisions between the letters are sometimes vague, as Stow points out. 4. Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171,’’ 19. Chazan points out that although Nathan’s own letter is not signed, his identity is revealed in the Paris letter.

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192 n o t e s t o p a g e 6 2 5. For an alternate view, see Stow, Jewish Dogs. 6. Ephraim’s account can be found in the following three published sources: Neubauer and Stern, Hebra¨ische Berichte, 66–69; Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 124–26; Ephraim of Bonn, Sefer Zekhirah, edited by Habermann, 30–33. Obadiah’s letter is found in Cod. Parm. 2295, fol. 91r–92r, as well as S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 285–87. It is described in Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina, 459, as an ‘‘elegy.’’ The lists are given in Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches, 16–17, 134–37. The seven poems are identified in Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 65 n. 2. 7. In Howlett, Chronicles, 250–51. English translation in Robert de Torigny, Chronicles of Robert de Monte, 114. 8. Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171’’; idem, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 37–38, 42, 48, 56–60; idem, ‘‘Ephraim ben Jacob’s compilation,’’ especially 401, 407–10; Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois’’; idem, ‘‘The Jewish martyrs of Blois’’; idem, Beautiful Death, 45–69; Stow, Jewish Dogs, 99–118. See also S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur’’; Yerushalmi, Zakhor, 48–52; Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 18–19, 24; Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds, especially 225–30; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 170–72, 183–85, 190–203. 9. Pacaut, Louis VII et les ´elections ´episcopales, 141, 146 and passim; idem, Louis VII et son royaume, 176; Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 15. 10. Chazan, ‘‘Ephraim ben Jacob’s compilation,’’ 407–9; Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 31; Stow, Jewish Dogs, 101. 11. For example, Joseph Kara (b. 1150–1155, d. 1120–1130) writes dsbrnyyrd for disbrancherad (‘‘will lop off ’’), lbrnyye for la branche (‘‘the branch’’), and pryye for perche (‘‘pole, flag, standard’’). Fudeman, ‘‘The Old French glosses,’’ 167 (glosses 48 and 50). The correct identification of ryyrt with ‘‘Richart’’ has been obscured by a silent emendation Habermann (Sefer gezerot, 145) made to the following passage in his edition of the Blois letters, adding the word ‘‘Pontoise’’ before ryyrt. Without the added word, the meaning of the passage—and of ryyrt—is clear.

(The king related before the Jews the incident of Richard, whom they made a saint in Paris, which was nonsense, just like this thing.) Later, in the Troyes letter, the name Richart is again followed by a statement about his being made a saint. 12. Henry is reported to have said, ‘‘ve-etmol yatsa’ qol be-‘erev ha-pesah. be-[Espernay]’’ (The ha-, not in Habermann, is in the manuscript; instead of be-Espernay, the manuscript has b’spnr’y). I translate, ‘‘yesterday a rumor [of blood libel] came out regarding the eve of Easter in E´pernay.’’ Christians who believed that Jews committed ritual murder typically associated these murders with the period between Good Friday and

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 3 – 6 4 193 Easter, or with Passover. See, e.g., Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 151–53; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 59, 208–9 and passim in ch. 4. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 202, interprets this passage differently. 13. Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 40. 14. Chazan, ‘‘The Hebrew First Crusade Chronicles,’’ 96–98, quote from 97–98. 15. See also, inter alia, Chazan, ‘‘The facticity of medieval narrative’’; Marcus, ‘‘From politics to martyrdom’’; idem, ‘‘History, story, and collective memory’’; G. Spiegel, The Past as Text, xv and ch. 6, ‘‘Genealogy’’; Stow, ‘‘Conversion, apostasy, and apprehensiveness’’ (on the historical versus the literary Emicho of Flonheim) and specifically 917–18 n. 20; Zumthor, Essai de poe´tique me´die´vale, 83–85. 16. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 99. 17. One detail that has struck Stow as a literary detail is the statement that ‘‘just [the martyrs’] souls were burned, while the body endured’’ (Jewish Dogs, 102). He relates this to Dan. 3 on the three boys in the furnace, the Jew of Bourges story, and the Croxton play. (Similarly, see also Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 191.) These parallels work for another detail in the Orleans letter (the Jews’ statement: ‘‘Behold, we are in the fire, but it has no power over us’’), but I believe we should seek another explanation for this particular comment. The full passage in the Orleans letter reads: ‘‘Then they wickedly burned the most pious ones, burning the soul while the body remained. All the uncircumcised ones testify thus that their bodies did not burn; only their enemies said that their bodies were burned, and apparently they spoke in this way out of hatred.’’ If the soul burned, then the martyrs were not fireproof in the way that the boys of Daniel, the Jew of Bourges, or the Eucharist in the oven in the Croxton play were. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 64, writes that late medieval Jews did not want to feel pain in the fire. I propose that stating that the soul burned while the body remained was a way of reassuring survivors that victims’ horrible suffering was felt by their bodies, but not their souls (the soul succumbed first and departed, leaving only the body to suffer). It can be related in turn to the medieval Jewish folk belief, represented in the Sefer H . asidim (section 32), that after the soul left the body—indeed, after burial—the body suffered terribly (Singer, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, 116). 18. Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171,’’ 20. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 110, suggests that repetition in the letters may be due to sloppy editing. 19. Vaire is a feminine adjective from Latin varium. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 257, in a note on l. 6, p. 124, mistakenly translates ‘orah vaire as ‘or yaroq (‘‘green hide’’), which is possibly the origin of a common but inexact translation of the same phrase, ‘‘untanned hide.’’ While the hide was pale and therefore had not been made dark in the process of tanning, we should not assume that it was untreated. 20. Ben Yehuda, Dictionary, 4395. The only example of ‘orah given there is from the Orleans letter. There is further discussion of the use of ‘orah in the Blois texts in the introduction to this volume. 21. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 103, mentions ‘‘the alleged hiding of a body in a leather pack, a parallel to the sack found in Robert of Torigny’s narrative about Blois itself.’’ (See also

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194 n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 5 – 6 7 85–86.) He considers this a literary detail, ‘‘typical of ritual murder stories.’’ The letters do not in fact mention a leather pack, and the pale color of the hide (‘‘skin’’) is significant, precisely because it could have been mistaken for the skin of a human corpse. 22. T-L, vol. 4, 426–27, s.v. golı¨art, golı¨ar. That golier also referred to a type of snake is by no means certain. This hypothesis is based on l. 820 in the Montpellier manuscript (M) of Maugis d’Aigremont. I consulted Vernay’s edition of this work, which unfortunately does not give M’s reading in its entirety. My impression is that goulier, the spelling found there, potentially has other interpretations, but that ‘‘kind of snake’’ does make sense. 23. Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches, 16–17, 134–36. The name is written pws.lyn’ and pwls.lyn’. See note 1 above. 24. Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 94. 25. See Morlet, Les noms de personne, 2:94, who cites the Cartulaire named in the text, ‘‘p.p. E. de l’Epinois, Chartres 1862–1865’’; Roth, ‘‘Elijah of London,’’ 62; Luchaire, E´tudes sur les actes de Louis VII, 277 (act 562). Roth also lists the name ‘‘Pucella’’ in A History of the Jews in England, 94. 26. Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 40, has already related Pucellina to French pucelle, but to explain the l, we must go at least one step further back. Pucelle is typically derived from *pullicella, and it is attested also as pulcele (Gormant et Isembart, c. 1125). 27. Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 39, lists scholars who presented Pucellina as such in work that appeared before hers. See also Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds, 225. 28. Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ especially 34–36; idem, Beautiful Death, 47. See also Jordan, ‘‘Jews on top.’’ 29. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 143. 30. There is some discrepancy in the numbers of martyrs reported in the sources. See Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171,’’ 15 n. 4. Like Einbinder (Beautiful Death, 45), I have gone with the figure of thirty-two. The Orleans letter numbers the martyrs at thirtyone, but in a closing note refers to an additional martyr that had been omitted (cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 144). Furthermore, Obadiah ben Makhir, in his letter, puts the number of martyrs at thirty-two. See edition of this letter in S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 286 (l. 16). 31. For a contrary view, see Stow, Jewish Dogs, 263 n. 28. 32. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 24. 33. Tolerance, not love—Louis VII’s actions toward the Jews were sometimes oppressive. On Louis VII’s tolerance, see, e.g., Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 29; Jordan, ‘‘Princely identity and the Jews in medieval France,’’ 261. On Louis VII’s darker side, see Blumenkranz, ‘‘En 1306,’’ 18; Stow, Alienated Minority, 113; idem, Jewish Dogs, 106. 34. S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 275; Pacaut, Louis VII et son royaume, 189; Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 6, 15. 35. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 15; Dunbabin, France in the Making, 310–12; S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 275.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 6 7 – 7 4 195 36. Dunbabin, France in the Making, 311. 37. Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 44 n. 42. This part of the letter has been discussed by Stow (see note 42 below) and Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 183–85. 38. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 144. 39. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 105. 40. Ibid., 105–6, 265–66 n. 32. 41. Deut. 2:28–29. See also Babylonian Talmud Yevamot 107a, Ketubbot 73a, and Gittin 81b. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence, 37, briefly discusses the malshin and gives further references. The focus there is on the Crown of Aragon. 42. The present analysis does not hinge on any specific identification of the prince or ruler. According to Stow, Jewish Dogs, 105–6, it is Philip Augustus, but this is related to his efforts to place all of the letters in the thirteenth century. 43. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 142. 44. Anticipating the analysis of the next section, it is perhaps significant that the word for ‘‘haughty’’ in Prov. 6:17 comes from the root r-w-m, used with the meaning ‘‘loud’’ below; and that the word translated ‘‘devise’’ in Prov. 6:16 has the root h.-r-sh, of which another meaning is ‘‘be silent’’ (cf. the aforementioned phrase ‘‘Be silent, you’’ [hah.aresh atah]). 45. Stow, ‘‘Conversion, apostasy, and apprehensiveness,’’ 917; idem, Jewish Dogs, 102–3. 46. Linder, ‘‘The ritual encounter of Pope and Jews,’’ 329–30. 47. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 143. 48. Cf. ibid., 145. 49. Marcus, ‘‘From politics to martyrdom,’’ 42. 50. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 37–38, quote from p. 38. In this section, Baldwin writes of the courts of Louis VII and Philip Augustus. 51. Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus, 38. 52. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 145. 53. See, e.g., Stow, Jewish Dogs, 106–7, 111. 54. Jastrow, Dictionary, 508. 55. Knobel, Targum of Qohelet, 48–49. See also 49 nn. 15–18. In Knobel’s edition, part of this passage is in italics. 56. See Deut. 13:6, 27:15, 27:24, 28:57; Job 13:10, 31:27. See also Prov. 25:23 (leshon sater) and verses quoted in text above. English translations in this paragraph and the next are from NJPS. 57. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 113–14. 58. On Judah ben Samuel the Pious (Judah he-H . asid) and the place and time of the composition of the Sefer H asidim, see Singer, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, xiii, xv–xvi. The . winter 2006 issue of JQR has several articles devoted to the Sefer H . asidim, including T. Fishman, ‘‘The Rhineland pietists’ sacralization of oral Torah,’’ and Kanarfogel, ‘‘R. Judah he-Hasid and the rabbinic scholars of Regensberg.’’ The Sefer H . asidim contains a number of Old French glosses (see J. Simon, ‘‘Les manuscrits he´breux’’), indicating it was at least

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196 n o t e s t o p a g e s 7 5 – 8 0 partially the product of a French-speaking Jewish community. Singer translates the Sefer H . asidim from the Bologna edition of 1538, a facsimile of which can be found in the Digitized Book Repository of the Jewish National and University Library (JNUL), online. (It is listed in the bibliography under Judah ben Samuel.) 59. Singer, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, 41 (section 36). See surrounding sections, too, for matters concerning speech and silence. 60. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 100. 61. Morawski, Proverbes franc¸ais ante´rieurs au XVe sie`cle, no. 45. From a late thirteenth-century manuscript, Paris, Sainte-Genevie`ve, 550, fol. 282v–294v. 62. Gal, ‘‘Between speech and silence,’’ 177. 63. On coalescence, see Chazan, ‘‘The Blois incident of 1171,’’ 13; Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus; idem, ‘‘Five discourses on desire,’’ 798. The last specifically addresses the twenty-year period whose midpoint was 1200 and lists the affected institutions (schools, courts, communes, and corporations) mentioned in this paragraph. 64. Translation from Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 37. With the exception of ‘‘Thibalt,’’ all material in brackets is hers. 65. A possible exception is the wife of the Hebrew poet Dunash Ben-Labrat, to whom a single poem is attributed. Even this is contested, and as Tova Rosen has written, ‘‘the fact that she left no successors still makes this poem the exception that proves that women were not writers’’ (‘‘On tongues being bound and let loose,’’ 68–69). See also Rosen, Unveiling Eve, 1–2. 66. Einbinder, ‘‘Jewish women martyrs,’’ 111, suggests that Ephraim of Bonn deliberately fashions the relationship of Pucelline and Count Thibalt as a failed love story so as to ‘‘[pattern] her story on the biblical character of Esther.’’ 67. The earliest source on this is Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 274–75. English translations of Bible verses in this paragraph are from NJPS. 68. At least one modern scholar has written Alix’s name with an ayin. Medieval French Jews, however, did not generally use ayin for writing French names and words. 69. Translated by Einbinder, ‘‘Pucellina of Blois,’’ 37. 70. Burns, Bodytalk, especially 59. See also Rosen, ‘‘On tongues being bound and let loose,’’ 74–76, on the shrewish wife in maqama literature. 71. See, especially, LoPrete, Adela of Blois, and idem, ‘‘Adela of Blois’’; also Bur, La formation, 231–35, 281 n. 1; Evergates, The Aristocracy in the County of Champagne, 6–7; Farmer, ‘‘Persuasive voices,’’ 522–26. Quote from LoPrete, ‘‘Adela of Blois,’’ 7. 72. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 46, makes this point. See Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches, 16–17, 134–35, for a list of victims. 73. See edition of Obadiah’s letter in S. Spiegel, ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur,’’ 285. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 113, 290 n. 28, considers the ruler with whom Joseph Ha-Cohen spoke to be Philip Augustus. 74. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 51. 75. Gal, ‘‘Between speech and silence,’’ 198 n. 2. 76. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 146. See Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 57, and Stow,

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 8 1 – 9 0 197 Jewish Dogs, 259, on David Wachtel’s having pointed out that there is no evidence of such a fast being observed so soon after these events. (David Wachtel, ‘‘The ritual and liturgical commemoration of two medieval persecutions’’ [Master’s thesis, Columbia University, 1995].) 77. Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 168, 176, 204 n. 122, 237 n. 115. 78. Baskin, ‘‘Jewish women in the Middle Ages,’’ 117; Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 88, 237 n. 115. 79. Irvine, ‘‘Formality and informality,’’ 776, 778. 80. Ibid., 779. 81. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 146. 82. On the association by the Jews of tyrants with Haman over the centuries, see Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 81–99. 83. Irvine, ‘‘Formality and informality,’’ 779. 84. Stow, Jewish Dogs, 201, considers this part of the text to belong to a second letter from Paris. However, it describes a meeting with Count ‘‘Heinrich,’’ brother of Thibalt. This is Count Henry I of Champagne, whose court in Troyes was an acclaimed cultural center (see, e.g., Evergates, Feudal Society in the Bailliage of Troyes, 2). I therefore consider it part of the Troyes letter. 85. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 146. 86. Chazan, ‘‘The Bray incident of 1192,’’ 6. See also Stow, Jewish Dogs, 289 n. 22. 87. Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France, 56. 88. A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 117. 89. Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 94. 90. Bourdieu, Ce que parler veut dire; Woolard, ‘‘Language variation and cultural hegemony’’; Friedrich, ‘‘Language, ideology, and political economy’’; Gal, ‘‘Between speech and silence’’; idem, ‘‘Language and political economy’’; Walters, ‘‘Gender, identity, and the political economy of language.’’ In Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘They have ears but do not hear,’ ’’ 559, I use political economy in an analysis of the wedding song El giv‘at ha-levonah. 91. Darmesteter, ‘‘Deux e´le´gies’’; Einbinder, Beautiful Death, ch. 5. 92. Cf. Habermann, Sefer gezerot, 146.

chapter 3 1. On these earliest of French texts and their manuscript context, see, e.g., AyresBennett, A History of the French Language Through Texts; Beer, Early Prose in France; Brunot, Histoire de la langue franc¸aise, 1:142–46; Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, 122–41; Rickard, A History of the French Language, 35–37. 2. Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, 123, 125. 3. Ibid., 139. 4. Ewert, ‘‘The Strasbourg Oaths’’; Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, 122. 5. Brunot, Histoire de la langue franc¸aise, 1:145–46. 6. Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘These things I will remember,’ ’’ 2; Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution’’;

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198 n o t e s t o p a g e s 9 0 – 9 5 Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes’’; idem, ‘‘Additions and corrections’’; idem, ‘‘Old French poems from the mahazor.’’ 7. When the glossaries deal with a particular biblical verse, words are unexpectedly included that belong neither to the verse itself nor to the book in which it is found. Banitt concludes that students wrote down words that the master used in his explanation of the verse. This means (1) that studying the Bible consisted of much more than simply translating it word for word, and (2) that lecture and discussion were carried on in the vernacular. Banitt, ‘‘Une vue d’ensemble,’’ 194. 8. On the Parma verses and glossary of bird names, see later in this chapter. On the Valmadonna glossary, see Banitt, ‘‘The glosses in Ms. Valmadonna I’’; and Beit-Arie´, Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book, 132, and appendix 1 by Banitt, 137. 9. Translation from Singer, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, 79. In addition to Singer’s translation of the Sefer H . asidim, I consulted the 1538 Bologna edition (listed in the bibliography under Judah ben Samuel). The passage in question is on p. 47 of the digitized version. (One page of the digitized version corresponds to a two-page spread in the original.) On the Sefer H . asidim’s regulation of the treatment of books, see T. Fishman, ‘‘The Rhineland pietists’ sacralization of oral Torah,’’ 10–12. 10. Mathieu le Juif is mentioned in the introduction to this volume. The fabliau ‘‘Charlot le Juif ’’ has been published several times, including in Noomen, Nouveau recueil, 9:251–61, and Zink, Œuvres comple`tes, 2:263–71. D. S. Blondheim questions Charlot’s Jewishness in Poe`mes jude´o-franc¸ais, 82, as do Montaiglon and Raynaud, Recueil, 3:403. For La Desputaison de Charlot et du Barbier de Melun, see Zink, Œuvres comple`tes, 2:254–61. 11. See Fudeman, ‘‘Etymology, gloss, and pesˇat,’’ for a discussion of the relationship between glossing and methods of reading. 12. See, inter alia, Elior, ‘‘Mysticism, magic, and angelology’’; Lesses, ‘‘Speaking with angels’’; Scha¨fer, Hidden and Manifest God; Scha¨fer and Shaked, Magische Texte aus der Kairoer Geniza; Swartz, Scholastic Magic. Kanarfogel, in Peering Through the Lattices, deals extensively with the involvement of medieval French and German Jewish scholars with magic and mysticism, including the hekhalot corpus. 13. Scha¨fer, Hidden and Manifest God, 2. 14. Quote from ibid., 139. 15. Swartz, Scholastic Magic, 30. 16. Kanarfogel, Peering Through the Lattices. 17. The section is fol. 262r–267r. 18. I use YYY’ here to transcribe the three yods used by the scribe for the name of God. The three yods are arranged in a triangle in the manuscript, and the upper one has a small, decorative stroke on it. 19. Liddell and Scott, Greek-English Lexicon, 7. 20. The spelling ’wn for an in Hebraico-French texts is common and should not be considered an indication of an Anglo-Norman origin. See Appendix 2 under ‘‘Graphic features’’ (Simple vowels and diphthongs). On aun for an in Anglo-Norman texts written in the Latin alphabet, see Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §446.

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notes to pages 95–99

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21. In the photograph of this text, it can be seen that the first symbol in each of the three words Elohim, El[h], and Ely is an aleph-lamed ligature and not merely an aleph. The ligature is found again at the end of the word Immanuel. 22. Discussion of my translation of this segment of the text can be found later in the chapter. 23. See Scha¨fer, Hidden and Manifest God, 50–51, 144, 150. 24. Ibid., 150. 25. On graphic substitutes for the tetragrammaton, see Beit-Arie´, Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book, 87. 26. Quote from Scha¨fer, Hidden and Manifest God, 127. 27. Translations from NJPS. I thank Jordan Penkower for connecting the sequence discussed here to the two biblical verses. 28. Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 633, fol. 149v-150v; Banitt, ‘‘Une formule d’exorcisme.’’ The manuscript is discussed by Sirat, ‘‘Un rituel juif,’’ and Kanarfogel, Peering Through the Lattices, especially 174–78, 180–84. 29. Glare, Oxford Latin Dictionary, 1912. 30. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §952, gives ez, pronounced ets, as an alternate form of the 2pl present indicative of estre (‘‘be’’). Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien franc¸ais, §227, also mentions it. I render the second-person plural subject pronoun ‘‘vus’’ because it is vocalized as such in Sarei bedolah.. 31. Our text is on fol. 40v. Above it we find the end of the manuscript’s copy of Midrash Samuel, which occupies fol. 1r-40v, and then, in a different hand from Midrash Samuel, but in the same hand as our text, ‘‘a list of the books of the Bible and their authors according to Rabbinic tradition, some gematriot and notarikonim on the name [R. Akiva].’’ Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina, 459. 32. See Yad, Yibbum 4:30 (Maimonides, Code of Maimonides, Book Four, The Book of Women, 291); Yevamot 12:6; Neusner, History of the Mishnaic Law of Women, 1: Yebamot, 14–15, 160–65 and sources discussed below. 33. Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, cited in Shinan, ‘‘The Aramaic Targum as a mirror of Galilean Jewry,’’ 249; Yad, Yibbum 4:1–23 (English translation from Maimonides, The Code of Maimonides, Book Four, The Book of Women, 285); E. Finkelstein, Sifre on Deuteronomy, 310; Shulh.an Arukh, EH 169. 34. Also Shulh.an Arukh, EH 169. 35. Katz, ‘‘Yibbum ve-h.alitsah ba-tequfah ha-betar-talmudit,’’ 127 (in Halakhah and Kabbalah). This study also appeared in Tarbiz; see bibliography. 36. See detailed discussion in Katz, ‘‘Yibbum ve-h.alitsah ba-tequfah ha-betartalmudit,’’ especially 136–55. See also L. Finkelstein, Jewish Self-Government, 27, 56–58, and passim; A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 93–97. 37. Katz, ‘‘Yibbum ve-h.alitsah ba-tequfah ha-betar-talmudit,’’ 127, 155–60; A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 97. 38. Katz, ‘‘Yibbum ve-h.alitsah ba-tequfah ha-betar-talmudit,’’ 138–40; A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 93–95.

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200 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 0 – 1 0 1 39. For helping me to understand the Aramaic passage, I wish to thank both Jordan Penkower, who meticulously laid out for me various interpretations found in rabbinic texts and modern scholarship, and Andrew Gross. I take full responsibility for the translation of the passage offered here and any errors it might contain. The first two Aramaic words, as noted above, are written together, and rygly should be read as rygly[h] (‘‘his foot’’), which is indeed how the medieval translator has understood it, cf. his translation ‘‘son pei’’ (his foot). (The end of a word is frequently dropped in Hebrew manuscripts and replaced with a sign that looks like an apostrophe. Sometimes scribes misread and copied this symbol as a yod. It is possible that that is what happened here. Two other possibilities, given that we find the same error not only with rygly[h] but also with ly[h], is that some Jews pronounced –ly as ‘‘leh’’ or that the yod of both words, which is final here, was followed by an apostrophe in the manuscript from which this was copied, and that the apostrophe was left off by the copyist.) The French is straightforward, except for the first word, which can be read faz moi or face moi. Faz is a first singular present indicative form. Face can be read as a first singular present subjunctive (may I make/cause) or a third-person singular subjunctive (may he make/cause); see Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §960. I feel that the last interpretation is most felicitous here. Dechalcer (‘‘remove someone’s shoe(s) or hose; uncover someone’s foot’’): see AND, s.v. deschaucer; T-L, s.v. deschaucier. As for the Aramaic root t-l-‘ that it translates, various interpretations have been put forward in the literature. The sense ‘‘incline’’ is found in Slotki’s translation of Yevamot in part 3 of I. Epstein, The Babylonian Talmud. 40. Thus, the first has an imperfect verbal form and the second has an imperative form, and the respective adverbial phrases (‘‘before you,’’ ‘‘before us’’) fit the context. Our text has the imperative form ‘‘incline’’ [’tl‘] but ‘‘before you’’ [qdmykwn]. Tobias b. Eleazar, Midrash Leqah. Tov, vol. 2 (Ki) Teitzei, 44a. 41. This has parallels across the ages. In early times, when Aramaic was still a spoken language, the weekly portion was read in the synagogue in Hebrew together with an Aramaic translation (Penkower, ‘‘Tahalikh ha-kanoniztsiah,’’ 134). In medieval Europe, the Aramaic translation no longer served its original purpose, so in most communities it was replaced with a translation into the community’s spoken tongue or with Rashi’s commentary (ibid., 134–45; on the use of Rashi’s commentary for this purpose, see specifically 140–45). In many Jewish communities today, the ketubbah is read aloud in Aramaic during the wedding ceremony and followed by a full or summary translation into the community’s vernacular (see EJ article ‘‘Marriage’’). 42. I thank Peter Sh. Lehnardt for sharing this fragment with me. Munich cod. hebr. 419XX is described in the Collective Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts as being fourteenth to fifteenth century and in the Byzantine script. The Munich catalog, however, lists it as being thirteenth century, and my own experience with thirteenth-century Ashkenazi manuscripts has led me to do the same. This manuscript fragment is not listed in Steinschneider, Die hebraeischen Handschriften der K. Hof-und Staatsbibliothek in Muenchen or Ro´th, Hebra¨ische Handschriften. It has been digitized and, at the time of writing, can be accessed at http://daten.digitale-sammlungen.de/⬃db/bsb00005886/images/index

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 1 – 1 0 3 201 .html (accessed July 8, 2009), as well as through the UCLA Catalogue of Digitized Manuscripts, http://manuscripts.cmrs.ucla.edu/ (accessed June 15, 2009). Shelf-mark in the UCLA catalogue: Cod. hebr. 419.XX. Additional information on the manuscript can be found at http://opacplus.bsb-muenchen.de/search?oclcno⳱166031687 and http://mdz10 .bib-bvb.de/⬃db/0002/bsb00026277/images/index.html?id⳱00026277&fip⳱194.95.59 .130&no⳱7&seite⳱200 (both accessed July 8, 2009). The latter is a digitized image of a page from the Repertorium der Codices orientales der Bayerischen Staatsbibliothek, Kapsel 1: A-J-BSB Cbm Cat. 40 d(1, Mu¨nchen, 19.-21. Jh. [BSB-Hss Cbm Cat. 40 d(1]. 43. The Medieval French Roman d’Alexandre, 2:342 (ll. 954–55); also Alexandre de Paris, Le Roman d’Alexandre, 804 (ll. 954–55). Similarly, the Arsenal version has ‘‘Enquenoit se porai vanter sanc Paradis / Unques mais en son ostels ne fu(s) tes oste mis.’’ See The Medieval French Roman d’Alexandre, 1:320 (ll. 6472–73). 44. Selected works on the muwashshah.ah include Rosen-Moked, The Hebrew Girdle Poem; Brener, Judah Halevi and His Circle of Hebrew Poets in Granada, 34–35, 42–43, 80–81; Zwartjes, Love Songs from al-Andalus. On the near silence of women outside these two genres, see Rosen, ‘‘On tongues being bound and let loose,’’ 77–82. 45. Interesting work has been done on the relationship between gender and the vernacular in non-Jewish society. See, e.g., Cornish, ‘‘A lady asks.’’ 46. See, inter alia, Jochnowitz, ‘‘Shuadit’’; Lazar, ‘‘Catalan-Provenc¸al wedding songs’’; idem, ‘‘Epithalames bilingues’’; idem, ‘‘Lis Obros.’’ Jewish women may well have attended circumcisions in late medieval southern France. Baumgarten, Mothers and Children, 78, writing of northern France and Germany, notes: ‘‘it is impossible to determine the whereabouts of the mother [during synagogue circumcision ceremonies of their sons] with certainty. I would suggest that it is probable that mothers were present at the ceremony in many cases, at least until the end of the thirteenth century or the early fourteenth century.’’ 47. See, Elcock, The Romance Languages, 323–35. 48. See M. Catane, Recueil des gloses; idem, Otsar ha-le‘azim; idem, ‘‘Les gloses en franc¸ais’’; Darmesteter and Blondheim, Les gloses franc¸aises dans les commentaires talmudiques de Raschi; Greenberg, Foreign Words in the Bible Commentary of Rashi; Banitt, Rashi; Weiser, ‘‘Translation as interpretation.’’ 49. Ferretti Cuomo, ‘‘Le glosse volgari nell’Arukh di R. Natan ben Yehi’el da Roma: Note di lavoro a proposito del fondo germanico,’’ 232. See also Ferretti Cuomo, ‘‘Le glosse volgari nell’Arukh di R. Natan ben Yehi’el da Roma: Interferenze lessicali e semantiche.’’ 50. Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd ed. (1989), accessed through the University of Pittsburgh library portal June 13, 2009. 51. On these glosses, see Brandin, ‘‘Les gloses franc¸aises (loazim) de Gershom de Metz.’’ On Gershom, see A. Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 106–74; Nahon, ‘‘Les sages de France et de Lotharingie,’’ 33–34. Kiwitt (‘‘Judeo-French’’) has written: ‘‘The history of the Judeo-French literary tradition begins in the 11th century with the glosses of Rashi and Moshe ha-Darshan,’’ without citation. I have been unable to confirm that any Old French glosses can be attributed with certainty to Moshe Ha-Darshan. Albeck,

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202 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 3 – 1 0 8 editor of Moshe Ha-Darshan’s Midrash Bereshit Rabbati, lists foreign words found in this particular work (see p. 53). See also Theodor, ‘‘Die Laazim in den alten Kommentaren zu Bereschit rabba.’’ 52. A. Grossman, Early Sages of Ashkenaz, 165. 53. Ibid., 167. 54. Ibid., 165–66; Epstein, ‘‘Der Gerschom Meor ha-Golah zugeschriebene TalmudCommentar.’’ 55. See Brandin, ‘‘Les gloses franc¸aises (loazim) de Gershom de Metz,’’ 241. 56. Banitt, ‘‘Les poterim,’’ 21–33 (especially 27–28); idem, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques,’’ 203; idem, Rashi, 8–9, 65, 144; Harris, Discerning Parallelism, 17. 57. The glosses of the Mah.zor Vitry were compiled from Hurwitz’s edition by Schlessinger, Die altfranzo¨sischen wo¨rter. Glosses from the Sefer H . asidim have been compiled by J. Simon, ‘‘Les manuscrits he´breux.’’ Glosses from Rashi’s responsa have been published by Elfenbein, Teshuvot Rashi, xlv–xlvi. On glosses in piyyut commentary, see Hollender, Piyyut Commentary in Medieval Ashkenaz, 59–79. 58. Six are listed by Banitt in Le Glossaire de Baˆle, xiv, and idem, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaries bibliques,’’ 191–92. On the Turin glossary’s destruction by fire, see idem, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques,’’ 192. It was studied by Darmesteter, Glosses [sic] et glossaires he´breux-franc¸ais. 59. Copeland, Rhetoric, Hermeneutics, and Translation in the Middle Ages; Stanton, ‘‘The (m)other tongue,’’ 39. 60. Fudeman, ‘‘Old French glosses,’’ 161–64. 61. On the petih.at lev ritual, see Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 49, 56–58, 115–16; Swartz, Scholastic Magic, 44–47; Harari, ‘‘La-‘asot petih.at lev.’’ 62. Swartz, Scholastic Magic, 33–50. On the procedures of petih.at lev being ‘‘remarkably uniform,’’ see 44. 63. Platina, in De honesta voluptate et valetudine (ca. 1475), describes how to roast fresh eggs in hot ashes. See Milham, Platina, 404–5. 64. See, e.g., Exod. 11:5, Num. 18:15, 17. 65. MED, s.v. verna¯g˘e. 66. On the association between fish and fertility, see Nacht, Simle ishah, 92–94. Patai (‘‘Jewish folk-cures for barrenness,’’ 208–9) addresses the link between fish and fertility as well as the talmudic belief that eating fish increases blood flow. See Talmud Bavli, ‘Avoda Zarah, 29a. 67. AND, s.v. favede. Favede represents a more conservative spelling than favege; the Latin was favida. 68. Drosdowski, Duden, 101, s.v. Brunnen, and 93, s.v. Born. 69. Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina, 274. 70. Strayer, The Reign of Philip the Fair, 100–101. 71. Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 186, 273–74; Kupfer, ‘‘Hebrew script and Jewish witness,’’ 73, 76. 72. See Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 272–73; Einbinder, No Place of Rest.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 0 8 – 1 1 2 203 73. Richler, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina, 274. 74. Cf. AND, s.v. mace. 75. ‘‘Onique est une espisce aromatique aussi com une petite escalope’’ (The onique is an aromatic spice just like a little nut shell), Bibl. hist. nach Godefroy V 604c, quoted in T-L, 6:1128, s.v. onique, onica. 76. Noiz muscate. See T-L, 6:737, s.v. noiz. 77. See T-L, 4:613–15, s.v. grenade, grenate (pomegranate), 4:615–16, s.v. grenat (garnet). Grenade, grenate is shortened from Old French pome grenade, cf. Latin (malum) granatum, medieval Latin po¯mum gra¯na¯tum, po¯ma gra¯na¯ta (‘‘apple having many seeds’’). The resh between parentheses in the Hebrew transcription appears to be a dalet; copyists commonly mistook one for the other. Furthermore, there seems to be a dalet written beneath this word that the scribe intended to be inserted after the nun. Though I would expect a final aleph on this word, T-L, 4:615, does provide the variant ‘‘puns de grenat’’ from Flor et Blancheflor. 78. Literally, ‘‘seed of paradise.’’ T-L, 4:523, s.v. graine. 79. A zedoary is an ‘‘aromatic tuberous root . . . having properties resembling those of ginger,’’ according to the Oxford English Dictionary. Medieval Latin zeduarium. See T-L, 2:451, s.v. citoval, spelling variant cito¨al. 80. ‘‘Four cups of redemption’’: this number and name is based on the four verbs in Exod. 6:6–7, all dealing with redemption from Egypt: we-hos.e’ti (‘‘I will bring [you] out’’), we-his..salti (‘‘I will deliver [you]’’), we-ga’alti (‘‘I will redeem [you]’’), we-laqah.ti (‘‘I will take [you]’’). The whole passage is based on Jerusalem Talmud, Pesah.im 10:1, fol. 37c (Academy of Hebrew Language edition, col. 555) where the symbolism of the four cups of the Passover seder is discussed and various options are given, including the three noted here. New here is the combination of three of the options for a total of twelve, equal to the number of ingredients in the h.aroset. I am grateful to Jordan Penkower for his help in identifying these references. 81. In addition, the falcon, our glossary reports, is put in a cage called a mue (‘‘mew’’), a word that is listed in the AND, s.v. mue, but not in T-L. We cannot read too much into this fact. T-L is based on a literary corpus, whereas the AND contains many technical terms. It is likely that this word, from Latin muta, also existed in continental Old French. 82. T-L, 2:847–48, s.v. corbel. 83. Scully, The Viandier of Taillevent, nos. 53, 56, 57 (pp. 106–10). 84. Banitt, Rashi, 6–7. These names were glossed in other languages as well. See, e.g., Asmussen, ‘‘Some bird names.’’ See also the discussion about the difficulty of identifying these birds in Bulmer, ‘‘The uncleanness of the birds of Leviticus and Deuteronomy,’’ 305–6. 85. This is not the same word as mue (‘‘gull’’), l. 10, or mue (‘‘mew’’), l. 12. 86. My reading of the sequence hwhn as huhn (modern German Huhn) seems likely given the combination of letters. However, given that ’anafah is an unclean bird, it would seem that the author intends huhn to refer to an unclean female bird and not to a chicken. The same word occurs in l. 18.

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204 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 1 2 – 1 1 7 87. nos.ato: I have corrected a metathesis in the text, which has nts.w. 88. This puzzling statement, that when the owl is captured, it is a symbol of the lecher, is perhaps attributable to the resemblance between dalet (d) and resh (r). The root of nilkadim (‘‘they are captured’’) is l-k-d. Although lecher is spelled with qof here (l’qr), one can imagine a scenario whereby an author concerned with paronomasia may have associated lecher (l’qr) with l-k-r and thus l-k-d. 89. The text has lsˇwrr, which I emend to lsˇwrr. Tsade and shin are frequently confused in Jewish texts in Old French. Although this is a Hebrew word, the attestation of the same error here is not surprising. 90. Herupe: in Chapter 1 I note that one word for ‘‘hoopoe’’ in Old French is hupe (T-L 4: cols. 1229–30). In the present text, the herupe is associated with the undomesticated cock. In modern French, according to Le nouveau petit Robert, the huppe is commonly called ‘‘coq he´ron’’ and according to the Tre´sor de la langue franc¸aise, it is called ‘‘coq d’e´te´’’ in Poitou. (‘‘Coq’’ is French for ‘‘cock.’’) This reinforces the hypothesis that herupe and hupe refer to the same bird. 91. Following is only a small sample of the texts in which the phrase occurs (I thank Jordan Penkower): Sifrei Dvarim 96; Talmud Bavli, Shabbat 151b; Talmud Bavli, Betsah 32b. It also occurs in the daily morning prayers in ‘‘Barukh she-amar.’’ 92. See Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §194; Banitt, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques,’’ 205–6. 93. See Kugel, ‘‘Two introductions to midrash’’; Stern, ‘‘The first Jewish books,’’ 181–86. 94. Banitt, Rashi, 3; Fudeman, ‘‘Etymology, gloss, and pesˇat.’’ 95. Teeuwen, The Vocabulary of Intellectual Life, 266. 96. Strayer, Dictionary of the Middle Ages, 4:448. On medieval Hebrew encyclopedias, see Harvey, The Medieval Hebrew Encyclopedias of Science and Philosophy. 97. See, e.g., Cohen and Horowitz, ‘‘In search of the sacred’’; Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 2, 5–6; Fudeman, ‘‘’They have ears but do not hear’ ’’ and Chapter 4 of this volume; Marcus, Rituals of Childhood; Sed-Rajna, ‘‘La circulation du savoir’’; Sirat, ‘‘Le livre he´breu’’; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb. 98. See discussion and references in Saenger, Spaces Between Words, 265–71 (in particular); Taylor, Textual Situations, 19–22. 99. Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public, 293. 100. The poem has been published by Darmesteter, Glosses [sic] et glossaires he´breuxfranc¸ais, 17–18, and Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 6. I have purposely strayed from the spellings there, as well as from Nicholas de Lange’s English translation (in Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages). Sirat identifies Delsberg as today’s Delemont. 101. A photo of this text can be found in Sirat, Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages, 6. 102. The poem seems carelessly written. The word that I read come in the second line has an extra waw. Tant: the word seems to read tmp’, apparently tempe—I tentatively

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 1 8 – 1 2 1 205 read it as tant (‘‘so much’’), with the mp reflecting assimilation in place of articulation to the initial m of the next word, and the final aleph treated as superfluous. There is a mark resembling a yod over the pe, which this reading does not account for. The mix of spellings in the text is unusual. Syllable-final n is omitted, as in Hebraico-French texts from the late thirteenth century onward. The unusual use of kaf for /k/ (in ma cope and cru) occurs also in the eleventh- to twelfth-century glosses of Joseph Kara (Fudeman, ‘‘The linguistic significance of the le‘azim,’’ 404–6; idem, ‘‘Old French glosses,’’ 155). A double yod in this text represents a vowel in e bui, written ’bwyy), a voiceless alveopalatal affricate or fricative [tsˇ] or [sˇ], and a voiced alveopalatal affricate or fricative [dzˇ] or [zˇ]. (In the course of the thirteenth century, [tsˇ] and [dzˇ] simplified to [sˇ] and [zˇ], respectively; see Pope, From Latin to Modern French, §194.) In some words in this text, double yod is used in conjunction with gimel to represent an affricate or fricative, as in a corage (written ’q’rgyy’ ). At the end of a word, aleph can represent a vowel (e.g., corage) or have a null value (cf. mei, written myy’ ). 103. Berlin, Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ms. or. oct. 512. See works by Kiwitt and Zaun listed in the bibliography. 104. See Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, ix–xii, 1–122. 105. Lodge, French, 106: in English as early as the eighth century. 106. Quotes from Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, 129, 128, respectively. 107. Wright, Late Latin and Early Romance, 139, 142–43. 108. Sirat, ‘‘Les manuscrits en caracte`res he´braı¨ques,’’ 263, 271. 109. Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public, 87–111. 110. Ibid., 34ff. 111. This quote is from ibid., 63. He discusses the Acts of Perpetua in the same work, pages 60–65. 112. Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public, 33. 113. Ibid., 51. 114. See the discussion in the introduction. 115. Tosafot on Shabbat, 112b, cited in Neubauer, review of Ju¨dischdeutsche Chrestomathie, 146. We can translate the passage in question as follows: ‘‘But as for war stories written in la‘az [the vernacular], Rabbi Judah believes that one should not read from them.’’ 116. Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 391 n. 5; Auerbach, Literary Language and Its Public, 305 n. 5. 117. I am grateful to Robbie Harris for first calling my attention to this passage. See also Liss, ‘‘The commentary on the Song of Songs attributed to R. Samuel ben Meı¨r,’’ 25. 118. Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 34. 119. Be´dier (‘‘Les plus anciennes danses franc¸aises’’) and Butterfield (Poetry and Music in Medieval France, 45) discuss the carole. On possible allusions to the Chanson de Roland in the Troyes elegy, see Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘These things I will remember,’ ’’ 3–14. 120. Stern, ‘‘The first Jewish books,’’ 196. 121. Haidu, The Subject of Violence, 7.

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206 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 2 2 – 1 2 5 122. I explore the connection between the emergence of Hebraico-French literature and crisis in greater detail in Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘These things I will remember.’ ’’ 123. Fraade, ‘‘Rabbinic views on the practice of targum,’’ 275. 124. Ibid., 275–76.

chapter 4 1. Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 65. 2. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 4–5; Spiegel, Past as Text, 183–84. 3. It was first published by D. S. Blondheim in 1926 and 1927. See Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution’’ (1926) 379–93, (1927) 22–51; idem, ‘‘Poe´sies jude´o-franc¸aises’’; idem, Poe`mes jude´o-franc¸ais du moyen aˆge. The song was later translated into English and analyzed in Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ and Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘They have ears but do not hear.’ ’’ 4. New York, Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS 8092, fol. 160v. Descriptions in Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and Liturgy MSS-III (both listed in bibliography under Manuscripts), as well as E. Cohen et al., ‘‘Index of Jewish Art.’’ MS 8092 has been called ‘‘the Reggio manuscript’’ because it was once owned by a Jewish religious school in Reggio Emilia. On Simchah of Vitry and the Mah.zor Vitry, see, inter alia, Ta-Shma, ‘‘Machzor Vitry—manuscript material,’’ and idem, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer, 15–29 and passim; Goldschmidt, ‘‘Mah.zor Vitry’’; Beit-Arie´ and May, Catalogue of the Hebrew Manuscripts in the Bodleian Library, 172–73 (on MSS 1100, 1101); and sources mentioned below. 5. Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer, 17–18. 6. Fol. 37r. 7. The hand of stanzas 6–7 is smaller and more ornamented than that of the first five, yet at the same time we might describe it as less careful. The scribe of stanzas 6–7 uses a stylized circle to fill up empty space at the end of a line of French, while the scribe of 1–5 often starts to write a word from the next line. (According to Beit-Arie´, Makings of the Medieval Hebrew Book, 82, ‘‘The graphic filler is not only one of the most personal elements in copying, but also the most noticeable manifestation of individuality in scribes who exhibit very similar handwritings.’’) The rafe is written with a heavier stroke in stanzas 6–7. If two different scribes recorded this song, why? Another mystery revolves around the parchment page itself: some writing has been scraped off, but we cannot say what it might have been or how much of the wedding song was written over the scraped part. Did the first scribe leave the song unfinished and the second scribe finish his work? Or did the second scribe scrape off then replace lines written by the first scribe? 8. Goldschmidt, ‘‘Mah.zor Vitry.’’ Berliner thought that the Jewish Theological Seminary manuscript, then in Reggio Emilia, contained the original text of the Mah.zor Vitry, but he did not examine it carefully, believing it was too damaged to be read. See Berliner, Likutei betar Likutei, 172; Goldschmidt, ‘‘Le texte des prie`res du manuscrit Reggio du Mah.zor Vitry,’’ 63; idem, ‘‘The Reggio Ms. of Mahzor Vitry,’’ 66–67. The wedding song

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 2 5 – 1 3 2 207 does not appear in Simon Hurwitz’s 1893 printed edition of the Mah.zor Vitry, prepared using British Museum MS 27200/1 and, since the first page of that manuscript was illegible, the Bodleian Library’s Opp. 59. The wedding song is not in any of the manuscripts of the Mah.zor Vitry that I have so far been able to consult on microfilm, including Moscow, Russian State Library Baron David Guenzburg Collection, MS 481. This manuscript is being edited by Aryeh Goldschmidt; to date, two volumes have appeared. 9. Ta-Shma, The Early Ashkenazic Prayer, 18. 10. The glosses in Hurwitz’s edition of the Mah.zor Vitry were compiled by Schlessinger, Die altfranzo¨sischen Wo¨rter im Machsor Vitry. 11. Baskin, ‘‘Jewish women in the Middle Ages,’’ 109. 12. On the fleur de lis, see Hinkle, Fleurs de Lis; Pinoteau, Vingt-cinq ans d’e´tudes dynastiques, especially 89–97; Beaune, Naissance de la nation France, 237–63. 13. Hinkle, Fleurs de Lis, 1. 14. Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Heid. 51, fol. 212v–213r. Detailed descriptions of the manuscript are found in Zurich, Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Z 322 (pp. 123–42), a handwritten catalog by Joseph Prijs; Schechter, Die hebra¨ischen Manuscripte der Zentralbibliothek zu Zu¨rich; and the Collective Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts. Of these, both Prijs and the Collective Catalogue mention the wedding song. The description of ms. Heid. 51 in Weinryb, ‘‘Die hebra¨ischen Handschriften der Zentralbibliothek in Zu¨rich,’’ 4) is brief and inexact; Weinryb calls it a Machsor (prayer book) and mentions only one of the many texts it contains: ‘‘Wichtig sind auch die ‘Birkat MahaRaM’ des R. Meir aus Rothenburg und ein Abschnitt aus seinen Responsen, die sich in einem 1441 geschriebenen Machsor (Ms. Heid. 51) befinden.’’ 15. Cohen and Horowitz, ‘‘In search of the sacred,’’ 227. 16. The other piyyutim in the section are Yos.’et ha-yom ha-mequddash (Departure of the sanctified day; fol. 211r), Be-mos.a’e yom menuh.ah (At the departure of the day of rest; fol. 211r), Ha-mavdil bein qodesh le-h.ol (He who separates holy and secular; fol. 212r), ’Azay mayim (Then waters; cf. Ps. 124:4, fol. 212r). 17. Moses Yedid H . azaq: This cannot be the poet of the same name listed in Davidson, Thesaurus, 3:141 (no. 1564), who seems to have been active in North Africa sometime in the eighteenth to nineteenth centuries (see Sefer ha-mekorot 1:513, 2:1430; also 1:xii–xiii). H . azaq frequently appears at the end of medieval Hebrew acrostics. 18. Zurich, Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Z 322, p. 141. 19. Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nu¨rnberger Memorbuches, 283–84. Also Mentgen, Studien, 43 n. 129, 113, 161. 20. The rest of the statement is too faded to read. The scribe sometimes writes the month of March in Middle High German as ‘‘Merz’’ and sometimes as ‘‘Merze.’’ Both are attested. Drosdowski, Duden Etymologie, 443, s.v. Ma¨rz. 21. My transcriptions of the Hebrew-letter spellings. See Drosdowski, Duden Etymologie, 291, s.v. Hornung; 434, s.v. Mai; 94, s.v. Brache (the Middle High German form is given there as bra¯cho¯t); 283, s.v. Heu; 53, s.v. August. Wintermonat was a name for December. See p. 124, s.v. Dezember. I thank Wayne Harbert for informing me of the following:

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208 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 2 – 1 3 4 Hornunc, still around as a poetic word for February in Modern German, comes from Horn. A lengthy discussion of the derivation can be found in Kluge and Mitzka, Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch der deutschen Sprache, s.v. Hornung. Broekht is from Middle High German braˆchoˆt, ‘‘fallow-month’’ (cf. Modern German Brache, ‘‘fallow land’’), and is still attested as Braˆchud and the like in some dialects of Swiss German, and indirectly in archaic Modern German Brachmonat (‘‘June’’). Ho¨umonat is ‘‘hay-month,’’ still attested as Modern German Heumonat. On volemonat: perhaps Middle High German vulemaˆnoˆt (‘‘month of fullness’’). Leistmonat may reflect Middle High German lesemaˆnoˆt (‘‘gleaningmonth’’) or something similar, which is among the Middle High German names for December. See Kluge and Mitzka, Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch der deutschen Sprache and Koller, Wegstein, and Wolf, Neuhochdeutscher Index zum mittelhochdeutschen Wortschatz. 22. Listed in Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, 2:446, no. 4085. 23. Hurwitz, Mah.zor Vitry, 602. 24. Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 46–47. Blondheim notes the existence of general similarities between El giv‘at ha-levonah and Old French dance songs. 25. The Hebrew word, qathedra’ot, sg. qathedrah, and the French one, cheire, come from the same Latin source, cathedra. On the crowning of the bride, see Feuchtwanger, ‘‘The coronation of the virgin and the bride’’; Cohen and Horowitz, ‘‘In search of the sacred,’’ 229. Feuchtwanger (218) also discusses a special seat for the bride and groom described in a late seventeenth-century account from Germany, as well as a bridal throne mentioned in an account published in 1661 in Basel. The custom behind the line ‘‘Raise the bridegroom and the bride upon the throne!’’ (Le h.atan e la kallah an la cheire sus leveiz!) is not clear. It may be that guests physically placed the bride and groom on the throne or that the throne was raised in the air, similar to today’s custom of lifting the bride and groom on chairs (I have been told that such a custom is not documented before the late nineteenth century). The raising may also have been metaphorical, i.e., the bride and groom may have positioned themselves on the chairs without actually being lifted in the air. 26. I have aimed for a more literal translation than those found in the NRSV or NJPS, though I retain elements of both. 27. Personal communication. See Kanarfogel, ‘‘Bein yeshivot ba‘alei ha-tosafot levatei midrashot ah.erim.’’ 28. See the papers collected in Eckert and Rickford, Style and Sociolinguistic Variation; Schilling-Estes, ‘‘Investigating stylistic variation.’’ On audience design, see A. Bell, ‘‘Language style as audience design’’ and ‘‘Back in style’’; on speech accommodation, see Giles and Powesland, Speech Style and Social Evaluation; Thakerar, Giles, and Cheshire, ‘‘Psychological and linguistic parameters of speech accommodation theory.’’ 29. Le Page, ‘‘Projection, focussing, diffusion,’’ 9, 13; Le Page and Tabouret-Keller, Acts of Identity, 181. See also discussion in Chapter 1 of this book. 30. See Cohen and Horowitz, ‘‘In search of the sacred,’’ 232, on medieval Christian marriage conceived as affecting individuals. 31. On all of these issues, see A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 33–67.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 4 – 1 3 8 209 32. Agus, Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry, 132, 149, 172, 223–26, 279–93, 298–301; Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law, 39–40, 55, 65, 86–112; A. Grossman, Pious and Rebellious, 65, 67, 149–51. 33. Falk, Jewish Matrimonial Law, 37; Cohen and Horowitz, ‘‘In search of the sacred,’’ 229–31. 34. Dante wrote of poetic language being polysemous (Letter of Cangrande, Dantis Alagherii, Epistolae); Auerbach addresses this in ‘‘Figurative texts,’’ 475. Kinoshita (Medieval Boundaries, 104) writes, ‘‘Medieval culture, as we are starting increasingly to recognize, is filled with artifacts susceptible of delivering different messages to different audiences.’’ Composers of motets profited from differences in the knowledge audience members brought to their performance in order to express ‘‘veiled or dual meanings tied to their respective chants’’ (Pesce, introduction, 10). 35. Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 29, first pointed this out. See also Pagis, Hebrew Poetry, 63; Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 32. 36. Vance, Mervelous Signals, 107–10; Rosen, Unveiling Eve, 118, 181. 37. Vance, Mervelous Signals, 108. 38. Fudeman, ‘‘’They have ears but do not hear.’ ’’ 39. Pagis, Hebrew Poetry, 63. 40. For a survey, see Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution,’’ 381–89. Lazar, ‘‘CatalanProvenc¸al wedding songs’’ and ‘‘Epithalames bilingues he´braı¨co-romans,’’ has published three wedding songs from medieval Occitania and one from medieval Spain. 41. Felman, What Does a Woman Want?, 95–96, cited in Rosen, Unveiling Eve, 118, 181. 42. On the mixing of languages in poetry during the medieval and early modern periods, see, e.g., Forster, The Poet’s Tongues, 9–25; Ziolkowski, ‘‘Cultural diglossia’’; Zumthor, ‘‘Un proble`me d’esthe´tique me´die´vale’’; idem, Langue et techniques poe´tiques a` l’e´poque romane, 82–111; and Lazar, ‘‘Epithalames bilingues he´braı¨co-romans,’’ 1:333, who in note 1 gives further references. Jews continue to mix languages in poetry; see, e.g., Chetrit, The Written Judeo-Arabic Poetry in North Africa. 43. Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death, 80; Rosen-Moked, The Hebrew Girdle Poem, 213–14. 44. Rosen-Moked, The Hebrew Girdle Poem, 214–17. 45. Ibid., 216. 46. Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 28; Pfeffer, ‘‘Yet another look,’’ 77. 47. Lazar, ‘‘Catalan-Provenc¸al wedding songs,’’ 165. The last line refers to Exod. 21:10. On the semantics of ‘onah, see Paul, ‘‘Exod. 21:10.’’ 48. Slavitt, Ausonius, 43–75, presents Ausonius’s Latin alongside a parallel cento of his own creation, which uses passages from Shakespeare instead of Virgil. 49. Cf. Deut. 3:5, 1 Sam. 23:7, 2 Chron. 8:5, 14:7. See Fudeman, ‘‘’They have ears but do not hear,’ ’’ 545. On the virginal door, see BT Ketubbot 10 a–b; Fonrobert’s discussion of ‘‘open door’’ in Menstrual Purity, 59–60; Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 56–57.

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210 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 3 8 – 1 4 3 50. See Prov. 9:17, discussed below. 51. On the association between woman and city as an archetype and its appearance in literature since antiquity, see Calin, The Epic Quest, ch. 1 and especially 28–31. We have already seen the door image in the discussion of Jesus’ birth in the disputation text discussed in the introduction. It also occurs in the Roman de la Rose: consider the ‘‘ever-open door’’ of ll. 12803–11 and the secret back door of ll. 14676–81. References are to Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, ed. Fe´lix Lecoy. Both passages are discussed by Gaunt, ‘‘Bel Acueil and the improper allegory of the Romance of the Rose,’’ 72–73. 52. Nacht, Simle ishah, 94–95. Scheindlin (Wine, Women, and Death, 95) also notes the association between doors and sexual activity, citing Gen. 19:5–11, Judg. 19:22–27, and Song of Sol. 5:2–6. 53. Schirmann, Ha-Shira Ha-‘Ivrit, 1:370–71; Scheindlin, Wine, Women, and Death, 90–91, with discussion 93–95. 54. See discussion of ‘‘doors’’ above. Seeman, ‘‘Where is Sarah your wife?’’ offers a detailed analysis of the motif of the open door in the Hebrew Bible. 55. I am grateful to Jordan Penkower for suggesting this example. NJPS. 56. M. Yoma 1:1. Translation from Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 48. On bayit as a metaphor for wife, see Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 48–76; Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 40–67; Stein, ‘‘Collapsing structures,’’ 8 n. 19, 14–17. 57. T. Sotah 7:20; Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 59. See also Fonrobert, Menstrual Purity, 40–67. 58. Baker, Rebuilding the House of Israel, 59. 59. Hurwitz, Mah.zor Vitry, 601. 60. Sabar, Mazal Tov, 17–24. 61. In Hebrew literature beginning with the Bible, another type of dwelling—the tent—is also associated with women, sexual intimacy, and fertility. See Seeman, ‘‘Where is Sarah your wife?’’ In ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah, the groom tells the bride in Hebrew, ‘‘Make wide the site of your tent,’’ an allusion to Isa. 54:2. 62. Micha, Lais, 192–221, quote is from l. 107. 63. On the latter two texts, see, e.g., Kinoshita, Medieval Boundaries, 58, 95–99. 64. Guillaume de Lorris and Jean de Meun, Le Roman de la Rose, vol. 3, ll. 21553– end. 65. Ibid., ll. 20632, 21638–89; Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 34; Fudeman, ‘‘’They have ears but do not hear,’ ’’ 556–57. 66. If so, Rosenberg continues, ‘‘then we probably need to narrow its period of composition from the second half of the thirteenth century . . . to the final twenty or twenty-five years’’ (‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 34). 67. On the trope of sexual violence in medieval French literature, see Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens. 68. Ibid., 2–4; Baldwin, The Language of Sex, 202. 69. I explain my interpretation of the French portion of this line in Appendix 2.

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 4 3 – 1 4 7 211 Hebrew gewi: the NRSV and NJPS translate this word as ‘‘my back,’’ but medieval French-speaking Jews understood it as ‘‘my body.’’ In the three instances where Hebrew gew is included in the thirteenth-century glossary edited by Lambert and Brandin (Glossaire he´breu-franc¸ais du XIIe sie`cle, 125, 126, 192), it is translated as Old French ‘‘kors.’’ The commentaries on Isa. 50:6 attributed to Isaiah of Trani (13th century) and on Isa. 51:23 by David Kimhi of Narbonne (1160?–1235?) (see the Miqra’ot Gedolot ‘‘HaKeter’’ series) gloss it with Hebrew guf (‘‘body’’). In Jacob bar Judah’s Hebrew elegy on the martyrs of Troyes, gewi also clearly carries the sense ‘‘my body’’ (Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 217). (Cf. the related word gewiyah, meaning ‘‘corpse’’ in modern Hebrew, but simply ‘‘body’’ in Gen. 47:18 and in many medieval Hebrew poems.) 70. Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens, 43. See also Baldwin, The Language of Sex, 202. 71. Gravdal, Ravishing Maidens, 44. 72. Lifschitz-Golden, Les Juifs dans la litte´rature franc¸aise du moyen aˆge; Dahan, ‘‘Les Juifs dans les Miracles de Gautier de Coincy’’; Rubin, Gentile Tales. 73. Rosen, Unveiling Eve, 9–10. 74. This is the title of Chapter 7 in Horowitz, Reckless Rites. 75. Resnick, ‘‘Medieval roots of the myth of Jewish male menses,’’ 259. See also Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 189. 76. Quoted and translated in Resnick, ‘‘Medieval roots of the myth of Jewish male menses,’’ 255. 77. Ibid., 257. 78. See Horowitz, Reckless Rites, 189–90, 194, on these stereotypes in the Middle Ages, and 187–212 for an exploration of these ideas through the centuries; also Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred, 74–75. 79. Resnick, ‘‘Medieval roots of the myth of Jewish male menses,’’ 263. 80. Fudeman, ‘‘ ‘These things I will remember,’ ’’ 3–14, 17–21. 81. Davidson, Thesaurus of Mediaeval Hebrew Poetry, 3:168 (no. 2142); see also 4:434 for a listing of works by the same poet. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte der synagogalen Poesie, 296. 82. Quoted in Kisch, ‘‘The Jewry-Law of the medieval-German law books.’’ 83. Yonec, in Micha, Lais, 201–2, ll. 135–92. 84. Beaune, Naissance de la nation France. 85. Other examples of medieval French influence on the wedding songs have been discussed by Blondheim, Rosenberg, and myself in the studies referred to in notes above. 86. See G. Spiegel, Romancing the Past, 65; idem, Past as Text, 184. 87. This is a major thesis in Jordan’s article ‘‘Home again.’’ 88. Jordan, ‘‘Princely identity and the Jews in medieval France.’’ 89. Einbinder discusses the identity of Jews expelled from France throughout her book No Place of Rest. 90. Carmi, The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, 453. The poem was also published by Habermann, ‘‘Hebrew secular poetry from Ashkenaz,’’ 292. According to the Collective Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts (CCHM; accessed June 15, 2009), the poem appears

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212 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 4 7 – 1 4 9 in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 1912, fol. 38v (fifteenth century) and its opening is given at the beginning of Paris, Bibliothe`que nationale, ms. he´breu 317 (fourteenth century). Although the CCHM entry for Paris ms. he´breu 317 attributes the poem to Isaac ben Abraham Ha-Gorni, born in the second half of the thirteenth century in Gascony, formal characteristics of the poem make this attribution problematic. (It is not clear from the entry whether the attribution is made in the Paris manuscript itself.) While Yom mi.sarefat yas.a’ti is strophic and has an acrostic, Abraham Ha-Gorni’s poems are all monorhymes, without acrostics. Furthermore, Ha-Gorni’s known poems are in Munich, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 128—this one is not found there. On Ha-Gorni, see Brener, ‘‘Isaac haGorni and the troubadour persona,’’ and Einbinder, No Place of Rest, 15–36. 91. Salomon ibn Verga, Sefer Shevet Yehudah, 70. 92. Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 19–20. 93. The evocation of such sorrows in the context of a wedding is not unique to the Mah.zor Vitry. The custom of breaking a glass, for example, has been given various explanations, with many Jews through the ages considering it a reminder of the destruction of Jerusalem. 94. See Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews. The following description of the thirteenth century is based on a reading of that work. 95. In addition to Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, see idem, ‘‘Princely identity and the Jews in medieval France.’’ On the government of Philip Augustus, see Baldwin, The Government of Philip Augustus. 96. See ibid., 149–50, 187; Kisch, ‘‘The yellow badge in history,’’ especially 103–6. 97. Jordan, ‘‘Marian devotion,’’ 69–72. On when the miracles were composed, see Gautier de Coinci, Les Miracles de Nostre Dame, 1:xxv–xxvi. 98. See, for example, Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 137–39. 99. For example, Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 17–19, 146–47, 219; Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb, 164, and generally in chapters 4 and 5. 100. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 239–41; idem, ‘‘Home again.’’ 101. Brown, ‘‘Philip V, Charles IV, and the Jews of France.’’ 102. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 248–50; Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, ix, 4, 17–54, 251–75; Dahan, L’expulsion des Juifs de France, 1394. 103. Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews, 222. 104. Ibid., 218–19. On the burning of Jews in Metz, see Blumenkranz, ‘‘En 1306,’’ 20. On Colmar, see Be´gin, ‘‘Histoire des Juifs dans le nord-est de la France,’’ 249. 105. Kohn, Les Juifs de la France du Nord, 8–12. 106. All of these episodes are discussed in greater detail in ibid., 9–10. 107. Spiegel, Past as Text, 183. See also R. Stein, Reality Fictions. 108. Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 201, 204 (ll. 2–3 of stanza 17). Here I have inserted n’s and m, which are regularly omitted by the scribe in syllable codas, without brackets. 109. We could contrast the refined expression of the wedding songs with the crude-

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 4 9 – 1 5 5 213 ness of the fabliaux. An important study of the language of courtly texts as opposed to the fabliaux is Baldwin, The Language of Sex. See especially 35–36, 41, 113–14, 188–92. 110. Vance, Mervelous Signals, 121. 111. Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart, 84–85, has noted evidence of Christians attending Jewish weddings in medieval Germany and England.

epilogue 1. We should not discount the possibility that Ge´, found only in Jewish texts, arose not out of natural phonological processes, as discussed in Chapter 1, but rather from the taboo against pronouncing the name of God aloud. Tabooistic distortion is common in languages. In Old French, bieu sometimes replaced Dieu, as in par le sang bieu (‘‘by [God’s] blood’’). This said, it is clear that for Jews, the taboo against saying and writing the name of God in French was weaker than the taboo against saying or writing the name of God in Hebrew; De´ is written in full in various Hebraico-French texts; see Chapter 1. 2. Du Bellay, La deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse, 11–12. 3. Montaigne, quoted and translated in Lodge, French: From Dialect to Standard, 129. 4. In texts whose matrix language is French, Hebrew words are again marked elements, elements that render the overall language of the text distinctive, if we use the more numerous corpus of Christian-authored texts in Old French as our point of comparison. 5. Einbinder, No Place of Rest, 6 (see also 160).

appendix 1 This appendix is as accurate and as comprehensive as circumstances allowed. Information on the manuscripts has come from many works, with Banitt’s Glossaire de Leipzig and Glossaire de Baˆle particularly important for the glossaries; Richler’s Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma particularly important for the Parma manuscripts; and the Collective Catalogue of Hebrew Manuscripts important overall. Sometimes sources gave contradictory information regarding contents or dating. Further information (e.g., on secondary sources) can be found in the bibliography of ‘‘sources jude´o-franc¸aises’’ in Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, vii–xvi, and, by using the index, in the notes of preceding chapters. 2. Dates for Menahem bar H . elbo given in Hollender, Piyyut Commentary, 30. 3. See Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, xiv. 4. See, e.g., Penkower, ‘‘The end of Rashi’s commentary on Job,’’ 40–46 (appendix 2 on Berechiah ha-Nakdan, with a list of Old French glosses). 5. On Moses and Elijah of London, see Roth, ‘‘Elijah of London.’’ On Moses’s work Sefer ha-Shoham (Book of the onyx), see also Renan, Les rabbins franc¸ais, 484–87, and works cited by Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, xv.

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214 n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 5 5 – 1 6 4 6. See Renan, Les rabbins franc¸ais, 439–42, and Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, xi. 7. In other words, the glosses are attributed to Gershom. Brandin, ‘‘Les gloses franc¸aises (loazim) de Gershom de Metz.’’ 8. See, for example, Penkower, ‘‘The French and German glosses (le‘azim) in the Pseudo-Rashi commentary on Chronicles.’’ 9. See discussion in Chapter 4. 10. On Judah ben Samuel and the place and time of the composition of the Sefer H . asidim, see Singer, Medieval Jewish Mysticism, xiii, xv–xvi. See also discussion in Chapter 2 and references given there. 11. Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, xiv. 12. On both Turin manuscripts, see Darmesteter, Glosses [sic] et glossaires he´breuxfranc¸ais. 13. Levy, Tre´sor de la langue des Juifs franc¸ais au moyen aˆge, xv; Maman, ‘‘A HebrewOld French glossary to Joshua 10:7–Judges 9:24.’’

appendix 2 1. Blondheim, ‘‘Poe´sies jude´o-franc¸aises,’’ 18, reprinted in Blondheim, Poe`mes jude´ofranc¸ais, 2. 2. Darmesteter, ‘‘Deux e´le´gies’’; Armistead and Silverman, The Judeo-Spanish Ballad Chapbooks; Sermoneta, Alfabetin; Kiwitt, Der altfranzo¨sische Fiebertraktat Fevres. 3. See Pfeffer, ‘‘Yet another look at the Troyes Elegy,’’ 73 and Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 195–96 on dialectal features of the Troyes elegy; Rosenberg, ‘‘The medieval Hebrew-French wedding song,’’ 23 on the dialect of El giv‘at ha-levonah; Blondheim, ‘‘Contribution a` l’e´tude de la poe´sie jude´o-franc¸aise,’’ 35 on the dialect of three hymns; Peri, ‘‘Deux hymnes jude´o-franc¸ais,’’ 399–400 on the dialect of two others. 4. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 495 (§xx). 5. This is also characteristic of Champenois, Burgundian, and northern dialects; see Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 489 (§xiii), 494 (§viii). 6. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 494 (§xv). 7. Wartburg, Franzo¨sisches Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch, 5:236a. 8. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 170 (§§436–38). 9. Rosenberg and Tischler, Chanter m’estuet, 5–6 in 1981 edition and 84 in 1995 edition; Fudeman, ‘‘They have ears but do not hear,’’ 562–63. 10. See Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 151 (§377). 11. Pope, From Latin to Modern French, 321, 490 (§§832, xxiv); Buridant, Grammaire nouvelle de l’ancien franc¸ais, 417 (§333). 12. Bec, La lyrique franc¸aise au moyen aˆge, 30. 13. Callahan and Rosenberg, Les chansons de Colin Muset, 17–18. 14. Fudeman, ‘‘Restoring a vernacular Jewish voice,’’ 196, 197–201 (ll. 10, 58, and 67).

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n o t e s t o p a g e s 1 6 7 – 1 7 2 215 15. Kibler, An Introduction to Old French, 238. 16. See Banitt, ‘‘L’e´tude des glossaires bibliques des Juifs de France au Moyen Age,’’ 206. 17. Morawski, Proverbes franc¸ais ante´rieurs au XVe sie`cle, no. 997; Schulze-Busacker, Proverbes et expressions proverbiales, 230. 18. Wartburg, Franzo¨sisches Etymologisches Wo¨rterbuch, 16:435b–436a. 19. For remarks on the fabliau, as well as both a diplomatic and critical text, see Noomen and van den Boogaard, Nouveau recueil complet des fabliaux, 73–81.

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bibliography

manuscripts Berlin Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin, Preussischer Kulturbesitz, ms. or. oct. 512

London British Museum, Add. ms. 19, 664 (Cat. Margoliouth II, no. 664) British Museum MS 27200/1 Jews’ College, London, MS 28 fol. 151–68, 1453 (now privately owned; photocopies at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, New York) Valmadonna Trust Library, ms. Valmadonna 1

Moscow Russian State Library, Baron David Guenzburg Collection, MS 481

Munich Bayerische Staatsbibliothek, cod. hebr. 419XX

New York Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Catalog of Hebrew Manuscripts in the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 192?–? (unpublished catalog, probably prepared by A. Marx)

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218 b i b l i o g r a p h y Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, Liturgy MSS-III, no. 4721-9674 (collection of typewritten and handwritten notes) Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS Lutzki 778 Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, MS 8092 (MS 438 according to the old numbering system) Oxford Bodleian Library, Opp. 59 Paris Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. franc¸ais 19152 Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 301 Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 302 Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 317 Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 422 Bibliothe`que nationale de France, ms. he´breu 633 Parma Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 1902 (De Rossi 403, Richler 1069) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 1912 (De Rossi 697, Richler 1104) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2295 (De Rossi 563, Richler 1541) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2342 (De Rossi 541, Richler 1542) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2780 (De Rossi 637, Richler 690) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 2924 (De Rossi 60, Richler 689) Biblioteca Palatina, cod. Parm. 3000 (De Rossi 378, Richler 1063) Valenciennes Bibliothe`que municipale, MS 521 Vatican City Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, cod. hebr. 322 Zurich Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Heid. 51 Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich, ms. Z 322, ‘‘Die hebra¨ischen Handschriften der Zentralbiblio-

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b i b l i o g r a p h y 239 Schlessinger, Gustav. Die altfranzo¨sischen Wo¨rter im Machsor Vitry nach der ausgabe des vereins ‘‘Mekize Nirdamim.’’ Mainz: Joh. Wirth’sche, 1899. Schulze-Busacker, Elisabeth. Proverbes et expressions proverbiales dans la litte´rature franc¸aise narrative du moyen aˆge franc¸ais: Recueil et analyse. Geneva: Editions Slatkine, 1985. Schwarzfuchs, Simon R. ‘‘Antwerp’’ (part 1). EJ. 2nd ed. 2:249–50. ———. ‘‘E´tudes juives re´centes: France et Allemagne me´die´vales (notes critiques).’’ Revue de l’histoire des religions 202 (1985): 71–78. Scotton, Carol M. ‘‘Diglossia and code switching.’’ In The Fergusonian Impact, vol. 2, edited by Joshua A. Fishman, Andre´e Tabouret-Keller, Michael Clyne, Bh. Krishnamurti, and Mohamed Abdulaziz, 403–15. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986. Scully, Terence. The Viandier of Taillevent: An Edition of All Extant Manuscripts. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press, 1988. Sed-Rajna, Gabrielle. ‘‘La circulation du savoir jusqu’a` l’aˆge de l’imprimerie.’’ In Mille ans de cultures ashke´nazes, directed by Jean Baumgarten, Rachel Ertel, Itzhok Niborski, and Annette Wieviorka, 44–53. Paris: Liana Levi, 1994. Seeman, Don. ‘‘ ‘Where is Sarah your wife?’ Cultural poetics of gender and nationhood in the Hebrew Bible.’’ Harvard Theological Review 91/2 (1998): 103–25. Sefer ha-mekorot la-sifrut ha-Ivrit bi-Tsefon Afrikah: Mi-shenat 151 (1391) ve-‘ad ha-yom. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Academy of the Hebrew Language, 761 [2000 or 2001]. Sermoneta, Giuseppe. Alfabetin: traduzione giudeo-siciliana in caratteri ebraici del servizio della pentecoste. Palermo: Centro di studi filologici e linguistici siciliani, 1994. Shepkaru, Shmuel. Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006. Shinan, Avigdor. 1992. ‘‘The Aramaic Targum as a mirror of Galilean Jewry.‘‘ In The Galilee in Late Antiquity, edited by Lee I. Levine, 241–51. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press. Signer, Michael A., ed. Expositionem in Ezechielem. Andreae de Sancto Victore Opera 6. Turnhout: Brepols, 1991. Simon, Joseph. ‘‘Les manuscrits he´breux de la Bibliothe`que de la Ville de Nıˆmes.’’ REJ 3 (1881): 225–37. Simon, Marcel. Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations Between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (135–425). Translated by H. McKeating. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1986. First published in French, Paris: Editions E. de Boccard, 1964. Singer, Sholom Alchanan. Medieval Jewish Mysticism: Book of the Pious. Northbrook, Ill.: Whitehall Company, 1971. Sirat, Colette. Hebrew Manuscripts of the Middle Ages. Edited and translated by Nicholas de Lange. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. ———. ‘‘Les femmes juives et l’e´criture au moyen aˆge.’’ Les nouveaux cahiers 101 (1990): 14–23. ———. ‘‘Le livre he´breu: Rencontre de la tradition juive et de l’esthe´tique franc¸aise.’’ In Rashi et la culture juive en France du nord au moyen aˆge, edited by Gilbert Dahan, Ge´rard Nahon, and Elie Nicolas, 243–59. Paris: E. Peeters, 1997.

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240 b i b l i o g r a p h y ———. ‘‘Les manuscrits en caracte`res he´braı¨ques: Re´alite´s d’hier et histoire d’aujourd’hui.’’ Scrittura e Civilta` 10 (1986): 239–88. ———. ‘‘Me´thodes de travail et liberte´ de penser.’’ In Les me´thodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scholastiques, edited by Colette Sirat, Sara KleinBraslavy, and Olga Weijers, with the collaboration of Philippe Bobichon. Paris: J. Vrin, 2003. ———. ‘‘Le proble`me pose´ par les rapports entre Gersonide et le milieu ambiant.’’ In Les me´thodes de travail de Gersonide et le maniement du savoir chez les scholastiques, edited by Colette Sirat, Sara Klein-Braslavy, and Olga Weijers, with the collaboration of Philippe Bobichon. Paris: J. Vrin, 2003. ———. ‘‘Un rituel juif de France: Le manuscrit he´breu 633 de la Bibliothe`que nationale de Paris.’’ REJ 119 (1961): 7–40. Siskin, Harley Jay. ‘‘A medieval semiotics of translation.’’ Semiotica 63 (1987): 129–42. ———. ‘‘A partial edition of a fourteenth-century biblical glossary: MS Parma 2780.’’ Ph.D. diss., Cornell University, 1981. Slavitt, D. R. Ausonius: Three Amusements. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998. Smalley, Beryl. The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages. 3rd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1983. Sowden, Lewis. ‘‘Rabinowitz, Louis Isaac.’’ EJ, 2nd ed. Spiegel, Gabrielle M. ‘‘History, historicism, and the social logic of the text in the Middle Ages.’’ Speculum 65 (1990): 59–86. ———. The Past as Text: The Theory and Practice of Medieval Historiography. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. ———. Romancing the Past: The Rise of Vernacular Prose Historiography in ThirteenthCentury France. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993. Spiegel, Shalom. ‘‘In monte dominus videbitur: The martyrs of Blois and the early accusations of ritual murder’’ (Hebrew). In The Mordecai M. Kaplan Jubilee Volume, Hebrew section, 267–87. New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1953. Stacey, Robert C. ‘‘The conversion of Jews to Christianity in thirteenth-century England.’’ Speculum 67/2 (1992): 263–83. ———. ‘‘Jews and Christians in twelfth-century England: Some dynamics of a changing relationship.’’ In Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, edited by Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen, 340–54. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001. Stanton, Robert. ‘‘The (m)other tongue: Translation theory and Old English.’’ In Translation Theory and Practice in the Middle Ages, edited by Jeanette Beer, 33–46. Kalamazoo: Medieval Institute Publications, Western Michigan University, 1997. Stein, Dina. ‘‘Collapsing structures: Discourse and the destruction of the temple in the Babylonian Talmud.’’ JQR 98/1 (2008): 1–28. Stein, Robert M. Reality Fictions: Romance, History, and Governmental Authority, 1025– 1180. Notre Dame, Ind.: University of Notre Dame Press, 2006. Steinschneider, M. Die hebraeischen Handschriften der K. Hof-und Staatsbibliothek in Muenchen. Munich, 1895.

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index

Abraham ben David of Posquie`res, 131 Abraham Ha-Gorni, 211 n.90 Abraham ibn Ezra, 5, 158 account registers. See Vesoul, account registers of ‘‘acts of identity,’’ 44, 133, 153 Adam of Bristol, 43, 57 Adela, wife of Count Stephen-Henry, 79 Adela of Champagne, 67 adolescents’ speech, 39 Agus, Irving, 24, 30–32, 35, 40 Aiguebelle, 148 Alcuin (De Orthographia), 118–19 ‘Aleinu, 70 Alexander of Paris (Roman d’Alexandre), 101 Alexander the Great, couplet from story of, 91, 92, 93, 101–2, 122, 157 Alix, wife of Thibalt V, 67, 78–79, 85, 196 n.68 Alsace, 131 Amalek, 27, 181 n.5 Anjou-Maine, 183 n.46 Antwerp, 28, 33 apostasy, 26, 28 Aramaic, 13–14, 73, 82, 105, 122; borrowings from, 22–23, 50, 59, 189 n.135; texts, use of French in translating or discussing, 90, 93, 98–101, 200 n.39; translations of the Bible, 103, 180 n.99, 200 n.41 Armistead, Samuel, 159 Aschheim, Steven, 31, 33 Asher ben Jehiel, 24 Ashkenaz, 11, 127, 177 n.30; leshon ashkenaz, 11, 107, 132 Aslanov, Cyril, 7 Auerbach, Erich, 1, 91, 116, 120, 178 n.44, 209 n.34

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Augustine, Saint, 120; Augustinian witnesses, 41 Ausonius (Cento nuptialis), 137 Avignon, 14, 43, 178 n.51 Bacon, Roger, 40 Baldwin, John, 72, 196 n.63 Banitt, Menahem, 6, 110, 177 n.25, 182 n.14, 190 n.151, 191 n.161; edited glossary from ms. Valmadonna 1, 11; edited incantation, 97, 188 n.122; on the Old French Vulgate, 9; remarks on Judeo-French dialect controversy, 28–30, 32–36, 40, 58, 184 n.49; remarks on the use of French in the teaching of Hebrew and Aramaic texts, 90, 189 n.143, 198 n.7 Bar-Maoz, Yona, 7 Bartholomaeus Anglicus, 40, 115 Barukh ben David Ha-Cohen, 70 Barukh ben Meir, 67, 79–80 Basque, 10 Beaune, Colette, 145 Beit-Arie´, Malachi, 13, 108, 206 n.7 Bell, David, 41, 175 n.3 Benor, Sarah Bunin, 28 Berechiah ben Natronai ha-Nakdan, 155 Berger, David, 15 Bernard of Gordon, 144 Bible, Jewish oral vernacular version, 9 bird names, glossaries of, 11, 22, 48, 90, 92, 93, 109–15, 156–57 Black Death, 131, 148 Blois: apostate from, 26; Blois incident of 1171 and documents related to it, 3–4, 9, 22, 44, 60–88, 104, 151, 191 n.160, 191 n.4 (chap. 2), 192 nn.11–12, 193 nn.17–19, 21; number of martyrs, 183 n.44, 194 n.30; sole manu-

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246 i n d e x Blois (continued ) script in which Blois incident letters are preserved, 63 Blondheim, David S., 9, 178 n.52, 198 n.10; as editor of Hebraico-French texts, 6, 87, 102, 151–52, 187 n.115, 214 n.3; life of, 6, 175 n.8; work on Judeo-French, 5, 32, 38, 182 n.15, 183 n.37, 185 n.71; work on wedding song, 125, 159, 206 n.3, 208 n.24, 209 nn. 35, 40, 211 n. 85 Blumenkranz, Bernhard, 38, 178 n.49 Book of Sir John Mandeville, 42 Brabant, 148 Brandin, Louis, 6, 49, 188 n.127, 201 n.51, 210 n.69 Breisach, 131, 148 bribery, 84 Brittany, 183 n.46 Budapest, Jews’ use of French in, 38 Burgundian, 32–33, 164, 214 n.5 Caesarius of Arles, 119 Callahan, Christopher, 163 Carcassonne, 15, 183 n.46 Carmi, T., 146 Catalan, 10 Catane, Moche´, 7 cento, 86, 87, 137 chair, in weddings, 132–33, 208 n.25 Champagne, 67, 69, 125. See also Champenois dialect of Old French; Troyes Champenois dialect of Old French, 10, 32–33, 188 nn.122–23, 214 n.5 Chanson de Roland. See Roland chansons de geste, 120 Charles IV, 12 Charles VI, 12 Charlot le Juif, 91 charters, 72 Chazan, Robert, 61–63, 69, 84, 181 n.1, 191 nn.3–4 Chre´tien de Troyes, 51, 141, 143, 145–46 Christians: literacy among, 17, 23, 120; relations with Jews, 1–4, 9, 21, 25, 36; relations with Jews in the context of the Blois incident of 1171, 60–88; scholarly interactions with Jews, 16, 178 n.58. See also Desputoison du juyf et du crestien; Hebrew city, image of, in wedding songs, 137–38 code-switching, 3, 45–47, 49, 55–58, 152, 187 nn. 103, 106

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codex, 121 Colmar, 148 Comencement de sapience (Beginning of wisdom), 5, 6, 17, 151, 158 Comtat-Venaissin, 12 Conflans, 148 Conon de Be´thune, 39 corpus of Hebraico-French texts: description of, 10–11, 90–92, 155–58; size of, 7–8; similarities to earliest texts in Old French, 89–90 crusader riots of 1096, narratives of, 71 Curtius, Ernst Robert, 1 Dante, 91, 209 n.34 Darmesteter, Arse`ne, 6, 8, 86, 159, 175 n.8 Dauphine´, 12, 148 Delemont, 10, 93, 116, 204 n.100 Desputoison du juyf et du crestien, 1, 17–20 dialects: of Hebraico-French texts, 10–11, 38, 109, 160, 162; of the Ile-de-France held up as standard for good French, 40. See also Burgundian; Champenois dialect; Lotharingian dialect; Picard dialect diglossia, 20–25; contrasted with bilingualism, 23, 55–56; definition, 20–21 Donin, Nicholas, 44 doors and gates, images of, 19, 137–40, 210 n.51 Dreux, 24, 180 n.95 Du Bellay, Joachim (Deffence et illustration de la langue francoyse), 91, 152 Dulles, Eleanor, 175 n.8 Dunbabin, Jean, 67 Edward I, 12 education, Jewish, 6, 21, 23–25, 31, 36, 44, 85 Einbinder, Susan, 7, 153, 178 n.41, 193 n.17, 211 n.89; on texts relating to the Blois incident of 1171, 62–63, 66–67, 80, 192 n.6, 194 nn.26–27, 30, 196 nn. 64, 66, 69, 72; on Troyes elegy, 50, 86 Eleanor of Aquitaine, 67 Eleazar bar Samuel, 125, 127, 129 Eleazar ben Judah of Worms, 131, 145 Eleazar of Beaugency, 7, 155 El giva‘t ha-levonah (To the hill of frankincense), 47, 53, 90, 124–28, 132–42, 144–46, 149–50, 157, 159, 163. See also wedding songs Elijah of London, 10, 11, 66, 155

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i n d e x 247 encyclopedias, 115 Engels, Friedrich, 31 England, 8, 10, 11, 23, 41, 42, 45, 94; expulsion of the Jews from, 12, 183 n.46; French spoken in, 10, 151, 154, 176 nn.21–22 E´pernay, 62–63, 192 n.12 Ephraim of Bonn, 4, 62–63, 66, 70, 77–79, 81–82, 192 n.6, 196 nn. 66, 69, 72 Ermengard of Auvergne, 79 Esther, 26, 78, 82–84; book of, 27, 80, 141 expulsion of Jews: from England, 12, 183 n.46; from France, 4, 11–12, 32–33, 34, 37, 38, 108, 122, 146, 147–49, 153–54; from Gascony, 183 n.46 Fano, Daniel, 7 fasting, 80–81, 196 n.76 Felman, Shoshana, 135 Ferguson, Charles, 20 fever treatise, 7, 8, 91, 118, 157, 191 n.160 Fishman, David, 32 Fishman, Joshua, 21 Flanders, 12, 83 Flemish, 10 fleur de lis, 127–28, 145 Fleury on the Loire, 119 Flor et Blancheflor, 141, 203 n.77 Folengo, Teofilo, 49 formality and informality of discourse, 4, 81– 85, 87 Fraade, Steven, 122 France: imaginaire of, 145; Jewish presence in before eighth and ninth centuries, 14, 29; linguistic regions, 9–10; post-Revolutionary, 41. See also expulsion; Tsarefat Franche-Comte´, 12, 148 French: and direct speech, 92–102, 122; distinction between Old and Middle French, 5; earliest Old French texts 4, 89–90, 102–3, 115, 118–19; influence on Hebrew, 3, 22; mother tongue of Jews in medieval France, 2–3, 8, 13–14, 21, 25, 27, 45, 58–59, 86, 102, 152–53; regions where it was spoken, 9–10. See also dialects; glosses and glossing; Hebrew, influence on Jews’ French Freud, Sigmund, 134 Gapenc¸ais, the, 148 Gascony, 183 n.46 Gautier de Coinci, 16, 18, 40–42, 146, 148

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Geiger, Abraham, 30 gender: grammatical, 22, 80, 189 n.143; and language, 4, 8, 61, 77, 79–86, 92, 98, 100– 102, 135, 151 German, 10, 11, 30, 31, 45, 50, 89; called leshon ashkenaz, 11, 107, 132; vernacular literature, 118–19; words in, 107, 132; Yiddish compared to, 31, 43 Germany, 8, 10–12, 23–24, 41, 94, 147, 201 n.46; as a destination for east European Jews in modern times, 33; h.alis.ah vs. yibbum in, 99; Hebraico-French texts preserved in libraries and archives in, 12; wedding customs in, 208 n.25, 213 n.111 Gershom of Metz, 103–4. See also pseudoGershom Gersonides, 15 Gilman, Sander, 32, 144 glossaries, 7–8, 48, 90–92, 104, 118, 156, 176; of Basel (Baˆle), 6, 48, 213; as evidence that French was used in teaching, 90, 189 n.143, 198 n.7; of Leipzig, 6, 48, 213; of Paris, 6, 48–49, 109, 176 n.9, 188 n.127, 210 n.69; of Parma, 10, 48, 93, 116. See also bird names, glossaries of; glosses and glossing; Turin, glossaries of Glossary of Kassel, 103 Glossary of Reichenau, 103 glosses and glossing, 3, 6–15, 30, 44, 48–49, 51–53, 62, 65, 90–93, 102–16, 118–20, 122– 23, 151; deletion and miscopying of, 38–39; in manuscripts containing wedding songs, 125, 132; manuscripts containing, 155–57. See also bird names, glossaries of; names of individual commentators Glosses of Silos and San Milla´n, 103 Gloucester, 61 God: spellings of Old French words for, 48, 52, 54, 96, 152, 184 n.49, 188 nn.122–24, 213 n.1; contrasted with avoidance of the tetragrammaton, 96, 152. See also names, divine names and names of power; tetragrammaton Golb, Norman, 8, 180 n.95 Goldschmidt, Daniel, 125, 206 n.8 golier, 22, 64–65, 70, 86, 191 n.160, 194 n.22 Gossen, Ch. The´odore, 48 Gravdal, Kathryn, 143, 210 n.67 Greenberg, Joseph, 7 Gre´goire, abbe´ Henri, 41

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248 i n d e x Gregory of Tours, 119 Gregory the Great, 119 Haggadah. See Passover Hagin le Juif, 5, 17, 158 Haidu, Peter, 121 Hainaut, 148 h.aldrube, 48 h.alis.ah, 90, 92, 93, 98–101, 122, 158 Haman, 27, 82, 181 n.5, 197 n.82; Thibalt V as a new Haman, 80, 82–84 h.aroset, recipe for, 12, 38, 93, 108–9, 157, 203 n.80 Hebraico-French: definition, 5; hymns, 6, 57, 87, 91, 151–52, 157, 188 n.123, 214 n.3; literature, emergence of, 119, 122; texts, study of, 6–8, 9. See also corpus of Hebraico-French texts Hebraico-Provenc¸al literature, 102, 137, 171 Hebrew, 1, 2, 32; influence on Jews’ French, 3; as a linguistic or ethnic term, 27; as a literary language, 13; as a marker of Jewishness, 3, 41–44, 57–59; oral culture, 22–23; prestige of, 2, 21; script, 11, 35–36; studied by Christians, 27, 179 n.65; use of Hebrew for recording events that took place in French, 3, 82, 86–87; use of Hebrew for written purposes, 2, 4, 7–8, 21–22, 34, 97, 121; varieties of, 13–14; women’s access to, 4, 24–25, 134–35; words for cardinal directions in, 48–50, 189 n.128. See also codeswitching; diglossia; French, influence on Hebrew; loanwords hekhalot literature, 93, 97, 198 n.12 Henry I, count of Troyes, 62–63, 69, 76, 83, 84, 192 n.12, 197 n.84 herupe, 48, 112–13, 204 n.90 Hinkle, William, 128 holidays, Jewish: vernacular compositions performed at, 46, 90, 102. See also names of specific holidays Holmes, Urban, 8 homiletic fragments, 10, 54–56, 158, 187 n.109 Horowitz, Elliott, 144 house, image of, in wedding songs, 139–40, 172 Hurwitz, Simon ha-Levi, 132, 202 n.57, 206 n.8 identity, 4, 28, 30, 74; collective, 124, 132–35, 145–50, 151–54; definition, 2, 175 n.3; dual

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French Jewish, 59, 121–22, 145; language and, 13, 28, 44–45, 49, 58; positional vs. public, 81–85; of refugees, 146. See also ‘‘acts of identity’’ Ile de la Cite´, 37, 58 Immanuel of Rome, 15 incantations, Hebraico-French, 10, 90, 91, 97, 158 Irvine, Judith, 81, 83 Isaac ben Eleazar of Blois, 60, 64, 66 Isaac ben Jacob Alfasi, 24, 99 Isaac ben Joseph of Corbeil, 25, 131 Isaac ben Judah, 70, 79 Isaac Cardoso, 144 Isaac Nakdan, 131 Isaiah ben Elijah di Trani, 24, 210 n.69 Jacob bar Judah of Lorraine, 10, 210 n.69 Jacob ben Asher, 24 Jacob ben Judah of London, 24 Jacques de Vitry, 144, 146 Janville, 62 Japhet, Sara, 21, 28, 30 Jehiel ben Eleazar, 10, 157 Jewish language(s), 29, 44, 45, 55; definition of, 35, 184 n.51; factors contributing to rise of, 34, 183 n.42, 184 n.54 Jewries and Jewish streets, 16, 36–38 Jezebel, 77–79 John, King of England, 183 n.46 jokes, sexual, 134–35 Jonah, 27; sermon on, 89, 119 Jonah ben Abraham Gerondi, 24 jongleurs, 91, 121 Jordan, William, 12, 37, 42, 66, 148, 183 n.46, 211 n.87, 212 n.94; on displays of power by newly ascended rulers, 146 Joseph, 16, 139 Joseph Bekhor Shor (Joseph of Orleans), 15, 18, 155 Joseph ben Nathan (Sefer Yosef ha-Meqanne´), 156 Joseph Ha-Cohen, 4, 62, 66, 77–78, 80, 82 Joseph Kara: dialect of glosses, 10, 188 n.123; glosses of, 7, 48, 51–53, 59, 104–5, 155, 189 n.143, 192 n.11, 205 n.102; spelling of name, x; studied in German-speaking lands, 11 Judah Al-H . arizi, 131 Judah ben Eleazar, 155 Judah ben Samuel the Pious, 74, 155, 214 n.10 Judeo-French: avoidance of term, 5, 175 n.5;

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i n d e x 249 dialect controversy, 28–36, 40, 59, 182 n.15; as field of study, 5–6, 9 Judeo-Spanish, 154, 185 n.69 Kanarfogel, Ephraim, 23, 94, 133, 179 n.65, 198 n.12 Kara, Joseph. See Joseph Kara Katz, Jacob, 99 ketubbot, 140, 200 n.41 kharjas, 102 kings: dangers of, 67, 75; displays of power, 146. See also names of individual rulers Kiwitt, Marc, 7, 159, 176 n.9, 201 n.51 Knobel, Peter, 73 Kohn, Roger, 147 la‘az: Aramaic as la‘az of Babylonians, 180 n.99; definition, xi, 11; translation of Passover Haggadah into, 24, 180 n.97; use of term for setting off glosses, 51–53, 103, 106, 107; war stories in, 115 Labov, William, 39, 184 n.54 Lajard, Fe´lix, 8 Lambert, Mayer, 6, 49, 210 n.69 Lancelot, 145; Lancelot, le chevalier a la charette, 141; Prose Lancelot, 116 Latin, 1–2, 4, 13, 22, 27, 42–43, 91, 96; alphabet, 5–6, 8, 121, 158; documents accompanied by versions in Hebrew, 17; etymologies, 39, 48, 66, 107; glosses, 102–3; inflectional endings, 49, 98; Jewish inscriptions in, 14; knowledge among Jews, 15–18, 42, 58; as a language of revelation, 14; in Latin-French diglossia, 21, 23, 27; learned through formal education, 15, 25; literature in, 89, 115–16; in macaronic sermons, 55; pronunciation of, 118–20; stability of, 153; styles of, 119–20 Le Mans, 181 n.1 Le´on Joseph de Carcassonne, 15 Le Page, Robert, 28, 44, 45, 133 Leqah. Tov, 99–100 Levy, Raphael, 5, 6, 34, 175 n.6, 176 n.10, 184 n.48 Limoges, 181 n.1 Linder, Amnon, 70 linguistic standardization, lack of in medieval Tsarefat, 41 literacy, among Jews, 23, 120, 133 literary languages, 5, 13–20; definition, 13. See also diglossia

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literary public. See reading public loanwords, 28; French, in medieval Hebrew texts, 65; Hebrew, in French spoken and written by medieval Jews, 3, 32, 33, 41, 45– 46, 152; in Shuadit, 43 Loches, 67–69, 73, 79 Lockshin, Martin, 16 Loire river, 60, 119 Loire valley, 10 London, 37, 180 n.97. See also Elijah of London; Jacob ben Judah of London; Moses of London LoPrete, Kimberly, 79 Lotharingian dialect of Old French, 10–11, 48, 160, 164, 185 n.73, 188 nn.122–23, 190 n.159 Louis VII, 62, 66–67, 69, 71–72, 74, 76, 82– 84, 127, 194 n.33, 195 n.50 Louis IX, 147 macaronic poetry, 49, 137 macaronic sermons, 55, 187 n.114 Mah.zor Vitry, x, 24, 108, 125, 147, 155; examples of Hebrew-French code-switching in, 51–53, 59; French glosses in, 104, 202 n.57; New York manuscript of, 53, 125–28, 206 nn. 4, 8; section of, pertaining to marriage and weddings, 125–26, 132–33, 140, 147, 206 nn.7–8, 212 n.93 Maimonides, 24, 99 Mainz, 104; Memorbuch, 50 malshin (slanderer), 44, 68, 73 manuscripts: bilingual Hebrew-French, 4, 45, 90–123; difficulty of pinpointing geographical origin of, 10–11, 190 n.159; discussed in chap. 3, table of, 93; position of HebraicoFrench texts in, 90; survival of, 14, 119. See also wedding songs Marcus, Ivan, 71 Marie de France, 141, 145 marriage, communal aspects, 134–35 martyrdom: of Jews in Blois (see Blois); of Jews in Troyes, 61. See also Troyes; Troyes elegies Mah.or ba’tah ha-‘ir (The city came under siege), 128, 144–45 Mathieu le Juif, 5, 91 Meir of Rothenberg, 11, 131 melammed, 23–24, 39 melder, 48, 50, 51, 57, 184 n.49, 188 n.118 Menahem bar H . elbo, 155 Menahem bar Jacob bar Solomon, 128, 144

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250 i n d e x Mendelssohn, Moses, 31 menstruation, myth of male, 144 Metz, 32–33, 103, 148 Middle French, differentiated from Old French, 5 Miqra’ot Gedolot ‘‘HaKeter,’’ 7, 189 n.143 Miracle de The´ophile (Rutebeuf ), 42, 94 miracle stories, 16, 40, 41, 120, 144, 148. See also Miracle de The´ophile moneylending, 25, 36, 66 Montaigne, Michel de, 153 months, Middle High German, 132, 207 n.21 Montme´lian, 148 Mont sont a mescheif. See Troyes elegies, Old French version morphology, 3, 14, 21, 22, 49–51, 161; and gender, 22, 64, 80 Moses, 20, 27, 43 Moses ben Jacob of Coucy, 131 Moses ibn Ezra, 138–39 Moses of London, 11, 155 Moses of Palermo, 15 Moses Yedid (‘Uri liqra’ti yafah), 128, 131, 207 n.17 Moshe Ha-Darshan, 201 n.51 murder accusations against Jews, 60–63, 66, 148, 192 n.12, 193 n.21 Muset, Colin, 32–33, 163 Nachshon Gaon, 131 Nahmanides, 99 names: divine names and names of power, 93–98, 105–6, 152; Jewish personal, 26–27, 29, 85, 127, 182 n.21; Jewish surnames, 108, 154 Nathan ben Jehiel of Rome (Arukh), 103 Nathan ben Meshullam, 61, 69, 80, 83, 191 n.4 Navarre, 183 n.46 Nave`, Pnina, 9 Normandy, 8, 10, 183 n.46 Norwich, 61 Nu¨rnberg Memorbuch, 56–57, 66, 79, 85, 192 n.6 nut, Scripture compared to, 18 Oaths of Strasbourg, 89, 115 Obadiah ben Makhir, 62, 80, 194 n.30 Occitan language, 10, 15, 41, 43, 45, 119, 137 Occitan literature, 119; Boecis, 119; Chanson de Sainte Foi d’Agen, 119

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Odo (Ysagoge in Theologiam), 42 Old French. See French ‘orah, 22, 64, 191 n.160, 193 nn.19–20 Orleans, 15, 33, 61, 76; Orleans letter, 3, 60– 70, 77–80, 82, 191 n.3, 193 nn. 17, 20, 194 n.30 Orthodox Jews, English spoken by, 28 ¨ sterreicher, Joseph, 6 O overlining, in Hebrew texts, 95, 106 Pagis, Dan, 135 Paris, 148, 183 n.46; during Blois incident, actions of Jewish leaders of, 61, 69, 71–73, 76, 82; cultural superiority or centrality, 40; medieval Jewish population of, 34, 37. See also glossaries, of Paris Paris letter, 71–73, 83, 191 n.4 Parma, 10, 22, 48, 90, 93–94, 156–58, 181 n.1, 211 n.90 paronomasia, 113–14 Passio SS. Perpetuae et Felicitatis, 120 Passover, 90, 102, 108–9, 203 n.80; associated with ritual murder accusations, 148, 192 n.12; translation of Haggadah into French, 24, 180 n.97 Penkower, Jordan, 7 Peri, Hiram, 6, 9, 87, 102, 152, 175 n.1, 179 nn. 66, 68–69 petih.at lev ritual, 105–6 Pfeffer, Wendy, 7 Philip III, 147 Philip IV the Fair, 12, 147, 183 n.46 Philip Augustus, 11–12, 37, 76, 127, 147, 183 n.46, 195 n.42, 196 n.73 Philippe Mouskes (Chronique rime´e), 109 Picard dialect of Old French, 10, 32–33, 39– 40, 48 Picardy, 10, 39, 158 ‘‘Piyyut for when the bridegroom sleeps with the bride,’’ 134–35 piyyutim, 128, 131, 163, 207 n.16 ‘‘Piyyut nae´h,’’ 137 Platter, Thomas, 43 poetry, Old French in Hebrew letters, 3, 8, 10, 46, 57, 87, 90, 116, 120, 122, 149, 160. See also Hebraico-French, hymns; Troyes elegy; wedding songs Poitiers, 181 n.1 Pontoise, 40, 61, 192 n.11 Pope, Mildred, 162 poterim, 104

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i n d e x 251 Potiphar, 139 Poz´nanski, Samuel, 30 Prijs, Joseph, 131–32 Prise d’Orange, 141, 145 Provence, 12, 15 proverbs, medieval French, 75, 141–42, 167 pseudo-Gershom, 48, 155 Pucelline, 61, 62, 65–66, 68, 81–86, 196 n.66; name of, 66, 79, 85, 191 n.1; treatment in prison, 77–78 Purim, 26–27, 83, 102 Rabin, Chaim, 8 Rabinowitz, Louis, 29, 30, 34, 37, 182 nn.20– 21, 183 n.44 Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir), 7, 15–16, 121, 155, 178 n.58 Rashi (Shlomo Yitsh.aqi), 6, 11, 32, 35, 125, 180 n.99, 200 n.41; glosses, 7, 10, 22, 48, 103–5, 119, 155, 201 n.51, 202 n.57; on h.alis.ah vs. yibbum, 99 reading public, 91, 115–23 recipes, 92, 104, 105–9, 110, 157–58. See also h.aroset, recipe for Resnick, Irven, 144, 211 n.76 responsa, 24, 38, 104 Rhineland, 10–11, 25, 38, 74, 128, 155 Richard of Paris, 62, 192 n.11 Richler, Benjamin, 108, 131 Rigord, 36, 37 Robert de Torigny, 62, 193 n.21 Robert of Clari, 116 Robert of Reading, 43 Roland, 121, 144–46, 205 n.119 Roman de la Rose, 121, 141–42, 210 n.51 Roman de Renart, 40 Rosen, Tova, 134, 144 Rosenberg, Samuel, 7, 134, 135, 142, 162, 163, 210 n.66 Rosh Hashanah, 46, 90, 102, 157 rouelle, 147 Rouen, 24, 37 Rubin, Miri, 41 Rutebeuf, 42, 91 Sabbath: carrying arms on, 145; custom of reading war stories in French on, 120; piyyutim for the end of, 128; words for, 184 n.49 Sa´enz-Badillos, Angel, 21 Sainte-Euphe´mie, 148 Saint-Pol, 183 n.46

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Sala, Marius, 8 Salfeld, Siegmund, 56, 66, 192 n.6 Salomon ibn Verga, 147 Salters, Robert, 21 Savoy, 12, 148 Scha¨fer, Peter, 96, 198 nn.13–14 script, Hebrew, 11, 16–17, 42, 199 n.21; graphic filler in, 206 n.7 Sefer H . asidim (Book of the pious), 74, 90, 104, 131, 155, 193 n.17, 195 n.58 segregation, social, 34, 37, 38 Seh.oq ben Esther Israeli, 26–28, 43–44, 58; meaning of name, 26–27 Sequence of Saint Eulalia, 89, 118 sermo humilis, 120 Sermoneta, Giuseppe, 159 Shevet Yehudah, 147 Shuadit, 43 Silverman, Joseph, 159 Simchah of Vitry, 125, 155 Sirat, Colette, 10, 23, 25, 119 social networks, effect on language variation and change, 36–39 Solomon ben Judah ibn Gabirol, 131 Solomon of Dreux or Rouen, 24, 180 n.95 Soultz, 148 Spain, 12, 15, 99, 103 Speyer, 61 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 28, 124, 148–49 Stacey, Robert, 11, 43, 57 St. Amand, abbey of, 118–19 Stern, David, 121 Stock, Brian, 23 Stow, Kenneth, 26, 62–63, 67, 70, 72, 74–76, 191 n.3, 193 nn. 17, 21, 195 n.42 streets of the Jews. See Jewries and Jewish streets Swartz, Michael, 105 syntax, 21, 50, 51, 53, 54, 119, 134; Aramaic and French influence on medieval Hebrew, 3, 14, 22; in formal discourse, 81 Tabouret-Keller, Andre´e, 28, 44, 45 Talmud, 24, 90, 99, 122; trial and burning of, 44, 148; vernacular glosses in talmudic commentaries, 6, 103–4 Tam, Jacob, 62, 131 Ta-Shma, Israel, 125 tetragrammaton, graphic substitutes for, 96, 152, 198 n.18, 199 n.25

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252 i n d e x Thibalt V of Blois, 60, 62, 66–73, 76–80, 82–86; king’s seneschal, 67, 72; family of, 67, 76 throne, in weddings. See chair Tischler, Hans, 162 Tobias ben Eleazar, 99 Torah: languages in which it was given, 14; means of developing understanding of, 96, 105–6; scroll, invalid if copied by women, 24; study of, 23, 50, 73 Toulouse, 183 n.46 transcription conventions, ix–x, 159–60 translation, as interpretation, 104–5 Troyes, 61, 76, 80, 86, 197 n.84; dialect of, 32–33; Jewish leaders of, 61, 83; Jewish presence in, 37; martyrs of, 49–50, 122, 144. See also Troyes elegies Troyes elegies, 61, 86, 152; Hebrew version, 86, 90, 137; Old French version, 34, 49–50, 86–87, 90, 91, 102, 121, 133, 144, 151, 157; Old French version, dialect of, 10, 164, 185 n.73; reference to migration in, 149; studies of, 7, 8, 189 n.134 Tsarefat: as anagram of France, 59; definition of, 11 Turin, glossaries of, 49, 104, 156, 188 n.126, 202 n.58 ‘Uri liqra’ti yafah (Arise, come toward me, beautiful one), 12, 90, 124, 128, 130–37, 139–40, 142–46, 148–50, 157, 159–73. See also wedding songs Vance, Eugene, 134, 149 variation, language, 27–28 Verus Israel, 26 Vesoul, account registers of, 12, 158 Veyne, 148 Viandier of Taillevent, 110 Victor, Saint, School of, 178 n.58 Villehardouin, Geoffroy of, 116 Vincent de Beauvais, 42 violence, sexual, 142–43, 145

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Vivant de Bellay, 116–17, 157 Vulgate, 16, 103, 179 nn.67–68; Old French Vulgate (see Bible, Jewish oral vernacular version) Wagenseil, Johann Christoph, 31, 43 Walloon, 10 weddings, customs, 80, 102, 123, 124, 128, 213 n.111 wedding songs, 4, 5, 7, 9, 54, 87, 90, 91, 122, 124–50; allusions to vernacular literature in, 121, 141–44; Hebrew, 136; manuscripts containing two Hebrew-French wedding songs, 125–32; women’s voices in, 102 Weil, Jacob, 131 Weinreich, Max, 28–31, 35 Wenzel, Siegfried, 55, 187 n.114 Western Loez, 30 Wexler, Paul, 44, 45, 55, 182 n.15 William, archbishop of Sens, 61–62, 69, 76, 83, 84 Wissenschaft des Judentums, 29–30, 35 women: basic record-keeping skills, 25; and Hebrew, 24–25; women’s participation in private and public ritual practices, 81 Worms, siege of, 145 Wright, Roger, 118 Yenne, 148 yibbum, 98–99 Yiddish, 28, 41, 43, 50, 132, 154; attitudes toward Yiddish and the Judeo-French dialect controversy, 29–33, 35 Yismah. he-h.atan ba-kallah (‘‘The groom will rejoice in the bride’’), 132 Yom Kippur, 90 Yom mi-s.arefat yas.a’ti (When I left France), 146–47 Zaun, Stefanie, 7 Ziolkowski, Jan, 22 Zumthor, Paul, 8, 46 Zunz, Leopold, 6, 30

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acknowledgments

Most of the material in this book has never before appeared in print, with the exception of certain primary texts and glosses that have already been edited and published. I have benefited, however, from the opportunity to present much of the material here before various audiences. A version of Chapter 1 was presented at the 37th Annual Association for Jewish Studies Conference, Washington, D.C., in December 2005. My edition of the glossary of bird and animal names discussed in Chapter 3 was presented at the 42nd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May 2007 and the 39th Annual Association for Jewish Studies Conference, Toronto, Ontario, in December 2007. Chapter 4 was presented in part at the 43rd International Congress on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, Michigan, in May 2008. I also presented parts of this book at the Universita` di Bologna in 2006, and I take great pleasure in thanking my host, Mauro Perani, for his hospitality during that visit. Many colleagues, friends, and institutions helped me during the writing of this book, and I express my heartfelt gratitude to all of them here. I first conceived the idea for this book during a semester’s research leave from Ithaca College in 2002 funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities, and a second research leave granted to me by the University of Pittsburgh in spring 2008 enabled me to complete work on this project. The American Philosophical Society funded a research trip to the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma in May 2006, and in August 2007, a faculty research grant from the University of Pittsburgh enabled me to study manuscripts at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America in New York City. I am also grateful for support from the Ithaca College Center for Faculty Research and Development, the Ithaca College Jewish Studies program, and the Richard and Mary Jane Edwards Endowed Publication Fund. I thank the librarians of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the Biblioteca Palatina for

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254 a c k n o w l e d g m e n t s

welcoming me and allowing me to work directly with their manuscripts, and the Institute of Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts and reproduction services at the Biblioteca Apostolica Vaticana, the Bibliothe`que nationale de France, the Burgerbibliothek in Bern, the Bodleian Library, the Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, the Universita¨tsbibliothek Heidelberg, and the Zentralbibliothek Zu¨rich for helping me obtain reproductions of many different manuscripts and answering my questions about their collections. I am deeply grateful to Ann Brener, whose abundant and unceasing generosity has sustained me throughout work on this project. Over the years she has read countless texts with me, teaching me much about the Hebrew language and about medieval Hebrew literature. No student has had a better teacher. I am also deeply grateful to Jordan Penkower, whose detailed answers to the many questions I have asked him and comments and questions on my published work have greatly enriched the analysis here. I thank Dennis Looney, Adam Shear, and two anonymous readers for the University of Pennsylvania Press who read the entire manuscript, offering many valuable suggestions, and the many people who read portions of it, doing the same: Alan Astro, Elisheva Baumgarten, Mayer Gruber, Elliott Horowitz, William C. Jordan, Ivan Marcus, Alex Orbach, Jordan Penkower, Gary Rendsburg, Samuel Rosenberg, Paul Saenger, and Michael Twomey. I am also grateful to all who have discussed the material here with me in person or who responded to written queries: Yona Bar-Maoz, Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, William Calin, Daniel Fano, Bernard Goldstein, Andrew Gross, Wayne Harbert, Yuval Harari, Shlomit Har-El, Robbie Harris, Marc Kiwitt, Rebecca Lesses, Mauro Perani, Vivian Ramalingam, Gary Rendsburg, Benjamin Richler, Colette Sirat, and Alison Stones. I thank Jerry Singerman, Caroline Winschel, and Erica Ginsburg of the University of Pennsylvania Press for their help and encouragement. I give very special thanks to my husband, Bill Ham, who has helped me in countless ways; my sons, Alexander and Gregory, who have brought so much laughter and joy to my life; my parents, brothers, sister, and uncle John Dahmus, who have always encouraged me; and my late grandfather, Joseph Dahmus, who has inspired me by his words and his example. This book is dedicated to Alexander and Gregory.

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