Sacred Trash

by Adina Hoffman

  It was Y. Levtov who described Schirmann as “a riddle to all those around him.” See “In a Still Voice,” Davar rishon, March 29, 1996. The account of Schirmann after the bombing appears in Ayala Gordon, Between Jerusalem and Neve-Yam, During the War of Independence [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1995/2008), letters from Feb. 22 and 26, 1948. These and the preceding characterizations of Schirmann are drawn from the sources cited above, as well as from Israel Levin, “A Life’s Work” [Heb], Davar, June 26, 1981; Ezra Fleischer, “A Triple Jubilee” [Heb], Maariv, Jan. 4, 1980; Dan Almagor, “And You Would Hear Your Teacher” [Heb], Hadoar 75/15, June 21, 1996. The quotations from Fleischer here are: “he shifted attention,” Fleischer, “A Triple Jubilee” [Heb], and “the type of character about which novels might be written,” Fleischer, in Milim, Levtov, ed.

  The story of the discovery of the poem by Dunash’s wife is told in full by Fleischer in “On Dunash ben Labrat, His Wife, and His Son: New Light on the Beginnings of the Hebrew-Spanish School” [Heb], Mehkerei Yerushalayim besifrut Ivrit 5, 1984, and “Towards an Early History of Secular Hebrew Poetry in Spain,” in Culture and Society in the History of Israel During the Middle Ages: Studies Presented in Memory of Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson [Heb], M. Ben-Sasson, R. Bonfil, and J. R. Hacker, eds. (Jerusalem, 1990). See also N. Allony, “Four Poems,” JQR 35/1, 1944.

  The vertically torn fragments are Mosseri VIII.202.2 and Mosseri IV.387. The manuscript of the full poem is T-S NS 143.46. The poem is translated in Cole, The Dream of the Poem. The description of it here is based on the analysis by Fleischer in “On Dunash and His Wife” [Heb]. Fleischer discusses the letter from Hasdai ibn Shaprut and the poem in its upper-left corner in “Towards an Early History” [Heb]. This is T-S J 2.71.

  Other scholars, including Abraham Geiger, Shmuel David Luzzatto, and David Kaufmann, had written about HaLevi, but their work was based on a very limited number of poems. Schirmann’s study was, on the other hand, based on Brody’s six-volume edition of the HaLevi Diwan (Berlin, 1894–1930). Schirmann’s 1938 Tarbiz article appears in Schirmann, Hebrew Poetry and Drama 1 [Heb]; see also his supplement to that two-part study. A list of Goitein’s relevant articles appears in Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; E. Fleischer, “The Essence of Our Land and Its Meaning” [Heb], Pe’amim 68, 1996. See also Goitein, MS 5: x, D; Ezra Fleischer and Moshe Gil, Yehuda HaLevi and His Circle [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2001).

  The twins’ motto, “lampada tradam,” echoes Lucretius: “Quasi cursores vitai lampada tradunt”—or, “Like runners, they hand on the torch of life.”

  The letter from the summer of 1129 is found in Goitein, MS 5, p. 465; Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi [Heb], Doc. 19; Raymond Scheindlin, The Song of the Distant Dove: Judah Halevi’s Pilgrimage (Oxford, 2008). Scheindlin interprets this differently, dates the letter twelve years later, to 1141, and places it in Alexandria. For yet a third version of the HaLevi chronology, see Joseph Yahalom, Yehuda Halevi: Poetry and Pilgrimage, Gabriel Levin, trans., chapter 10 (Jerusalem, 2009).

  The line “the dust of the desolate shrine” is from “My Heart Is in the East,” which appears in Cole, The Dream of the Poem (the final line is translated differently there). Opinions differ as to when HaLevi was born. The date generally given is c. 1075 (or sometime before 1075). Yahalom and Scheindlin believe that it was closer to 1085. See Schirmann and Fleischer in The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; Scheindlin, The Dove; Yahalom, Yehuda Halevi. The description of HaLevi as “the quintessence … of our country” is found in Goitein, MS 5: X, D. The notion of the pilgrimage as “an educational and political model” is discussed in Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi. HaLevi’s phrase, “all flowers and no fruit,” is discussed in R. Brann, “Judah HaLevi,” in The Literature of al-Andalus, María Rosa Menocal, Raymond P. Scheindlin, and Michael Sells, eds. (Cambridge, 2000), and Brann, The Compunctious Poet.

  Citations from the letters (followed by analyses) are drawn from the following sources: “The Sultan’s new ship,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 40; see also Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 97ff. (Fleischer-Gil, Scheindlin, and Yahalom provide different accounts of when this letter was written.) “Outwardly I participated,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 41; Scheindlin, The Dove, p. 103. “Put an end to this headache,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 42; Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 100–101. “Burn after reading!” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 48 (see 49 as well); Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 135–36. “HaLevi is … aboard an ‘oversized nutshell,’ ” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 50; Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 141ff; also Yehuda Halevi, Poems from the Diwan, Gabriel Levin, trans. (London, 2002). “The ships bound for al-Andalus,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 51. “HaLevi sailed on Wednesday,” Scheindlin, The Dove, p. 149; Halfon’s letter was written five days after the ship sailed—that is, on Monday the nineteenth. “The memory of a saint is a blessing,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 54; Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 150–51. “The gates of Jerusalem,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 53; Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 249–52. “Modest pilgrimages,” Yahalom, Yehuda Halevi, chapter 24; see also Yahalom’s “Yehuda HaLevi and the Western Wind,” Haaretz, May 20, 1999. “Reasonably convincing evidence,” Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, chapter 7. As for where HaLevi was buried, see Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 150, 276. On the condition of the manuscript telling of HaLevi’s demise, see Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, Doc. 53; and Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 249–52.

  The larger question prompted by HaLevi’s activity in Egypt is: Why was the poet writing Andalusian-style poems at all if he was, as Fleischer says, rejecting the Andalusian cultural ethos outright? Was he trying to make a nationalist statement with his decision to settle in the Land of Israel, or, as Scheindlin argues, was the pilgrimage private and spiritual? See Fleischer, “The Essence of Our Land” [Heb], and Fleischer-Gil, HaLevi, p. 233; Scheindlin, The Dove, pp. 4, 155–56, 170, and 277.

  Information about Fleischer is drawn from a variety of sources, including interviews from Yediot aharonot (by Zisi Stavi, March 20, 1987, and by Penina Meizlisch, July 25, 1975); obituaries and memorial notices in the New York Times (by Ari Goldman, Aug. 1, 2006) and Haaretz (by Ariel Hirschfeld, Aug. 2, 2006; by Uri Dromi, Aug. 3, 2006; by Yehoshua Granat, Aug. 4, 2006; and by Michael Handelsatz, Aug. 11, 2006); personal page, the Israeli Academy of Arts and Sciences, http://www.academy.ac.il/data/persons_data/55/EzraF1.pdf; Shulamit Elizur, “From the Depths” [Heb], Madda’ei haYahadut 43, 2006; Shulamit Elizur, “The Scholarly Project of Ezra Fleischer: General Observations” [Heb], unpublished article, 2006 (quoted by permission of the author); and Yehoshua Granat, “Diverse Colors, Threads of Delicate Echoes, an Authenticity Deep and Sharp: On Ezra Fleischer’s Studies of Medieval Hebrew Secular Poetry” [Heb], Madda’ei haYahadut 45, 2009. Fleischer stopped publishing poetry after he immigrated to Israel.

  In “Diverse Colors” [Heb] Granat discusses Fleischer’s complex relationship to the Hebrew poetry of Spain. See also H. Schirmann, Yehosef HaNagid: The Tragedy of a Jewish Statesman [Heb], with a foreword by Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem, 1982). Fleischer’s astonishing response to the Hebron massacre—“A Cry”—appeared in Haaretz, March 25, 1994. Our thanks to Yehoshua Granat for alerting us to this article.

  Schirmann’s avoidance of political and social commentary is apparent in H. Schirmann, “The Study of Hebrew Secular Poetry” [Heb], Sedarim: me’asef sofrei Eretz Israel. See also Tova Rosen and Eli Yassif, “The Study of Hebrew Literature of the Middle Ages,” in The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies, M. Goodman, ed. (Oxford, 2002).

  For more on Ben Saruk and Ibn Avitor, see Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Muslim Spain [Heb]; Fleischer, “On the Early History of Our Poetry in Spain: The Secular and Liturgical Poetry of R. Menahem ben Saruk” [Heb], Asufot 2, 1988; “On the Poetry of R. Ibn Avitor” [Heb], Asufot 4, 1990, as well as Fleischer’s doctoral dissertation, The Works of Yosef ibn Avitor [Heb] (The Hebrew University, 1967); and “Towards an Early History of Secular Hebrew Poetry in Spain,” in Culture and Society [Heb], Ben-Sasson, Bonfil, an
d Hacker, eds. See also Cole, The Dream of the Poem.

  The phrase “a fourfold miracle” is Fleischer’s, from “Early Hebrew Poetry in the Cairo Geniza” [Heb]. “The study of the Geniza” is from the same essay. Shulamit Elizur discusses Fleischer’s work as a whole in “The Scholarly Project of Ezra Fleischer” [Heb]. See also Y. Granat, Haaretz, Aug. 11, 2006. Fleischer’s articles on the subject are collected in The Hebrew Poetry of Spain and Its Offshoots [Heb], S. Elizur and T. Be’eri, eds. (Jerusalem, 2010). In “A Triple Jubilee” [Heb], Fleischer mentions “the tens of thousands of hitherto unknown poems” released by the Geniza. The image of their ancient authors all around him is from S. Elizur, “Poetry Is in the Details” [Heb].

  10. A Mediterranean Society

  We are extremely grateful to Ayala Gordon, Elon Goitein, and Ofra Rosner for permission to quote from their father S. D. Goitein’s letters and journals, which are in their private possession. The letter that begins “SECRET” is dated Oct. 8, 1955.

  For more on Baneth, see, for example, Goitein, “David Hartwig (Zvi) Baneth, 1893–1973,” Studia Orientalia Memoriae D. H. Baneth, J. Blau et al., eds. (Jerusalem, 1979); Hava Lazarus-Yafe, “The Transplantation of Islamic Studies from Europe to the Yishuv and Israel,” in The Jewish Discovery of Islam, Martin Kramer, Menachem Milson, eds. (Tel Aviv, 1999).

  Goitein’s published account of the discovery of the New Series appears in Goitein, “Involvement in Geniza Research,” in Religion in a Religious Age, Goitein, ed. (Cambridge, 1974). The description in his diary is dated Oct. 7, 1955. For another vivid description of the work with the New Series’ crates and their contents, see Hayyim Schirmann’s radio interview (notes to chapter 9), where he tells of his first encounter with the new finds in the summer of 1957: “Immediately after my arrival, Miss Skilliter brought me to the library’s storeroom, and before my wonder-struck eyes stretched a long row of thirty tall crates, full of Geniza fragments, mostly to the brim.… ” A brief examination was enough to convince Schirmann that the discovery was every bit as valuable as the Old Series and that the crates had to be gone through systematically. “Examination of this sort called for qualities normally found in a natural-born archeologist. Call it an ability to take pleasure in drudge work in the fullest sense of the term. A willingness to swallow clouds of dust which rose up after the slightest motion of the hand inside the Geniza crates, [and] a power of endurance, because one had to sit with the crates for weeks on end. I didn’t have these traits, but as no one else had come to [sort the literary fragments], I had no choice but to lock myself in with the enormous crates and send up the dust that had settled in them. I washed myself several times a day, and still couldn’t completely get rid of the traces of the Geniza.” Schirmann’s account recalls that of Schechter in Cairo in 1897 and his coining of the unforgettable term—“Genizahschmutz.”

  The comparisons of the Geniza to garbage are as follows: “contents of a huge waste paper basket,” D. S. Margoliouth, “The Zadokites,” The Expositor 8/32, Aug. 1913; “nothing of any interest,” Reif, A Jewish Archive (he is quoting the library assistant B. C. Nightingale); “I have … once or twice rummaged,” A. F. Schofield, “Librarian’s Report: 4 April 1944,” CUL ULIB 6/4/1/104.

  For more on Judeo-Arabic, see Joshua Blau, The Emergence and Linguistic Background of Judaeo-Arabic: A Study of the Origins of Neo-Arabic and Middle Arabic (Jerusalem, 1999); Goitein, MS 1, introduction; Ghosh, In an Antique Land; “Judeo-Arabic,” Encyclopedia of Islam.

  For the Carlyle quote, see Thomas Carlyle, On Heroes, Hero-Worship and the Heroic in History (New York, 1888). See Starr’s chapter on “The History of Great Men,” in Catholic Israel, for more on Schechter’s relationship to Carlyle’s notion of history. Simha Assaf’s contribution to Geniza research is described in Goitein, “What Would Jewish and General History Benefit by a Systematic Publication of the Documentary Geniza Papers?,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 23, 1954; Reif, A Jewish Archive; Goitein, MS 1, introduction. His role in naming Rehavia’s streets is described in Amnon Rimon, Rehavia: A Neighborhood in Jerusalem [Heb] (Jerusalem, 1998). Goitein calls Baneth the “father of the Geniza project” in “S. D. Goitein: Scientific Projects/Instructions in Case of a Fatal Accident,” dated July 25, 1961, which is held in the SDG Geniza Lab, 2J.1.2, NLI.

  Biographical information about S. D. Goitein and overviews of his work come from Goitein, “The Life Story of a Scholar,” in Robert Attal, A Bibliography of the Writing of Prof. Shelomo Dov Goitein (Jerusalem, 1975/2000), and from the bibliography itself; S. D. Goitein, “Involvement in Geniza Research”; Ayala Gordon, Shelomo Dov Goitein and Shmuel Yosef Agnon: Criticism and Letters, 1919–1970 [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2008); The History of the Goitein Family [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2008); Ayala Gordon, Between Jerusalem and Neve-Yam [Heb]; Avraham Udovitch, preface to Goitein’s MS 5; Mark Cohen, “Shelomo Dov Goitein,” in The American Philosophical Year Book, 1987; Mark Cohen, “Goitein, the Geniza, and Muslim History,” Middle Eastern Lectures, no. 4, Moshe Dayan Center, Tel Aviv University, 2001; Eric Ormsby, “The ‘Born Schulmeister,’ ” The New Criterion 22/1, Sept. 2003; Mordechai Akiva Friedman, “A Note on the Contribution of S. D. Goitein to the Interdisciplinary Study of Judaeo-Arabic Culture” [Heb], Sefunot 5/20, 1991; Mordechai Friedman, “Prof. S. D. Goitein, Man and Scholar” [Heb], Yedion haIgud haOlami leMadda’ei haYahadut 26, 1986; Joel Kraemer, “Goitein and His Mediterranean Society” [Heb], Zmanim, no. 34–35, summer 1990; Gideon Libson, “Hidden Worlds and Open Shutters: S. D. Goitein between Judaism and Islam,” in The Jewish Past Revisited, Myers and Ruderman, eds.; Franz Rosenthal, “Shlomo Dov Goitein,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 53, 1986; Avraham Udovitch et al., Shelomo Dov Goitein, 1900–1985 (Princeton, 1985); Steven M. Wasserstrom, “Apology for S. D. Goitein: An Essay,” in A Faithful Sea: The Religious Cultures of the Mediterranean, 1200–1700, Adnan A. Husain and K. E. Fleming, eds. (Oxford, 2007); Shaul Shaked, “S. D. Goitein: Scholar of the Historical Cooperation between Judaism and Islam” [Heb], Pe’amim 22, 1985; Trude Weiss-Rosmarin, “Shlomo Dov Goitein—Scholar Extraordinary,” Judaism 33/3, 1984; Moshe Gil, “Shlomo Dov Goitein, 1900–1985: A Mediterranean Scholar,” Mediterranean Historical Review 1/1, 1986; Noam A. Stillman, “From Oriental Studies and Wissenschaft des Judentums to Interdisciplinarity” [Heb], and Miriam Frankel, “The Historiography of the Jews in the Middle Ages—Landmarks and Prospects” [Heb], both in Pe’amim 92, 2002; Studies in Judaism and Islam: Presented to Shelomo Dov Goitein on the Occasion of His Eightieth Birthday by His Students, Colleagues and Friends, Shelomo Morag, Issachar Ben-Ami, Norman A. Stillman, eds. (Jerusalem, 1981); and interviews (conducted throughout 2008–9) with Ayala and Amirav Gordon, Elon and Harriet Goitein, Mark Cohen, Joshua Blau, Stefan Reif; e-mail exchanges with Mordechai Friedman, Norman Stillman, Paula Sanders. Goitein’s arrival in Palestine with Gershom Scholem is described by the latter in From Berlin to Jerusalem: Memories of My Youth, Harry Zohn, trans. (New York, 1980).

  For the drama surrounding the publication of Pulcellina (Tel Aviv, 1927), see B. Z. Kedar, “S. D. Goitein and Pulcellina on the Banks of the Loire” [Heb], Haaretz, April 14, 1995; Shalom Spiegel, “A Play about the Martyrs of Blois” [Heb], Davar, Oct. 7, 14, 21, 1927.

  Information about Theresa Goitein comes from Ayala Gordon, Theresa Gottlieb Goitein [Heb] (Jerusalem, 2008); Ayala Gordon, “Shelomo Dov Goitein and His Wife Theresa (Gottlieb)” [Heb], in History of the Goitein Family [Heb], and interviews with Ayala and Amirav Gordon and Elon and Harriet Goitein.

  The descriptions of Goitein are as follows: “like a bumblebee,” Joshua Blau, conversation with the authors, Oct. 5, 2009; “trains constantly coming and going,” SDG diary, Jan. 5, 1955. His letter “I fear that our entire existence” was written to Ernest Simon, Dec. 18, 1947 (NLI Arc 4 1751/426).

  The account of Goitein’s “special mission” is compiled from “The Life Story of a Scholar”; Mordechai Friedman, preface, Goitein and Friedman, India T
raders of the Middle Ages: Documents from the Cairo Geniza (“India Book”) (Leiden, 2008); Friedman, “A Note” [Heb]; Gordon, History of the Goitein Family [Heb]; interviews with Ayala Gordon, Elon Goitein, and Mark Cohen; Friedman, e-mail to the authors, Sept. 15, 2009; Norman Stillman, e-mail to the authors, Oct. 1, 2009.

  Goitein reported on his trip to Paris in “The Congress of Orientalists” [Heb], Haaretz, Sept. 17, 1948, and wrote of being in Budapest (without specifying why he was there) in “A Visit to Hungary” [Heb], Haaretz, Nov. 19, 1948, and again in “On the Jews of Hungary” [Heb], Haaretz, Jan. 7, 1949. His description of the plane filled with chickens is from his diary, Sept. 26, 1948, when he was making plans to fly home. He returned to Jerusalem on Oct. 12. (Our thanks to Ayala Goitein Gordon for help with the timeline of his trip.)

  For more on the atrocities that Theresa witnessed, see, for instance, Goitein’s letter to Ernest Simon, April 19, 1948, in which he describes her disgust at having to provide medical care to the perpetrators of the Deir Yassin massacre (NLI Arc 4 1751/426), and her own letter to Goitein (then in Paris) in Between Jerusalem and Neve-Yam [Heb] from Aug. 8, 1948, about their neighbor who died from a bullet to the stomach.