The Jewish poets of medieval Spain combined elements of the dominant Arabic-Islamic culture with Jewish religious and literary traditions to create a rich new Hebrew literature that is as richly entertaining today as it was in the twelfth century. In this delight delightful book, Scheindlin presents the original Hebrew poetry with his own melodic English translations, each followed by commentary that explains its cultural context.

From the tenth century to the thirteenth, the Jews of Spain belonged to a vibrant and relatively tolerant Arabic-speaking society, a sophisticated culture that had a marked effect on Jewish life, thought, artistic tastes, and literary expression. In this companion volume to Wine, Women, and Death, we see how the surrounding Arabic culture influenced the new poetry that was being written for the synagogue service. The Hebrew poems here, accompanied by elegant English translations and explanatory essays are short lyrics of the highest literary quality.

Where did the Jews come from? How did they retain their strong sense of community through centuries of dispersion? How have the Jews of the present, with their proud ethnic identity and thriving national home, emerged out of the downtrodden Jews of the past? Such questions arise naturally in the minds of anyone contemplating the long history of Jewish people. In one concise, authoritative volume, A Short History of the Jewish People provides insights and answers.

This sweeping and highly informative work presents the major geographical, cultural, and political forces that have...

The Jewish prayer book, the sidur, is the longest continuous record of the history, philosophy, literature and ethics of the Jewish people. It has been read and reread in every generation, in every Jewish community. Elobgen's analysis covers the entire range of Jewish liturgical development - beginning with the early cornerstones of the siddur, such as the Amidah, the Shema through the evolution of the meieval piyyut tradition, to modern prayerbook reform in Germany and the United States. This book traces the origins of present-day prayers, noting the many variants that arise within...

The years 950-1200 are often called the Golden Age of the Jews in Spain. During this period, the Jews reached a peak of achievement in all aspects of their life-political, spiritual, and cultural. They produced great works of literature and philosophy; their poetry represents a peak of literary achievement unparalleled in Hebrew until the twentieth century. The poets of the Golden Age forged the language of the Hebrew Bible into a magnificent instrument for the expression of every facet of their experience--love and friendship, war and exile, philosophy and prayer. Their poems reflect their...

The Cambridge History of Arabic Literature: The Literature of Al-Andalus explores the culture of Iberia from the eighth to the thirteenth century, and to the centuries following the Christian conquest, when Arabic continued to be used. While the focus is on literature, the study extends to the related fields of philosophy, art, architecture and music. Edited by an Arabist, a Hebraist and a Romance scholar, with individual chapters by a team of the world's leading experts in the field, this is a truly interdisciplinary and comparative work offering a radical new approach.