panegyric, whether in public ceremonies—what might be called “political rituals”—or in small gatherings, and the more extensive evidence we possess regarding its place in epistolary exchange. The chapter stresses the epistolary context for Jewish panegyric alongside a performative, sometimes ceremonial, one while also breaking down the dichotomy presumed to exist between the two. I do not propose an austere culture of poetic reading that negated aural experience; as demonstrated, poems that played a primarily epistolary function could be recited publicly subsequent to reception.
In discussing the subject of Jewish regionalism within the Mediterranean, I also offer, inter alia, a critique of what has generally been dubbed the “courtly” Jewish culture of al-Andalus. It has often been asserted that the Jews of al-Andalus imitated the performance practices of Islamic courts where poets lauded caliphs for pay and thus engaged in a kind of miniature Jewish court culture; a key element of this portrayal has been the image of the Jewish patron surrounded by professional poets who recited his praise in exchange for money. Although the courtly image is justified to an extent, it has also been partly misunderstood, a point that has had the effect of distorting our ideas about Andalusian Jewish panegyric and its function. In the Islamic West, as in the Islamic East, Hebrew panegyric practice involved epistolary as well as performative elements, which makes its role more continuous than has been imagined. Further, the performative settings of Jewish panegyric recall both the hierarchic majlis as well as the more egalitarian mujālasa, as distinguished in the Arabic context by Samer Ali and discussed in the Introduction to this book.8
Evidence for the Oral Performance of Panegyric in the Islamic East
Our sources for the oral performance of Jewish panegyric in the Islamic East are fairly sparse.9 Even more rarely do we find indications of oral performance in connection with an actual political ceremony. Natan ha-Bavli, writing in the tenth century, reports that when a new exilarch was invested on the Sabbath, he stood under a canopy beneath which a cantor also placed his head in order to “bless [the exilarch] with prepared blessings (berakhot metuqanot), prepared the previous day or the day before, in a soft voice so that no one could hear them save those sitting around the dais and the young men beneath it. When he blessed him the young men would respond ‘Amen!’ in a loud voice but all the people remained silent until he had finished his blessings.”10
Because Natan’s text was originally written in Judeo-Arabic and this section survives only in a medieval Hebrew translation, we are left to deduce what Arabic word lay behind the Hebrew berakhot (blessings). It seems likely that the word was du‘ā, “invocations with blessings,” which were frequently used when acclaiming men of power in Islamic political ceremonies.11 On the one hand, the acclamations associated with this installation call to mind the setting of a majlis ‘ām, a public assembly, and the installation of a caliph. On the other, the fact that the hearing of blessings was limited to a small circle of elites distinguishes the performative context.12
The only mention in Natan’s account of “praises” comes after the conclusion of the Musaf service, when the exilarch returned to his home amid an entourage of congregants, “and when the exilarch exits all the people go out before him and after him and say before him words of poetry and praise (omrim lefanav divrei shirot ve-tishbaḥot) until he arrives at his home.” One wonders exactly what these divrei shirot ve-tishbaḥot entailed. Were they sung or recited? Were they in Arabic or in Hebrew? Were they specific for the occasion, previously composed, or spontaneous? There may be some parallel here also to the public entourage in Muslim celebrations. As Paula Sanders notes, “popular” festivals in Fatimid Cairo could move from the “streets, to al-Azhar, to the palace” and could involve poets offering “invocations and blessings.”13 As I have argued elsewhere, the ceremony described by Natan “drew simultaneously on the idioms of ancient Jewish rites and contemporary Muslim ceremonial to articulate an image of leadership and political legitimacy that blended Jewish categories … with resonances of caliphal power.” There I also concluded that “the elites of Babylonian Jewry recognized that presiding over the Jewish world was a type of statecraft and, as Clifford Geertz notes, that ‘statecraft is a thespian art.’”14
An important text that is highly suggestive of a ceremonial performance is a long panegyric in honor of Daniel Ben ‘Azariah (d. 1062), a gaon of the Jerusalem academy who emanated from a family that claimed descent from King David. This gaon was able to bolster the position of the Palestinian academy even unto Iraq and was greatly esteemed by the Palestinian community of Fustat. He seems to have had some difficulty securing loyalty among Jews in the Islamic West, though he was praised in verse by none other than Shemuel ha-Nagid of al-Andalus as a kind of political endorsement.15
In 1057, around the time that Ben ‘Azariah assumed the position of gaon, the poet ‘Eli ha-Kohen composed a panegyric in his honor using a form, structure, and style that were entirely unique.16 It is clear that the poet saw his poem as related to the Arabic poetic tradition, since he gives it the heading qaṣīda (Ar., “formal ode”) in the manuscript. Although the poem suggests no clear liturgical context, its form is closer to the style of the classical piyyut than the relatively new Arabized poetry of the Andalusian school, despite the fact that this latter form had penetrated Jewish communities throughout the Islamic world by the eleventh century and would have been familiar to Ben ‘Azariah. Like the ‘avodah liturgy of Yom Kippur, the poem begins by recounting the creation of the world, leading to a long yet selective review of Israel’s history that culminates with praise for Ben ‘Azariah.17 Much of the historical summary dwells on tracing Ben ‘Azariah’s lineage from King David, which, as Arnold Franklin notes, “dramatically suggests that [Ben ‘Azariah’s] assumption of the post of gaon be viewed as part of a divine plan extending back to creation itself.”18
The copy of the poem that survives is an autograph draft that includes alternate versions of verses throughout. Although we have no external testimony that this panegyric was performed, I agree with Ezra Fleischer, who published the poem, that the internal evidence suggests a public performance, quite possibly from the time of the gaon’s investiture (alternatively, the poem could simply have been given to the gaon or recited in a small audience). In the section reviewing the history of Israel, the text focuses on the moment of King David’s investiture (lines 135–45), in all likelihood alluding to the performative context of the poem.
The poem gives no indication of the setting in which it was recited, but the manuscript does bear a date, the thirteenth of Nissan, just before the festival of Passover. The association with Passover is further corroborated by allusions within the poem itself. Just after recounting the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt, the plagues, and the Exodus, the poet dedicates several lines to the laws of Passover, concluding with Ex 13:10, “You shall keep this ordinance at its set time from year to year” (lines 86–91). Did a ceremony of installation take place on Passover? As discussed in the Introduction, the dedication of Arabic panegyrics often coincided with particular Islamic festivals and hence the recitation of the panegyric for Ben ‘Azariah at Passover might present a Jewish analogue to this practice. Although Fleischer found the link with Passover puzzling, there is a certain logic in associating the festival with a political ceremony. The Exodus from Egypt marks Israel’s entry into the realm of the political, becoming in the desert a hierarchically organized camp, a kind of community, polity, or even quasi-state. Even if the poem were not written for an investiture specifically, Passover would have been an appropriate occasion for reiterating—indeed, representing—the divine origins of the Jewish “polity” and solidifying bonds of political loyalty. This poem cannot be categorized neatly as “secular” or “sacred”; it demonstrates just how intimately the two were linked such that the elevation of a man’s status was integrated within sacred history and the act of praising him was imbued with sacrality.
Although we have no other description of a Jewish ceremony as elaborate as that of the exilarch’s investiture as described by Natan ha-Bavli, occasional texts from subsequent centuries
