Judah Halevi (ca. 1075-1141) is the best known and most beloved of medieval Hebrew poets, partly because of his passionate poems of longing for the Land of Israel and partly because of the legend of his death as a martyr while reciting his Ode to Zion at the gates of Jerusalem. He was also one of the premier theologians of medieval Judaism, having written a treatise on the meaning of Judaism that is still studied and venerated by traditional Jews.
As a member of the wealthy Jewish elite of medieval Spain, Halevi enjoyed the material pleasures available to the upper classes. Alongside his sacred poetry, he wrote verses about youthful romance, wine songs, and odes to his friends. In midlife, Halevi turned more seriously to religion, eventually abandoning his family and community with hopes of ending his life as a pilgrim in the land of Israel.
Miraculously, a number of letters in Arabic were discovered about fifty years ago, some written by Halevi, some written to Halevi, and yet others written about Halevi by his friends in Egypt. These letters preserve a vivid record of Halevi's travels as a pilgrim and of the last months of his life. Raymond Scheindlin has written the first book-length treatment of Halevi's pilgrimage in any language. He tells the story of Halevi's journey through selections from these revealing sources and explores its meaning through discussions of his stirring poetry, presented here in new verse translations with full commentary.
In Hebrew verse of unparalleled beauty, Halevi salutes the Holy Land; he argues with friends about his intentions; he sets out his fantasy of crossing the ocean, of walking the hills and valleys of the Land of Israel, and ofdying and mingling his bones with its soil and stones. He even confides his secret fears and uncertainties, his longing for his family, and his fear of death at sea. With his consummate skill as a translator of Hebrew poetry and his mastery of Judeo-Arabic culture, Scheindlin provides fresh insights into the literary, religious, and historical facets of Halevi's captivating poetry and fateful journey.

In Jewish Literary Eros, Isabelle Levy explores the originality and complexity of medieval Jewish writings. Examining medieval prosimetra (texts composed of alternating prose and verse), Levy demonstrates that secular love is the common theme across Arabic, Hebrew, French, and Italian texts. At the crossroads of these spheres of intellectual activity, Jews of the medieval Mediterranean composed texts that combined dominant cultures' literary stylings with biblical Hebrew and other elements from Jewish cultures. Levy explores Jewish authors' treatments of love in prosimetra and finds them creative, complex, and innovative. Jewish Literary Eros compares the mixed-form compositions by Jewish authors of the medieval Mediterranean with their Arabic and European counterparts to find the particular moments of innovation among textual practices by Jewish authors. When viewed in the comparative context of the medieval Mediterranean, the evolving relationship between the mixed form and the theme of love in secular Jewish compositions refines our understanding of the ways in which the Jewish literature of the period negotiates the hermeneutic and theological underpinnings of Islamicate and Christian literary traditions.

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.

The love of books in the Jewish tradition extends back over many centuries, and the ways of interpreting those books are as myriad as the traditions themselves. Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers the first full survey of Jewish illuminated manuscripts, ranging from their origins in the Middle Ages to the present day. Featuring some of the most beautiful examples of Jewish art of all time--including hand-illustrated versions of the Bible, the Haggadah, the prayer book, marriage documents, and other beloved Jewish texts--the book introduces readers to the history of these manuscripts and their interpretation. Edited by Marc Michael Epstein with contributions from leading experts, this sumptuous volume features a lively and informative text, showing how Jewish aesthetic tastes and iconography overlapped with and diverged from those of Christianity, Islam, and other traditions. Featured manuscripts were commissioned by Jews and produced by Jews and non-Jews over many centuries, and represent Eastern and Western perspectives and the views of both pietistic and liberal communities across the Diaspora, including Europe, Israel, the Middle East, and Africa. Magnificently illustrated with pages from hundreds of manuscripts, many previously unpublished or rarely seen, Skies of Parchment, Seas of Ink offers surprising new perspectives on Jewish life, presenting the books of the People of the Book as never before.

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.

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.

The Literature of Al-Andalus is an exploration of the culture of Iberia, present-day Spain and Portugal, during the period when it was an Islamic, mostly Arabic-speaking territory, from the eighth to the thirteenth century, and in the centuries following the Christian conquest when Arabic continued to be widely used. The volume embraces many other related spheres of Arabic culture including philosophy, art, architecture and music. It also extends the subject to other literatures - especially Hebrew and Romance literatures - that burgeoned alongside Arabic and created the distinctive hybrid culture of medieval Iberia. Edited by an Arabist, an Hebraist and a Romance scholar, with individual chapters compiled by a team of the world's leading experts of Islamic Iberia, Sicily and related cultures, this is a truly interdisciplinary and comparative work which offers a interesting approach to the field.

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 historical periods and different geographic communities. The work includes generous citations from primary sources such as rabbinic texts, comparative historical documents, medieval commentators, and modern scholarship. Included are full bibliographies and several useful indexes, among them an index of prayers in Hebrew and English.

This collection of essays by seven highly respected scholars is a straightforward narrative of real world-intellectual, commercial, spiritual, philosophical, scientific, aesthetic-creative engagement among Jews, Muslims, and some Christians in daily life in Spain and around the Mediterranean. History as Prelude is a major contribution to the Israeli-Arab peace process because it undermines-in fact, blows away-the efforts of propagandists who serve governments or political movements to negate the reality of the Arab-Jewish relationship in the medieval Mediterranean. The contributors, in unassuming, well-researched scholarship have erected a wall protecting historical reality from distortion, providing irrefutable-and often delightful-examples of creative coexistence.