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The first Jewish Bible commentaries were written in Arabic, in medieval Islamic cities like Baghdad and Jerusalem.
Jewish Piety in Islamic Jerusalem explores the construction of a new Jewish spirituality within these texts, focusing on the Lamentations commentary of Salmon ben Yeruhim. Salmon considers Lamentations to be a source of pious and ritual instruction for the Jewish community in exile. He reinterprets the Bible and traditional rabbinic teachings with the scholarly tools of his era--Arabic-Islamic models of exegesis, homily, and historiography--and develops distinctively Jewish practices of biblical scholarship, asceticism, and penitential mourning.
List of contents
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Part One: Studies
- Preface
- Notes on the Translation
- Chapter One: Lamentations and the Mourners for Zion
- Chapter Two: The Lamentations Commentary of Salmon ben Yeruhim
- Chapter Three: Salmon's Engagement with Rabbinic Sources
- Chapter Four: Salmon's Approach to Figurative Language
- Chapter Five: The Art of the Homily
- Chapter Six: The Hermeneutics of Historical Reflection
- Conclusion
- Part Two: Selected Translations from the Commentary
- Invocation
- Introduction
- Lamentations 1
- Lamentations 2
- Lamentations 3
- Lamentations 4
- Lamentations 5
- Glossary of Salmon's Arabic Terms
- Bibliography
About the author
Jessica Andruss is Assistant Professor of Religious Studies at the University of Virginia. Her research and teaching concern medieval Jewish and Muslim cultural and intellectual history, and the connections between Jewish and Muslim communities in the Mediterranean and Middle East.
Summary
The emergence of the Jewish Bible commentary in the tenth century marks a turning point in Jewish intellectual history, namely, the transition from ancient rabbinic culture to the Arabized Judaism of the medieval period. This book explores a formative moment in this cultural reorientation by analyzing one of the earliest Jewish Bible commentaries. Written in Arabic in tenth-century Jerusalem, Salmon ben Yeruhim's commentary on Lamentations reveals a nuanced negotiation between the rabbinic tradition and the intellectual resources of the Islamic world.
Salmon was a prominent figure among the Karaites, a Jewish movement defined by its commitments to biblical scholarship and penitential practices. For him, Lamentations is "instruction for Israel"--spiritual guidance for the Jewish community in exile--and his task is to communicate that instruction. Jewish Piety in Islamic Jerusalem explores the medieval Arabic dimensions of Salmon's project, tracing his engagement with the nascent fields of Arabic literary theory, historiography, and homiletics. The central argument of the book is that Salmon articulates a Jewish pietistic message through emergent Arabic-Islamic genres, transforming them to reflect his own religious and exegetical commitments. In this way, Salmon applies Arabic learning to the Bible at the same time that his understanding of the biblical text expands the Arabic intellectual tradition. The book advances these claims through six analytical chapters and an annotated English translation of the homilies and excursuses of Salmon's commentary.
Additional text
With much care and insight, Andruss elucidates a text of vital importance for understanding the Karaite 'Mourners for Zion' movement in tenth-century Jerusalem. The plaintive tone of Lamentations lent itself naturally to the Mourners' focus on Jerusalem's destruction and through the practice of commentary Salmon Ben Yeruhim explored ascetic ritual and historical reflection in a decidedly Islamic key and thus transformed the biblical poem into a presentist book of guidance and exhortation aimed at ending the condition of Exile.
