Early Yiddish Epic is a volume that is part of the series dedicated to Judaic Traditions in Literature, Music, and Art. The book is important because it demonstrates the relative lack of knowledge regarding the Jewish epic and helps to fill the gap. This lack of knowledge is due to many factors, including the scarcity of original material, the need for the transliteration of the Yiddish alphabet, which is not always correct, and the lack of dictionaries that provide precise definitions. Consequently, there cannot be accurate translations of terms that were in use in various geographical locations (now, nations) during the Middle Ages.
It should be mentioned that the basis of Yiddish, the language of Ashkenazi Jews, is a high-German dialect written in the Hebrew alphabet. Schematically, Yiddish developed in several stages: ancient Yiddish (until 1250), old Yiddish (up to 1500), middle Yiddish (up to 1700), and finally modern Yiddish that is still in use today. In fact, the first roots of the Yiddish language seem to date back to the tenth century, when the Jews in Italy and France moved into the area around the Rhine River.
Yiddish is a fusion language that has evolved over the centuries and in the process has assimilated, in a very original manner, language elements of Hebrew-Aramaic, Romance, Germanic, and Slavic origin. The evolutionary process is associated with the geographical movements of the Jewish populations, often imposed by their persecution.
In the introduction, Frakes clearly traces the history of the discoveries related to this language, providing abundant data regarding sources, bibliographies, original texts, and problems of interpretation (with practical examples for some terms) and of translation that are described as a real process of “triangulation.”
The first four chapters of the book are dedicated to the Midrashic Epic (the word midrash means the exegetical study of biblical texts from which rules for life can be derived). Even if the characters described are certainly biblical, the stories are enriched with details that have nothing to do with the Bible. The stories are inaccurate, imaginative, and sometimes ironic, and they describe characters whose behavior is certainly less than commendable. The essential purpose of the stories is to praise the one God and to encourage ways in which everyday life can be permeated by what Judaism teaches.
The stories reflect the times in which the authors write; in the first story there is a Christian priest, and in the last story the Italian cities of Venice and Cremona are mentioned. The author presents four writings. The first, “Abraham Our Father” (3-11), tells the story of the relationship between Abraham and his father, a respected, wealthy, illiterate craftsman who made idols. Abraham began to believe in God and the Scriptures at the young age of three, and at the same time, he began to distrust the idols that his father was making. When he was sent by his father to the market to sell the idols, he destroyed them. When he returned home, he lied about how the idols had been destroyed (but he had taken care to bring the broken pieces of the statues home).
“Joseph the Righteous” (12-14) is the second story, followed by the “Book of Samuel” (15-148) and “The Binding of Isaac” (149-155). In this last story the figures of Sara and Satan appear; Satan tries in vain to tempt, one by one, all the characters of the story. Each story is presented with a short introduction as well as information about the time when the story was written and the name of the author, when possible.
The next four chapters are dedicated to the Secular Epic. The “Dukus Horans” (159-180) is an example of a bridal-quest epic. This is a medieval epic subgenre that is closely related to the practical need to insure that the feudal ruler finds a bride and has, above all, a descendant to whom he can leave his possessions. It is not perfectly clear if the script is a transcript of an original text from a Middle High German source or is in an original Yiddish, as Frakes believes. This problem is discussed in detail in the introduction that precedes the fragmentary and incomplete Yiddish text. The main character, Dukus Horans, is gifted with a supernatural singing ability.
The “Vidvilt” (181-237) is the adaptation of an anonymous poet of “Wigalois” (a Middle High German epic). Some aspects of Arthurian romance are not present, e.g., the long speeches and elaborate descriptions. The text skilfully compacts the original long epic and dechristianizes it by eliminating any divine intervention, making the heroic actions more difficult, but possible. The translation is based on the texts from two manuscripts: the Cambridge manuscript, which was damaged during attempts to restore and preserve it, and the Hamburg manuscript.
“Bovo d'Antona” (238-316) was written by Elijah Levita (born in Neustadt, 1472, died in Venice, 1549), a well-known Jewish scholar who spent much of his life in Italy. He lived in Padua, Venice, and Rome, where he met and became friends with Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo. Marco Grimani was the patron who hosted him in Venice until his death in 1549. This work was published in 1541, but it was the reworking of a Tuscan text that has its roots in an Anglo-Norman text of the first half of the thirteenth century (“Boeve de Haumpton”) that appears as “Beuve d’Hanstone” in the same century, between the French version, “Chanson de Geste” and two Italian versions, one, French-Venetian and the other, Tuscan.
The original text is from the thirteenth century. Elijah Levita was born and lived during the time of the Enlightenment, in the fifteenth century, and published his work in the Renaissance, during the sixteenth century. This fact could explain the various critical remarks reported by Frakes in his introduction, but does not explain the love for and the huge success of this story, which became part of the first Yiddish literary tradition and had numerous reprintings.
In the text of Elijah Levita there is an interesting introduction of a brief dictionary of Italian terms found in the text, which can still be understood by Italians today. The terms are still in use today with some slight written modifications both in the official mother tongue and in regional dialects. Elijah lived in the Enlightenment and was very open-minded. This pushed him to approach the cultured world, and even to meet those persons who did not have as much as he did.
“Pariz and Viene” (317-403), written by an anonymous author of the late-sixteenth century (although attributed by some, but without evidence, to Elijah Levita), was discovered accidentally by Anna Maria Babbi in its full version in 1986. It is a love story, not an original one, written during the Italian Renaissance. The protagonists are “wealthy, noble, beautiful and virtuous.” However, in “Pariz and Viene,” in contrast to a traditional Jewish concept, for the first time a heroine, a woman, is introduced as the autonomous, independent subject, the primary character in the story. The rebellion of Viene is not total—while the heroine challenges the decisions of the family with regard to the choice of her future husband, other conventions related to maintaining social status and having a family are not challenged.
The appendix contains “The Book of King” (Appendix A) and “Briyo and Zimro” (Appendix B). These texts were written in the sixteenth century by anonymous authors, though the first of these (407-417) was most likely written in the fifteenth century. The second (419-430) is a tragic and tormented love story that, after the death of the two protagonists, has its crowning moment in Heaven with God's blessing. The volume concludes with a series of detailed notes and an extensive bibliography. The English translations of the Hebrew texts are adequate by scholarly standards.
In the introduction the author writes that he does not “wish to claim any kind of pioneering status for the volume, but rather to apologize for the embarrassment of publishing it a century too late.” Of course, we can agree with the first part of the sentence, but not with the second (we apologize to the author, for our well-intentioned irony), for reasons related to the calendar. This text is useful for scholars and students and is the result of an arduous work of synthesizing and clarifying that, in my opinion, provides a point of reference for understanding medieval Yiddish literature. Whether it will become a new starting point for further studies and adjustments will depend on eventual, unforeseen, fortuitous, fortunate, and future discoveries.
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[Review length: 1419 words • Review posted on March 11, 2015]