Joseph Yahalom Ed (11 results)

Condition: New.

Hardcover. Condition: Near Fine. Dust Jacket Condition: Near Fine. 8vo in glossy illustrated boards. Text in Hebrew, second title page in English. Near Fine.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: New.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

Condition: New.

Condition: New.

Condition: As New. Unread book in perfect condition.

IN HEBREW. 25x16cm. VI+312 pages. Hardcover. Spine edges slightly bumped. Else in good condition. The book is in : Hebrew.

Hardcover. Condition: VERY GOOD. vi [English intro.]; 312pp [Hebrew Text] + sepia facsimile plates. Sewn binding in linen cloth, brown stamped lettering. Some light foxing to the extremities, sound and square otherwise with clean, unmarked text. Out of print and quite scarce in trade. ' The works of the early Hebrew liturgical poet Sim'on bar Megas were until quite recently completely unknown. Now, thanks to new discoveries among fragments of the literature from the Cairo Geniza, we are in possession of a substantial corpus of his poems, and can piece together some rudimentary facts about his life and times. The poet lived in Byzantine Palestine in the sixth or seventh century. He is the author of a cycle of over a hundred and fifty Gedustot based on the Triennial cycle, then current among Palestinian Jewry. The popularity of his works in the synagogues is reflected in the Cambridge Geniza manuscript of the Pizmonim of the Anonymous Poet, which reproduce the opening verse of many poems composed by Sim'on bar Megas. These allusions have helped us to identify almost fifty of his Qedustot, scattered in nearly sixty different manuscripts of the Cairo Geniza. Apart from its intrinsic literary interest, Simon's work represents an important link connecting his predecessor Yannai - whose work he knew and whose influence made itself felt in Sim'on's poems - and the later, better known, El'azar Hagallir. However, Haqallir, whose liturgical poems have predominated in the Ashkenazi books of prayer, wrote only for Holydays and special Sabbaths, whereas Sim'on bar Megas apparently wrote a new composition for his public every week. His Palestinian congregation must certainly have admired and appreciated his work and doubtless supplied him not only with a livelihood but also with the costly parchment on which to record his compositions. For his part, Simon devoted himself to composing in the most exacting and complicated liturgical genre, the Ledusta, a highly organized chain of poems intended for recital during the 'Amida of the Sabbath morning prayer. In his Qedustot, Sim'on touched on many of the themes and issues of concern in his time. In addition to their literary and exegetical merit, his writings constitute one of our few resources for information on Palestinian Jewry, its habits and customs, during the crucial period of transition from the Byzantine to the Arabic period. The ruling government mentioned in Sim'on's poetry is consistently that of Byzantium, and his work is thus one of the last echoes of the original cultural achievements of the Jewish people in their homeland before the Arab conquest. Simon's poetry manifests a special ingenuity in vocabulary and inventiveness in finding neologisms, new poetic forms and structures. Its study can also contribute substantially to our knowledge of Palestinian Hebrew, which was probably still spoken in his time, at least in small villages. The importance of his poetry for understanding contemporary liturgical practices and the way of reciting the Bible in synagogue is beyond doubt. Finally, his poems regularly allude to prose homilies that constituted part of synagogue services; some of these homilies have been known previously only in garbled versions scattered in midrashic literature. In some cases Sim'on's poems enable us to restore the original sense of the text and thus offer a better understanding of this important part of Israel's homiletical literature.…