The Gazelle: Medieval Hebrew Poems on God, Israel, and the Soul

by Raymond P. Scheindlin

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.

Genres: Poetry, Jewish, Judaism

288 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1994

About the author

Raymond P. Scheindlin is a scholar of early Hebrew literature, specializing in the Hebrew writing that emerged from contact between Jews and Arabs in the Middle Ages–the medieval Golden Age of Hebrew Literature.

Reviews

[Veiltender · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm not real sure how to review this book. It is a series of translations, with commentary of a number of Medieval Jewish poems. Some of the poems are brilliant. Some of them are merely good. It isn't, however, a book I would necessarily recommend...I enjoyed it, but I know Hebrew. The reader without Hebrew has to read it mediated through Scheindlin's translations. He's a good scholar, but I didn't always agree with his choices. Thus the three stars. In its genre, it deserves far more. In my own unimportant subjective opinion, it gets three.