Hebrew Poetry from Late Antiquity: Liturgical Poems of Yehudah. Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary

The discovery of the Genizah manuscript collection has been considered by some as a revolution in the knowledge of Hebrew literature and Jewish culture in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages. The major corpora of Palestinian liturgical poetry bear evidence to the prolific literary activity of a number of famous poets who laid the foundations for the development of Hebrew poetry in later periods: Yossi ben Yossi; Yanni; Simon bar Megas; Elazar birabbi Kilir; and Yohanan ha-Kohen. One of these mostly Byzantine-Jewish melodists was Yehudah who composed a cycle of poems in accordance with the reading tradition of the Pentateuch and Prophets on the sabbath. This study presents Yehudah’s oeuvre with commentaries and deals with its historical and literary context in four introductory chapters.