YITZHAQ HASNIRI

(c. 1170/75–after 1229)

While the Spanish liturgical canon left little room for new material, it seems that greater opportunity for expression was offered by the tradition of sacred verse in Provence, where links were maintained to other Jewish communities in France and Ashkenaz. YITZHAQ HASNIRI was the first Provençal religious poet who, in the eyes of the period’s leading scholars, bears comparison to the Spanish liturgical poets, and he is perhaps the most important of the Provençal paytanim. He was active during the turbulent years of the Albigensian Crusade; though that campaign was not aimed at the Jewish community, the Jews of Provence suffered in its wake, and the aggressive policies of Pope Innocent III also made life difficult. In his poetry, HaSniri was by far the most outspoken critic of the Church’s harsh policies. His somber temperament was further darkened by these circumstances, at times to the point of morbidity. In his famous, long tokheha (admonition) he walks the worshiper through his own burial, visualizing the scene in disturbing detail. The poem translated here, which is unusually direct in its ridicule of the Church and Islam, should be read in the light of the talmudic dictum: “All sneering is forbidden except the ridiculing of idols” (Avodah Zarah 25b). The fact that it was intended for recitation as part of the Passover liturgy—in other words, in close proximity to a yom hahesger, a day near the Easter holiday on which Christians traditionally hurled stones at the Jews and their property—may account for the extended mockery of the cross.

The poet’s name, which alludes to the snow-capped biblical Mount Snir (Hermon [Deuteronomy 3:9]), indicates that he came from the region of Mont Ven-toux (meaning, in Provençal, the mountain of snow), near Malaucène. In 1195 (or 1190), he met Yehuda Alharizi, who praises him in Gate 46 of his Tahkemoni (“in his poems he puts the stars to shame”). From this we can deduce that HaSniri was already considered a formidable poet by then. We also know that he was active during the years 1208–29, the latter date marking the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders, an event that figures in one of his poems. No secular poems by HaSniri have survived.

ON THE WORSHIP OF WOOD AND A FOOL