The Dangers of Being without a Frame (Con licenza de Superiori)

While preparing the critical edition of Bovo d’Antona (printed in Isny in 1541), one of the best-known Old Yiddish chivalric poems, I found myself presenting the book as a “naughty” work in contrast to the “good” and “pious” muser-bikher, such as the morally and halachically didactic Lev tov and Brantshpigl, or the books of precepts and minhogim (customs). ^{1 1} A number of points in this paper appeared in Claudia Rosenzweig, “La ricezione del Meshal HaQadmoni nella letteratura yiddish antica,” in Yitzhaq ibn Sahula, Favole antiche, ed. Anna Linda Callow and Pier Francesco Fumagalli, 2 vols. (Milano: G.A.M. Rudiano, Brescia – Veneranda Biblioteca Ambrosiana, 2021), vol. II, 49–63. I wish to thank Guy Ron-Gilboa, Kedem Golden, David Rotman, Ron Lasri and Alberto Conte for their suggestions, and Jennie Feldman for the editing of the English text. Bovo d’Antona was indeed composed with a view to giving pleasure, ^{2 2}Bovo d’Antona was dedicated to women who asked the writer to publish the enjoyable work “so that they might amuse themselves with it and read it on Shabbat and the Holidays.” Elye Bokher, Bovo d’Antona (Isny, 1541), Introduction, ll. 1–10. See also Claudia Rosenzweig, Bovo d’Antona by Elye Bokher. A Yiddish Romance. A Critical Edition with Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 2015), 58–64. and it includes scenes of carnal love. The author is the polymath Eliyahu ben Asher haLevi Ashkenazi. Known also as Elia Levita or Elye Bokher, he wrote a number of works in Hebrew and in Yiddish that enjoyed a wide readership and had several reprints. His surviving Yiddish works include Ha-Mavdil-lid (“Poem of He Who divides the sacred from the profane”), a gross parody of a Hebrew piyut. Probably composed in 1514, the poem is characterized by an interplay of high and low registers and contains a number of sexual vulgarities. It is kept in two manuscripts, one of which includes religious instructions and translations of the Five Scrolls; it was copied in Venice for Serlina, a young bride, in the middle of the sixteenth century. ^{3 3} See Claudia Rosenzweig, “Rhymes to Sing and Rhymes to Hang up. Some Remarks on a Lampoon in Yiddish by Elye Bokher (Venice 1514),” in The Italia Judaica Jubilee Conference, eds. Shlomo Simonsohn and Joseph Shatzmiller (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 143–165 and the bibliography quoted there. If such a poem appeared in the same manuscript as religious texts, one may infer that the reading canon was rich and comprehensive, encompassing literary genres such as vulgarizations of the Pentateuch and other books of the Bible, as well as prayers, letters, and stories, together with obscene poems. Indeed, there is a broad range of reading matter to be found in what is arguably the most important “book of stories” in Old Yiddish: the Mayse-bukh. Printed in Basel in 1602, this work includes rewritings of Talmudic haggadot and hagiographic tales about Hasidei Ashkenaz, together with long stories intended solely for pleasure, with no moral and, at least in one case, with frank sex scenes. ^{4 4} I presented part of this argument in my “Getlekhe un nisht getlekhe mayses. The Mayse-bukh and its Readership,” Jewish Studies Quarterly 26, no. 3 (2019): 203–223. It is interesting to note that in their several reprintings in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Bovo d’Antona and the Mayse-bukh always retained the parts involving sex, which indicates that they were integral rather than marginal to these Old Yiddish literary works, and that printers were confident of selling their editions to prospective readers. Clearly there was a public demand for engaging reading matter that offered a mix of ethical teaching and humor, religious customs and social satire, examples of pious conduct and portraits of Jewish and non-Jewish everyday life.

Many of these elements are distinctively present in the Kü-bukh, the “Book of Cows,” a collection of fables in rhymed prose. Printed in Verona in 1595, the Kü-bukh–one of the most interesting works of Old Yiddish literature – is the focus of this paper. In its day it must have enjoyed a marked popularity, since in the introduction to the Mayse-bukh, the Old Yiddish “Book of Stories” mentioned above, we find this stern injunction:

do not read from the “Book of Cows” (Kü-bukh) and you should also not make the effort to read from Ditrikh fun Bern and Mainster Hildebrant, since they are worth mere vapor, they give neither warmth nor heat, and besides, they are not “godly,” and you well deserve that God will forgive you: in our books it is written that it is a sin as big as a house to read from them on the holy Shabbat. ^{5 5} The editio princeps of the Mayse-bukh can be consulted here: https://www.e-rara.ch/bau_1/co.... See also Astrid Starck, Un beau livre d’histoire. Eyn shön Mayse bukh, Fac-similé de l’editio princeps de Bâle (1602), trans. and ed. Astrid Starck, 2 vols. (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2004) and in particular 4–5 for the quoted passage from the introduction.

Ditrikh fun Bern and Meinster Hildebrant, the two works to be shunned along with the Kü-bukh, are Yiddish rewritings of German chivalric works. They are defined as “not-godly” literature, which it is a grave sin to read on the holy Sabbath, ^{6 6} In the introduction to the Mayse-bukh the reference is probably to the section in the Shulhan Arukh regarding what is forbidden and what is allowed to be read on Shabbat (Orah hayim 307:16). Sifre’ milhamot–“books of wars” or “books of battles,” which could well refer to chivalric works–are forbidden, but Rabbi Moshe Isserles permitted them if they were in the Holy Tongue, i.e., Hebrew. the day of the week dedicated to reading. ^{7 7} See for instance c. 3v of ms. Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Hébreu 92 (https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12... 92?rk=128756;0), where the dedication says:
איך וויל אוייך דו אירן איר ורויאן . אם שַבַתֿ זולט איר דש בוך אל שויאן . אין דער ווָאכֿן גען אונ׳ שפינן / און געלט גווינן .
(here I want to honor you women / on Shabbat you should look at the book / during the week [you should] spin / and earn money). In other contemporary Yiddish sources, too, chivalric literature is considered “dangerous” reading material, being conducive to sin. ^{8 8} The reading of torekhte or narishe bikher (foolish books) and sifrey havolim (books of vanity) is condemned a number of times. See, for example, Max Weinreich, Bilder fun der yidisher literaturgeshikhte fun di onheybn biz Mendele Moykher-Sforim (Vilne: Farlag Tomor fun Yosef Kamermakher, 1928), 53–55 and Weinreich, Geshikhte fun der yidisher shprakh. Bagrifn, faktn, metodn, 4 vols. (New York: YIVO, 1973), and in particular vol. I, 270, 277, 279 and vol. IV, 285–286 (English version: Max Weinreich, History of the Yiddish Language, ed. Paul Glasser, trans. Shlomo Noble with the assistance of Joshua A. Fishman, 2 vols., YIVO Institute for Jewish Research [New Haven: Yale University Press, 2008], Vol. I, 265, 272, 274, A261). See also Rosenzweig, Bovo d’Antona, 58–64 (quoted above: see footnote 2) and the bibliography quoted there. The ban is given forthright expression in the Judeo-Italian version of Slonik’s Mitsves noshim kept in ms. München, Bayerische Staatsbibliothek (BSB), Cod. Hebr. 475, c. 3v (copied in 1596), where it is stated: “And he who reads Ariosto, the Innamoramento, the Cento novelle, Amadis di Gaula and similar profane books will act very badly: it is not permitted to read them on the Shabbat as rabbenu Moshe [Moses our teacher] says, while talking about these books, that those who composed them and those who printed them and those who read them, especially on Shabbat, should deserve to be thrown all together in the fire, together with their books, since from them one cannot learn anything but maliciousness and vain things and a lascivious life, which leads everybody to Gehinnom (Hell).” See Claudia Rosenzweig, “Women: Instructions for Use. Slonik’s Seder mitzvot nashim from Yiddish to Judeo-Italian,” in Rabbinical Literature in Yiddish and Judezmo, eds. Katja Šmid and David M. Bunis (forthcoming). Indeed, the topos that reading romances can be dangerous on account of “their capacity to stir mimetically the passions” ^{9 9} See Michael Schoenfeldt, “Reading Bodies,” in Reading, Society and Politics in Early Modern England, eds. Kevin Sharpe and Steven N. Zwicker (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 215–243, and in particular 217. can likewise be found in other European literatures of the time. Best known is Dante Alighieri’s story of Paolo and Francesca (Inferno, canto V, ll. 73–142), in which their reading per diletto (“for pleasure”) about Guinevere and Lancelot’s illicit passion awakens them to their own desire for each other, and will lead to their deaths at the hand of Francesca’s husband. The romance, and its author, are to blame. Three centuries later, Don Quixote loses his mind as a result of reading multiple chivalric romances. It could be understood that the two Yiddish chivalric works cited here are to be avoided because they are clearly based on non-Jewish sources, or perhaps because they were intended “for pleasure”: in the Yiddish version of Ditrikh fun Bern, for example, printed in Krakow in 1597, it is stated in the paratexts – on the front-page and in the colophon – that the book is kurtsvaylik (“entertaining”); no moral justification is proposed. ^{10 10} The term kurtsvaylik is quite commonly found in Yiddish paratexts, including in chivalric poems based on the Bible. In the latter, however, the opening stanzas state that the work will instruct readers on God’s wonders and strengthen their faith in Him; since these Yiddish poems are based not only on the Bible but also on rabbinic commentaries and midrashim, it is understood that Jewish readers, in addition to being entertained, will gain instruction. See, for example, stanza 4 in the Sefer Shmuel (Augsburg 1544): בֿון דעם בוך שְמואל איך אויך זאגן וויל . ווי גוֿט יתברך דורך זייניא גויטיא גרוש וואונדר הוט גיטון . דער וועל אונש אין דעם גלותֿ איו קיינן נויטן לון : (‘I want to tell about the Book of Samuel as well, [about] how God Blessed Be He made his good great wonders / He will not abandon us in any state of misery in our exile’).

Why, though, is the Kü-bukh included in the list of books to be shunned? One can only speculate. Was the disapproving editor of the Mayse-bukh seeking to highlight the worth of his own book at the expense of rival works? Perhaps he wanted to offer his “godly” book as a counter-work to the Kü-bukh, even though three of the stories in the Mayse-bukh also appear, albeit in rhymed prose, in the Kü-bukh, and the Mayse-bukh has “not-godly” stories of its own. ^{11 11} I endeavored to show this aspect of the Mayse-bukh in “Getlekhe un nisht getlekhe mayses” (see above, footnote 4). Or was it because the morals were too universal? According to Eli Katz, the Kü-bukh was attacked on account of the work’s blunt and salacious sexual allusions, which were toned down in the 1697 reprint of Frankfurt am Main. ^{12 12} See Book of Fables. The Yiddish Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich. Frankfurt am Main, 1697, trans. and ed. Eli Katz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), 20–22. There is more to be said on this, but before pursuing the discussion, a few remarks about this famed work are in order.

The Kü-bukh was published in Verona in 1595 in the printing house of Francesco delle Donne by Avraham ben Mattathia Bat-Sheva. ^{13 13} There is one extant copy of the book, in a private collection in London. See Khone Shmeruk, “Defuse’ Yiddish be-Italia,” Italia III, 1–2 (1982), 112–175 [in Hebrew]; Moshe N. Rosenfeld, The Book of Cows. A Facsimile Edition of the Famed Kuhbuch (London: Hebraica Books, 1984); No. 70, in Chava Turniansky and Erika Timm, Yiddish in Italia, with the collaboration of Claudia Rosenzweig (Milan: Associazione Italiana degli Amici dell’Università di Gerusalemme, 2003), 138–141. The book can be viewed on the following site: https://www.hebrewbooks.org/45.... Studies of the book include, for example: Eli Katz, “Das >Kuhbukh< und das >Sefer Mešolim<. Die Überlieferung eines Mitteljiddischen Textes,” Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Sprache und Literatur 112 (1990), 81–95; Jennifer Juillard-Maniece, “‘Ainer sol sich al-mol bedenken wer er sei’: Social Order, Status, and Class Stratification in the Kuh-bukh,” in Worlds of Old Yiddish Literature, eds. Simon Neuberg and Diana Matut (Cambridge: Legenda, 2024), 159–173; Simon Neuberg, “The Kü’-bukh: In Search of Origins,” in Worlds of Old Yiddish Literature, 79–92; and Simon Neuberg, “Neues zum Kü’-buch,” Jiddistik Mitteilungen 70 (November 2023), 15–21. Other seminal studies of the genre of the fable in Old Yiddish are: Erika Timm, “Die ‘Fabel vom alten Löwen’ in jiddistischer und komparatistischer Sicht,” Zeitschrift für deutsche Philologie 100 (1981), 109–170 and Erika Timm, “Zur jiddischen Fabelliteratur des 16. Jahrhunderts,” Proceedings of the Eighth World Congress of Jewish Studies, Division C, Talmud and Midrash, Philosophy and Mysticism, Hebrew and Yiddish Literature (1982), 159–164. It includes thirty-five fables, accompanied by illustrations, but with no frame-story. ^{14 14} See Khone Shmeruk, The Illustrations in Yiddish Books of the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. The Texts, the Pictures and Their Audience (Jerusalem: Akademon, 1986), pp. 30–33 [in Hebrew]; Diane Wolfthal, Picturing Yiddish. Gender, Identity, and Memory in the Illustrated Yiddish Books of Renaissance Italy (Leiden: Brill, 2004), esp. figures 105a–120b. The main sources for the first part of the book are Berekhya HaNakdan’s Mishle shu‘alim (“Fox Fables,” thirteenth century) and Edelstein by the German Dominican Ulrich Boner (fourteenth century), ^{15 15} On Boner and his work, see Klaus Grubmüller, Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters Verfasserlexicon, ed. Kurt Ruh, with Gundolf Keil, Werner Schröder, Burghart Wachinger, Franz Josef Worstbrock, second edition (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1978–2004), s.v., vol. 1, cols. 947–952. The work appeared in print in 1461: see Doris Fouquet, Der Edelstein. Faksimile der ersten Druckausgabe Bamberg 1461, 16. I Eth. 2° der Herzog-August-Bibliothek Wolfenbüttel (Stuttgart: Müller and Schindler, 1972). and for the second part, Isaac ibn Sahula’s Meshal haqadmoni (“Fables from the Distant Past,” thirteenth century). These sources are very different from each other: while the Hebrew Mishle shu‘alim and the German Edelstein are closer to the Aesopian fable tradition, ^{16 16} For this tradition in Hebrew literature during the Renaissance, see David Rotman, “Author and Fiction, Lamb and Wolf: Hebrew Adaptations of ‘Aesop’s’ Fables from the Middle Ages through the Early Modern Era,” Te‘uda XXVIII (2017), Essays in Folklore and Jewish Studies in Honor of Professor Eli Yassif, eds. Tova Rosen, Nili Aryeh-Sapir, David Rotman, Tsafi Sebba-Elran, pp. 495–537 [in Hebrew], and the rich bibliography quoted there. in Ibn Sahula’s Hebrew work Meshal haqadmoni the fables are inserted into a complex structure and held together by a frame-story with a strong didactic and moral purpose, in a manner resembling works in the Arabic genre of the maqama. ^{17 17} See Jefim Schirmann, The History of Hebrew Poetry in Christian Spain and Southern France, ed. Ezra Fleischer (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1997), 345–364 [in Hebrew]. Composed in 1281, Meshal haqadmoni was printed by Gershom Soncino in Brescia around 1491, reprinted by Soncino around 1497, and in Venice in 1546; ^{18 18} The first print can be viewed via this link:
https://www.nli.org.il/he/book.... For the second print, see Moses Marx, “Gershom Soncino. Contributions to the History of His Life and His Printing” in Sepher ha-Yovel. A Tribute to Professor Alexander Marx, ed. David Frankel (New York, 1943), i-x. For the rich manuscript tradition, see esp. Simona Gronemann, The Story of Meshal haqadmoni and its Extant Copies in 15th Century Ashkenaz (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz Verlag, 2019). there followed a number of further printings and also Yiddish reworkings. ^{19 19} See esp. Avraham Meir Habermann, “Di yidishe oysgabes fun ‘Meshal hakadmoni,’” YIVO-bleter 13 (1938): 95–101. A complete analysis of the Yiddish rewritings of the Meshal haqadmoni remains a desideratum. A reprint of Kü-bukh in Frankfurt am Main in 1697 was given the title Sefer mesholim. ^{20 20} See Katz, Book of Fables. Katz relates that only two copies of this print have survived, in Oxford and in Amsterdam (23, note 1). On the main differences between Kü-bukh and Sefer mesholim, see Katz’s introduction, 19–22. On Sefer mesholim, cf. also Jeremy Dauber, In the Demon’s Bedroom: Yiddish Literature and the Early Modern (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 87–139.

Of the 35 fables of the Kü-bukh eight are reworkings of Meshal haqadmoni that appear in the final part of the book and are much longer than the other fables in the collection. ^{21 21} I use as a main reference the following edition: Isaac ibn Sahula, Meshal Haqadmoni. Fables from the Distant Past, ed. and trans. Raphael Loewe, 2 vols. (Oxford: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2004). They are: ^{22 22} For the titles given to the fables I have followed Eli Katz’s edition of the reprint of the Kü-bukh published in Frankfurt am Main: Book of Fables. The Yiddish Collection of Reb Moshe Wallich. Frankfurt am Main, 1697, trans. and ed. Eli Katz (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1994), see especially page 12.

n. XXVI, “The Peasant and the Scribe,” 34v–38r (seeMeshal haqadmoni,
section III, ll. 18–209)
n. XXVII, “The Mouse and the Weasel” (see Meshal haqadmoni, section III, ll.
266–612)
n. XXVIII, “The Dog and the Cow” (see Meshal haqadmoni, section I, ll.
825–1042)
n. XXIX, “The False Guardian” (see Meshal haqadmoni, section IV, ll. 1093–1245)
n. XXX, “The Adulterous Young Wife,” 48r–54v (see Meshal haqadmoni,
section II, ll. 132–435)
n. XXXI, “The Greedy Innkeeper” (see Meshal haqadmoni, section III, ll.
415–612)
n. XXXII, “The Rich Man and the Beggar” (see Meshal haqadmoni, section
III, ll. 815–857)
n. XXXIII, “The Lazy and the Diligent Servant” (see Meshal haqadmoni,
section II, ll. 1205–1288)

Unlike Mishle Shu‘alim and Edelstein, where the fables have no frame-story and so can be more freely adapted, in Meshal haqadmoni the fables are embedded in the main discussions between the מקשׁה (Cynic) and the מחבר (Moralist, lit. “author”) on the central topics of the work’s five parts: wisdom, penitence, sound counsel, humility, and reverence. Each part has a twofold construction: the thesis put forward by the Cynic, “a challenger” or devil’s advocate, who tells a long and complex story with a “perverted moral,” ^{23 23} Dan Pagis, “Variety in Medieval Rhymed Narratives,” Scripta Hierosolymitana 27 (1978), 79–98, in particular 94. and the response given by the Moralist. ^{24 24} The structure of the work can be seen in Raphael Loewe, “Introduction,” in Isaac ibn Sahula, Meshal Haqadmoni, xxiv-xxvii.

In this paper I wish to suggest that some of the fables in the Kü-bukh are particularly “dangerous” simply because they appear without the frame that in Ibn Sahula’s work has a key authorial function, firmly directing the reader’s reception of the text. ^{25 25} On the frame and its functions see, among others, Mieke Bal, Narratology. Introduction to the Theory of Narrative, Fourth Edition (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2017), 51–58; Alberto Varvaro, “Forme di intertestualità. La narrativa spagnola medievale tra Oriente e Occidente,” Annali dell’Istituto Orientale di Napoli (sezione romanza) XXVII, no. 1 (1985): 49–65; Michelangelo Picone, “Tre tipi di cornice novellistica: modelli orientali e tradizione narrativa medievale,” Filologia e critica XIII (1988): 3–26; John Pier, “Narrative Levels (revised version; uploaded 23 April 2014),” in The Living Handbook of Narratology, eds. Peter Hühn et al. (Hamburg: Hamburg University, 2014). http://www.lhn.uni-hamburg.de/.... Pier’s work has a rich bibliography. This is especially true in the case of two fables which, in Meshal haqadmoni, are narrated by the Cynic and are thus intended to serve as examples of negative behavior, to be duly countered by the Moralist; in the Kü-bukh, however, there is no such corrective, counter-balancing text. The two stories in question are “The Peasant and the Scribe” and “The Adulterous Young Wife.” In presenting them, I shall first consider the versions in the Kü-bukh, noting the Hebrew source, and then compare them with the Yiddish version of Meshal haqadmoni, printed in Frankfurt an der Oder in 1693.