The present opuscule began life as a lecture delivered at a seminar on the Taḥkemoni convened by Prof. Raymond Scheindlin at the Jewish Theological Seminary during the academic year 2015â2016. Strictly speaking, my task was to address the question of the manuscript witnesses of the work, but as will become evident from the discussion below, the question of its witnesses cannot be separated from that of its various versions. During the summer of 2016 I was able to write up my findings from the research on which the lecture was founded. Working without any particular regard for word limits, what I came up with was a decidedly oversized article, which I sent for review to the Jewish Studies Quarterly, whose guidelines for authors inspired me with the hope that the editors would be willing to publish it despite its bulk. And indeed, after it had been read and accepted in principle, JSQâs managing editor, Sally Freedman, indicated that the journal would be willing to serialize it in two parts, provided, of course, that the various changes suggested by the anonymous readers were implemented, and that I removed what is now Appendix 1.A (An Annotated List of Fragments of the Taḥkemoni in the Genizah Collections) with a view to re-casting it as a small, separate article for publication in a more specialized venue. On the same occasion, Ms Freedman also suggested that I try a different, potentially more fruitful tackâadding material to the existing article so as to produce a book. And this was the genesis of the transformation of an oversized article into a slender volume. I would therefore like to hereby record my gratitude to Ms. Freedman for her excellent advice, both in terms of the ideas about the Taḥkemoni that the task of producing the book forced me to have, as well as any future benefits to my career (and, by extension, my bank account) in which it may issue.
An alternative title for the present book may have been something like Marginalia to ed. Yahalom and Katsumata of Yehuda al-Ḥariziâs Taḥkemoni. This would certainly have underscored my own indebtedness, and that of research in Medieval Hebrew poetry in general, to Yahalom and Katsumataâs excellent work, which has placed all future research in the Taḥkemoni on a new and solid footing by providing for the first time a truly reliable textual basis for the study of the work, as well as working out gross modo the convoluted history of its evolution as it flowed from the authorâs pen. At the same time, this edition has its limitations. The first is predominantly technicalâthe text of the Taḥkemoni given in ed. Yahalom and Katsumata is grounded in an, albeit excellent, but nevertheless limited manuscript basis. The editors have selected a small number of witnesses representing Recensions 1 and 2 of the work (see below), and used them to produce a base text of Recension 1 and to list basic textual variants reflecting the differences between it and Recension 2. Or, where necessary, they have produced two separate base texts, which represent the two different recensions. Strictly speaking, therefore, theirs is not a full-blown critical edition, in particular as it does not take into systematic account the evidence of the manuscripts of the Taḥkemoni contained in the Firkovitch collection as well as in the Genizah. Admittedly, to have done so would have required an immense amount of additional research labor, which may very well have either significantly delayed the production of the edition or simply rendered it impossible. One must therefore be grateful to the editors for having produced the edition that they did, which, as I have indicated above, has already rendered signal service to scholarship. However, a full critical edition of the Taḥkemoni, which after all is one of the finest examples of Medieval Hebrew belles lettres to have reached us, remains a desideratum and ought to be considered a major scholarly priority, though certainly a far less pressing one than it had been before the publication of ed. Yahalom and Katsumata. My own personal circumstances make it inconceivable that I will be able to apply myself to the task of producing a full critical edition of the Taḥkemoni in the next few decades, and the present work ought therefore to be considered my modest contribution to this gargantuan task, which still lies ahead. This is relevant in particular to the descriptive lists of the manuscripts of the Taḥkemoni in the various Genizah collections and in the Firkovitch Evr. IIA collection, which I have provided in Appendix 1. But also in general, I entertain the hope that some of the insights that are contained in other parts of the book will prove useful to future editors of the Taḥkemoni, whoever those may be.
The second limitation of ed. Yahalom and Katsumata, if it can properly be called that, is that it leaves some room to work out the implications of the manuscript evidence for the recensional history of the Taḥkemoni as it seems to have evolved during the authorâs lifetime. In my work, I have endeavored to fill this gap in part, while of course remaining conscious of the fact that many of the relevant details are forever lost in the sands of time, and that in fact a not-insignificant portion of the answers to the questions that we are posing accompanied al-Ḥarizi to his grave. Moreover, I am perfectly conscious of the fact that this aspect of my own contribution has been rendered possible by the material given in ed. Yahalom and Katsumata, both in terms of the manuscripts that they have studied and edited as well as the basic reconstruction of the recensional history of the Taḥkemoni that they propose, which has proven to be quite solid in its fundamental presuppositions.
It is therefore with a sense of scholarly debt to those who trod my path before me, a sense of obligation to encourage and further the work of those who will follow, and a ceaseless sense of delight in the Taḥkemoni itself that I offer this book to those who will deign to peruse it. My fondest aspiration can be that it will earn me the merit of li-vnot u-le-hibbanot.
Finally, it is a great pleasure to be able to thank four colleagues for looking over and commenting on the book, either in whole or in partâKedem Golden, Matti Huss, Raymond Scheindlin and Jonathan Vardi. Their insights into the subtleties of the Spanish-Hebrew poetic tradition stood me in good stead in my attempts to propose solutions that are as plausible as possible to the many impenetrable, or nearly impenetrable, little mysteries that surround the Taḥkemoni. Dr. Vardi also kindly supplied me with his private catalogue of the anthology of the Taḥkemoni that is copied in ms. Cambridge Add.377.5, on the basis of which I produced that which is now given in Appendix 2.