The Fez-Andalusian poetic rabbit hole
The Fez-Andalusian poetic rabbit hole
With bonus abortion justice roundup!
I am so sorry for the radio silence. I have been running from thing to thing the last few weeks, with a number of deadlines that I have been shoving to the back to the proverbial closet for ages finally springing out, demanding that I attend to them at long last.
This week, I had the deep honor to be at an amazing gathering of incredible abortion justice leaders—collaborating, envisioning, strategizing. Most of us are doing work in a whole range of faith-based contexts; some doing direct, on the ground work helping people get access to care—and some providing care and support at various points in the process, including (especially) those who are experiencing trauma now—being forced by the state into a reproductive situation or even emergency not of their choosing; and/or able to access abortion only by taking legal risks and crossing state lines; and/or seeking care at a clinic that has antiabortion protesters outside; a myriad of other things. Some of us are focusing more on organizing communities and advocacy work, some more on education and culture change, some of us on a combination of things, and some are just plain doing the work of helping in places where people haven’t had meaningful access for a long time.
For: Over 1000 abortion bans were passed between Roe v. Wade in 1973 and its repeal this June, 49 years later. Roe wasn’t Day One: A lot of communities haven’t had abortion access for a long time, or haven’t ever really had access. And the harm here falls exactly as structural inequality always falls, between the Hyde Amendment—whose impact falls disproportionately on Black and Brown women—and the fact that abortion bans overall disproportionately impact BIPOC communities, undocumented immigrants, disabled people, youth, those in rural areas, trans men and some nonbinary people.
(Note that 1 in 5 transmasculine people who have ever been pregnant end up resorting to DIY methods for abortion (note: some do not seek to terminate!) often after being denied treatment for being trans.)
NOTE!! DIY abortion can be perfectly safe! Medication abortion is safer than aspirin when taken before 10 weeks’ gestation! Learn more at PlanCPills.org! BUT: The DIY abortion methods trans people were reported to seek viz above includes herbs, which may or may not be safe, seeking out physical trauma—definitely not safe—substance abuse (needless to say) and Vitamin C—which does not work. AND people should not have to go to medication abortion if that’s not their preference because they’re turned away from clinics as a result of their gender presentation or because clinics insist on misgendering them.)
All this to say: We need to remember that abortion access hasn’t been a crisis only since Roe for a lot of people, in a lot of areas. This has been a crisis for a long, long time, and in order to solve it, we need not only to pass the Women’s Health Protection Act (WHPA) that would codify Roe as law, basically, but also the EACH Act, which would expand access for the people to whom it has been too long denied.
Anyway, the power and wisdom in that space was amazing, and I’m so glad to get to work in the field with these folks all the time.
We at National Council for Jewish Women are holding it down with Jews for Abortion Access, I’ll tell you that. Join us.
I’m too tired and punchy at this point to remember everybody who should be lifted up, but here’s to Catholics for Choice and Faith Choice Ohio and Shero Mississippi and Faith in Women (also based in Mississippi) and RCRC and the Black Women’s Reproductive Agenda (they weren’t at the gathering but all the orgs there merit a shoutout) and the New Mexico Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice and everyone else doing such extraordinary work. Thank you.
Today’s missive is a meandering poetic journey that begins with what may be the earliest Hebrew poem by a woman—written in the very late 10th century.
It’s then been set to some gorgeous, oud-based (ouddish?) music by the contemporary musician Yoni Avi Battat, and performed by Yoni Avi Battat and Laura Elkeslassy. Musical balm and passionate narration.
As you might remember from a little while back, the Cairo Genizah was a collection of some 400,000 Jewish manuscript fragments and Fatimid administrative documents that were kept in the geniza (storage space for sacred/Hebrew documents) of the Ben Ezra Synagogue in Fustat or Old Cairo, Egypt, dating from the 6th to the 19th c. Scholars became aware of its existence in the late 19th c., and the contribution of these documents to our understanding of history and Jewish life and practice is immeasurable.
Among the goodies was a poem by the (sadly still-unnamed) wife of Dunash Ibn Labrat, ca. 990 ce. Dunash Ibn Labrat on his own was quite the Torah hotshot—he was, according to Moshe Ibn Ezra, born in Fez, and the name “Dunash” is, evidently, a Berber name. When he was younger, he traveled to Baghdad to study with the great Saada Gaon, but eventually settled back in Fez. He then wrote many poems, became somewhat famous—even had poems written about him—and eventually received an invitation from Jewish scholar and physician Hasdai ibn Shaprut, who lived in Córdoba, to come study there.
Around the occasion of or after his departure from Fez for Iberia, presumably solo, we then have this poem written by his wife—and confirmed to be her work.
Will Her Love Remember
by the wife of Dunash Ibn Labrat.
Will her love remember his graceful doe
her only son in her arms as he parted?
On her left hand he placed a ring from his right,
on his wrist she placed her bracelet.
As a keepsake she took his mantle from him,
and he in turn took hers from her.
Would he settle, now, in the land of Spain,
if its prince gave him half his kingdom?"
Or, like, if you want to catch the rhymes, read—or just listen:
הֲיִזְכּוֹר יַעֲלַת הַחֵן יְדִידָהּ
בְּיוֹם פֵּירוּד וּבִזְרוֹעָהּ יְחִידָהּ
וְשָׂם חוֹתַם יְמִינוֹ עַל שְׂמֹאלָהּ
וּבִזְרוֹעוֹ הֲלֹא שָׂמָה צְמִידָהּ
בְּיוֹם לָקְחָה לְזִכָּרוֹן רְדִידוֹ
וְהוּא לָקַח לְזִכָּרוֹן רְדִידָהּ –
הֲיִשָּׁאֵר בְּכָל אֶרֶץ סְפָרַד
וְלוּ לָקַח חֲצִי מַלְכוּת נְגִידָהּ?
hayizkor ya'alat haḥen yedidah
b'yom peirud uvizro'ah yeḥidah
v'sam ḥotam yemino 'al smolah
uvizro'o halo sama tzemidah
b'yom lakḥah l'zikaron redido
v'hu lakaḥ l'zikaron redidah
hayisha-er b'khol eretz s'farad
v'lu lakaḥ ḥatzi malkhut negidah
Translation by Peter Cole The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950-1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007).
And as long as we’re talking about medieval women’s poetry, let’s bring in Qasmuna bint Isma'il, the only female Arabic-language Jewish poet that we know of from medieval Andalusia. That’s pretty cool. There’s debate about whether or not she’s from the 11th or 12th century. We only know of her because a few of her poems survived in later (15h c. and later) anthologies of verse, or of women’s verse.
First, before anything, let us enjoy this sick burn:
Just like the sun, from which the moon derives its light
always, yet afterward eclipses the sun's body.
And she is also responsible for these two haunting poems that remind us what women’s life back then was like:
I see an orchard
Where the time has come
For harvesting,
But I do not see
A gardener reaching out a hand
Towards its fruits.
Youth goes, vanishing; I wait alone
For somebody I do not wish to name.
Ayā rawḍatan qad ḥāna min-ha qaṭāfu-ha
wa-laisa yurâ ḥānin yamudda la-ha yadā;
fa-wā asafī yamdī-shshabābu mudayyaʿan
wa-yabqâ-lladhī mā lanʾusammī-hi mufradā.
and
Always grazing
here in this garden--
I'm dark-eyed just
like you, and lonely.
We both live far
from friends, forsaken --
patiently bearing
our fate's decree.
Ayā rawḍatan qad ḥāna min-ha qaṭāfu-ha
wa-laisa yurâ ḥānin yamudda la-ha yadā;
fa-wā asafī yamdī-shshabābu mudayyaʿan
wa-yabqâ-lladhī mā lanʾusammī-hi mufradā.
And OK OK OK and FINE as long as I have slid all the way down this Andalusian poetic rabbit hole, let’s haul out some homoerotic poems, too! Whoo! 🏳️🌈
For, a few of our guys—left behind some interesting poetry as well:
Like Solomon ibn Gabirol, (1021-1058) the Andalucian poet and philosopher—born in Cordoba, died in Toledo, and of him, a contemporary said, "his irascible temperament dominated his intellect, nor could he rein the demon that was within himself. It came easily to him to lampoon the great, with salvo upon salvo of mockery and sarcasm." So: relatable.
And these poems.. could be a metaphor for the human and the divine, sure, but. Well.
I will be a ransom for that gazelle of love, in whom all who grieve find happiness;
Whose cheeks are like white marble, and ruddy [as though] anointed with the blood of lovers.
The fruit of his lips are like swords and his eyes like arrows to the heart.
And also:
He wounds me, whose necklace is the Pleiades and whose neck is like the light of the moon.
In opening the loops of his mouth he reveals the light of his pearls like the sun from its abode.
I answered him: “Take my soul and slay; or if not, heal me, please heal!” He replied with the sweetness of his mouth: “There is no cure for an old wound.”
“Is my wound old, my friend? It is fresh – not more than a year old.”
He answered: “Drink my cup, and sing to me as on a day of parting, let there be no exaltation.”
And my beloved sang to me in Arabic: “In the memory of the man whose appearance I love.”
That last one was absolutely a metaphor for the love between humans and God.
So then we have the poet Yehuda haLevi (1075-141), born Toledo, died Jerusalem:
On the wind
in the cool of the evening
I send greetings to a friend.
I ask him only to remember the day
of our parting when we made a covenant
of love by an apple tree.
And on that note, I bid you all adieu for now. I have a bit more Shabbat prep to do over here. May your days be filled with poems and apple trees.