RHYMES TO SING AND RHYMES TO HANG UP: SOME REMARKS ON A LAMPOON IN YIDDISH BY ELYE BOKHER (VENICE 1514)

Abstract

In the 15th and 16th centuries, Northern Italy became home to Jews migrating from many parts of Europe—Spain, Germany, and Poland, as well as Southern Italy. The Veneto, in particular, saw the founding of several Ashkenazi communities, in which Yiddish was not only the spoken tongue but also an established literary language. In this paper, I would like to present initial research findings on a song written in the style of a lampoon in 1514 by Elia Levita, a well-known figure in Jewish circles of the Italian Renaissance, while he was living in Venice. This song, which we will call Hamavdil-lid, according to the first word of the text, was the subject of studies published in the 1920s, a period that produced remarkable work in the field of Yiddish philology. Since then, important new material has been discovered, stimulating further significant research. In light of these developments, Elia Levita’s lampoon can now be reappraised in the context of Yiddish literary culture, and also against the background of European literature in the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, and of Jewish history in Italy.