The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context

24 The Aramaic Bible: Targums in their Historical Context
this genre. The reading for the new moon of Nisan (Exod. 12) and
the story of the death of Moses at the conclusion of the Pentateuch
(Deut. 34) also elicited poetic embellishment. Michael Sokoloff and
Yosef Yahalom have edited a collection of these poems, based primarily
on Genizah manuscripts. 12
The first three lines of the alphabetic acrostic poem 'elison mah
meshabah haden yarhah... to Exod. 12.2, were first published by
E. Fleischer in 1968. 13 However, these were the last lines on the
verso of a single leaf, and the remainder of the poem was lost. (An
alphabetic acrostic poem in Hebrew or Aramaic may be presumed to
have originally had 22 lines.) This poem, which was probably recited
in the synagogue on Shabbat Hahodesh (the sabbath closest to the new
moon of Nisan) is a glorification of Nisan, the month in which the
Israelites were delivered from Egypt. It is of somewhat special
interest because it contains the words 'elison and Qiris (= kyrios),
albeit separately, in its first two lines. Twenty years after Fleischer's
publication, while scanning the Additional Series in Cambridge, I
discovered a second copy of this poem, preserving more than half of
the original composition and containing some interesting variants.
A popular Aramaic poem on the death of Moses is 'azlat Yokheved,
which tells of Yokheved, mother of Moses, seeking her son after his
death. The first Genizah exemplar of this composition emerged in the
process of preparing the comprehensive catalogue in Cambridge.
Of a slightly different genre is the Aramaic introductory poem
(r'shut), which was recited by the Meturgeman before beginning the
Targum to the Torah lection or the Targum of the Haftarah. Leopold
Zunz was the first to list poems of this sort that he collected from
mahzor manuscripts. 14 A common theme for introducing the Targum
of the Haftarah was praise of Jonathan ben Uzziel, traditional author
of the Targum of the Prophets. The Meturgeman might mention the
debate between Jonathan and the heavenly voice, when Jonathan completed
the translation of the Prophets and further desired to reveal the
'secrets' of the Hagiographa. Another favored motif tells how a bird
that flew above the holy rabbi was consumed by the fire of his Torah.
12. The volume, titled Aramaic Poems from the Byzantine Period (Hebrew), is in
an advanced stage of preparation.
13. E. Fleischer, 'The Great New Moon', Tarbiz 37 (1967-68), pp. 265-78.
14. L. Zunz, Literaturgeschichte tier Synagogalen Poesie (Berlin, 1865),
pp. 79-80.