אוֹדְךָ כִּי אָנַֽפְתָּ בִּי | Odekha Ki Anafta Bi, a Yotser (Hymn) for Ḥanukkah by Yosef bar Shlomo of Carcassone (ca. 11th cent.)

“Odekha ki anafta bi (I give thanks to you although you were angry with me) was composed by Joseph ben Solomon of Carcassonne, who is dated to the first half of the eleventh century. This elegant and abstruse poem tells an epic tale of the Jews’ resistance to the decrees of Antiochus IV and includes accounts of both the Hasmonean bride and Judith. It bears a considerable resemblance to texts 4 and 12 of the Hanukkah midrashim (find Grintz, Sefer Yehudit, pp. 205, 207–08) and this is evidence for the circulation of the joint Hasmonean daughter-Judith tales in the eleventh century, even if the surviving manuscripts of these stories are from a later date.” (Deborah Levine Gera, “The Jewish Textual Traditions” in The Sword of Judith: Judith Studies Across the Disciplines (2010).)

Categories:

Ḥanukkah, Ḥag haBanot (Eid el Benat) Readings

Tags:

11th century C.E., 49th century A.M., acrostic, Alphabetic Acrostic, High Middle Ages, Judith, Megillat Yehudit, פיוטים piyyuṭim, predation

Contributor(s):

Yosef ben Shlomo of Carcassonne, Girls in Trouble and Sara Reguer (translation)

💬 מַעֲשֵׂה היְהוּדִית | Ma’aseh haYehudit — the story of Judith as found in the Sefer Ḥemdat Yamim

The text of Ma’aseh Yehudit, the story of Judith, as found in Sefer Ḥemdat Yamim, a mystical compilation of customs and tiqqunim first published in İzmir in around 1731. (This text is also found as “Maaseh Yehudit, Version 2” in Judah David Eisenstein’s monumental Otzar Midrashim compilation.) Sefer Ḥemdat Yamim is a unique work, likely compiled by a Sabbatean but largely based on earlier pre-Sabbatean mystical sources, and because of this any specific text in it is quite difficult to date. This specific version of the story of Judith shows substantial influence from the Septuagintal text not found in earlier Jewish variants, giving a likely terminus post quem of several generations after the Inquisition when Spanish benei anusim brought their knowledge of the Vulgate’s apocrypha with them to Judaism. Even so, it is very clearly a fundamentally Jewish work. It is appropriate to recite on Yom haBanot (1 Tevet) or any time throughout Ḥanukkah, perhaps with Esther cantillation.

Categories:

Extracanonical Megillot, Ḥanukkah Readings, Ḥag haBanot (Eid el Benat) Readings

Tags:

18th century C.E., 55th century A.M., חג הבנות Ḥag HaBanot, heroic women, Judith, Megillat Yehudit, predation, resistance, soporifics, women

Contributor(s):

Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (translation), Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (transcription & naqdanut) and Unknown