
Contributor(s): Aharon N. Varady (transcription), Isaac Gantwerk Mayer (naqdanut), Susan Weingarten (translation), Moshe Shmi'el Dascola and Unknown Author(s)
Shared on כ״ח בתמוז ה׳תשע״ו (2016-08-03) — under the following terms: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike (CC BY-SA) 4.0 International copyleft license
Categories: Megillot, Ḥanukkah Readings, Ḥag haBanot (Eid el Benat)
Tags: women, Judith, anti-predatory, dairy foods, soporifics, resistance, Megillat Yehudit, High Middle Ages, 14th century C.E., heroic women, חג הבנות Ḥag HaBanot, 52nd century A.M., derivative work
This is a faithful transcription of the text of the medieval Megillat Yehudith (the Scroll of Judith), not to be confused with the deutero-canonical Book of Judith, authored in Antiquity. We have further set this text side-by-side with the English translation made by Susan Weingarten, and vocalized and cantillated the Hebrew so that it may be chanted. . . .
A soliloquy in the voice of Judith. . . .
“Odecha 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[ref]See Grintz, Sefer Yehudit, pp. 205, 207–08[/ref] 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).) . . .
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