Sepher HaMachbaroth [poetry]

FIRST BOOK PRINTED OF HEBREW POETRY Immanuel of Rome (c.1261-after 1328), a contemporary of Dante, is credited with introducing the sonnet into Hebrew poetry. Israel Zinberg noted wistfully that “while Dante was the harbinger of a new and brilliant period in Italian national poetry, the Jews of Italy did not produce a single significant poet after Immanuel. The golden age of the Italian Renaissance had virtually no influence on Jewish poetry.” Zinberg, A History of Jewish Literature, Vol. IV (1974) p. 9. Jewish law took a rather dim view of Immanuel’s work. Joseph Karo’s Shulchan Aruch expressly forbade reading the Machbaroth on the Sabbath, due to the erotic content of some of the poems. Machbereth is the Hebrew equivalent to the Arabic maqama (poem). Immanuel’s collection consists of 28 such Machbaroth. The final, twenty-eighth machbereth, “Ha-Topheth ve-ha-Eden” (Hell and Heaven) was directly inluenced by Dante’s Inferno