Introduction, ‘Singing in the vernacular.

Abstract

Michael Sokoloff and Yoseph Yahalom’s ground-breaking collection Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity: Critical Edition with Introduction and Commentary (JPAPLA),1 contains a broad range of poetic texts in Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, representing a variety of genres and (presumably) Sitz im Leben as well. Most of them have not yet been subject to substantial analysis. At the December 2017 annual conference of the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) in Washington, D.C., a session was arranged to deal with some of this poetry, in an attempt to establish a place for it on the map of ‘Jewish History and Culture in Late Antiquity’. Entitled ‘Singing in the Vernacular: Jewish Palestinian Aramaic Poetry in Performance and Interpretation’, the session presented three approaches to this poetic material: one of a broad nature by Laura S. Lieber, and two more narrowly focused by Abraham J. (A.J.) Berkovitz and Moshe J. Bernstein, followed by a response from Michael Swartz. (from Introduction)One of the most significant themes shared by the studies in this issue is intertextuality. Several authors conduct systematic analyses of the relationship between Aramaic poems and their biblical antecedents, while one study argues that the repetition of refrains in Jewish Aramaic poetry has much in common with the practice of public acclamation in the Greco-Roman world. Each of these studies also advances the question of the Sitz im Leben of Jewish Aramaic poetry in Palestine in late antiquity, including the context of its performance. The historical context of these poems is reflected in the way the poets addressed the conditions of their times. This response ends by singling out a number of further questions.