Did you love my death day?

Did you1 love my death day when you wrote:
 “Have you betrayed, and annulled the [marital] bonds?”
How could I betray a learned woman like you,
 when God has commanded [to be faithful] to the wife of one’s youth?
If my heart would plot to abandon you,
 I would decree a thousand decrees against it.
May God crush the one that betrays a friend
 with hostile, cruel, alien betrayal.
May leopards eat his very flesh,
 and may eagles lap up his blood.
And who is like the stars of heaven . . .
Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

Notes

[Plural. The scholar of medieval Hebrew poetry Ezra Fleischer interpreted this as addressing a group of the poet’s wife’s friends, who have sent a letter on her behalf (in addition to the one that she herself has sent).—Trans.]

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 3: Encountering Christianity and Islam.

Engage with this Source

This Hebrew poem is written as a response to “Will he, her beloved, remember?”; the two were found copied together on a page found in the Cairo Geniza. The ellipsis at the end of the poem indicates where the manuscript breaks off.

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