Even if the quarter-dinar

Ephraim of Regensburg

Mid-12th Century

Even if the quarter dinar for the bird ofering is gone,
even if God has emptied out the tent where he used to dwell,
let us not perish on this account,
for we still have an old father!
Treat us favorably,
as we address You, recalling his righteousness.
You commanded him, “Please take your dear son,
and squeeze out his blood against the altar wall.”
He ran to the youth, to designate him as holy,
and their souls were so entwined,
he crowned him, with wood and fre to bear,
a divine crown upon his head.
His only-born son, light as a deer,
spoke up to him, and said, “Father,
here we are bringing the wood and the fre,
but we are not bringing any sacrifice?”
His father responded, so as not to confound him.
He spoke up, and said these words to him,
“God will see to it that there be a lamb for Him,
and the Lord will make known what is His.” [ . . . ]
They saw a [divine] fre atop the mountain,
and they hastened to perform the burnt-ofering.
Together, with total love,
they made a straight path in the wasteland.
The only-born son saw that he was the lamb,
and he said to his father, who was being tested,
“Prepare me like a lamb;
have no compassion, make no cover-up.” [ . . . ]
He stretched out his neck of his own accord,
and his father approached him
to slaughter him, as his own personal ofering—
but there was the Lord, standing above him!
He called out to [Abraham], whom he had sought out since before birth,
“Instead of your son, you should choose—
Look!—a ram, behind you.
Do this, and tarry not!” [ . . . ]
May the memorial of this, in heaven before you,
forever be inscribed in the book,
an eternal covenant, not to be erased,
with Abraham and Isaac. [ . . . ]
Those who cry out, kneeling before you,
take diligent care of them, in the merit of the Akedah.
Take account of your fock, with mercy,
as the fock turn toward the Binding.1
Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

Notes

1. [The last words of this poem refer to the Jewish community at prayer as “the fock turn[ing] toward the Binding [‘akod],” that is, as your fock, the Jewish people, contemplate the Binding of Isaac and put their trust in its merit; this is a punning reuse of Genesis 30:40, where Jacob turns his sheep to “face the speckled [‘akod]” branches of wood in order to inspire them to produce speckled ofspring.—Trans.]

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

Engage with this Source

This is a seliḥah (penitential poem) for the liturgy of the penitential season, specifically of the genre called ‘ake-dah, which recounts the story of the binding of Isaac and begs for mercy in its merit. The poet begins with the Jewish people bereft, a result of the destruction of the Temple, based on the Babylonian Talmud, Keritot 9a. In the ideal situation, a convert to the Jewish religion must, as part of the conversion process, bring a sacrifice to the Temple. But after the destruction of the Temple, this requirement was replaced by a requirement to set aside a quarter dinar, the cost of the least expensive bird sacrifice, to be held until the rebuilding of the Temple. When it became clear that the exile was not going to be

short, Yohanan ben Zakkai abolished even the quarter dinar, because the money earmarked for the sacrifice would be likely to end up accidentally being spent on something else. The Jewish community is without even a monetary substitute for the Temple. Nonetheless, the Jewish people still has the merit of Abraham to protect them. This is the only poem of Ashkenazic origin to be widely accepted also in Sephardic rites.

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Creator Bio

Ephraim of Regensburg

1110–1175

Ephraim ben Isaac of Regensburg was a member of the Jewish court (bet din) in Regensburg and the author of numerous talmudic writings and several liturgical poems. He studied with Jacob ben Meir (1100–1071; Rabbenu Tam) in France, and several of his halakhic letters are preserved in Rabbenu Tam’s Sefer ha-yas-har (The Upright Book). At some point, Ephraim became embroiled in a legal dispute in Speyer and moved to Regensburg. He wrote Tosafot and a commentary, almost entirely lost, on the parts of the Talmud dealing with tort law. Some of his liturgical poems lament the 1137 massacre of Jews in Regensburg and the tribulations that Jews faced during the Second Crusade.

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