What folly my homeland has committed

These moving lines are extracted from a longer Hebrew lament over the death of the poet’s mother. Interestingly, at a certain point, a reader of this text (perhaps the later copyist) made emendations between the lines, reworking this poem into a memorial for the wife of a certain Samuel. This text offers an idealized portrait of a son’s mourning for his mother, cast as a dialogue between the dead woman and the poet.