I am turning [to you] to help you

Hayya Ga’on

Early 11th Century

I am turning [to you] to help you,

so that I can make you increase in wealth.

Request what I should give you;

open your mouth and speak.

I will fulfill all that you ask;

I will not decrease from it or change it.

In my city and in my community,

and in writing and in letters.

From the very edges of the earth,

I am an agent for you.

I will sustain your scholars

with support, as my own children,

And I will be present, in times of need,

like a grape in the wilderness. [ . . . ]

May [God] bless your dwellings,

your barns and your storehouses,

Your threshing-floors, winepresses,

house, and domicile,

Wheat, spelt,

millet, and barley,

Figs, olives,

apples, and dates,

Grapevines and grape juice,

and types of olive oil,

And the olive-pickler,

the wine-cask,

The winepress,

and the pit.¹ [ . . . ]

As for your foes, your enemies,

who are hostile to you and attack you—

May [God] shoot them out of the hollow of a sling,

and scatter them to corners and clip them off.

May He place them as a curse,

with furious rage, and curse them,

And smite them with consumption

and fever and extreme burning,

And scab and itch

and ratan [a skin disease] and hemorrhoids. [ . . . ]

May my God answer my call,

and heed and grant my plea,

That you ascend far up,

to heights reaching heaven.

See, O my people,

and gaze at this shining light [Judah],

Take joy in him, in great measure,

gloriously and excessively.

His praises spare me

from fabricating or lying.

If anyone says that it is not so,

that my words are merely approximate,

I will answer with words.

I will not remain silent or stop myself.

Is he not the one who sustains our sages,

and clothes them, up to the jewelry he has bought?

And their eyes look toward him,

as to dew or a container of grain! [ . . . ]

. . . to inscribe [this poem]

with an iron or lead pen,

to incise it on a tablet,

with the point of a diamond,

to spread it out in front of [Judah],

to be like drops for his eyes,

to place it in his mouth,

to arrange it as divine speech,

to strengthen its gates

with diacritics and annotations [masorah],

to train every child to repeat it,

like the parashah and haftarah,

to read it every Sabbath,

to read it as Scripture, each month.

Let it be written and preserved

for the next generation, the people to be born.

And here I end.

I seal and preserve it.

Just as I began with his good name,

so shall I seal it, and say:

Judah, our beloved,

who is a noble [aluf] and the Rosh ha-Seder!

Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

Notes

[Perhaps the container that catches the juice from the winepress.—Trans.]

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

These lines are excerpted from a very long panegyric—around two hundred lines in total—in honor of Judah Rosh ha-Seder (“head of the order,” a title indicating a high status in a geonic academy) (d. 1020), of Qayrawān, Tunisia, a wealthy trader. Several other poets also wrote panegyrics for Judah during his lifetime, including Isaac Ibn Khalfūn (ca. 970–d. after 1020) and at least one anonymous poet. Hayya begins by assuring Judah of his willingness to act as Judah’s agent, and over the course of the poem, he ranges through a number of themes standard to panegyrics. In the final section, however, Hayya strikingly compares his own poem to the Torah itself, suggesting it should have cantillation marks and Masoretic annotations and be chanted ceremonially, to edify the community for years to come. The unbracketed ellipsis indicates a lacuna in the manuscript.

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I am turning [to you] to help you

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