The words of our lips

10th Century

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This complex poem deals with the Jewish calendar and was meant to be recited on the Sabbath just before the first of Nisan (Shabbat ha-Hodesh), when the new year begins, according to biblical and some rabbinic tradition. Throughout the poem, Adonim refers to Tishri as the first month and Nisan as the seventh. These excerpts review Israel’s chosenness and then discuss many of the standard rules of the medieval rabbinic calendar. Like Se‘adya Ga’on and many others, Adonim ascribes these rules to ancient tradition.

This is the opening poem that our master and teacher Adonim ha-Levi of Fez, son of R. Nissim, whose soul is in paradise, composed to recite [lit., expound] on Shabbat ha-Hodesh. This is its text:

The words of our lips begin with thankful praise, and the stirrings of our hearts stir with hymns, to render blessing to the lofty One, who is elevated above all heads.

He is high above all blessings and praise. He is one and cannot be comprehended.

He is alone and cannot be counted. He exists but has no beginning.

He is mighty, and we cannot know Him. The number of His years is unfathomable. [ . . . ]

He is the head of all beginnings, but He has no beginning or start, and He is with the last ones, having no end or last point.

He created all that there is, from nothingness to existence; He made existence fixed in air that cannot be caught.¹ [ . . . ]

He established the first acquisition [i.e., the Torah, see Proverbs 8:22], and she is the beginning of the way, before the stars of heaven, before the dust of the earth.

She has six edges, and she quarried seven ancient things of the universe, which occurred in [God’s] mind.²

Jacob [i.e., the Jewish people] are called by her, and [they] constitute the witnesses of her Master. They study her words, and this never departs from them.

The first one from whom they are quarried [Abraham]; the place exalted from aforetime [the Temple]; among them the name Yinnon, which is in front of the sun.³

And the throne of glory, established since the beginning, and the inferno, and paradise, already set up yesterday.

The balm [i.e., repentance] preceded; it came before the birth of the mountains and hills [i.e., the patriarchs and matriarchs] and the fruit [the Jewish people] that resulted from them.

All of them are drawn, faithfully standing, brought by means of love, from then and forevermore.

Their work is eternal, the kingdom of priests, and their descendants, their progeny, are established in His presence.

In keeping [the commandments] is great reward [see Psalms 19:12], to study and to teach; the first of the commandments is to keep and perform [them].

In the world, which is judged at four seasons,⁴ it, too, is divided into four heads.⁵

On the twenty-fifth of Elul were created the four mothers [elements], to be weighed in scales—

[the fiery heavens], reckoned with [God’s] handsbreadth; [the dust of the earth], contained in a measure; [the waters], calculated in the hollow [of His hand]; [the air], gathered in [His] fist.

The light was a burning fire, created through His might—the moon and the sun and the stars to have dominion [see Genesis 1:18].

All three served, behaving, for three days. They were divided, due to [the moon’s] complaint,⁶ at twenty [hours] and the completion of 408 [parts of 3.33 seconds each].

Their complaint appeased the ruler of darkness, for this is his portion, his appointed lot.⁷

For [the calculation of] four days, eight hours, and 876 parts⁸ is the support for BaHaRaD;⁹ [the moon ruled] for [the remaining] three hours and 672 parts [of the day, and then throughout the night] until twelve hours and no parts.

[God created the luminaries] to distinguish [day from night], and to rule, and to be signs for the appointed days, the times, the days, and the years.

They are the signs for the beginning of the order of the hours, and the mnemonic is efse‘a, and half is metek.¹⁰

The hour is the primary unit for the calculation of the days; and 28 [days] plus 36 [hours] plus 793 [parts], make the sanctification of the month.

The days are divided for impurity, and for counting, and for atonement, and for daily offerings, and for the festivals observed in exile.

The month is the primary unit for [a year], the completion of [all] months; and the years are divided into ten cycles.

One of which is the nineteen-[year cycle], which is necessary [to calculate] time: seven [leap years], corresponding to [the seven days of] Creation; and the remainder are for all.¹¹

And other matters,¹² a multitude of delays; and the Four Tables [for calculating the calendar for different types of years], and the eight delays [when the lunar new year starts a day later].

And four things not to do [i.e., four reasons not to establish the new year on the day of the mean lunar conjunction]: it is a tradition for the holidays that their head, [the New Year], not be on ADU [acronym for Sunday, Wednesday, Friday].

And the first day of the year is when the sabbatical year begins, and the sabbatical cycle, and the fifty-year [ jubilee] year.

And the year of the festivals is about seven months; it begins in the seventh month, and ends in the first.¹³

The seventh month [Nisan], counting from the first [Tishri], is the first of the months, and the first for the festivals, and the first [for which the emissaries] go out,¹⁴ and the first for the pilgrimage holidays [Passover, Shavuot, and Sukkot].

The first of the firsts is the fourteenth [of Nisan];¹⁵ it is the first day of commandments, and of keeping the unleavened bread.

One may eat [leavened grain products] for the first four hours, and leave them for the fifth, and burn them at the beginning of the sixth—and slaughter the paschal offering.

And the first day of the first [pilgrimage festival, i.e., the first full day of Passover] is the first day of eating [unleavened bread?], and the first day of the special festival offerings [ḥagigah], and the holy times.

And the beginning of ascension¹⁶ is fifty [days] from the seventh [month]; on its morrow they heard, and on the fourth they ate [?].

The ninth [month, Sivan] counting from first month, and the third counting from the seventh—its sixth day is Shavuot, and the second from the first.¹⁷

And the first of the count of seven weeks and seven Sabbaths [is the same day of the week as] the day of Hoshana.¹⁸

And the sixth [of Sivan], the first day to eat the first fruits,¹⁹ and the morrow of the Sabbath, and the morrow of the seventh [week].²⁰

Translated by Gabriel Wasserman.

Notes

[This is based on an obscure description of creation in the work Sefer yetsirah.—Trans.]

[See Genesis Rabbah 1:4, b. Pesaḥim 54a, Tanḥuma, ed. Buber, Naso 1 9 . —Trans.]

[According to a rabbinic tradition, Yinnon is the messiah’s name. See Psalms 72:12 and Genesis Rabbah 1:4.—Trans.]

[According to m. Rosh Hashanah 1:2, the world is judged by God four times a year: on Passover, on Shavuot, on Rosh Hashanah, and on Sukkot.—Trans.]

[I.e., the year is divided at four turning points: the two solstices and the two equinoxes; or, alternatively, at the four new years listed in m. Rosh Hashanah 1:1 (1 Nisan, 1 Elul, 1 Tishri, 1 or 15 Shevat). Alternatively, the world is divided into four elements. (The language is from Genesis 2:10, about the river in the garden of Eden.).—Trans.]

[According to b. Ḥullin 60b, the sun and moon started at equal size, but the moon complained, for which she was punished and made smaller.—Trans.]

[This seems to mean that God appeased the moon by making it the sole ruler of the night. However, the syntax is difficult.—Trans.]

[The time that a year of twelve mean lunar months drifts, in terms of days of the week, from the previous one.—Trans.]

[An acronym for the moment that the mean conjunction (when the sun and moon are considered to be in the same celestial longitude) of Tishri took place the next year, the end of the first year of creation, from which all subsequent astronomical calculations are based. The acronym means: Monday (B), five (H) hours, 204 (RD) parts. If, in the previous year, Tishri’s moon was “born” (new) on Wednesday, at 20 hours and 408 parts, then BaHaRaD results from the calendar drift of 4 days, 8 hours, and 876 parts. Note that in most sources, BaHaRaD was the mean conjunction of Tishri in the first days of creation; the idea that it was in the year after creation is attested only here, in Targum Pseudo-Jonathan, and in Evyatar ha-Kohen’s Megilat Evyatar (The Scroll of Evyatar) .—Trans.]

[These words literally mean “I would march” and “sweetness,” but here they are mnemonics, following their numerical values: 1,080 (the number of parts in an hour—the word efse‘a breaks into alef-peh, 1080, and sha‘a, an hour) and 540. —Trans.]

[The meaning is uncertain.—Trans.]

[These words are in Aramaic, alluding to the phrase in the b. Rosh Hashanah 20a, where Abba the father of R. Simlai asks Samuel whether he knows a certain obscure matter of calendrical calculation, Samuel responds that he does not, and Abba concludes that there must also be “other matters” (presumably also about calendrical calculation) that Samuel does not know.—Trans.]

[I.e., the holidays fall within the seven-month period between Nisan and Tishri.—Trans.]

[According to m. Rosh Hashanah 1:3, there are seven months when the Sanhedrin sent emissaries to far-fung communities to inform them when the month began; the first is Nisan.—Trans.]

[According to b. Pesaḥim 5a, the word rishon, literally “first,” is an epithet for the 14th of Nisan.—Trans.]

[The language is from Ezra 7:9 (where it refers to the day when Ezra began to ascend from Babylonia to Jerusalem, the first of Nisan); here it seems to refer to the 20th of Iyyar, the date when the Israelites “ascended,” or got up, from their encampment at Mount Sinai, according to Numbers 10:11.—Trans.]

[Perhaps this refers to the 2nd day of Shavuot (observed only in the diaspora), counted from the first.—Trans.]

[I.e., according to the fixed system, the 16th of Nisan (when the count from Passover to Shavuot begins) falls on the same day of the week as Hoshana Rabbah, the seventh day of Sukkot.—Trans.]

[The first fruit offerings are brought (and consumed by the priests) over the summer, between Shavuot and Sukkot. The season is inaugurated by the festival of Shavuot, when no private first fruit offerings are brought, but the Two Loaves, described in Leviticus 23:17, are consumed by the priests.—Trans.]

[According to Leviticus 23:11, the first day of the count is on “the morrow of the Sabbath”; rabbinic tradition understands the word “Sabbath” here to mean not Saturday, but the festival day of the 15th of Nisan. This day necessarily falls on the same day of the week as Shavuot, the morrow of the end of the seventh week.—Trans.]

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

The words of our lips

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