Poetry and Memory in Karaite Prayer

Book excerpt: In Poetry and Memory in Karaite Prayer Joachim Yeshaya offers an edition of liturgical poems which the Karaite poet Moses Darʿī composed in twelfth-century Egypt as introductory poems for the Torah readings on each Sabbath. The Hebrew text and Judaeo-Arabic heading of each poem are provided in the original order attested in the manuscript NLR Evr. I 802, dated to the fifteenth century. Every poem comes with a commentary section consisting of English commentary essays and bilingual (Hebrew / English) line-by-line annotations. In the conclusion following this edition, Joachim Yeshaya demonstrates how Darʿī’s liturgical poems are among the earliest examples of the introduction of poetry, Andalusian Rabbanite poetical norms, and the “memory” of being exiled from Jerusalem into Karaite prayer.