Although scholars have long been aware of the existence of Hebraico-French glosses, and to a lesser extent, texts, we can date the beginnings of intense scholarly interest in Hebraico-French literature and Judeo-French language to the mid- to late nineteenth century. The most famous of the early researchers were Arsène Darmesteter (1846–1888) and David S. Blondheim (1884–1934). Both edited and published Hebraico-French texts and glosses but died tragically young.8 Among their most famous publications are compilations begun by Darmesteter and completed by Blondheim of the Old French glosses scattered throughout the biblical and talmudic commentaries of the celebrated medieval commentator Rabbi Shlomo Yitsḥaqi (Solomon ben Isaac) of Troyes, better known as Rashi (1040–1105). Blondheim was a particularly fine editor, and I have often been impressed by the exceptional accuracy of his work.
Here we must also mention Louis Brandin, who in 1905, along with Mayer Lambert, published an edition of a Hebrew-French glossary owned by the Bibliothèque nationale de France.9 This volume was one of the first to make the major genre of the medieval Hebrew-French glossary available to a wide modern public, even if the glossaries themselves, of which several survive today, had already been studied to some extent by scholars such as Darmesteter, Joseph Österreicher, and Leopold Zunz.
In the mid- and late twentieth century, major researchers in the field of Judeo-French studies included Menahem Banitt, Hiram Peri (formerly Heinz Pflaum), and Raphael Levy. Menahem Banitt (born Max Berenblut) edited with great skill and meticulousness a number of Jewish texts in French, among them two major glossaries, Le glossaire de Bâle and Le glossaire de Leipzig, and various shorter works. He engaged in extensive historical, linguistic, and graphic analysis of these texts and others and explored issues such as the Judeo-French dialect question and the use of the vernacular in medieval Jewish education. Peri’s contributions to the field include a fine edition of two Jewish hymns in Old French and a survey of Jewish prayer in the vernacular. Levy is most famous for his edition of the aforementioned Comencement de sapience and for his lexicographical work. Levy’s lexicographical and other linguistic studies of “Judeo-French” were criticized by Banitt as selective and non-scientific.10 Nonetheless, they are valuable resources for the modern scholar, who, for example, can use Levy’s Trésor de la langue des Juifs français au moyen âge or Contribution à la lexicographie française selon d’anciens textes d’origine juive to identify attestations of particular Old French words in Jewish texts. Other twentieth-century scholars who have made important contributions to the field include Moché Catane (born Paul Klein; 1920–1995) and Joseph Greenberg, who published editions of Rashi’s Old French glosses, and who studied glosses by Joseph Kara and Rashbam (Rabbi Samuel ben Meir), respectively, as well.11
Recent years have seen a surge of interest in Jewish texts and glosses in French. Scholars Daniel Fano and Yona Bar-Maoz, working on the Miqra’ot Gedolot “HaKeter” project in Israel, have performed meticulous comparative analysis of Old French glosses found in manuscripts of medieval commentaries in Hebrew, in many cases correcting transmission errors. This makes the Miqra’ot Gedolot “HaKeter” series the most reliable source available to scholars wishing to study the glosses of the northern French commentators in full context. Cyril Aslanov has published selected Old French glosses from commentaries on Ezekiel by Joseph Kara and Eleazar of Beaugency, and I have published the glosses from Kara’s commentary on Isaiah and glosses from fragments of his commentary on Psalms, as well as analysis of Kara’s Job glosses, and studies of one Hebrew-French wedding song and the Troyes elegy. Jordan Penkower has prepared editions of glosses from the commentaries of Rashi and pseudo-Rashi. Marc Kiwitt and Stefanie Zaun have both worked extensively on a Hebraico-French medical treatise from the late thirteenth century or early fourteenth century, and Kiwitt has also worked extensively on glossaries.
The importance of the Hebraico-French corpus is perhaps best illustrated by the fascination it engenders in scholars in related fields. These include Samuel Rosenberg and Wendy Pfeffer, specialists in medieval French literature, and Susan Einbinder, specialist in medieval Hebrew literature and Jewish history, who have all written studies of individual Hebraico-French poetic compositions. The specialized knowledge of medieval French and Jewish history, literature, and music that these scholars possess gives their studies a freshness and originality that I have found stimulating, and like them, I strive always to study Hebraico-French texts in their larger social, cultural, and historical context.
Despite these many contributions to the study of Jewish literature in French, this corpus is sometimes ignored or deemphasized by modern scholars. To be fair, this is not without reason: it is far smaller and more limited in terms of genre than the corpus of medieval Jewish texts in Hebrew or of medieval French texts in the Latin alphabet. Marius Sala estimates the number of Hebraico-French manuscripts at at least one hundred.12 Although I believe the actual number is somewhat higher, most are Hebrew manuscripts that contain only words in French. (See Appendix 1.) Moreover, the Hebraico-French texts that we do have tend to be short, often containing fewer than ten lines. Only eleven Hebraico-French poetic works are known, including a mere couplet in a longer Hebrew text. Aside from Hebrew-French glossaries, only one full-length Hebraico-French text is known—this is the aforementioned medical treatise.13
It is nonetheless striking that from the end of the nineteenth century to the mid-twentieth century, Hebraico-French poetry was often mentioned in surveys of Old French literature, such as Lajard’s Histoire littéraire de la France, or the surveys written by Paul Zumthor and Urban T. Holmes.14 In more recent general works, these poems are typically not mentioned.
Jewish studies scholars have remained more or less conscious of Hebraico-French texts and glosses ever since Darmesteter brought the Troyes elegy to the public’s attention. Nonetheless, the Hebraico-French corpus often seems to be overlooked by scholars studying medieval Jewish literature in Hebrew and Arabic. Chaim Rabin, contrasting the abundance of Judeo-Arabic texts with the (relative) absence of Jewish vernacular texts in continental Europe, asserts, “In France, pre-1290 England, and Germany, mishnaic Hebrew was the language for all written purposes, including religious poetry (there being no worldly poetry in that society).”15 Norman Golb writes of medieval Normandy during the Angevin period, “[Hebraic culture] was all embracing, including the study and practice of Jewish law, religious worship, the formulation of communal and regional enactments, and personal written expression, all taking place in Hebrew rather than in Latin or French.”16 That Hebraic culture embraced Jewish life in medieval France cannot be denied; and on almost every occasion that a medieval French-speaking Jew put pen to parchment, it was indeed to write in Hebrew.17 But if Hebrew culture was all-embracing in some respects, then vernacular culture was all-embracing in others. The vernacular was the mother tongue and the spoken language par excellence for all ages and both genders. Hebrew was indeed the language of Jewish law, worship, communal enactments, and a host of other matters, but discussion of these was carried on not only in Hebrew but also in the vernacular. The content and structure of Hebrew-French biblical glossaries, for example, suggest that the study and teaching of the Hebrew Bible was accomplished through the medium of the spoken language. Evidence also suggests that in addition to the written, Hebrew Bible, the Jews of medieval France had an oral, vernacular version, called by Banitt the Old French Vulgate.18
Limits of This Study
This study focuses on the relationship between language, history, and identity, and at its core are Hebraico-French and Hebrew-French texts that survive in medieval Jewish manuscripts, some published previously, some newly edited for this project. This core determined which of the many threads that make up the linguistic culture of medieval French-speaking Jews would be taken up here, and which I would leave for other scholars or future studies. The focus on Hebraico-French texts has led me to pursue topics such as influences on the genesis