From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Shmuel-Bukh
Shmuel-Bukh
The Shmuel-Bukh is a religious verse epic written in Yid- Its authorship is a matter of controversy. The next
dish. Composed no later than the second half of the 15th to last stanza of one surviving manuscript says that it
century and widely circulated in manuscript, it was first Vearba.
was "made" by Moshe Esrim Vearba No one can be sure
printed in Augsburg in 1544. Its stanzaic form resembles whether this "maker" is the author or a copyist, and Esrim
that of the Nibelungenlied, and its hero is the biblical Vearba is Hebrew for 24, the number of books of the He-
David. Although it was less popular than the roughly con- brew Bible, so the name is almost certainly a pseudonym.
temporary, secular Bovo-Bukh, Sol Liptzin characterizes it Zalman Shazar (president of Israel 1963–1973) believed
as the greatest Old Yiddish religious epic. [Liptzin, 1972, that it was written by an Ashekenazi rabbi active in Con-
8–9]. stantinople (now Istanbul) in the second half of the 15th
Following the example of other European epics, the century. [Liptzin, 1972, 8-9]
poem was not simply recited, but sung or chanted to mu- The work draws on the Hebrew Bible, the Haggadah,
sical accompaniment. Its melody was widely known in and German chivalric tales. [Liptzin, 1972, 9]
Jewish communities. Far from being a rhymed adapta-
tion of the Biblical Book of Samuel, it fuses Biblical ma-
terial, Midrashic legends and rabbinical folklore with the
References
European courtly poetry, rendering king David into a me- • Liptzin, Sol, A History of Yiddish Literature, Jonathan
dieval chivalric hero, thus creating an Ashkenazic na- David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN
tional epic, comparable to the Nibelungenlied and The 0-8246-0124-6.
Song of Roland.[1] [1] Introduction to Old Yiddish literature By Jean
Baumgarten, Jerold C. Frakes
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Categories:
• Yiddish stubs
• Yiddish literature
• Epic poems
• Yiddish folklore
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