A Book of Spells, a Hymn, and a Love Song: Two Yiddish Songs in a Magic Anthology

• In Event: And you shall tell”: Anthological Practices in Late-Antique, Medieval, and Early Modern Jewish Writings

Abstract

Ms. Orient 18 found in the State Library of Kassel, contains a collection of magical recipes and spells, written mostly in Yiddish. According to the colophon found in the manuscript, it was copied by Yaakov ben Rabbi Moshe Shalit in 1566. Surprisingly, although the codex is almost entirely an anthology of magical and medical materials, it also includes two songs in Yiddish. One is a translation of a Protestant hymn popular in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries; the other is a love song, a rare genre in early modern Yiddish literature. These songs do not appear in the margins of the manuscript or on separate pages. Rather, they are copied within the main body of the codex, likely by the same Yaakov ben Rabbi Moshe Shalit, the manuscript’s primary scribe. This talk focuses on the newly discovered Yiddish songs and their function within a magical anthology.

Author

• Roni Cohen, Goethe University, Frankfurt am Main