Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity: Translations and Commentaries. Cambridge Genizah Studies Series, Volume 8

In Jewish Aramaic Poetry from Late Antiquity, Laura Suzanne Lieber offers annotated translations of sixty-nine poems written between the 4th and 7th century C.E. in the Land of Israel, along with commentaries and introductions. The poems celebrate a range of occasions from the ritual year and the life-cycle: Passover, Shavuot (Pentacost), the Ninth of Av, Purim, the New Moon of Nisan, the conclusion of the Torah, weddings, and funerals.

Written in the vernacular of the Jews of living in Palestine after the Christianization of the Roman Empire, these works offer insight into lived Jewish experience during a pivotal age. The volume contextualizes the individual works so that readers from a range of backgrounds can appreciate the formal, linguistic, exegetical, theological, and performative creativity of these works.

Lieber has produced reliable renderings, as well as learned and helpful annotations, and has consistently expressed herself in clear and elegant fashion….Her volume is an important, scientific study in its own right, as well as a useful reference tool (if read alongside the Sokoloff-Yahalom edition), and certainly deserves a wide readership. - Stefan C. Reif, St John’s College, Cambridge, UK, in: Journal of Jewish Studies 70.2 (2019)

Scholars of Judaism in late antiquity and the early Middle Ages will certainly appreciate Lieber’s effort in offering all of this textual material to them in conveniently accessible form. Almost every student of Judaism in those eras, regardless of academic specialty, is likely to find something of interest and value in the poems that she has translated. - Mose J. Bernstein, Yeshiva University, Speculum 95/3 (2020)