Poets and Rhymesters as Cultural Heroes in the Jewish Society of the Mediterranean Basin During the Middle Ages

This research aims to check the assumption that the cultural icons of Jewish communities in Islamic countries, in the Mediterranean Basin during the early Middle-Ages, were Jewish poets, or at least rhyming experts and poetry “technicians”. Through vast study of Genizah documents, in the purpose of outlining the shape of the leadership of Jewish communities in these Islamic countries, I realized that all leaders whose portraits I have studied, out of hundreds of letters and documents—were poem writers. Some of them were real poets, who created poems and liturgics of rare poetic qualities, and some were mere “technicians” who joined rhymes according to accepted rules of their time. By looking at those “technicians” poems, it seems that the writing has cost them a considerable mental effort, and yet they continued with the poem writing. The assumption is that in order to become a role model or a cultural hero, as we call it today, the leaders had to write poems and use them as a means for political and social advancement.