the Middle Ages was illiterate, for the poetic instinct was fed
on the fancies of the Midrash. This accounts for their lack of freshness
and originality. The poet was a scholar, and he was also a teacher. Much
of Kalir's work is didactic; it teaches the traditional explanations of
the Bible and the ritual laws for Sabbath and festivals; it provides a
convenient summary of the six hundred and thirteen precepts into which
the duties of the Law were arranged. But over and above all this the
genius of Kalir soars to poetic heights. So much has been said of
Kalir's obscurity that one quotation must, in fairness be given of Kalir
at his simplest and best. The passage is taken from a hymn sung on the
seventh day of Tabernacles, the day of the great Hosannas:

O give ear to the prayer of those who long for thy
salvation,
Rejoicing before thee with the willows of the brook,
And save us now!

O redeem the vineyard which thou hast planted,
And sweep thence the strangers, and save us now!
O regard the covenant which thou hast sealed in us!
O remember for us the father who knew thee,
To whom thou, too, didst make known thy love,
And save us now!

O deal wondrously with the pure in heart
That thy providence may be seen of men, and save us now!
O lift up Zion's sunken gates from the earth,
Exalt the spot to which our eyes all turn,
And save us now!

Such hymns won for Kalir popularity, which, however, is now much on the
wane.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

KALIR AND JANNAI.

Graetz.--III, 4.

Translations of Poems in Editions of the Prayer-Book, and _J.Q.R._,
VII, p. 460; IX, p. 291.

L.N. Dembitz,--_Jewish Services_, p. 222 _seq._

CHAPTER VIII

SAADIAH OF FAYUM

Translation of the Bible into Arabic.--Foundation of a Jewish
Philosophy of Religion.

Saadiah was born in Fayum (Egypt) in 892, and died in Sura in 942. He
was the founder of a new literature. In width of culture he excelled all
his Jewish contemporaries. To him Judaism was synonymous with culture,
and therefore he endeavored to absorb for Judaism all the literary and
scientific tendencies of his day. He created, in the first place, a
Jewish philosophy, that is to say, he applied to Jewish theology the
philosophical methods of the Arabs. Again, though he vigorously opposed
Karaism, he adopted its love of philology, and by his translation of the
Bible in