Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. Sefer ha`ibbur: A Treatise on the Calendar by Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. Translated and Annotated by Mordechai S. Goodman. Jersey City: KTAV Publishing House, 2011. 300 pp. $59.50, cloth, ISBN 978-1-60280-160-8.

Reviewed by Shlomo Sela

Published on H-Judaic (February, 2012)

Commissioned by Jason Kalman (Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion)

The calendar was always high on the agenda ish law, in order to strengthen and safeguard the of educated Jewish audiences in the . Jewish calendaric regulations as they knew and The ritual and social connotations of the calendar described them. On the other hand, they ex‐ had enormous consequences for the collective re‐ plained the foundations of the Jewish calendar by ligious awareness of medieval societies, and all implementing the tools provided by the new Gre‐ the more so for the national identity of a minority co- astronomy with whom Andalusian in‐ medieval community. By the tenth century, a sta‐ tellectuals had become acquainted. The latter ble perpetual calendar had been promulgated, su‐ point is our main justifcation for designating perseding the ad hoc determination of new their calendaric work as scientifc. and intercalations by the supreme reli‐ Ibn Ezra owes his reputation to his outstand‐ gious court in Roman Palestine. Even though ing biblical commentaries, but he also wrote reli‐ there was very little to add to these rules, gious and secular poetry; monographs on theolo‐ eleventh- and twelfth-century Spanish Jewish in‐ gy and grammar; and a large corpus of treatises tellectuals of the Rabbanite camp, such as Abra‐ on , astronomy, mathematics, and the ham Bar Hiyya (ca. 1065–ca. 1136), Abraham ibn Jewish calendar. His contribution to the last of Ezra (ca. 1089–ca. 1161), and (1138– these was immense and infuential. In contrast 1204), made a signifcant contribution in this feld. with Bar Hiyya and Maimonides, he addressed They began to write about the calendar in He‐ calendar issues in his biblical commentaries.[1] In brew, an innovation that made it possible for addition, ibn Ezra wrote several works in Hebrew, their work to cross the cultural and linguistic bor‐ devoted specifcally to the Jewish calendar. There ders between the eastern and western Jewish are two versions of Sefer ha‘Ibbur (Book of inter‐ communities. On the one hand, they reverted to calation). The frst was composed in Verona in what they deemed as the ultimate sources of Jew‐ 1146; the second, now lost, was written in H-Net Reviews

Provence somewhat later. He also wrote responsa translation is followed by eight appendices and a to three questions submitted to him by David ben glossary of technical terms, which are very useful Joseph of Narbonne, presumably when he lived in for understanding the text. that town between 1148 and 1153. Finally, in De‐ Here and there it is obvious that this edition cember 1158, somewhere in , ibn Ezra of Sefer ha‘Ibbur was produced in isolation from wrote Iggeret ha-Shabbat (The epistle on the Sab‐ current ibn Ezra scholarship. Goodman does not bath), in which, behind the fctional veneer of re‐ seem to be aware that our knowledge of ibn plying to the Sabbath’s grievance against him, he Ezra’s work and thought has grown apace in the dealt with the three chief calendrical periods: the last few years. Almost all the entries in his bibliog‐ year, the month, and the day.[2] Ibn Ezra also de‐ raphy belong to the twentieth and nineteenth cen‐ voted parts of Liber de rationibus tabularum turies. For example, according to the translator’s (Book of the reasons behind astronomical tables, preface, only a fragment of the third chapter of a Latin work written in two versions that modern Sefer ha‘Ibbur is extant; but there is no source scholarship has assigned to him although it may note for this statement. The last page of the He‐ originally have been written in Hebrew and sub‐ brew text is a short fragment of that third chap‐ sequently translated into Latin) to present before ter. In fact, it is only the frst part of a larger frag‐ Christian readers the points of contact linking the ment that was identifed a few years ago, parts of Jewish and the Christian calendars, and presum‐ which have been already published and translat‐ ably also parts of the two versions of the lost He‐ ed.[5] brew counterpart Sefer Ta’amei ha-Luhot (Book These caveats aside, this new edition and of the reasons behind astronomical tables), to translation of ibn Ezra’s Sefer ha‘Ibbur, particular‐ deal with the astronomical aspects of the Jewish ly the translation and appendices, is a valuable calendar.[3] contribution to the feld. As such, it will serve as Mordechai S. Goodman has now provided us an important tool for students of the Jewish calen‐ with the frst annotated English translation of ibn dar in general, and of the work and thought of the Ezra’s Sefer ha‘Ibbur.[4] The translation is id‐ twelfth-century polymath ibn Ezra, in particular. iomatic and clear. Even though he does not al‐ Notes ways stick as closely to the Hebrew text as might be desired, only a translator profcient in the tech‐ [1]. See, for example, prefaces of the short nicalities of the Jewish calendar (as Goodman and long commentaries on the Pentateuch; long clearly is) could have done justice to such a con‐ commentary on Exod. 12:2; Lev. 23:4, 23:24, and voluted medieval text. This is not a conventional 25:19; Ps. 81:4 and 104:19; Esth. 9:22; etc. critical edition, to say the least. Although Good‐ [2]. See Shlomo Sela and Gad Freudenthal, man says that he used seven diferent “Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Scholarly Writings: A manuscripts of Sefer ha‘Ibbur, he has not pro‐ Chronological Listing,” Aleph 6 (2006): 13–55, esp. duced a signifcant improvement on S. Z. H. Hal‐ 19–22, 32, 36, and 46–47. berstam’s edition (1874). The Hebrew text is not [3]. José M. Millás Vallicrosa, ed., El Libro de accompanied by variae lectiones, and only occa‐ los Fundamentos de las Tablas Astronómicas de sionally do the annotations ofer variant readings R. Abraham Ibn Ezra (Madrid and Barcelona: of isolated words or expressions. In the vast ma‐ CSIC, 1947), 75–76, 98–100. jority of cases, the notes below the Hebrew text [4]. Goodman has also translated ibn Ezra’s ofer conventional explanations just as those Iggeret HaShabbat (The Sabbath Epistle of Abra‐ found below the English translation. One wonders ham of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra) (Jersey City: why this duplication was necessary. The English

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Ktav, 2009) and has edited an edition of his com‐ mentary on the Book of Job, Sefer Iyov im pe‐ rushei ibn Ezra (: Mossad HaRav Kook, 2009). [5]. Shlomo Sela, Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Science (Leiden: Brill, 2003), 42–44.

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Citation: Shlomo Sela. Review of Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. Sefer ha`ibbur: A Treatise on the Calendar by Rabbi Abraham Ibn Ezra. H-Judaic, H-Net Reviews. February, 2012.

URL: https://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.php?id=33189

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