The Book of Delight, and Other Papers

In 12th-century Spain, a poet named Joseph Zabara wrote a book whose sole purpose was to delight. That ambition, radiant and unapologetic, is what Israel Abrahams revives in this luminous collection. At its heart lies Zabara's "Book of Delight," a poetical romance where the protagonist encounters Enan, a giant whose friendship conceals darker depths, whose wisdom cuts both ways. Here are fables about desire and cunning, about women and storytellers, woven with proverbs that sparkle like sudden stars. Abrahams, the distinguished British Jewish scholar who taught at Columbia's Jewish Theological Seminary, functions as a passionate guide through centuries of Hebrew literary culture that most readers have never encountered: the secular pleasures, the wit, the sheer narrative pleasure existing alongside religious tradition. This is not a dry academic exercise. It is a reclamation of joy, an argument that Jewish intellectual history contains multitudes, that its storytellers could be as profane and delightful as any courtly romance. For readers hungry for the roads not taken in literary history, here is a forgotten byway worth exploring.