the fact that the hearing of blessings was limited to a small circle of elites distinguishes the performative context.12
The only mention in Natan’s account of “praises” comes after the conclusion of the Musaf service, when the exilarch returned to his home amid an entourage of congregants, “and when the exilarch exits all the people go out before him and after him and say before him words of poetry and praise (omrim lefanav divrei shirot ve-tishbaḥot) until he arrives at his home.” One wonders exactly what these divrei shirot ve-tishbaḥot entailed. Were they sung or recited? Were they in Arabic or in Hebrew? Were they specific for the occasion, previously composed, or spontaneous? There may be some parallel here also to the public entourage in Muslim celebrations. As Paula Sanders notes, “popular” festivals in Fatimid Cairo could move from the “streets, to al-Azhar, to the palace” and could involve poets offering “invocations and blessings.”13 As I have argued elsewhere, the ceremony described by Natan “drew simultaneously on the idioms of ancient Jewish rites and contemporary Muslim ceremonial to articulate an image of leadership and political legitimacy that blended Jewish categories … with resonances of caliphal power.” There I also concluded that “the elites of Babylonian Jewry recognized that presiding over the Jewish world was a type of statecraft and, as Clifford Geertz notes, that ‘statecraft is a thespian art.’”14
An important text that is highly suggestive of a ceremonial performance is a long panegyric in honor of Daniel Ben ‘Azariah (d. 1062), a gaon of the Jerusalem academy who emanated from a family that claimed descent from King David. This gaon was able to bolster the position of the Palestinian academy even unto Iraq and was greatly esteemed by the Palestinian community of Fustat. He seems to have had some difficulty securing loyalty among Jews in the Islamic West, though he was praised in verse by none other than Shemuel ha-Nagid of al-Andalus as a kind of political endorsement.15
In 1057, around the time that Ben ‘Azariah assumed the position of gaon, the poet ‘Eli ha-Kohen composed a panegyric in his honor using a form, structure, and style that were entirely unique.16 It is clear that the poet saw his poem as related to the Arabic poetic tradition, since he gives it the heading qaṣīda (Ar., “formal ode”) in the manuscript. Although the poem suggests no clear liturgical context, its form is closer to the style of the classical piyyut than the relatively new Arabized poetry of the Andalusian school, despite the fact that this latter form had penetrated Jewish communities throughout the Islamic world by the eleventh century and would have been familiar to Ben ‘Azariah. Like the ‘avodah liturgy of Yom Kippur, the poem begins by recounting the creation of the world, leading to a long yet selective review of Israel’s history that culminates with praise for Ben ‘Azariah.17 Much of the historical summary dwells on tracing Ben ‘Azariah’s lineage from King David, which, as Arnold Franklin notes, “dramatically suggests that [Ben ‘Azariah’s] assumption of the post of gaon be viewed as part of a divine plan extending back to creation itself.”18
The copy of the poem that survives is an autograph draft that includes alternate versions of verses throughout. Although we have no external testimony that this panegyric was performed, I agree with Ezra Fleischer, who published the poem, that the internal evidence suggests a public performance, quite possibly from the time of the gaon’s investiture (alternatively, the poem could simply have been given to the gaon or recited in a small audience). In the section reviewing the history of Israel, the text focuses on the moment of King David’s investiture (lines 135–45), in all likelihood alluding to the performative context of the poem.
The poem gives no indication of the setting in which it was recited, but the manuscript does bear a date, the thirteenth of Nissan, just before the festival of Passover. The association with Passover is further corroborated by allusions within the poem itself. Just after recounting the Israelites’ enslavement in Egypt, the plagues, and the Exodus, the poet dedicates several lines to the laws of Passover, concluding with Ex 13:10, “You shall keep this ordinance at its set time from year to year” (lines 86–91). Did a ceremony of installation take place on Passover? As discussed in the Introduction, the dedication of Arabic panegyrics often coincided with particular Islamic festivals and hence the recitation of the panegyric for Ben ‘Azariah at Passover might present a Jewish analogue to this practice. Although Fleischer found the link with Passover puzzling, there is a certain logic in associating the festival with a political ceremony. The Exodus from Egypt marks Israel’s entry into the realm of the political, becoming in the desert a hierarchically organized camp, a kind of community, polity, or even quasi-state. Even if the poem were not written for an investiture specifically, Passover would have been an appropriate occasion for reiterating—indeed, representing—the divine origins of the Jewish “polity” and solidifying bonds of political loyalty. This poem cannot be categorized neatly as “secular” or “sacred”; it demonstrates just how intimately the two were linked such that the elevation of a man’s status was integrated within sacred history and the act of praising him was imbued with sacrality.
Although we have no other description of a Jewish ceremony as elaborate as that of the exilarch’s investiture as described by Natan ha-Bavli, occasional texts from subsequent centuries refer to political rituals that recount many of the same basic elements. Shemuel Ben ‘Eli was a rosh yeshivah (head of the academy) in Baghdad who penned a number of epistles to Jewish communities in Iraq, Persia, and Syria between 1184 and 1207.19 Several of the letters concern a certain Zekhariah Ben Barkhael, a native of Aleppo who wrote to Ben ‘Eli in his youth, studied with him in Baghdad, and ultimately became the sage’s successor. In 1190, Ben Barkhael was appointed av bet din (head of court) and dispatched to communities in Iraq and Syria. His responsibilities included the rendering of judgments, gathering funds, and the appointment of “scribes, cantors, prayer leaders, and community heads.” Throughout the letters, Ben Barkhael is presented as an extension of and proxy for the rosh yeshivah himself, a “limb of the body,” as Ben ‘Eli calls him in one instance.20 Jews should pay homage to the av bet din much as they would to the rosh yeshivah himself; yet Ben ‘Eli is also careful to safeguard his own rank by describing Ben Barkhael’s status as derivative and a matter of investiture.
The epistles’ aim was to establish the new av bet din’s, and hence the rosh yeshivah’s, authority and legitimacy in satellite communities. To this end, they recount at length Ben Barkhael’s praiseworthy qualities and request that certain rituals be observed concerning his public appearances, including his verbal “magnification” (Heb., giddul). The epistles thus refer to ceremonies of power that have already taken place, convey the appointee’s praiseworthy qualities through writing, and call for further rituals to be observed in the future. In one of the Hebrew letters, after enumerating Ben Barkhael’s merits, Ben ‘Eli writes:
When we saw these precious and honored characteristics in him, including fear of God, love of the commandments, and intelligence and knowledge, we laid hands upon him (samakhnuhu) as av bet din of the yeshivah and gave him authority to judge, teach, and permit firstborn animals (for slaughter) (cf. b. Sanhedrin 5a), to explicate the Torah in public, to set the pericopes, and to appoint the translator. Before he expounds, “Hear what he holds!”21 should be said and after he expounds his name should be mentioned in the qadish…. It is incumbent upon the communities, may they be blessed, when they hear that he is approaching, that they go out to greet him and come before him with cordiality so that he may enter a multitude (‘am rav) with glory. When he comes to the synagogue, they must call before him and he must sit in glory on a splendid seat and comely couches with a cushion behind him, as is appropriate for av bet dins. He also possesses a signet ring to sign documents, rulings, and epistles that are appropriate for him to sign.22
The “laying of hands” is a gesture of investiture from one of higher authority to one of lower authority (based on Moses’ investiture of Joshua in Dt 34:9), while the signet ring is a standard emblem of political authority throughout Near Eastern cultures.23 Many of the points in this letter are reiterated in a second epistle, now in Judeo-Arabic with Hebrew phrases interspersed. The rosh yeshivah writes that “his presence among you is in place of our presence” and continues (Hebrew in italics): “We conferred