Professor Herman Prins Salomon, usually away for the High Holidays, joined us for Rosh Hashanah this year (2015). In addition to his signature Haftorah readings in the Sephardic Spanish-Portuguese tradition, he read for us a dramatic poem “Eit Shaarei Ratzon” by master poet Yehudah Samuel Abbas (his name is spelled out as an acrostic of this poem), originally from Fez Morocco but spent much of his life in Aleppo Syria due to Almohad terror in his homeland. This poem (which follows a sophisticated Arabic style of syllable count) retells the Akeidah Binding of Isaac in emotionally-laden verse and rich vivid color, unlike the biblical matter-of-fact text.
For a number of years, our Dr. Salomon was the editor of “The American Sephardi” the scholarly research journal of the Sephardic Studies Program at Yeshiva University. He shared with us his in-depth research article on this poem and its author.
A striking biographical detail lends much insight and background to the father-son, son-mother dialogue in this poem. The poet had an only child, name Samuel, born in his older age. Sadly, his son converted out of the Jewish faith to Islam in an area that is in today’s Iran. This son composed a pamphlet “Ifham al-Yahud” which was the source of many attacks on Judaism. Obviously his learned father was devastated and made a trip from Syria to Iran to reach out to his only son. But the father, the poet, died along the way, in the city of Mosul, Iraq, in the year 1163 (the same year of his son’s conversion to Islam).
As Herman concludes in his article: “Knowledge of the poet’s bitter experience and death may enhance our receptivity to the emotion laden verses of the et sa’are rason.”