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72
JEWISH BOOK ANNUAL
self. There is a need also to strengthen the resolve of the beloved
to follow the path o f righteousness. One o f the poems in this
genre puts it as follows:
Choose your beloved, strengthen your heart
in righteousness,
a white shawl weave fo r yourself.
The choice that is presented is accompanied by the need to prac
tice. The white shawl is a necessary covering in o rder to en ter the
world to come and its acquisition is dependen t on worthiness.
The beloved needs to wear this clothing or she will be forced to
don the clothing o f Gehenna. The above-quoted lines echo what
is written in Zoharic literature.8
The genre of “Who kissed me?” is itself an evolutionary devel
opment from another genre which, although not unique to Yem
enite poetry, is more evident in this poetry than elsewhere. This is
the genre of “Poetry o f the soul.”9 Such writers as Saadia Gaon,
Yehuda Halevi, Ibn Pakuda, Moshe Dar’i and al-Harizi all wrote
of the dialogue between the body and the soul, and all composed
poetry which was infused with the neo-Platonic ideas that
penetrated Hebrew literature. Yemenite poetry o f this genre
deals as well with these philosophical ideas that provide didactic
guidance to the soul.
The genre o f “Who kissed me?” transformed the Hebrew
poetry of the Yemen from the category of philosophical poetry to
that o f kabbalistic poetry. If the realm of the “Poetry of the soul”
is that o f the esoteric and the philosophical, then the realm of
“Who kissed me?” poems is that of the mystical, based on exten
sive use o f elements o f the Kabbalah.
GENRE OF THE MARANOT
Examples of works o f this genre are found in the prayerbooks
Seder Amram Goan
and
Seder Saadya Gaon .10
Both o f these
prayerbooks include no more than eleven such piyyutim, the ma
jority of which are also to be found in the prayerbooks o f o ther
8 Zohar 111, 175b.
9 Mishael Maswari Caspi,
Nehar Dinur,
Tel Aviv, 1978.
10 Mishael Maswari Caspi,
Piyyutim of the Maranot in the Yemenite Tiklal,
Tel-Aviv,
1982.