Shmuel-Bukh

The "Shmuel-Bukh" is a religious verse epic written in Yiddish. Composed no later than the second half of the 15th century and widely circulated in manuscript, it was first printed in Augsburg in 1544. Its stanzaic form resembles that of the Niebelungenlied, and its hero is the biblical David. Although it was less popular than the roughly contemporary, secular "Bovo-Bukh" Sol Liptzin characterizes it as the greatest Old Yiddish religious epic. [Liptzin, 1972, 8-9]

Its authorship is a matter of controversy. The next to last stanza of one surviving manuscript says that it was "made" by Moshe Esrim Vearba. No one can be sure whether this "maker" is the author or a copyist, and "Esrim Vearba" is Hebrew for 24, the number of books of the Hebrew Bible, so the name is almost certainly a pseudonym. Zalman Shazar (president of Israel 1963–1973) believed that it was written by an Ashekenazi rabbi active in Constantinople (now Istanbul) in the second half of the 15th century. [Liptzin, 1972, 8-9]

The work draws on the Hebrew Bible, the Haggadah, and German chivalric tales. [Liptzin, 1972, 9]

References

*Liptzin, Sol, "A History of Yiddish Literature", Jonathan David Publishers, Middle Village, NY, 1972, ISBN 0-8246-0124-6.