Wisdom and Virtue Ethics in the Cairo Genizah

In medieval and early modern Jewish circles, poetry functioned as an important medium through which hortatory reminders were expressed and spiritual thought preserved. Much of the didactic material that can be discerned from the Judaeo-Arabic poetry fragments does not make direct biblical, or for that matter, quranic references, albeit both are represented to varying degrees here. Two verses from the Qur’an are partially quoted as well as echoes of the Book of Proverbs (Old Testament) in several of the poetry verses. Poetic references which promote the good treatment of others, keeping positive in difficult circumstances, and similar moral values and virtues are scattered throughout these fragments, espousing a general religious sentiment that is incontrovertibly aligned to Jewish and Islamic values and promoted by the sacred texts of each respective tradition. Religious wisdom distilled in such poetry on a few occasions is even made with direct reference to Islamic phrases that have distinct relations to Jewish themes. An appeal to emotions is also evoked to heighten the appeal of the teachings. This paper will attempt to make a connection between such fragments and Islamic textual sources to argue that the values which the Jewish authors were promoting were often congruent with the values espoused by the Muslim society in which they were composed. However, on occasion, there seems to be selective use of Islamic sources, which bolsters the theory that only those parts which align with a positive Jewish identity were included on account of their authors being Jewish.