They call him Meir

Abraham Bukrat

Early 16th Century

When I heard that Meir the teacher had exchanged his glory for futility,1 I said:

They call him Meir,2 but he has no light, for all the lights around him have gone dim.
Indeed, he has a thick cloud of darkness, like the darkness in Egypt,
When no person saw their fellow. And they that named him knew how he would end up, and they prophesied,
Calling him thus, just as the sages called night “light,”
And they knew that a blind person is called “flowing with light,” and charcoal is called “white”3—thus did they name him!

Translated by
Gabriel
Wasserman
.

Notes

[I.e., that he had apostasized to Christianity.—Trans.]

[The name literally means “shining, enlightening.”—Trans.]

[The first two euphemisms, “light” (or) for nighttime, and “flowing with light” (sagi nahor) for a blind person, are from talmudic literature. The third expression, “white” for charcoal, may be from the vernacular speech of the poet’s own time.—Trans.]

Credits

Abraham Bukrat, “They Call him Meir (Hebrew),” in Hebrew Poetry in North Africa(Ha-shirah ha-ivrit be-tsafon afrikah), ed. Efraim Chazan (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2003), 213.

Published in: The Posen Library of Jewish Culture and Civilization, vol. 5.

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Creator Bio

Abraham Bukrat

Late 15th Century–Early 16th Century

Abraham Bukrat was forced to leave his home in Málaga, Spain, in 1492. He first lived in Algiers, then Oran and Tlemcen, before settling in Tunisia, where he served as a rabbi and teacher. Abraham wrote a well-known and meticulous supercommentary on Rashi’s biblical commentary (Sefer ha-zikaron), which he finished in Tunisia in 1507. He was also a talented poet, and some of his poems have been preserved in manuscript, among them works composed in both Spain and North Africa. These include a long and detailed lament describing the expulsion from Spain, an important historical source that includes information about the fate of the exiles as well as data regarding their numbers, and another praising the rabbi of Málaga. He also penned riddles, using wordplay and linguistic games. However, the gloomy atmosphere in which the Jews of Spain lived before the exile permeates some of his poetry, which at times calls upon his fellow Jews to improve their ways.

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