Riddles (Hebrew)

Riddles in Hebrew are referred to as חידות ḥidot (singular חִידָה ḥidah). They have at times been a major and distinctive part of literature in Hebrew and closely related languages. At times they have a complex relationship with proverbs.[2]

Manuscript of riddles by Yehuda haLevi in his own hand (colours inverted), from the Cairo Genizah. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Library, Taylor-Schechter Misc. 8/47 recto.)[1]:26 The text says:[1]:25

Top right-hand text (at 90° to image orientation)

1 מלתזם בית אלמתאת'ם [ג'לאל]תה אל[ ]
2 יא מולאי וסיידי אלאג'ל ואלמולאי וסנדי אלאפצ'ל אלאכמל [ ]
3 ג'לאל ומתצל אלסעד ואלאקבאל כתאבי [ ] אל [ ]
4 אפט'ע ואלמצאב אלאכ'שע ואלנביה אלאכ'שע מא כאן מן קדר [ ]
5 וחתמה אלסאדק אמנה ומולאי וסנדי אלא[פצ'ל אלאכמל

Bottom right-hand text

6 ראיתם דג אשר בלע ליונה
7 ותשבחות לעם ארץ בסודי
8 והבא ראש חמור עליו עטרת
9 ונחן
10 והעח נהפכו מעיו והקיא
11 אשר בלה ומצאחי ידידי

Left-hand column:

12 ועלמה שחרה דודה. וידה פרשה לעב.
13 וידה הפכה ומת.
14 והעת הפכה ידה. בצמא מת וגם רעב.

15 כתבנית יד עלי ראש מחמדי.
16 והוא יושב בצד חיקה ושוכב.

17 יצק שמו עבדיהו.
18 עלי צואר בכור צידון.

19 קחי יונה אשר ישנה לצדי.
20 שלומותי ושא אל מחמדי.

21 והרוצה להפליא שם ידידו.
22 שמו הטוב יהי יוצר עלי חק.
23 ואת ראש יוצרו יכרות בידו.
24 ויתלהו כוו מחץ לרחוק.

25 חצי עצים חצי אלים תחבר
26 תקבר.
27 וביניהם כמספרם חכנס.

In the Bible

Riddles are not common in the Bible,[3] nor in Midrashic literature,[4] though other tests of verbal wit are. The most prominent riddle in the Bible is Samson's riddle: Samson outwitted the Philistines by posing a riddle about the lion and the beehive until they learned the answer from his Philistine bride, costing Samson 30 suits of clothes (Judges 14:5-18).[5] However, some passages in the Book of Proverbs in which sets of three or four objects are mentioned (e.g. 30:15 et seq.) were likely originally in the form of riddles, while Ezekiel 17:1-10 is also a riddle of sorts.[6]

In post-Biblical and rabbinic literature

Sirach mentions riddles as a popular dinner pastime.

The Talmud contains several riddles, such as this one from the end of Kinnim: 'What animal has one voice living and seven voices dead?' ('The ibis, from whose carcass seven different musical instruments are made').[6]

The Aramaic Story of Ahikar contains a long section of proverbial wisdom that in some versions also contains riddles.[7]

Solomon and the Queen of Sheba

The Bible describes how the Queen of Sheba tests Solomon with riddles, but without giving any hint as to what they were.[8] On this basis, riddles were ascribed to the Queen in later writings. Four riddles are ascribed to her in the tenth- or eleventh-century Midrash Proverbs,[9][10] including the following: 'She said to him: "Seven exit and nine enter, two pour and one drinks". He said to her: "Surely, seven days of menstruation exit and nine months of pregnancy enter, two breasts pour and the baby drinks".’[11] These plus another fourteen or fifteen tests of wisdom, some of which are riddles, appear in the Midrash ha-Ḥefez (1430 CE), for example:[9]

  • There is an enclosure with ten doors: when one is open nine are shut; when nine are open, one is shut. — The womb, the bodily orifices, and the umbilical cord.
  • Living, moves not, yet when its head is cut off it moves. — A ship in the sea (made from a tree).
  • What was that which is produced from the ground, yet produces it, while its food is the fruit of the ground? — A wick.[12]

The early medieval Aramaic Targum Sheni also contains three riddles posed by the Queen to Solomon.[9]

In the Middle Ages

Under the influence of Arabic literature in medieval al-Andalus, there was a flourishing of literary Hebrew riddles in verse during the Middle Ages. Dunash ben Labrat (920-990), credited with transposing Arabic metres into Hebrew, composed a number of riddles, firmly rooted, like folk-riddles, in describing everyday, physical objects.[13] His diwan includes a twenty-line poem comprising ten riddles, one of which runs:

וּמַה שָׁחוׂר וְגַם אָדוׂם יְרוּצוּן
שׁנֵי מַתִים אֲלַיהֶם כֵּעֲבָדִים
בְּהֶאֶחֶד רְפוּאָה גַם חְּעָלֶה
וְהַשֵׁנִי עֲדִי בַּת הַנְּגִידִים[14]

What black thing and what red thing run
and have two dead things as servants?
In the one is medicine and remedy;
in the other, the ornamentation of princesses.[15]

Subsequent exponents included Samuel ibn Naghrillah (born 993), the sixth section of whose philosophical verse collection Ben Mishlei (literally 'son of Proverbs', but more idiomatically 'after Proverbs') presents a series of philosophically inclined riddles.[16][17] The subjects of his riddles generally remained concrete — examples include the moon, pen and ink, a boat or fountain — but he began to introduce riddles on abstract themes such as God, wisdom, joy, and folly, with a didactic purpose.[18]:20

And he said to me: Is there life in death, without a heart?
I answered: foolishness.
And he continued: Is there death in life, with the body intact?
I answered: poverty.

Frequently, the word representing the solution was integrated into the end-rhyme of the poem, making the solution to the riddle the completion of a verse.[19]:100–101

Samuel was followed by Moses ibn Ezra (born c. 1055×60), Judah Halevi (born c. 1075), Abraham ibn Ezra (born 1089×92) and Yehuda Alharizi (born 1165).[6][20]

Judah is noted as the most prolific Hebrew riddler of his time, with a corpus of at least sixty-seven riddles,[18]:21 some of which survive in his own hand, and even in draft form.[1] These are mostly short, monorhyme compositions on concrete subjects such as everyday artefacts, animals and plants, or a name or word.[21][1] For example, he wrote:

Evincing the infinite--
the size of your palm--
what it holds is beyond you,
curious, at hand.[22]

(The answer is 'hand-mirror'.) However, his riddles also include a piece as long as 36 verses, to be solved both as 'pomegranate' and 'Granada'.[18]

Meanwhile, Abraham is noted for maximising the use of riddles as a meditation on knowledge and the divine.[19]:104 n. 1[23]

The Andalusian tradition extended to Italy from the twelfth century, beginning with the work of Yerahmiel Bar Shlomo.[19] Immanuel the Roman wrote riddles, as did Israel Onceneyra.[24]

Post-medieval

In Hebrew-speaking Spain and Italy during around 1650-1850, a baroque sub-genre of the literary riddle called ḥiddat hatsurah vehalo‘ez (literally 'riddles of an emblem with foreign-language passages', known in English simply as 'emblem riddles') flourished. The genre was characterised by alluding to words in languages other than Hebrew (lo‘ez) in order to provide clues to the solution. For example, one riddle includes the Hebrew phrase Eh ko nistarti ('I am hidden somewhere here'). The first two of these words sound the same as the Italian/Spanish word eco ('echo'), and 'echo' (Hebrew hed) is indeed the solution to the poem. Each riddle would include an 'emblem' (tsurah) near the opening in the form of an allusive picture, poem, or phrase, or a combination of these, after which the riddle proper would commence. Poems in this genre were occasional, composed in celebration of specific high-society events such as weddings and circumcisions. The topic of the riddle would often reflect the occasion and audience (with solutions such as 'wisdom' for a gathering of scholars, or 'love' at a wedding), and the riddle might make use of information about the people at the gathering in ways which would make little sense to a wider audience.[25]

At the end of the Haggadah, there is also the Echad Mi Yodea, characterised by Joseph Jacobs as 'a curious riddle'.[6]

See also
  • Yehuda Ratzaby, 'Halakhic Poetic Riddles of R. Shalem Me'oded', Sefunot: Studies and Sources on the History of the Jewish Communities in the East (שירי-חידה הלכיים לר' שלם מעודד יהודה רצהבי, ספונות: מחקרים ומקורות לתולדות קהילות ישראל במזרח) New Series /סדרה חדשה, כרך א (טז) (תש"ם), pp. 273–286
  • Dan Pagis, A Secret Sealed: Hebrew Baroque Emblem-Riddles from Italy and Holland (Jerusalem: The Magnes Press, 1986).
  • Tova Rosen-Moked, “'Testing with Riddles': The Hebrew Riddle of the Middle Ages” [in Hebrew], Ha-Sifrut, 30–31 (1980): 168–83

References
  1. נחמיה אלוני/N. Allony, 'שלושים חידות אוטוגראפיות לר' יהודה הלוי' [Thirty autograph riddles by R. Yehudah ha-Lev], .עלי ספר: מחקרים בביבליוגרפיה ובתולדות הספר העברי המודפס והדיגיטל/Alei Sefer: A Journal for the Study of the Hebrew Book, 3 (October 1976), 20-43 (repr. Allony, N., 'Šělošim hidot 'otografiot Iě-R. Yehudah ha-Levi, Studies in medieval philology and literature: collected papers, 4: Hebrew medieval poetry, Volume 4 (Jerusalem: Ben Zvi Institute, 1991), pp. 425-48).
  2. Galit Hasan-Rock, 'Riddle and Proverb: The Relationship Exemplified by an Aramaic Proverb', Proverbium 24 (1974), 936–40.
  3. Harry Torcszyner, 'The Riddle in the Bible', Hebrew Union College Annual, 1 (1924), 125-49, https://www.jstor.org/stable/43301983; Othniel Margalith, 'Samson's Riddle and Samson's Magic Locks', 'Vetus Testamentum, 36 (1986), 225-34, DOI: 10.2307/1518382; https://www.jstor.org/stable/1518382.
  4. Dina Stein, 'A King, a Queen, and the Riddle Between: Riddles and Interpretation in a Late Midrashic Text', in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. by Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Dean Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), 125-74 (at p. 127).
  5. Margalith, Othniel, "Samson's Riddle and Samson's Magic Locks", Vetus Testamentum 1986; 36, pp. 225-234 (p. 226) https://www.jstor.org/stable/1518382.
  6. Joseph Jacobs, 'Riddle', in The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day, ed. by Isidore Singer (New York: Funk & Wagnalls, 1901-1907)
  7. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 41-42.
  8. I Kings 10:1-13
  9. Jacob Lassner, Demonizing the Queen of Sheba: Boundaries of Gender and Culture in Postbiblical Judaism and Medieval Islam. University of Chicago Press, 1993, pp. 9-17
  10. Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 24.
  11. Annikki Kaivola-Bregenhøj, Riddles: Perspectives on the Use, Function, and Change in a Folklore Genre, Studia Fennica, Folkloristica, 10 (Helsinki: Finnish Literature Society, 2001), p. 13; https://dx.doi.org/10.21435/sff.10; http://oa.finlit.fi/site/books/detail/12/riddles/.
  12. Christine Goldberg, Turandot's Sisters: A Study of the Folktale AT 851, Garland Folklore Library, 7 (New York: Garland, 1993), p. 24.
  13. Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 33-35, citing Nehemya Aluny, 'Ten Dunash Ben Labrat's Riddles', The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, 36 (1945), 141-46.
  14. Nehemya Aluny, 'Ten Dunash Ben Labrat's Riddles', The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, 36 (1945), 141-46 (p. 146).
  15. The answer is probably the day and the night. Translated into English from Rodríguez's Spanish translation: '¿Qué cosa negra y qué cosa roja corren | y tiene dos muertos como servidores? || En el uno está la medicina y el remedio; | en el otro, el ornato de las princesas', Dunash ben Labrat, El diván poético de Dunash ben Labraṭ: la introducción de la métrica árabe, trans. by Carlos del Valle Rodríguez (Madrid: Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Cientificas, Instituto de Filologia, 1988), pp. 225-28 (p. 228); ISBN 84-00-06831-9.
  16. Samuel ibn Naghrīla, Ben Mishlei, ed. by Dov Yarden (Jerusalem: Libov School of Graphic Arts, 1982).
  17. Sarah J. Pearce, The Andalusi Literary and Intellectual Tradition: The Role of Arabic in Judah Ibn Tibbon's Ethical Will (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2017), pp. 68-69 ISBN 9780253025968.
  18. Aurora Salvatierra, 'La "Granada" más hermosa: una adivinanza de Yĕhudah Ha-Levi', Biblio, 47 (1998), 19-36.
  19. Dan Pagis, 'Toward a Theory of the Literary Riddle', in Untying the Knot: On Riddles and Other Enigmatic Modes, ed. by Galit Hasan-Rokem and David Shulman (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), pp. 81-108.
  20. The 1928-29 edition of the works of Solomon ibn Gabirol (born 1021×22) attributes seven riddles to him: אבן גבירול שלמה ב"ר יהודה הספרדי (1928–1929). שירי שלמה בן יהודה אבן. 5. תל אביבגבירול. p. 35.. But these have since been reassigned to Dunash ben Labrat: Nehemya Aluny, 'Ten Dunash Ben Labrat's Riddles', The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, 36 (1945), 141-46.
  21. Brody, H.,1894-1930, Dîwân des Abû-l-Hasan Jehudah ha-Levi. Diwan wĕ-hu 'sefer kolel šire 'abir ha-mešorerim Yĕhudah ben Šĕmu'el ha-Levi. Berlin, 2 vols. II, 191-211 (riddles), 141-56 (notes on the riddles).
  22. The Dream of the Poem: Hebrew Poetry from Muslim and Christian Spain, 950–1492, ed. and trans. by Peter Cole (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007), p. 150.
  23. Masha Itzhaki, 'The Riddles of Abraham Ibn Ezra', in Abraham Ibn Ezra y su tiempo: actas del Simposio Internacional: Madrid, Tudela, Toledo, 1-8 febrero 1989/Abraham Ibn Ezra and his Age: proceedings of the International Symposium: Madrid, Tudela, Toledo, 1-8 febrero 1989, ed. by Fernando Díaz Esteban (1990), pp. 163-68, ISBN 84-600-7500-1.
  24. See further Archer Taylor, The Literary Riddle before 1600 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1948), pp. 35-37.
  25. Arthur Lesley, 'The Riddles of Dan Pagis', Prooftexts, 11.1 (January 1991), 76-80.
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