Springtime and Sovereignty
Moses ibn Ezra’s "The Garden"
By Joseph Lowin

How is Hebrew poetry like the Jewish people? Both like to commemorate events of Jewish history but neither has much respect for chronological order. Take, for example, Moses ibn Ezra's "The Garden," composed in Spain toward the beginning of the twelfth century. It celebrates Jewish sovereignty as well as any contemporary poem written to celebrate the State of Israel.

"The Garden" is ostensibly a secular wine-drinking song in celebration of the change of season from winter to springtime. The six-line poem divides itself into three movements: the flowering of nature in spring (verses 1-3); the role of the rose (verses 4-5); and the role of the reader/observer (verse 6).

In the first part, the poem tells how nature, in spring, metaphorically puts on many-colored coats to display its beauty.

(1) The Garden donned its coats of many colors; woven garments covered the grass. (2) Trees wore checkered tunics and displayed their wondrous beauty to all eyes. (3) Seasonally renewed blossoms emerged laughing to greet the spring.

At first glance, all this is very conventional, very medieval. But listen more closely, as Neal Kozodoy does, and you will hear a very modern note. "The spring season in this poem does not simply occur," says Kozodoy. "The garden brings it about, by its own effort, each tree and each blossom undertaking, gladly, its necessary function in the strenuous passage from winter." In so doing, of course, nature takes on human attributes.

This personification is presented further as a self-coronation when the rose, in verses 4 and 5, metamorphoses itself into a newly liberated king.

(4) Before them passed the rose–the king–whose throne was raised on high. (5) It emerged from its outer shell and changed its prison garments.

Kozodoy sees the result of these transformations as "a jubilant kingdom, . . . a warm and civilized society in miniature."

The last line of the poem breaks into the frame surrounding the picture and addresses itself to the reader of the poem, who is also the observer of the scene.

(6) Whoever will not toast it with wine will have to account for his sin.

In this manner, the poem ends on a playful note, inviting the reader to join the jubilant kingdom by taking a sip of wine in celebration of spring.

At first blush, this poem celebrates wine and nature. The ornaments used by ibn Ezra to decorate the poem, however, convey another message as well. To go back to the beginning, then, the first lines of the poem–dealing as they do with "coats of many colors" and "checkered tunics"–allude to clothing worn in the Torah narrative by Joseph and by the Priests. The reference to clothing is elaborated in the fifth line as well. Not only does Joseph–the captive who becomes a prince in Egypt–change his prison garments, so, too, does Jehoiachin in the Book of Kings when he becomes King of Judah. The poem is thus anchored in the biblical traditions of nobility.

Furthermore, the poem takes place in the spring not only because that is when nature emerges from its "prison" of winter; it is also the time when the Hebrews emerged from their captivity in Egypt. The last line of the poem produces a slight shock of recognition in the reader familiar with the biblical laws of Passover. So important is the mitzva of drinking the wine of national liberation that a second Pessah is ordained in the Torah for those who might have inadvertently missed the first one. The Book of Numbers (9:13) tells us that if one purposely avoids celebrating the Passover, "that man shall bear his sin." Ever so slightly, ibn Ezra twists the meaning of the verse and implies that it is not only to liberation that we must drink. Nor is it to nature that we must lift our cups. Rather, we must sanctify with our wine kingliness, and its logical extension, sovereignty. Even if it takes until the year 1948, implies ibn Ezra obliquely, the Jewish people must not only be free from slavery; they must also form a nation, with its own laws and government.

As Kozodoy says of the poem, "The garden plays out a little drama of redemption-from-servitude in which we can recognize ourselves and in which, by the end, we become explicitly involved." That we become involved without reference to chronology is a tribute both to the Jewish people and to the power of Hebrew poetry.

*Many of the insights in this piece were inspired by the NCHL’s Honorary Board member, Neil Kozodoy, in his article "Reading Medieval Hebrew Love Poetry." AJS Review. 2(1977):111-29.