Meir of Norwich

Meir ben Elijah of Norwich (Hebrew: מאיר בן אליהו מנורגיץ, romanized: Meïr ben Eliyahu mi-Norgits; fl. 13th century), also known as Meir of England,[1] was a mediaeval English Jewish poet. He is acknowledged as the "chief representative of the poetic art among the Jews of medieval England."[2]

Little is known of his life,[3] but some scholars have speculated that he was among the Jews expelled from England in 1290.[2] It is possible that Meir was a son of Elias Levesque.[4]

One long elegiac poem and fifteen smaller ones by him are found in a Vatican manuscript, from which they were published by Abraham Berliner in 1887.[5] Among them is the liturgical poem Oyevi bim’eirah tikkov ('Put a Curse on My Enemy'), decrying the persecution suffered by English Jews.[2][6][7] His work shows the influence of both Ashkenazic and Sephardic piyyutim.[8]

References

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Jacobs, Joseph (1904). "Meïr ben Elijah of Norwich". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 436.

  1. Habermann, Abraham Meir (2007). "Meir ben Elijah of Norwich". In Berenbaum, Michael; Skolnik, Fred (eds.). Encyclopaedia Judaica. Vol. 13 (2nd ed.). Detroit: Macmillan Reference. p. 783. ISBN 978-0-02-866097-4.
  2. Einbinder, Susan L. (2000). "Meir b. Elijah of Norwich: Persecution and Poetry among Medieval English Jews". Journal of Medieval History. 26 (2): 145–162. doi:10.1016/S0304-4181(00)00004-X. S2CID 159613376.
  3. Bale, Anthony (2017). "Poems of protest: Meir ben Elijah and the Jewish people of early Britain". Our Migration Story. Retrieved 9 July 2022.
  4.  Jacobs, Joseph (1904). "Meïr ben Elijah of Norwich". In Singer, Isidore; et al. (eds.). The Jewish Encyclopedia. Vol. 8. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. p. 436.
  5. Berliner, Abraham (1887). Hebräische Poesien des Meir ben Elia aus Norwich (in German). London: Nutt.
  6. Hillaby, Joe; Hillaby, Caroline (2013). The Palgrave Dictionary of Medieval Anglo-Jewish History. Palgrave Macmillan. ISBN 978-1-137-30815-3.
  7. Krummel, Miriamne Ara (Summer 2009). "Meir b. Elijah of Norwich and the Margins of Memory". Shofar. 27 (4): 1–23. doi:10.1353/sho.0.0403. JSTOR 42944786. S2CID 170815511.
  8. Boyarin, Shamma (2019). "'Rhymes So Good the Likes of Which Have Not Been Seen in all the Land of Spain': Meir of Norwich and Friendship Poetry". Early Middle English. 1 (2): 67–71. doi:10.17613/skf5-vy37. ISSN 2516-9084.
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