Editing Sonnet (section)

==Jewish languages==
For three millennia there has been a literature in the [[Jewish languages|various languages developed by the scattered communities of Jewish origin]]. So far as the sonnet is concerned, two languages were involved, mostly written in the European areas where that form was taken up and taken elsewhere in the world by emigrants.

===Hebrew===
The Hebrew name for a sonnet is ''shir zahav'', deriving from a numerological play on words. Literally 'golden song', the consonants of ''zahav'' also stand for numbers adding up to fourteen, so that the term can also mean 'song of fourteen lines'.<ref>''Gardens and Ghettos: The Art of Jewish Life in Italy'' (University of California, 2023), [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=QU3hEAAAQBAJ&pg=PT567&dq=%22shir+zahav%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjnpcqIwvCIAxUvVUEAHQRoOb0Q6AF6BAgNEAI#v=onepage&q=%22shir%20zahav%22&f=false "A millennium of Hebrew poetry in Italy"]</ref>

The first sonnets in [[Medieval Hebrew poetry]] were probably composed in Rome by [[Immanuel the Roman]] around the year 1300, less than a century after the advent of the Italian sonnet.<ref name="DB">{{cite journal |last1=Bregman |first1=Dvora |title=The Emergence of the Hebrew Sonnet |journal=Prooftexts |date=September 1991 |volume=11 |issue=3 |pages=239 |jstor=20689314 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/20689314 |access-date=9 May 2022}}</ref><ref name="IL">{{cite web |last1=Levy |first1=Isabelle |title=Immanuel of Rome and Dante |url=https://digitaldante.columbia.edu/history/immanuel-of-rome-and-dante-levy |website=Digital Dante |publisher=Columbia University Libraries |access-date=9 May 2022}}</ref> 38 sonnets are included in his [[maqama]] collection ''Mahberot Immanuel'' that combine elements of both the quantitative metre traditional to Hebrew and Arabic verse and Italian syllabic metre. Predominantly dealing with love, they were rhymed ABBA ABBA CDE CDE.<ref name="IL"/>

Immanuel's work provided a ready model for the second wave of Italo-Hebrew sonnet writers. The first printed edition of ''Mahberot Immanuel'' appeared in [[Brescia]] in 1492, followed by a second edition published in Constantinople in 1535. The new crop therefore coincided with the adoption of the sonnet in other European literatures at the start of the 16th century and persisted into the Baroque period of the following century, with more than eighty poets taking up the form. Though there was now a shift of focus to religious themes, love poetry was not excluded, particularly in the sonnets of David Okineira of [[Salonika]].<ref>Dvora Bregman, [https://www.academia.edu/19054917/The_Golden_Way_The_Hebrew_Sonnet_during_The_Renaissance_and_Baroque_Periods ''The Golden Way The Hebrew Sonnet during The Renaissance and Baroque Periods''], Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies), Tempe, Arizona, 2006</ref> The Baroque practice of incorporating sonnets along with other verse into plays, as had Shakespeare in England and Lope da Vega in Spain, was also to be found in [[Moses ben Mordecai Zacuto]]'s ''Yesod Olam'' (Foundation of the World, 1642) and in ''Asirei ha-Tiqva'' (Prisoners of Hope, 1673), an allegorical play by [[Joseph de la Vega]]. A further revival of the Hebrew sonnet followed in the 18th century, associated with Samson Cohen Modon (1679–1727), [[Moshe Chaim Luzzatto]] and his cousin, Ephraim Luzzatto (1729–1792), who are regarded as founders of modern Hebrew literature.<ref>Dvora Bregman, "The Emergence of the Hebrew Sonnet", [https://www.jstor.org/stable/20689314?read-now=1&seq=1  Prooftexts, Vol. 11, No. 3 (September 1991), p. 232]</ref>

That the form persisted into the 20th century was celebrated by [[Shaul Tchernichovsky]] in his ''Maḥberet ha-Sonetot'' (Berlin 1923), in which appeared a sonnet of his own celebrating its continuity since the time of Immanuel of Rome: "Thou art dear to me, how dear to me, ''Sonetot, O shir zahav''".<ref>[https://www.academia.edu/19054917 Bregman 2006, p.1]</ref> The same author was responsible for introducing the [[crown of sonnets]] into Hebrew poetry. 

===Yiddish===

[[Yiddish]], the name given to a continuum of Judaeo-German dialects spoken particularly across Eastern Europe, has had a literature since the Middle Ages. The sonnet, however, arriving late in the surrounding Slavic areas, was at first viewed as an alien genre among Jewish writers in Yiddish. Its adoption came only slowly with greater access to secular educational and with emigration. 

The first poets to use the form are credited as Dovid Kenigsberg (1891-1942) and [[Fradl Shtok]]. The former published ''Soneten'' ([[Lviv|Lemberg]] 1913) and later his hundred sonnets (''Hundert Soneten'', Vienna, 1921).<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/993/Kenigsberg-Dovid The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> Shtok emigrated to the US while young and began publishing poetry soon after her arrival in New York in 1910.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/309/Shtok-Fradl-1888-1952 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> In reality, earlier sonnets dating from the 1890s were written in the US by Morris Vintshevski (1856-1932); and in [[Vilnius]] those written by [[Leib Naidus]], starting from 1910, demonstrated the westward-spreading influence of Symbolist-inspired modernism.<ref>Jordan D. Finkin, ''Exile as Home: The Cosmopolitan Poetics of Leyb Naydus'', Hebrew Union College Press, 2017, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=3gV-DwAAQBAJ&pg=PA55&dq=%22Yiddish+Sonnets%22&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiQz6KO_tGIAxXKbEEAHcZJDS4Q6AF6BAgOEAI#v=onepage&q=%22Yiddish%20Sonnets%22&f=false pp. 55-9]</ref> Those poets in Europe who authored entire collections of sonnets include Gershon-Peysekh Vayland (1869–1942), published in [[Warsaw]] in 1938 and 1939;<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/4683/Vayland-Gershon-Peysekh-1869-1942 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> Yankev Gotlib (1911–1945), published in [[Kaunas]] in 1938;<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/6183/Gotlib-Yankev-October-1911-May-27-1945 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> and the Polish [[Abraham Nahum Stencl ]], whose ''Londoner Sonetn'' were published after his arrival in London in 1937.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/260/Shtentsl-Avrom-Nokhum-Abraham-Nahum-Stencl The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> 

Later examples of those writing substantial numbers of sonnets in the US number the scholar [[N. B. Minkoff]], who included a [[sonnet cycle]] in ''Lieder'' (1924), his first publication after immigrating,<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/2858/Minkov-Nokhum-Borekh-November-18-1893-March-14-1958 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> and Aron Glantz-Leyeles (1899–1968), who published a whole collection of poems in mediaeval forms in 1926. This included "Autumn", a densely rhymed [[crown of sonnets|garland of fifteen sonnets]].<ref>''American Yiddish Poetry'', Stanford University, 2007, [https://books.google.co.uk/books?id=KkmmAAAAIAAJ&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&printsec=frontcover#v=onepage&q&f=false pp. 46-7]</ref> In 1932 Yoysef-Leyzer Kalushiner (1893–1968) published a whole book of sonnets in New York.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/1369/Kalushiner-Yoysef-Leyzer-June-29-1893-1968 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> He was followed by the little known M. Freed, who had already published a sonnet collection, ''The Narcissi'' ("נארציסן", Czernowitz, 1937), in [[Bukovina]] before making his way to the US, where he published ''An evening by the Prut'' (מ. פרידוויינינגער, New York, 1942).<ref>A. V. Zornytskyi, [http://eprints.zu.edu.ua/16246/1/THE%20YIDDISH%20SONNETS.pdf "The Yiddish sonnets of M. Freed"]</ref> Later collections of sonnets include ''Sonetn fun toye-voye'' (Sonnets of chaos, New York, 1957) by Yirmye Hesheles, (1910–2010)<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/4839/Hesheles-Yirmye-February-27-1910-October-16-2010 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> and [[Mani Leib]]'s ''Sonetn'' (1961), considered the crowning achievement of his work and "one of the last great works of Yiddish poetry".<ref>Jordan Finkin, "To organize beauty: the sonnets of Mani Leyb", [https://go.gale.com/ps/i.do?id=GALE%7CA428175302&sid=googleScholar&v=2.1&it=r&linkaccess=abs&issn=02719274&p=LitRC&sw=w&userGroupName=anon%7E6c63b88&aty=open-web-entry  ''Studies in American Jewish Literature'' 34.1], Spring 2015</ref> To these post-war collections may be added ''Meksike, finf un draysik sonetn'' (Mexico, 35 sonnets, 1949), which was published in [[Mexico City]] after Austridan Oystriak (1911-92) had fled there from Europe in 1940.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/7039/Ustri-Dan-Yeshayahu-Oystriak-Austridan-December-23-1911-1992 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref>

Yiddish sonnets published in Israel, where the preferred language was Hebrew, were comparatively rare. Samuel Jacob Taubes (1898-1975) had already published religious sonnets in Europe before emigrating to Israel after a wandering literary career.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/4130/Toybish-Yankev-Shmuel-Jacob-Samuel-Taubes-August-13-1898-February-2-1975 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref> Shlomo Roitman (1913-85) began writing in Russia and published sonnet collections after his arrival in Israel.<ref>[https://congressforjewishculture.org/people/594/Roytman-Shloyme-February-1-1913-January-15-1985 The Congress for Jewish Culture Lexicon]</ref>