Novel
The Love of Zion
אהבת ציון
Abraham Mapu · 1853
Opening lines
איש היה בירושלים בימי אָחָז מלך יהודה ושמו יוֹרָם בן אֲבִיעֶזֶר, אלוף ביהודה ושר אלף, ויהי לו שדות וכרמים בכרמל ובשרון ועדרי צאן ובקר בבית לחם יהודה; ויהי לו כסף וזהב, היכלי שן וכל שכיות החמדה, ושתי נשים היו לו, שם האחת חַגִית בת עִירָא, ושם השנית נַעֲמָה.
There was a man in Jerusalem in the days of Ahaz king of Judah, named Joram son of Abiezer, a chief in Judah and captain of a thousand; he had fields and vineyards in Carmel and in the Sharon, and flocks and herds in Bethlehem of Judah; he had silver and gold, ivory palaces and every precious thing, and he had two wives, the name of the one Hagith daughter of Ira, and the name of the other Naamah.
Translation by Erostrate
Text quoted from benyehuda.org
Synopsis
In Jerusalem, under King Ahaz, two friends, Yoram and Yedidiah, promise to marry their children to each other before they are even born. Yoram goes off to war; his house burns, and his second wife, Naama, flees and gives birth to twins, Amnon and Peninah. Separated from his family, Amnon grows up a shepherd, unaware of his birth. One day he saves Tamar, Yedidiah's daughter, from a lion, and they fall in love; but Tamar is promised to another man, whom Jerusalem takes to be Yoram's son. His brother Teman falls in love with Peninah, who also hides her name, and schemers work to separate the lovers.
Context
Mapu worked on it for more than twenty years: he had begun it around 1830, at the age of twenty-two. To bring the kingdom of Judah back to life, he wrote in the very language of the Bible, and the influence of the French novel of his time has been noted, above all that of Eugène Sue's Les Mystères de Paris. The book was the first great bookshop success of modern Hebrew literature: it went through at least fifteen editions and was translated into Yiddish, German, Russian, English, French, Ladino, Judeo-Arabic, Arabic and Judeo-Persian.
Who it is for
A novel of love and adventure in biblical Jerusalem, written in biblical Hebrew; it is read in French under the title Les Amants de Jérusalem.
Prizes and reception
Welcomed with fervour by the supporters of the Jewish Enlightenment and criticised by traditionalists, the book was reissued continually until the twentieth century.
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