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the implicit level that reveals a glimpse at the
biographies of both poets.
Ruth Bitan-Cohen is a Ph.D. student in the
Department of Jewish Literature at Bar-Ilan
University

Yosef Tobi discusses the different responses
of the Jews of northern and southern Tunisia
towards political and cultural developments
from the mid-nineteenth century on. The
interest in knowledge and secular literature in
the northern communities led to an enormous
increase in publications printed in Judeo-Arabic,
which was the lingua franca of Tunisian Jews.
This development ceased almost entirely in
the northern part of the country when French
language and culture took over Jewish society
since most of the Jews did not see themselves as
a part of the Arabic-speaking Muslim society.
Prof. Yosef Tobi is Professor Emeritus in the
Department of Hebrew Literature at the
University of Haifa.

Translations of the Bible into Judeo-Greek
maintain a rare combination of reflections of
the Septuagint – that rare creation of Hellenistic
Jewry of the first centuries C.E. – and the
Aramaic translations that succeeded it together
with the exegesis of the sages. Merging with
them into one piece are echoes of medieval
Jewish exegesis:Tuvia ben Eliezer, Rashi, R. David
Kimhi, Ibn Ezra and others. The study by Shifra
Schnoll presents the linguistic characteristics of
these Judeo-Greek translations for the first time
(script and language), describes the history of

In This Issue VII