ABSTRACT
In Jewish culture after Maimonides, the black image found its way into travel literature, medieval Aggadic commentaries, Bible commentary, prose and poetry, philosophy and science. Some of these distinctions are arbitrary, given the nature of medieval culture, where boundaries between literary genres were blurred. Many texts are on the borderline between philosophy, literary prose and poetry. Falaquera’s Sefer ha-Mevakesh, with which I began this book, and where harsh stereotypes identify the threatening black as ultimate other, is an outstanding example. In other texts, such as Isaac Abarbanel’s commentary on the Bible, where we find one of fullest and most important expressions of the black image in Jewish thought in the late Middle Ages, there are philosophical and scientific discussions in the guise of biblical commentary. An examination of texts will show us that all these literary forms project the image of the black that Jewish scholars in Latin-Christian Europe inherited from the rabbinic tradition on one hand and Greek and Islamic culture on the other.
