ABSTRACT
The sages of Byzantine Palestine produced, besides the Palestinian Talmud and midrashim, a great mass of liturgical poetry, called piyyut. The Byzantine piyyut belongs to the same cultural and religious matrix as the Talmud and the midrashim and has points of contact with the Midrash both as to its themes and literary techniques. Medieval Jewry produced a variety of Hebrew prose works of a literary nature. There are many prose stories that elaborate on biblical and talmudic stories. The Jewish community of Islamic Spain, like that of the rest of the Muslim world, was part of the cultural sphere of Iraq and the geonim. The poetry of the Golden Age would embrace many genres adopted from Arabic literature. In Spain, Jewish literature did not come to an end. Jews were welcome in the burgeoning Christian kingdoms, and after a period of adjustment, a new generation of Hebrew writers came forth in Castile and Catalonia.
