Hebrew Poetry Course

Lesson 1 • Essential Poetic Vocabulary

Introduces high-frequency words and terms appearing across Hebrew poetry. A working vocabulary enables fluent reading of core poetic texts.

Lesson 2 • Vowel Systems and Niqqud

Covers the full niqqud vowel-pointing system and unpointed text conventions. Students gain ability to vocalize both pointed and unpointed poetry.

Lesson 3 • Basic Hebrew Word Structure

Explains root-and-pattern morphology central to Hebrew vocabulary. Understanding roots allows students to decode unfamiliar poetic words.

Lesson 1 • Biblical Poetry: Origins and Scope

Maps the poetic books and embedded poems of the Hebrew Bible. Students understand which texts are classified as poetry and why.

Lesson 2 • Modern and Contemporary Hebrew Poetry

Traces Hebrew poetry from the Haskalah revival through twentieth-century and current poets. Students connect historical shifts to changes in form and theme.

Lesson 3 • Medieval Hebrew Poetry

Covers the Golden Age of Hebrew poetry in Andalusia and its eastern counterparts. Students identify Arabic-influenced meters and secular themes.

Lesson 1 • Parallelism and Interpretive Meaning

Connects structural analysis to theological and emotional meaning in the text. Students write interpretive paragraphs grounded in parallelism analysis.

Lesson 2 • Synthetic and Emblematic Parallelism

Examines less symmetrical forms where the second line extends or illustrates the first. Students learn to recognize these subtler structural moves.

Lesson 3 • What Is Parallelism?

Defines parallelism and explains its role as the primary organizing device in Hebrew poetry. Students distinguish it from rhyme-based structures in other traditions.

Lesson 1 • Rhythm and Oral Performance

Connects rhythmic analysis to the oral and cantillation traditions of Hebrew poetry. Students practice reading aloud using traditional cantillation marks.

Lesson 2 • Stress-Based Meter in Hebrew Poetry

Introduces the accentual meter system and the debate over Hebrew prosody. Students apply stress-counting to sample verses and evaluate competing theories.

Lesson 3 • Alliteration and Assonance

Identifies consonant and vowel sound repetition as deliberate poetic devices. Students locate and interpret these patterns in selected biblical poems.

Lesson 1 • Irony, Hyperbole, and Understatement

Identifies indirect rhetorical strategies that complicate surface meaning. Students learn to detect tonal shifts signaling irony or exaggeration.

Lesson 2 • Personification and Apostrophe

Examines the animation of nature, nations, and abstractions as speaking agents. Students connect these devices to the rhetorical goals of the poem.

Lesson 3 • Simile and Metaphor in Hebrew Verse

Distinguishes simile from metaphor and traces their use in biblical and later poetry. Students practice identifying vehicle, tenor, and ground in each figure.

Lesson 1 • Lament Psalms: Individual and Communal

Examines the lament form as the most frequent psalm type, covering its six standard elements. Students write a structural outline of a lament psalm.

Lesson 2 • Love Poetry and the Song of Songs

Explores the erotic and pastoral imagery of the Song of Songs as a distinct genre. Students debate allegorical versus literal interpretive approaches.

Lesson 3 • Hymns and Songs of Praise

Defines the hymn genre through its call-to-praise, body, and conclusion structure. Students analyze representative psalms using the genre template.

Lesson 4 • Prophetic and Apocalyptic Poetry

Identifies poetic features in prophetic oracles, woe sayings, and vision reports. Students analyze how poetic form intensifies prophetic rhetoric.

Lesson 1 • Establishing the Text

Covers manuscript traditions, textual variants, and critical editions used for Hebrew poetry. Students learn to select and justify a working text before analysis.

Lesson 2 • Writing the Analytical Essay

Guides students through drafting, revising, and presenting a formal poetic analysis. Students submit a complete essay on a self-selected Hebrew poem.

Lesson 3 • Integrating Multiple Analytical Layers

Combines parallelism, meter, imagery, and genre analysis into a unified reading. Students practice moving between micro and macro levels of the text.

Lesson 1 • Christian and Interfaith Reception

Traces how Hebrew poems were reread in early Christian, Syriac, and later interfaith contexts. Students analyze how new contexts transform poetic meaning.

Lesson 2 • Principles of Translating Hebrew Poetry

Contrasts formal, dynamic, and literary translation strategies for verse. Students assess how each approach handles parallelism, wordplay, and imagery.

Lesson 3 • Hebrew Poetry in Modern Culture

Explores the influence of biblical and medieval Hebrew poetry on modern literature, music, and art. Students trace a single poem's reception across media.