On Speaking at the Right Time, Acting Humbly, and Eating in Moderation: Practical Philosophy in Translation Within Distant Jewish Communities

In an Eastern Jewish community in 1467, there appeared a book in Judeo-Arabic entitled Kitāb maḥāsin al-ādāb [The Book of Excellent Conduct]. In its introduction, the author states that he is translating an earlier Hebrew work on ethics called Sefer musar [Book on Ethics]. That Hebrew work, broadly known as Mishle ha-ʿarav [The Sayings of the Arabs], is in turn a thirteenth-century Provençal translation of a still-earlier Arabic work. This article takes three chapters of the Judeo-Arabic version as a vantage point for a comparative cultural analysis: chapter 9 on speaking at the right time, chapter 10 on acting humbly, and chapter 28 on eating in moderation. As medieval translation often involved a process of adaptation and re-creation, I will (1) explore the translation strategies the author employed to transform a Jewish Hebrew musar work into a Jewish Judeo-Arabic adab work in terms of genre, form, and content, and (2) examine how the ethical values discussed in the three chapters were adapted for the new linguistic audience. The results will shed light on the understanding of how distant Jewish communities interpreted seemingly similar texts in different ways.