see thee a beggar.
A prince erstwhile, thou shalt become a slave;
Instead of a crown, thou shalt wear a wreath of straw."

Serach in abject despair turns for comfort to his three friends, and it
is decided to bring suit for divorce in a general assembly. The women
appear at the meeting, and demand that the despiser of their sex be
forced to keep his ugly wife. One of the trio of friends proposes that
the matter be brought before the king. The poet appends no moral to his
tale; he leaves it to his readers to say: "And such must be the fate of
all woman-haters!"

Judah Sabbatai was evidently far from being a woman-hater himself, but
some of his contemporaries failed to understand the point of his
witticisms and ridiculous situations. Yedaya Penini, another poet,
looked upon it as a serious production, and in his allegory, "Woman's
Friend," destitute of poetic inspiration, but brilliant in dialectics,
undertook the defense of the fair sex against the misanthropic
aspersions of the woman-hater.

Such works are evidence that we have reached the age of the troubadours
and minnesingers, the epoch of the Renaissance, when, under the blue sky
of Italy, and the fostering care of the trio of master-poets, Dante,
Petrarch, and Boccaccio, the first germs of popular poetry were
unfolding. The Italian Jews were carried along by the all-pervading
spirit of the times, and had a share in the vigorous mental activity
about them. Suggestions derived from the work of the Renaissance leaders
fell like electric sparks into Jewish literature and science, lighting
them up, and bringing them into rapport with the products of the
humanistic movement. Provence, the land of song, gave birth to Kalonymos
ben Kalonymos, later a resident of Italy, whose work, "Touchstone"
(_Eben Bochan_) is the first true satire in neo-Hebraic poetry. It is a
mirror of morals held up before his people, for high and low, rabbis and
leaders, poets and scholars, rich and poor, to see their foibles and
follies. The satire expresses a humorous, but lofty conception of life,
based upon profound morality and sincere faith. It fulfils every
requirement of a satire, steering clear of the pitfall caricature, and
not obtruding the didactic element. The lesson to be conveyed is
involved in, not stated apart from the satire, an emanation from the
poet's disposition. His aim is not to ridicule, but to improve,
instruct, influence. One of the most amusing chapters is tha