The wife of Dunash אשת דונש
to her is ascribed the only known medieval Hebrew poem written by a woman
The poem was found in fragments in the 1940s, in an eleventh-century manuscript. Its authorship remained unclear until, in the 1980s, another fragment turned up in the Cairo Genizah saying that Dunash's wife had written it.
It is written about his departure: will her beloved remember the one who was left with their only son in her arms at the hour of his going. The form of address is the same as he used himself—that is, she knew both the metre and the devices.
Its significance is simple and therefore strong: in the whole Jewish Middle Ages this is the only known poem written by a woman in Hebrew. Not the first of many—the only one. She has no name.
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- The Cairo Genizah fragment naming her as the author — the only evidence of the authorship; found in the 1980s
Basis: documents and evidence.