[Avodah] Selichos and Kinnos

[David Riceman]

  RMYG

<<Why did the writers of Selichos and Kinnos do so in such difficult to 
understand language?>>

Rabbi Soloveitchik as transcribed in the new set of Kinnos suggests that 
it was a response to persecution; the bad guys [presumably the Byzantine 
Empire] banned or restricted Torah study, so the Jewish response was to 
summarize midrashim in byzantine (lower case b) poetry.

RMB:

<<This is largely an Ashocentric question.>>

No, the Kallir and his contemporaries predate the migrations to Ashkenaz 
and Sefarad (actually there were Jews in Ashkenaz and Sefarad before his 
time, but the cultures we think of by those names came later).

David Riceman