Lecha dodi

“Lech Dodi” means “Come out, my beloved” and is a request to the mystical “beloved”, who can mean either God or a friend (s), to welcome the Sabbath, called the “bride” together: “לִקְרַאת כַּלָּה” ).

The anthem expresses the sufferings of the Jewish people in Galut (in exile), longing and hope for the speediest deliverance. Lech Dodi is included in the sidurs (prayer books) of all Jewish communities. In a hymn, the people of Israel ask God to send the great Sabbath of the Messianic salvation ^[1] .

In the composition of praises Kabbalat Shabbat hymn follows psalms 95-99 and 29 . When reading his last stanza, in which the “Queen of the Sabbath” is invited, they turn to face the entrance to the synagogue, symbolically marking the arrival of the Sabbath by bowing ^[2] .

In reformist communities, only the first and the last two stanzas are sung ^[3] .

The anthem was compiled in the 16th century by Rabbi Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz , who was born in Thessaloniki and became a kabbalist in Safed .

The content of the anthem was influenced by Isaiah ’s prophecy about the coming revival of Israel ^[3] .

The author used the rabbinical interpretation of the Song of Songs and the Book of Prophets , in which the virgin is a metaphor of the Jewish people, and the beloved (דוֹד, "dod") is a metaphor of God ^[4] .

Based on the lines from the Talmud :

The Messianic aspirations reflected in the hymn are also borrowed from the Talmud ^[2] .

As was customary at that time, the hymn was written by an acrostic : the first letters of the first eight stanzas constitute the name of the author (שלמה הלוי, “Shlomo Halevi”).

“Lech Dodi” was among the hymns and prayers with which the Kabbalists of Safed, going out to the field on Friday at sunset, greeted the coming Saturday ^[2] .

Lech Dodi is one of the most recent Hebrew poems included in the liturgy.

The anthem was included in the prayer book, printed in 1584 in Venice, and became one of the most popular in the Ashkenazi and Sephardic liturgies. He sings on a variety of tunes ^[2] .

The anthem was translated by Heinrich Heine into German . Heine mistakenly attributed authorship to Rabbi Yehuda Halevi .

The significance of the anthem and its reverence for the faithful Jews encouraged almost every Hazzan and choirmaster to devote his most tender melodies to him. Therefore, Lech Dodi compositions , as a rule, very expressive and often delicate, can be found in each collection of synagogue melodies.

In Sephardic communities, the anthem is sometimes sung to the ancient Moorish melody, which is much older than the text of Lech Dodi. The age of the melody is spoken not only by characteristic tunes, but also by the title in many old sidurs, indicating that the anthem should be sung on the tune “ Shuvi nafshi li'mnuhiehi ” (“Come back, my soul, to your peace”) compiled by Yehudah Halevi, who lived for five centuries before Alkabets ^[3] . In this performance, brought to the Holy Land by Jews who fled from Spain (that is, before Alkabets), the hymn is sung by the entire community, and the refrain (chorus) serves only as an introduction.

In some Ashkenazic old-style synagogues, the stanzas are usually sung to a certain length by a chazan, and the refrain is the answer of the community, but in most modern ( orthodox ) Ashkenazic synagogues, it is sung by everyone, and in his words the singers turn to each other.

This popular sing is sung to various melodies around the world, including India, Central Asia ( Bukharian Jews ), Yemen, Kurdistan, Italy, Bulgaria, Germany and the Caucasus ( Mountain Jews ).

German and Polish melodies

At certain times of the year, many northern communities reject later compositions and use two simple old melodies, especially those resembling the folk songs of Northern Europe of that period, which followed the time of writing the text of the hymn.

The most famous of them is the motif played in the Omer weeks (between the holidays of Pesach and Shavuot ). This tune is described as an adaptation of the famous political song “ Lillibulero ” and cavatina at the beginning of Mozart’s opera The Marriage of Figaro . But the similarity with the German folk song of the end of the XVII century is present in the whole melody as a whole.

In the communities of Northern Europe, a special motif is often used, which is traditional for Trehnedelya ( Bein Ha-Metsarim , the period of mourning preceding the day of mourning for the Ninth Ava ). The anthem that expresses longing for Zion and faith in its revival, in its mood corresponds to the atmosphere of these days, which are dedicated to the memories of the sad events that befell the Jewish people ^[3] . Nowadays, the most frequently used tune is Eli Zion . From the latter, he is more soft. A variant of this motive was chosen by Benedetto Marcello for the performance of Psalm 19 in his “Poetic harmonic inspiration” (“ Italian. Estro poetico-armonico ”) and “Parafrasi Sopra li Salmi” (Venice, 1724). Cantor Eduard Birnbaum ^[5] discovered the source of this motif in the Polish folk song Wezm ja Kontusz, Wezm, shown in Oscar Kohlberg 's Piesni Ludu Polskiego (Warsaw, 1857).

The old melody, also having a national origin, was popular with the London Jews a century ago. It was performed in two slightly different versions in the synagogues of the old city. Both of these forms are given by Isaac Nathan ( en: Isaac Nathan ) in his collection “Jewish Melodies” by Gordon Byron (London, 1815), where they constitute the motive for the poem “She Goes in All Beauty” ( en: She Walks in Beauty ). Since then, the melody has ceased to be used in the English and other Jewish communities.

Ashkenazi canon ^{[6] [7]} :

In the Sephardic rite and in the Chabad rite the last stanza reads as follows:

• Almost the only “voiced” spell of Old Man Hottabych (present in the first edition of the book of 1940 and its modern reprints) almost coincides with the Ashkenazi pronunciation of the first line of Lech Dodi ^[8] .

• The article contains materials from the Jewish Encyclopedia ( en: Jewish Encyclopedia / Singer, Isidore ; et al., Eds. New York: en: Funk & Wagnalls Company , 1901-1906), which is currently in the public domain .

• Baer A. , Baal Tefillah, Nos. 326–329, 340–343, Frankfurt, 1883;
• Cohen and Davis , Voice of Prayer and Praise, No. 18, 19a and 19b, London, 1899;
• Consolo, F. , Libro dei Canti d'Israele, Part 1, Florence, 1892;
• De Sola and Aguilar , Ancient melodies, 16 and No. 7, London, 1857;
• Israel, London, I, 82; III, 22, 204;
• Journal of the Folk-Song Society, I, No. 2, pp. 33, 37, London, 1900;
• Shechter, S. , Studies in Judaism, II, 1908.

Translations

• Israel, III, 22;
• Heine, H. , III, 234, Hamburg, 1884;
• Herder, JG von , Werke, Stuttgart, 1854;
• Lucas, A. , The Jewish Year, 167, London, 1898. [To JE, VII, 675-677].

• Olman, Arie . “Lech Dodi”: from Lurian Kabbalah to Hottabych // Lechaim . Number 272. January 2015.