El Nora Alila (), also transliterated as Ayl Nora Alilah, is a
piyyut
A piyyuṭ (plural piyyuṭim, ; from ) is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Most piyyuṭim are in Mishnaic Hebrew or Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and most follow some p ...
(liturgical poem) that begins the
Ne'ilah service at the conclusion of
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur ( ; , ) is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei, corresponding to a date in late September or early October.
For traditional Jewish people, it is primarily centered on atonement and ...
. The piyyut is recited as part of the
Sephardic
Sephardic Jews, also known as Sephardi Jews or Sephardim, and rarely as Iberian Peninsular Jews, are a Jewish diaspora population associated with the historic Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula (Spain and Portugal) and their descendant ...
and
Mizrahi liturgy, and has been adopted by some
Ashkenazic communities.
The English translation offered below is a lyric rendering, reproducing a rhyme similar to the Hebrew. A more literal translation makes the title and recurring line, "God of awesome deeds". It consists of eight stanzas, each stanza consisting of four lines of five syllables to the line. Each line (in Hebrew) has three words and the fourth line is always two words, "as Thy gates are closed at night" – the gates being shut are presumably those of Heaven's gates for receiving prayers of repentance (modelled after the gates of the Temple, Ezekiel 46:2), and the hymn is one last impassioned plea for Divine pardon in the last minutes of the Day of Atonement. The initial letters of the eight stanzas of the piyyut spell out משה חזק תם, "Moses, may he be perfectly strong", in reference to the piyyut's author
Moses ibn Ezra (ca. 1055-1138) of Granada.
Text
Melodies
File:The_National_Library_of_Israel_-_El_Nora_Alila_-_Baghdad_version_-_1785181_HURI.ogg, El Nora Alila - Iraq, Baghdad version, Performers: Yaakov Huri and a group, recorded by: Edith Gerson-Kiwi in Jerusalem 1958
File:The_National_Library_of_Israel_-_El_Nora_Alila_-_Greek_version_-_1785182_larisa.ogg, El Nora Alila - Greek Version, Greece, Larissa Performer: Itzhak Meizan Recorded by: Amnon Shiloah In Larissa, 1970.
El Nora Alila has been described as "that powerful and all-engulfing hymn of the Sephardim ... ascendant and aggressive in the highest degree." There are at least eighty versions of the melody sung across four continents. The melody for El Nora Alila is generally sprightly, as is much of the Ne'ilah service, deliberately, coming at the end of a 25-hour fast, when the congregants are probably feeling fatigue and weakness.
[Nulman, Macy, ''Concise Encyclopedia of Jewish Music'' (1975, NY: McGraw-Hill) s.v. Ne'ilah, page 184.]
See also
*
Yom Kippur
Yom Kippur ( ; , ) is the holiest day of the year in Judaism. It occurs annually on the 10th of Tishrei, corresponding to a date in late September or early October.
For traditional Jewish people, it is primarily centered on atonement and ...
*
Ne'ilah
References
External links
El Nora Alilaat the
Jewish Encyclopedia
''The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day'' is an English-language encyclopedia containing over 15,000 articles on the ...
video of three melodies - Turkish, Moroccan, and Spanish-Portuguese - to El Nora Alila page with multiple videos of different renditions
{{High Holidays
Songs in Hebrew
Jewish liturgical poems
Jewish prayer and ritual texts
Yom Kippur
Ne'ila
Hebrew words and phrases in Jewish prayers and blessings