Ya Ribon () is an Aramaic

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 ...

by the 16th-century payytan Israel ben Moses Najara of Gaza, first published in his 1586 work זמירות ישראל "Songs of Israel".

Ashkenazi Jews Ashkenazi Jews ( ; also known as Ashkenazic Jews or Ashkenazim) form a distinct subgroup of the Jewish diaspora, that emerged in the Holy Roman Empire around the end of the first millennium CE. They traditionally speak Yiddish, a language ...

traditionally sing it at table after the Friday night meal and

Sephardi Jews 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 ...

sing it (sometimes in Ladino) among the

Baqashot The ''baqashot'' (or ''bakashot'', ) are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian, Moroccan, and Turkish Jewish communities for centuries each week on Shabbat mornings from the early hours of t ...

. The piyyut, originally sung to an Arab melody, has been set to dozens of tunes, both ancient and modern. "The 21st century Shabbat table", says one modern writer, "is incomplete without the singing of the universal Yah Ribon."

Form and content

Najara's best-known work, this piyyut was written in Aramaic, and the first letters of the verses form the author's name ISRAEL by

acrostic An acrostic is a poem or other word composition in which the ''first'' letter (or syllable, or word) of each new line (or paragraph, or other recurring feature in the text) spells out a word, message or the alphabet. The term comes from the Fre ...

. An example of the

strophic Strophic form – also called verse-repeating form, chorus form, AAA song form, or one-part song form – is a song structure in which all verses or stanzas of the text are sung to the same music. Contrasting song forms include through-composed, ...

model known in Arabic as ''

muwashshah ''Muwashshah'' ( ' ' girdled'; plural '; also ' 'girdling,' pl. ') is a strophic poetic form that developed in al-Andalus in the late 10th and early 11th centuries. The ', embodying the Iberian rhyme revolution, was the major Andalusi inno ...

'', the piyyut is composed of equal metrical units and the refrain "Yah, lord for ever and ever/O King, you are king of kings" is repeated after every verse. The piyyut is largely formed from the language of Daniel and incorporates quotes from the

Zohar The ''Zohar'' (, ''Zōhar'', lit. "Splendor" or "Radiance") is a foundational work of Kabbalistic literature. It is a group of books including commentary on the mystical aspects of the Torah and scriptural interpretations as well as material o ...

. Unusually for a Sabbath table song, it makes no mention of the Sabbath or its rituals, because it was not originally intended for the Sabbath. Apparently it entered the Sabbath repertoire because of similarity in language to the Sabbath zemirot of

Isaac Luria Isaac ben Solomon Ashkenazi Luria (; #FINE_2003, Fine 2003, p24/ref>July 25, 1572), commonly known in Jewish religious circles as Ha'ari, Ha'ari Hakadosh or Arizal, was a leading rabbi and Jewish mysticism, Jewish mystic in the community of Saf ...

. Max D. Klein's ''Seder Avodah'' prayerbook substitutes "who served Thee, Lord, in every age" for the literal "whom Thou chosest from all nations" in what Theodor Gaster understood as a "romantic idealization of the past.

Words

References

Notes

{{Notelist Songs in Aramaic Jewish liturgical poems Zemirot