Rabbinic Piyyutim (Liturgical Poetry and Hymns)

Beginning in the fourth or fifth century CE, Jewish prayer leader–poets (paytanim) in Palestine produced numerous liturgical poems and sacred songs (piyyutim) for holidays and the Sabbath, for services in the synagogue, and for communal occasions outside of it. Their works (along with monumental synagogues unearthed in recent years) attest to the flourishing of Jewish culture in late antique Palestine. While a few ancient piyyutim were incorporated into high holiday and festival liturgies and not a few anonymous poems were incorporated into Sabbath and daily liturgies, most of their poetic efforts were lost during the Middle Ages due to the use of a different Torah-reading cycle on Sabbaths, only to be rediscovered in the Cairo Geniza in the late nineteenth century.

The authors of most of the piyyutim from this period are unknown. Only the names (and some of the works) of a few paytanim have reached us. The most significant of these are Yosi ben Yosi, Yannai, and Eleazar be-Rabbi Qillir. Their poetic point of departure was the biblical psalms, but the paytanim proved creative in their own right, incorporating acrostic, meter, and rhyme as well as poetic epithets for the protagonists of their compositions.