A Song of the Ten Commandments

Known only as author of this tekhine—a prayer or supplication, often for women, in vernacular Yiddish—Sheyndele, in her “Song of the Ten Commandments,” summarized in verse each command in order, in rhyme, adding brief, practical explanations. This content and the work’s poetic form suggest it was intended for recitation, perhaps by groups of women, during the late-spring festival of Shavuot, which commemorates God’s giving of the Torah to the people of Israel at Mount Sinai. In composing a liturgical work for festival use, Sheyndele resembles Rebecca Tiktiner, who died in Prague eighty years before this publication.