’Em ka-yonah (A Mother Like a Dove)

Yannai was a liturgical poet from the Galilee region in Palestine. His innovations in piyyut, including the use of acrostic and end rhyme, and the composition of poems for weekday services, sparked the era of classical piyyut that lasted from the fifth to the eighth centuries. Most of his works were lost until their discovery in the Cairo Geniza in the nineteenth century. The Byzantine poet Eleazar be-Rabbi Qillir was likely one of Yannai’s pupils.