Let me recall my Fathers’ names

This is one of many poems about the binding of Isaac (the Akedah) written by medieval northern European Jews. In his historical and poetical reflections on the Jewish martyrdom that took place during the Crusades, Ephraim was particularly attuned to the comparison between Isaac’s near-sacrifice and the very real martyrdom of his own community. This penitential selihah, then, took on a deepened meaning for its audience, who saw their ancestors as embodying the traditions of Abraham and Isaac. Ephraim draws on a range of midrashic traditions and writes with a complex acrostic that includes a partially reversed alphabetical order (known as at-bash) and his name.