Early Medieval Liturgical Poetry (Piyyut)

The Place of Piyyutim in the Jewish Prayer Service

For many centuries, these poems were a celebrated aspect of the liturgy. However, beginning in the late Middle Ages in many Iberian and post-Iberian Sephardic communities, and in the nineteenth century in many Ashkenazic communities, piyyutim were drastically cut from the service, due in part to their occasional linguistic obscurity and in part to a desire to shorten communal worship. Only on certain major holidays like Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur does their number in many liturgies remain significant. Beginning with a few poems representing the second half of the classical period of piyyut, which spans the sixth and seventh centuries, this section contains piyyutim written by early medieval poets living in the Middle East, Italy, and, later, in Ashkenaz (France and the Rhineland) and al-Andalus (Muslim Spain), with each local tradition having its own distinctive style.

The Development of Early Piyyut 

It is clear that piyyut originated in Palestine in the first centuries of the Common Era, but exactly how early to place the inception of this literary genre remains uncertain. Most of the earliest paytanim (liturgical poets) remain anonymous, although a few names have come down to us. It is due almost entirely to the Cairo Geniza that we know anything about many of the great early poets.

The earliest authors wrote poems of relative simplicity, without the complicated rhyme schemes and convoluted acrostic patterns that would later become common. Even rhyme was not used until the era of the exceptional poet Yannai, around the sixth century. These early poems had much in common, stylistically, with the compositions that became the statutory prayers. But by the time of the great poet Eleazer be-Rabbi Qillir in the seventh century, an evolving formal strictness coincided with a rich linguistic inventiveness. Not only did the poets resurrect rare words, but they also coined new ones from biblical roots, conjugated verbs anomalously, and borrowed from Aramaic and rabbinic Hebrew. Later grammarians viewed their freedom in creating Hebrew words with suspicion or even hostility.

The Spread of Piyyut

Piyyutim spread, at first to southern Italy in the second half of the ninth century, and then to central and northern Italy, France, and Germany. Iraq, too, saw the composition of numerous liturgical poems in Hebrew. In the tenth century, Se‘adya Ga’on included many poems of his own composition in his Siddur (prayer book). Poems were sometimes composed afresh to mark particular times of the year, such as festival days or the Torah portion read that week; significant occasions such as weddings; or, occasionally, contemporary events.

Liturgical Poetry of Medieval Ashkenaz

The poems of medieval Ashkenaz tended to be more opaque than those in Islamic lands and were often intentionally difficult in their literary allusiveness. They continued—and elaborated upon the tradition of classical piyyut but, unlike classical piyyut, made extensive use of the dialect of Hebrew used in rabbinic literature, even including Aramaic and Greek words. These poems soon accreted extensive commentaries, which were perhaps initially transmitted orally but were committed to writing beginning in the thirteenth century. Some of the early piyyutim remained in the prayer books of the Ashkenazic tradition into the modern era, where they still adorn the services for the High Holidays and some other occasions.

Liturgical Poetry of Al-Andalus (Muslim Spain)

For their part, by contrast, the Jewish poets of al-Andalus, influenced by Muslim reverence for classical Arabic and for the language of the Qur’ān, elevated pure Biblical Hebrew as their own linguistic ideal. Absorbing the newly fashionable styles and techniques of Arabic and Hebrew secular poetry, they wrote lyrical poems for new places in the liturgy following the quantitative metrics used in Arabic poetry, while slightly adapting Biblical Hebrew to the purposes of the form. In part, this development may have represented a reaction to the difficulty of the poetry of Se‘adya’s time and a search for a purer form of poetic language, but it also reflected the self-conscious turn of the Jewish poets to the use of biblical grammar and vocabulary. Some of these piyyutim can still be found in modern Sephardic prayer books. This new form of piyyut would also powerfully influence the composition of poetry in the Jewish communities of the East. In addition to those preserved in medieval prayer books, an enormous number of previously unknown poems have emerged individually from the Cairo Geniza.

The Genres of Piyyut 

The genres of piyyut are defined by the place in the service where the poem is to be inserted. The kerovah (approach; one of the earliest forms of the liturgy) is named after the approach of the ḥazan (precentor) to recite the Amidah and thus denotes poems written for that part of the service. Within this group, poems are further classified by the type of Amidah for which the poem has been written. Thus, a kedushta is a poem written for an Amidah that includes a Kedushah (a benediction that sanctifies God’s name), for example, on Sabbath morning. A shiv‘ata (seven) is for an Amidah with seven benedictions—that is, a Sabbath or festival Amidah for the Musaf or Ma‘ariv service (which did not include a Kedushah in late antique Palestine).

Many other places in the service lent themselves to poetic embellishment. Those piyyutim sometimes draw their names from the subject or opening words of the blessing to which they are attached. For example, a poem written to introduce the prayer that begins “Nishmat kol ḥay” (“The breath of all who live . . .”) is called a nishmat. The poet usually elaborates, to a lesser or greater extent, on the subject of the blessing, which in this case is often the soul and praise of God. Piyyutim routinely refer to approaching holidays and related motifs, and less often local issues, all in the context of the overarching theme of the form. 

These poems, taken together, illustrate our understanding, fragmentary though it may be, of the development of the liturgy over the course of the early medieval period and showcase the religious depth, literary beauty, and emotional range of the prayers themselves.