Piyyut

Many piyyuṭim are familiar to regular attendees of synagogue services. For example, the best-known piyyuṭ may be Adon Olam "Lord of the World." Its poetic form consists of a repeated rhythmic pattern of short-long-long-long (the so-called hazaj meter). It is so beloved that it is often sung after many synagogue services after the ritual nightly recitation of the Shema and during the morning ritual of putting on tefillin. Another beloved piyyuṭ is Yigdal "May God be Hallowed," which is based upon the thirteen principles of faith set forth by Maimonides.

Scholars of piyyuṭ today include Shulamit Elizur and Joseph Yahalom, both of whom formerly taught at Hebrew University and are now retired.

The author of a piyyuṭ is known as a pay(e)ṭān (פיטן); the plural is pay(e)ṭanim (פיטנים).

History

The Eretz Yisrael school

The earliest piyyuṭim date from classical antiquity but date as late as the Middle Ages: from the Talmudic (c. 70 – c. 500 CE) and Geonic periods (c. 600 – c. 1040). They were "overwhelmingly from the Land of Israel or its neighbor Syria, because only there was the Hebrew language sufficiently cultivated that it could be managed with stylistic correctness, and only there could it be made to speak so expressively." The earliest Jewish prayer manuscripts, which were found in the Cairo Geniza, often consist of piyyuṭim, as these were the parts of the liturgy that required to be written down: the wording of the basic prayers was generally known by heart, and there was supposed to be a prohibition of writing them down. It is not always clear from the manuscripts whether these piyyuṭim, which often elaborated the themes of the basic prayers, were intended to supplement or replace them or, indeed, whether they originated before the basic prayers had become fixed. The piyyuṭim, in particular those of Eleazar birabbi Qallir, were often in very cryptic and allusive language, with copious reference to midrash.

Initially, the word piyyuṭ designated every type of sacred poetry, but as usage developed, the term came to designate only poems of hymn character around the fourth or fifth centuries CE. The piyyuṭim were usually composed by a talented rabbinic poet, and depending on the piyyuṭ’s reception by the community determined whether it would pass the test of time. Looking at the composers of the piyyuṭim, one can see which family names were part of the Middle Eastern community and which hakhamim were prominent and well established. The composers of various piyyuṭim usually used acrostic forms to hint their identity in the piyyuṭ itself. Since siddurim were limited then, many piyyuṭim had repeating stanzas that the congregation would respond to, followed by the hazzan’s recitations.

The additions of piyyuṭim to the services were primarily used to embellish them and make them more enjoyable to the congregation. As to the origin of the piyyuṭ's implementation, there is a theory that this had to do with restrictions on Jewish prayer. Al-Samawal al-Maghribi, a Jewish convert to Islam in the twelfth century, wrote that the Persians prohibited Jews from holding prayer services. "When the Jews saw that the Persians persisted in obstructing their prayer, they invented invocations into which they admixed passages from their prayers (the piyyuṭ) … and set numerous tunes to them". They would assemble to read and chant the piyyuṭim at prayer time. The difference between that and prayer is that the prayer is without melody and is read only by the person conducting the service. In the recitation of the piyyuṭ, the cantor is assisted by the congregation in chanting melodies. "When the Persians rebuked them for this, the Jews sometimes asserted that they were singing, and sometimes [mourning over their situations]." When the Muslims took over and allowed Jews dhimmi status, prayer became permissible for the Jews. The piyyuṭ had become a commendable tradition for holidays and other joyous occasions. The use of piyyuṭ was always considered a Jewish specialty in Palestine: the Babylonian geonim made every effort to discourage it and restore what they regarded as the statutory wording of the prayers, holding that "any [hazzan] who uses piyyuṭ thereby gives evidence that he is no scholar". It is not always clear whether their main objection was to any use of piyyuṭim at all or only to their intruding into the heart of the statutory prayers.

For these reasons, scholars classifying the liturgies of later periods usually hold that the more a given liturgy uses piyyuṭim, the more likely it is to reflect Land of Israel influence as opposed to Babylonian (Lower Mesopotamian) influence. Sephardic liturgical framers took Geonic strictures seriously. For this reason, the early Jewish piyyuṭim, such as those of Yannai and Eleazar birabbi Qallir, do not survive in the Sephardic rite. However, they do in the Ashkenazi and Italian rites.

Middle Ages and early modernity

In the later Middle Ages, however, Andalusi Jewish poets such as Judah Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol, Abraham ibn Ezra and Moses ibn Ezra composed quantities of religious poetry, in correct Biblical Hebrew and strict Arabic metres. Many of these poems have been incorporated into the Sephardic rites, and to a lesser extent, the others, and may be regarded as a second generation of piyyuṭ.

Lurianic Kabbalah, which originated in the early modern Kabbalistic circle of Isaac Luria and his followers, used an adapted Sephardic liturgy but disapproved of Andalusi piyyuṭim, regarding them as spiritually inauthentic. They invoked the Geonic strictures to eliminate them from the service or move away from its core. Their disapproval did not extend to piyyuṭim of the early Jewish liturgical tradition of the Land of Israel, which they regarded as an authentic part of the Talmudic-rabbinic tradition. Luria himself went to Ashkenazi communities to recite piyyuṭim from the Eretz Yisrael school. Lurianists and their successors also wrote piyyuṭim of their own, such as Ya Ribon by Israel ben Moses Najara, the grandchild of an Andalusi emigrant.

No Sephardic community reinstituted the Eretz Yisrael piyyuṭim under the influence of the Sephardic-rite Kabbalists. Some Andalusi piyyuṭim survive in the Western Sephardic rite but were eliminated or moved in Sephardic Syrian and in rites from the Muslim world. Syrian Jews preserve some of them for extra-liturgical use as pizmonim.