LEADER’S REPETITION מִסּוֹד חֲכָמִים וּנְבוֹנִים Drawing from the counsel of wise and knowing men. This type of prayer is known as a reshut, an “asking of permission.” The leader of prayer asks permission of the congregation to represent them in prayer. He assures them that the additional prayers he will be saying in the course of the Repetition were composed with the advice and approval of the learned and the wise. The reason for making this point is that, during the Middle Ages there was considerable debate about the legitimacy of many of the piyutim, the additional liturgical poems added to the prayers on Sabbaths and festivals. There were vast numbers of these poetical compositions. Some 35,000 of them have been collected. There were times and places where each leader of prayer would compose his own. Some authorities, among them Sa’adia Gaon and Maimonides, had marked reservations about them. They felt they were unnecessary, at times their theology was questionable, and sometimes their Hebrew grammar was at fault. Only with the invention of printing did the text become more standardized. The piyutim were sifted; relatively few gained general acceptance. But the ancient custom of assuring the congregation beforehand was kept in place.

יָרֵֽאתִי בִּפְצוֹתִי I am afraid as I open my mouth. A continuation of the reshut, now addressed not to the congregation but to God. The initial letters of each verse spell out the name of the composer, Rabbi Yekutiel ben Moshe, who lived in Speyer in the eleventh century. The leader confesses his inadequacy and prays for God’s help as he presents the pleas of those who have delegated him to represent them. The leader of prayer on the High Holy Days was often a person of great spiritual stature. Sometimes it was the rabbi of the congregation. The sight of such a person publicly confessing his failings, together with the plaintive chant associated with reshut prayers, had great impact on the worshipers, moving them to a sense of humility and awe. Each line of this prayer ends with the syllable ḥil, because it was written as a prelude to the next piyut which begins with the words “At ḥil, The trembling comes.” It is only in profound humility that we approach God in prayer. Abraham called himself “dust and ashes” when praying for the cities of the plain (Gen. 18:27). Moses asked (Ex. 3:11), “Who am I” that I should lead? The Torah later calls him “the humblest man on the face of the earth” (Num. 12:3). In the life of the spirit, humility is greatness.

אָת חִיל The trembling comes. A poem by Elazar HaKalir, based on the tradition that Isaac was born, and bound, on this day. The poem focuses on the fact that God had already foreseen the birth of Abraham before He created humankind. It asks God to forgive us in the merits of Abraham and Sarah and their son.

תַּאֲלַת זוּ כְּחָפֵץ לְהַתְעִיל When God desired to heal His nation’s curse. A poem by HaKalir structured as a reverse acrostic, each line beginning with a letter of the alphabet and progressing backwards, from tav to alef. The poet begins by saying that it was God who taught His people how to pray. It speaks of the nine blessings of the Musaf prayer and relates them to the nine mentions of God’s name in Hannah’s prayer for a child (cf. Berakhot 29a).

יָלְדָה שִׁבְעָה Who gave birth to seven children. I Samuel 2:5 states that “the barren [i.e. Hannah] has borne seven [children],” yet I Samuel 2:21 says that she had “three sons and two daughters.” The rabbis resolved the apparent contradiction by saying that she lived to see Samuel’s two sons and that “grandchildren are like children” (Pesikta Rabati 43:6).

עֹז מַלְכִיּוֹת עֶֽשֶׂר The ten coronation verses. The poet links the ten verses of Kingship in Musaf with the ten trials of Abraham; and the ten verses of Remembrance and Shofar to the ten blessings Isaac gave to Jacob (Gen. 27:28–29).

בְּזֶה פֶּֽרֶק חִנֵּן It was at this time of year when Isaac beseeched God. Jacob and Esau were born on Rosh HaShana (Rosh HaShana 10b). By analogy with Sarah and the birth of Isaac – it was a year between Sarah being told that she would have a child, and the birth itself (Gen. 18:10) – it follows that Isaac prayed for a child the previous Rosh HaShana.

אֲיַחֲלֶֽנּוּ כֶּֽתֶר לְעַטְּרָה I hope to place a crown upon Him. “There is no King without a people” (Rabbeinu Baḥye, Gen. 38:30). Therefore, it is our recognition of God’s sovereignty that makes this fact real in human consciousness.

אֶֽבֶן חוּג The stone of the earth. A poem constructed on the pattern known as at-bash: an ascending acrostic for the first phrase and a descending one for the second, so that the first letter of the alphabet, alef, is paired with the last, tav, and so on. According to tradition (Rosh HaShana 10b), three barren women, Sarah, Rachel and Hannah, were remembered on Rosh HaShana and granted a child. This poem is about Rachel.

סִלּוּף דִּינָה בִּיהוֹסֵף The switch of Dina for Joseph. A tradition tells that Rachel initially conceived a girl while Leah, in her seventh pregnancy, conceived a boy, but that by a miracle the children were transposed so that Rachel was able to give birth to Joseph while Leah gave birth to Dina (Berakhot 60a). Rachel’s tears at the fate of her children are mentioned in the Haftara for the second day of Rosh HaShana. It is striking how often our thoughts turn on these holy days to the relationship between parents and children and to the prayers of childless women. It is through our experience as children and parents that we begin to understand the love and longing, as well as the tensions, between God, our Parent, and us, His children.

וְאַתָּה קָדוֹשׁ, יוֹשֵׁב תְּהִלּוֹת יִשְׂרָאֵל You are the Holy One, enthroned on the praises of Israel. This stunning line, taken from Psalms 22:4, speaks of God’s throne woven out of the words of His people as they sing His praise. This is the paradox: God is everywhere, but only when we recognize this fact does He live in the hearts and minds of humanity.

אַתָּה הוּא אֱלֹהֵֽינוּ You are our God. An alphabetical hymn composed out of descriptions of God, all but two of which are biblical. The exceptions are “His life is everlasting” (Yerushalmi, Berakhot 2:3) and “His counsel is candor” (found only here). מַעֲטֵֽהוּ קִנְאָה His cloak is jealousy. At the heart of Judaism is the faith that God loves. God’s gaze is turned outward. By contrast, the gods of myth were egoistic, concerned about themselves, and the philosopher’s god was passionless. Jealousy, when attributed to God, is the prophet’s way of describing the pain of love betrayed. נֶאְפָּד נְקָמָה His coat is vengeance. When Judaism speaks about the “vengeance” of God, it means two things: (1) vengeance belongs to God, not man (see Lev. 19:18); (2) ultimately there is justice in history. The great crimes do not go unpunished.

תָּעִיר וְתָרִֽיעַ Awaken and sound the shofar. A conclusion of the previous poem. Most of these fragments, ending one poem and heralding the next, end with the word Kadosh, “holy,” since all these poems have been inserted into the third paragraph of the Amida whose keyword and theme is holiness.

אַדֶּֽרֶת מַמְלָכָה The glorious mantle of our royalty. A powerful testament to the pathos of the Jewish people during their centuries of exile. On Rosh HaShana they proclaim the sovereignty of God. Yet they have lost their own sovereignty. Their enemies have desecrated their holy places, oppressed God’s people, and arrogantly declared themselves, not God, the rulers of earth. The poet pleads with God to end Israel’s oppression so that they can return to serving God alone. The poem is written as an acrostic whose initial letters spell out the name of its author, Elazar bei-Rabbi Kalir.

אֵם אֲשֶׁר בְּצֶֽדֶק נִתְיַשְּׁנָה O matriarch who aged in righteousness. Another poem about one of the four hitherto infertile women who were granted children on Rosh HaShana, in this case Sarah. Written as an alphabetic acrostic, it speaks of her story and the birth of Isaac. It is a narrative of hope, about a woman who had almost given up hope, on this day of hope.

אַאְפִּיד I shall crown. On Rosh HaShana, the anniversary of God’s coronation, it is as if we placed the crown on His head. The poet vividly describes the scene in heaven – the host of angels who form, as it were, God’s retinue – as Israel proclaims God’s sovereignty on earth. The first and third words in each stich form a double alphabetic acrostic.

שְׁמוֹ מְפָאֲרִים His name is glorified. Said when the first day of Rosh HaShana falls on Shabbat, since the alternative first-day poem mentions the shofar, not blown on Shabbat. Adapted from a poem originally written for the second day, it was composed by Rabbi Shimon HaGadol, who has encoded his name in the first five stanzas. A paean to God’s majesty and to Rosh HaShana as the annual Day of Judgment.

חִכֵּם חֲנִיטָיו לִתְקֹֽעַ He taught His offshoots to sound the shofar. A reference to the fact that Rosh HaShana is described in the Torah as both Yom Terua, “a day when the horn is sounded” (Num. 29:1) and Zikhron Terua, “a remembrance of the sounding of the horn” (Lev. 23:24). The sages reconciled these two different descriptions by saying that the first refers to a weekday, when the shofar is sounded, the second to Shabbat, when the horn is merely remembered (Rosh HaShana 29b). Even though the decision not to blow the shofar on Shabbat was rabbinic, it was hinted at in the Torah.

תֹּֽקֶף אֶרְאֶלִּים וְכוֹכְבֵי צְפָר The splendor of angels and the morning stars. It is impossible to understand the basic worldview of Judaism without the idea of the essential harmony between cosmos and ethos. Just as the universe is governed by physical laws, uncovered by science, so it is governed by moral laws, revealed in the Torah. The angels and the stars, heavenly beings and the lights of heaven, rejoice in the moral harmony of justice. Creation is completed by redemption, physics by ethics.

אֶתֵּן לְפֹעֲלִי צֶֽדֶק I shall ascribe righteousness to my Maker. Written by Rabbi Shimon bar Yitzḥak, the poem begins with a quotation from the book of Job, and is largely woven from biblical quotations attesting to God’s power and majesty on the one hand, His humility and concern for the powerless and poor on the other. So should we too be humble: “The Mighty One does not despise / anyone who is lowly in his own eyes.”

יהוה מֶֽלֶךְ The Lord is King. The line “The Lord is King, The Lord was King, The Lord shall be King forever and ever,” though it appears in our daily prayers, is not biblical. It is the joining of three biblical fragments. The poet, HaKalir, has here based himself on two themes. First is the threefold angelic sanctification of God that Isaiah heard in his vision of heaven: “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts.” The second is the idea that when we say the Kedusha, we too are like the angels. So the poem is written in three lines, with each line containing a triple alphabetical acrostic, and followed by the threefold refrain that The Lord was, is, and always will be King. Its theme is the harmony between the praises we sing on earth and those the angels sing in heaven.

וּבְכֵן לְךָ הַכֹּל יַכְתִּֽירוּ And so, all shall crown You. A powerful fugue, affirming both the awesome mood and nature of the day – God sitting in judgment on the Day of Judgment – yet also God’s compassion and forgiveness. Without both, the human world could not survive. Without justice and judgment there would be anarchy, a war of all against all. But without compassion and forgiveness we would all be condemned, since “There is none on earth so righteous as to do only good and never sin” (Eccl. 7:20). The prayer is much loved because of its plaintive melody. Though said in Shaḥarit on the first day, it is often moved to Musaf on the second day.

KEDUSHA The Kedusha is one of the holiest as well as the most audacious of prayers. It is based on the visions of Isaiah and Ezekiel who saw God enthroned in heaven surrounded by a retinue of angels singing His praises. Isaiah heard them singing “Holy, holy, holy is the Lord of hosts; the whole world is filled with His glory.” Ezekiel heard them singing, “Blessed is the Lord’s glory from His place.” These two lines, plus a third taken from Psalms, form the core of the Kedusha. What is daring is the idea that having come thus far in prayer – through the dawn blessings, the verses of praise, Shema and its blessings, and the Amida itself – it is as if we now stand in the innermost court of the King, joining our voices to the angelic choir. We have climbed the ladder of prayer stretching from earth to heaven, and we now stand on its uppermost rung. This is prayer’s supreme mystical moment. We have left planet Earth far behind and we become part of the music of infinity.