Lekhah Dodi
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Lekhah Dodi (לכה דודי transliterated as Lecha Dodi, L'chah Dodi, Lekah Dodi or Lechah Dodi) is a Hebrew liturgical song recited Friday at dusk, usually at sundown, in synagogue to welcome Shabbat (the Jewish Sabbath) prior to the Maariv evening services. It is part of the Kabbalat Shabbat ("acceptance of the Jewish Sabbath"). It translates as "come my beloved", and is a request of a mysterious "beloved" that could mean either God or one's friend(s) to join together in welcoming the Sabbath that is referred to as the "bride": likrat kallah ("to greet the [Sabbath] bride"). During the singing of the last verse, the entire congregation rises and turns to the open door, to greet the "Sabbath Queen" as "she" arrives.
It was composed in the 16th century by Rabbi Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, a Kabalist in Safed. As was common at the time, the song is also an acrostic, with the first letter of the first eight stanzas spelling the author's name. The author draws much of his phraseology from Isaiah's prophecy of Israel's restoration, and six of his verses are full of the thoughts to which his vision of Israel as the bride on the great Sabbath of Messianic deliverance gives rise. It is practically the latest of the Hebrew poems regularly accepted into the liturgy, both in the southern use, which the author followed, and in the more distant northern rite.
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[edit] Ancient Moorish melody
Its importance in the esteem of Jewish worshipers has led every cantor and choir-director to seek to devote his sweetest strains to the Sabbath welcomesong. Settings of "Lekah Dodi," usually of great expressiveness and not infrequently of much tenderness and beauty, are accordingly to be found in every published compilation of synagogal melodies. Among the Sephardic congregations, however, the hymn is universally chanted to an ancient Moorish melody of great interest, which is known to be much older than the text of "Lekah Dodi" itself. This is clear not only from internal evidence, but also from the rubric in old prayer-books directing the hymn "to be sung to the melody of 'Shubi Nafshi li-Menuḥayeki,'" a composition of Judah ha-Levi, who died nearly five centuries before Alḳabiẓ. In this rendering, carried to Palestine by Spanish refugees before the days of Alḳabiẓ, the hymn is chanted congregationally, the refrain being employed as an introduction only. But in Ashkenazic synagogues the verses are ordinarily chanted at elaborate length by the ḥazzan, and the refrain is properly used as a congregational response.
[edit] Old German and Polish melodies
At certain periods of the year many northern congregations discard later compositions in favor of two simple older melodies singularly reminiscent of the folk-song of northern Europe in the century succeeding that in which the verses were written. The better known of these is an air, reserved for the 'Omer weeks between Passover and Pentecost, which has been variously described, because of certain of its phrases, as an adaptation of the famous political song "Lilliburlero" and of the cavatina in the beginning of Mozart's "Nozze di Figaro." But resemblances to German folk-song of the end of the seventeenth century may be found generally throughout the melody.
Less widely utilized in the present day is the special air traditional for the "Three Weeks" preceding Tisha b'Av, although this is characterized by much tender charm absent from the melody of Eli Tziyyon, which more often takes its place. But it was once very generally sung in the northern congregations of Europe; and a variant was chosen by Benedetto Marcello for his rendition of Psalm xix. in his "Estro Poetico-Armonico" or "Parafrasi Sopra li Salmi" (Venice, 1724), where it is quoted as an air of the German Jews. Cantor Eduard Birnbaum ("Der Jüdische Kantor", 1883, p. 349) has discovered the source of this melody in a Polish folk-song, "Wezm ja Kontusz, Wezm", given in Oskar Kolbe's "Piesni Ludu Polskiego" (Warsaw, 1857). An old melody, of similarly obvious folk-song origin, was favored in the London Jewry a century ago, and was sung in two slightly divergent forms in the old city synagogues. Both of these forms are given by Isaac Nathan in his setting of Byron's "Hebrew Melodies" (London, 1815), where they constitute the air selected for "She Walks in Beauty", the first verses in the series. But the melody, which has nothing Jewish about it, was scarcely worth preserving; and it has since fallen quite out of use in English congregations and apparently elsewhere as well.
[edit] Text
[edit] Hebrew
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והיו למשסה שאסיך ...לכה דודי ימין ושמאל תפרוצי ...לכה דודי בואי בשלום עטרת בעלה ...לכה דודי |
התנערי מעפר קומי ...לכה דודי התעוררי התעוררי ...לכה דודי לא תבושי ולא תכלמי ...לכה דודי |
לכה דודי לקראת כלה שמור וזכור בדבור אחד ...לכה דודי לקראת שבת לכו ונלכה ...לכה דודי מקדש מלך עיר מלוכה ...לכה דודי |
[edit] Transliteration
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L'khah dodi liq'rat kalah Shamor v'zakhor b'dibor echad L'khah dodi... Liqrat Shabbat lekhu venel'khah L'khah dodi... Miq'dash melekh ir m'lukhah L'khah dodi... |
Hit'naari meafar qumi L'khah dodi... Hit'or'ri hit'or'ri L'khah dodi... Lo tevoshi v'lo tikhal'mi L'khah dodi... |
V'hayo lim'shisah shosayikh L'khah dodi... Yamin vus'mol tif'rotzi L'khah dodi... Boi v'shalom aseret ba'lah L'khah dodi... |
[edit] (Partial) English translation
Below is the translation of the first two stanzas of the Hebrew text:
Come out my Beloved, the Bride to meet;
the inner light of Shabbat, let us greet.
Observe and remember in a single word,
he caused us to hear, the One and Only Lord.
God is One and His Name is One,
for renown, for glory and in song.
Come out my Beloved, the Bride to meet;
the inner light of Shabbat, let us greet.
To welcome the Shabbat, let us progress,
for that is the source, from which to bless.
From the beginning, chosen before time,
last in deed, but in thought - prime.
Come out my Beloved, the Bride to meet;
the inner light of Shabbat, let us greet.
There are overall nine stanzas. Please note that the translation is not very accurate.
[edit] See also
[edit] External links
- Audio file "Lekhah Dodi" MP3
- Audio file "Lekhah Dodi" MP3
- Lekhah Dodi with music from The Jewish Learning Group from the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center
[edit] Bibliography
- English translation and discussion: in Kabbalat Shabbat: Welcoming Shabbat in the Synagogue, Rabbi Lawrence A. Hoffman, ed. Jewish Lights Publishing. 2004. ISBN 1-58023-121-7.
- Traditional settings: A. Baer, Ba'al Tefillah, Nos. 326-329, 340-343, Gothenburg, 1877, Frankfort, 1883;
- Cohen and Davis, Voice of Prayer and Praise, Nos. 18, 19a, and 19b, London, 1899;
- F. Consolo, Libro dei Canti d'Israele, part. i, Florence, 1892;
- De Sola and Aguilar, Ancient Melodies, p. 16 and No. 7, London, 1857;
- Israel, London, i. 82; iii. 22, 204;
- Journal of the Folk-Song Society, i., No. 2, pp. 33, 37, London, 1900. Translations, etc.: Israel, iii. 22;
- H. Heine, Werke, iii. 234, Hamburg, 1884;
- J. G. von Herder, Werke, Stuttgart, 1854;
- A. Lucas, The Jewish Year, p. 167, London, 1898
- This article incorporates text from the 1901–1906 Jewish Encyclopedia, a publication now in the public domain. [1]
