Magen Avot is a

genre Genre () is any style or form of communication in any mode (written, spoken, digital, artistic, etc.) with socially agreed-upon conventions developed over time. In popular usage, it normally describes a category of literature, music, or other fo ...

piyyut A piyyuṭ (plural piyyuṭim, ; from ) is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. Most piyyuṭim are in Mishnaic Hebrew or Jewish Palestinian Aramaic, and most follow some p ...

designed to be inserted into the blessing Berakha Aḥat Me‘en Sheva‘ in the Jewish liturgy for Friday evening, right before the words "Magen avot bidvaro" ("He shielded the patriarchs with His word"), from which the name of the genre is taken.

High medieval Europe

This genre, unlike most genres of piyyut, does not go back to

late antique Late antiquity marks the period that comes after the end of classical antiquity and stretches into the onset of the Early Middle Ages. Late antiquity as a period was popularized by Peter Brown in 1971, and this periodization has since been wide ...

Palestine Palestine, officially the State of Palestine, is a country in West Asia. Recognized by International recognition of Palestine, 147 of the UN's 193 member states, it encompasses the Israeli-occupied West Bank, including East Jerusalem, and th ...

, but rather to

high medieval The High Middle Ages, or High Medieval Period, was the periodization, period of European history between and ; it was preceded by the Early Middle Ages and followed by the Late Middle Ages, which ended according to historiographical convention ...

Europe Europe is a continent located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and Asia to the east ...

. The first known author to write a poem in this genre was

Joseph Kimhi Joseph Kimhi, Qimḥi, or Kimchi (1105–1170) () was a medieval Jewish rabbi and Hebrew Bible, biblical commentator. He was the father of Moses Kimhi, Moses and David Kimhi, and the teacher of Rabbi Menachem Ben Simeon and poet Joseph Zabara. ...

, who was born in Muslim Spain, but spent his later life in

Narbonne Narbonne ( , , ; ; ; Late Latin:) is a commune in Southern France in the Occitanie region. It lies from Paris in the Aude department, of which it is a sub-prefecture. It is located about from the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and was ...

Provence Provence is a geographical region and historical province of southeastern France, which stretches from the left bank of the lower Rhône to the west to the France–Italy border, Italian border to the east; it is bordered by the Mediterrane ...

. Kimhi wrote two piyyutim to embellish this prayer: the first one, “Yom Shabbat Zakhor” (יום שבת זכור), is intended to be recited before the beginning of the standard liturgical paragraph “Magen Avot”, and every line ends in the syllable "-hu", to rhyme with the end of the first sentence of “Magen Avot” (''ha-’el ha-qadosh she-’en kamohu''); the second one, “Yom Shabbat Shamor”, is intended to be recited before the second line of the standard paragraph ("He gives rest to His people on His holy Sabbath day, for He desired them, to give rest to them"), and every line ends in the syllables "-lehem", to rhyme with the end of that second line in the standard paragraph, (''ki vam raẓa le-haniaḥ lahem''). These two poems of Joseph Kimhi had very different fates; “Yom Shabbat Zakhor” became quite popular, and appears in a number of manuscripts; the first two lines even made it into printed rites, and are recited even today in some synagogues of the Western Ashkenazic Rite on the evening of the Festival of Shavu‘ot that falls on the Sabbath. Though Joseph Kimhi was in Provence, the genre really became popular only in Germany. In the late 13th century, Samuel Devlin of

Erfurt Erfurt () is the capital (political), capital and largest city of the Central Germany (cultural area), Central German state of Thuringia, with a population of around 216,000. It lies in the wide valley of the Gera (river), River Gera, in the so ...

wrote a Magen Avot poem “Shipperam Ram Be-ruḥo” (שפרם רם ברוחו), following the style of “Yom Shabbat Zakhor”, and intended to be inserted in the same place in the liturgy. Like Kimhi's poems, this one is about the Sabbath in general. Later German poets wrote piyyutim of this general specifically for special Sabbaths, and Sabbaths that fell on holidays; these poems speak not only about the Sabbath, but also about the specific themes of the given holiday. The twentieth-century scholar

Ezra Fleischer Ezra Fleischer (; 7 August 1928 – 25 July 2006) was a Romanian-Israeli Hebrew-language poet and philologist and laurate of the Israel Prize for Literature studies for 1959. Biography Fleischer was born in 1928 in Timișoara, in the Banat r ...

collected, from Ashkenazic manuscripts, no fewer than eighteen such poems, by various poets, for occasions throughout the year, such as: a Sabbath that falls on

Rosh Chodesh In Judaism, Rosh Chodesh or Rosh Hodesh (; trans. ''Beginning of the Month''; lit. ''Head of the Month'') is a minor holiday observed at the beginning of every month in the Hebrew calendar, marked by the birth of a new moon. Rosh Chodesh is obs ...

, or

Hanukkah Hanukkah (, ; ''Ḥănukkā'' ) is a Jewish holidays, Jewish festival commemorating the recovery of Jerusalem and subsequent rededication of the Second Temple at the beginning of the Maccabean Revolt against the Seleucid Empire in the 2nd ce ...

, or

Rosh Hashana Rosh Hashanah (, , ) is the New Year in Judaism. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (, , ). It is the first of the High Holy Days (, , 'Days of Awe"), as specified by Leviticus 23:23–25, that occur in the late summer/early autu ...

, or Shabbat Naḥamu; and lifecycle events, such as a Sabbath on which a

wedding A wedding is a ceremony in which two people are united in marriage. Wedding traditions and customs vary greatly between cultures, ethnicity, ethnicities, Race (human categorization), races, religions, Religious denomination, denominations, Cou ...

circumcision Circumcision is a procedure that removes the foreskin from the human penis. In the most common form of the operation, the foreskin is extended with forceps, then a circumcision device may be placed, after which the foreskin is excised. T ...

is being celebrated in the community.Fleischer, Poetic Embellishments, pp. 97-104 In all of these, every line ends with the rhyming syllable "-hu", just as in “Yom Shabbat Zakhor”.

References

{{reflist Jewish liturgical poems