Lekhah Dodi

Lekhah Dodi (Hebrew: לכה דודי; also transliterated as "Lecha Dodi", "L'chah Dodi", "Lekah Dodi", "Lechah Dodi"; Ashkenazic pronunciation "Lecho Dodi") is a Hebrew-language Jewish 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").

"Lekhah Dodi" means "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 Safed Kabbalist. 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.

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 "Lekhah 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 "Lekhah 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 'Shuvi Nafshi li-Menukhayekhi,'" a composition of Judah ha-Levi, who died nearly five centuries before Alkabetz. In this rendering, carried to Palestine by Spanish refugees before the days of Alkabetz, 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 chazzan, and the refrain is used as a congregational response.

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 Shavuot, which has been variously described, because of certain of its phrases, as an adaptation of the famous political song "Lillibullero" 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. The melody has since fallen out of use in English congregations and elsewhere.

Text

The full version of the song (note that many ReformFact|date=December 2007 congregations omit verses 3, 4, 6, 7 and 8 in order to shorten it):

ee also

* Jewish services
* List of Jewish prayers and blessings
* Piyyut

External links

* [http://www.virtualcantor.com/007%20Lecha%20Dodi%20v1.mp3 Audio file] "Lekhah Dodi" MP3
* [http://www.virtualcantor.com/008%20Lecha%20Dodi%20v2.mp3 Audio file] "Lekhah Dodi" MP3
* [http://www.chabad.org/article.asp?AID=265789 Lekhah Dodi with music from The Jewish Learning Group] from the Chabad-Lubavitch Media Center

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

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