Sephardi Piyut of Rosh Hashana

Sacrifice of Isaac, painting by Caravaggio

Many of the piyutim (liturgical songs) that we sing at Congregation Etz Ahaim on Rosh Hashana and Yom Kippur are beautiful, memorable melodies, but one that stands out in particular is Et Sha’arei Ratzon. The poem was written by R. Yehuda ben Shmuel Ibn Abbas in the 12th century; it is a haunting retelling of the Akeida, the story in which Avraham brings his son Isaac as a sacrifice and then he is stopped by an angel. The repeated verse that most remember is “Oked veHanekad VeHamizbeach” – “the binder, the bound, and the altar.” Here is Avraham the binder bringing his son the bound on the altar – a scary, hard to explain, difficult to comprehend episode in the Torah. It seems like we too on Rosh Hashana are coming before God; like for Avraham, it is the “Et Sha’arei Ratzon” – the time of the gates of grace or desire. The Akeida is part of the Torah reading for Rosh Hashana.

My husband explained some of the midrashim of this song. The first is a lie that Avraham tells Sarah, that he is taking Yitzhak (Isaac), her beloved only son, to study Torah. In the next, Avraham, Yitzhak (Isaac) and his servants are approaching the mountain, but at some point the servants are told to stay behind because, according the English translation in the Sephardi siddur, they are not “spiritually worthy.” The Hebrew, however, calls them “חֲמוֹר”. (Hamor may possibly be translated as donkey). When Isaac is taken to be sacrificed, he worries about his mother Sarah, how she will weep for him. The angels ask that Isaac be spared, that there shouldn’t be a world without a moon (i.e., without Isaac, who is compared to the moon).

The poet, who starts the poem with gates of “ratzon” (desire?) ends with gates of “rahamim” (pity, mercy) and a call for salvation.

You can listen to the piyut on the piyut.org website (try using Internet Explorer on a PC). One of the advisers of that site of piyutim is Dr. Meir Buzaglo, who was a visiting professor for a year at the Rutgers Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life and a visitor to Etz Ahaim, as well.

Our chazzan, Refael Ishran, who lives in Israel but visits Congregation Etz Ahaim in Highland Park on the High Holidays, sings this and other melodies beautifully and with great kavana (concentration). I prefer his melody to the one on the piyut website. Too bad his CD is not available for purchase online.
***Note: this week is the holiday of Sukkot, but I don’t want to wait until next summer to publish this post.***