PIJJŪT. – Hebrew synagogue poetry, cultivated by the “paetani” (from ποιητής), largely liturgical, in which the biblical Psalms, the body of precepts (v. HĀLĀKHĀH), and principally midrashic narrative (v. AGGADA) resound. The p. originated in Palestine, around the 5th or 6th century A.D.; it spread through the Babylonian diaspora and then throughout the entire diaspora, reaching its greatest flowering in Spain (750–1250); it continues to live on, albeit modestly, in our own day.
According to Jēhūdhāh ben Barzilaj of Barcelona (around 1100) and Samuel ben Jēhūdhāh ibn Ābān of Fēz (12th century, converted to Islam), the emergence of the p. was due to religious persecutions. The p. would have been a composition sung al-hizāna (Heb. hazānīth, from hazān, originally the supervisor of boys during religious services, later an official and also a dignitary of the community), in contrast to the ancient fundamental prayers (yalā, in Aramaic yēlōtā), which were recited rather than sung. The p. developed under the influence of Arabic poetry and culture (after 635), adopting the use of hārāz rhyme, rhythm, and the acrostic (called alfabethā), whose earliest elements are already found in biblical poetry. The melody accompanying the p. is called nō'am (“sweetness”), ta'am (“taste”), lahīn (from the Arabic lahn, alhān), or niggūn, “melody.” The metre, under Arabic influence, is called mīqāl, “weight” (quantitative). Rāhīṣ, “bolt,” denotes a poem framed by words and hemistichs taken from the Bible; the Greek term δρόμος is sometimes used. The concluding poem is called
The piyyut is fundamentally hymnic. Compositions of a penitential character are called sēlḥōth (from sih “to forgive”).
Among the “paetani,” Jōsē ben Jōsē, called “the orphan,” probably a Palestinian (ca. 600–650), and his fellow countryman Jannaj (ca. 700) should be remembered. The most popular is El'āzār Qālif of Cariathsepher, who lived around 750. For every day of the religious year he wrote short poems rich in artifice and wordplay, as did the other “paetani,” involving the polysemy of words, biblical hapax legomena, and incessant allusions to texts of rabbinic literature. Among Qālif’s imitators should be counted the Gaonite Sa'adhjāh ben Jōsēph (892–942), author of a rhyming dictionary (Agrōn), a learned man rather than a poet. The first European paytan was Salomone ben Jēhūdhāh “the Babylonian,” that is, from Rome (Babylon = Rome), 950–980. Calonimos (v.) “the elder,” ca. 980, his son Calonimos of Lucca, and the latter’s son Mēsāllām of Calonimos. Jōsēph ben Jishāq ibn Abītūr, or ibn Santas (ca. 970), the first representative of the piyyut in Spain, was spiritually akin to Jishāq ben Jēhūdhāh ibn Gajāth (d. 1089), rabbi of the community of Lucena. The compositions of Šim'ōn ben Jishāq ben Ābūn of Mainz (ca. 1000) were widespread in Germany and France. Rabbēnū Gēršōm ben Jēhūdhāh, the “luminary of the exile” (around 1000), was called ba'al haš-šēm (“lord of the Name”) because he often dealt with the various divine names. Jōsēph ben Šelōmōh of Carcassonne (first half of the 11th century) was the first among the “paetani” to draw upon the Sēpher jēšīrāh.
From 1050 onward, the sēlḥāh, a penitential composition, predominated. The French “paytan” Elia of Mēnāhēm belongs to this period. Among the authors of sēlḥōth, Elia ben Šēma'jāh of Bari was famous, endowed with great sensitivity and at times original. In Germany, Mē'ir ben Jishāq is well known. Rašī was also an author of piyyut. The tragic events of 1096 (the First Crusade) made the content of the synagogue poetry of that period especially sorrowful. Modest in extent but rich in profound piety is the poetic work of Bahjā (v.) ibn Paquda. Outstanding synagogue poets were Šelōmōh ibn Gēbīrōl (v. AVICEBRON), Mosè and Abramo ibn 'Ezrā', Giuda Levita (v.). A famous “paytan” was Israele Nagera (16th century), who belonged to the kabbalistic milieu of Safed and was the author of the well-known Sabbath hymn Lēhhāh dōdhī (“Come, my beloved”).