NEILAH Newcastle Reform Synagogue Saturday 12th October 2024
El Nora Alilah
On page 570 of our new Yom Kippur book you can find the song El Nora Alilah / God Awful in Deeds by the Spanish Hebrew poet Moses ibn Ezra (c 1055 – 1139) from Granada in Al-Andalus, Muslim Spain. Muslim Spain was not always the idyllic place for Jews we sometimes imagine it to have been. When the young poet was eleven years old, in December 1066, a rumour spread through Granada that Joseph ibn Nagrela, Jewish statesman and lead government minister, was planning to assassinate the Muslim King. A mob stormed through the city, killing ibn Nagrela, as well as most of the Jewish population of the town. Worse was to come with the arrival of the hardline Berber Almoravid dynasty in 1090. Two of Moses’ three brothers fled, and later Moses did too, taking up residence further north in Christian Spain. They never returned. The rest of Moses’ life was lonely and unhappy. He hated being separated from his family. Later He wrote in one of his poems: ‘My pain persists: for my father’s sons who have perished and for my friends who have gone far away.’
The time of Moses ibn Ezra marks the high point of Hebrew poetry in Spain. He specialised in poetry like this one called selichot/penitential poems, so much so that was given the nickname ha-sallach, meaning someone who composes selichot. Selichot were written mainly for the ten days of repentance and the period leading up to them. Back in the eleventh century selichot were composed in Greece, Italy, France and Germany, as well as in Arabic speaking lands. But it was the Spanish poets who specialised in them, using rhyme, like Muslim poets, and adapting Arabic rhyme and rhythms to Hebrew. Five Spanish poets between them wrote around 1000 such poems. The famous ones include Solomon ibn Gabirol, Judah HaLevi, and Abraham ibn Ezra (probably not related to Moses ibn Ezra).
Back then, in the Sephardi and eastern communities, a new custom arose of reciting selichot for a full month before the High Holyday season of the New Year and Day of Atonement. It mirrors the recitation of supplications by Muslims during Ramadan, the month of fasting. In Arabic such a prayer is called a du‘ā’. The word denotes a supplication or call for help. Muslims recite Duas at any time, but they have a special function during the month of Ramadan: in the last ten days of the month, extra prayers for protection from punishment are recited, along with seclusion in the mosque and staying up all night. These have a parallel in the ‘ten days of repentance’ in rabbinic Judaism. Moses Maimonides mirrors the Ramadan customs when he wrote in his ‘Laws of Repentance’ (Mishneh Torah, Hilchot Teshuvah 3:5):
It is customary for everyone to get up at night during the ten days and to pray in the synagogues with words of supplication and humility until the day dawns.
By far the most popular and often sung poem that Moses ibn Ezra wrote is El Nora, which is sung in Sephardi, Mizrachi and many other communities across the Jewish world at the start of the concluding service on Yom Kippur. The poet pleads for forgiveness, joy, protection, restoration and redemption ‘at the time of Neilah’, a Hebrew word meaning ‘locking up.’ The poem introduces our neilah /closing service, looking forward to the closing of the gates of the Ark in the synagogue which will take place at nightfall. The return of the congregation to the synagogue and the joy of this last hour is in stark contrast to the meditative quietness of earlier in the day. The gates of God’s mercy will close for now, and yet the hope of God’s mercy will always be there.
A remarkable feature of both Arabic and Hebrew religious poetry from Spain is the use of secular love poetry and erotic imagery within a spiritual context. All the important Jewish poets of Spain also wrote love poetry as well as prayer poetry, and many of them were happy to mix up the two. From my days studying classical Greek and Latin poetry, I remember the paraklausithyron, the tearful song of a lovesick man as he stood outside his beloved’s locked door. Just as the beloved can close the gate leaving her lover lamenting outside, so can God close the gates on us. So for us, who love God, this poem is a heartfelt plea for our God to have pity on us before the day ends, just as the lovers of old asked the ones they had fallen in love with to have pity on them. Many of the ancient love songs became sadder and sadder as the end nears, but this one becomes happier and happier. The wording of each verse becomes more cheerful as the song goes on. We have the chorus, with which the song begins, which asks God to help us to forgiveness at this special time. This chorus is repeated after each of the six verses which can be summed up like this:
1 We tremble but dare to ask;
2 Wipe out our sins;
3 Deliver us from our enemies (which we shall sing as a heartfelt plea this year) to share in your joy;
4 Be kind to us and judge all who seek our harm;
5 Bring a time of renewal;
6 Honour to the remnant of Israel and Judah.
The strong rhythm of the song is accompanied by a rhyme scheme known in Arabic as muwashshaḥ, which comes From the Arabic wushāḥ, a woman’s sash worn over her shoulder. In Hebrew a poem arranged like this is called shirat ha-ezor, in English a ‘girdle’ poem. It is so called because the chorus line links the verses, just as a woven belt links the garment. In our song, the chorus and the last two lines of each verse have a common rhyme, –la, but the first two lines of the verses use a different rhyme for each verse. Verse three uses the sound ra which rhymes with the chorus. The last verse moves from -m at the end to the sound -n, signalling a change or perhaps a slowing for recital. What is more, the poet has woven his own name into the poem, for the large first letters of each of verses two to six spell out Moshe Chazak ‘Moses is strong’, or perhaps ‘Moses, be strong!’
There is also a concluding seventh verse, which has not been included in our service, and which is positively messianic:
Mi-khael sar Yisrael, Eliyahu v’Gavriel, basru na hagg’ullah, bish’at ha-neilah.
Michael the guardian angel of Israel, Elijah and Gabriel! Bring the good news of redemption at this time of the Neilah service.
In the Jewish folk tradition, Elijah will come as shabbat ends to herald the Messiah and will announce it by blowing the shofar. Today is Saturday and at the end of the service we too will sound the shofar, make Havdalah and sing Eliyahu Ha-navi.
A study of modern recordings of the song has found 56 different versions from 25 different countries. What is very remarkable is that all these tunes are variations of the same basic melody. It used to be sung from Cochin and Mumbai in the East to New York in the West, in Kurdistan, Persia, Turkey, Georgia, Yemen, Tunisia, Italy, Israel, and elsewhere, all the places to which the exiles from Spain travelled, with the tune passed down orally until it was written down in the nineteenth century.[1]
By the time Moses ibn Ezra died, the Christian kingdom had taken over most of Spain, leaving the kingdom of Granada alone in Muslim hands. Christian Castilian rulers inherited and adapted the poetic and other cultural Arabic traditions: and as Jewish scholars moved eastwards across Europe, Arabic learning, song and storytelling gradually made its way into Ashkenazi Jewry. By the year 1287, three years before Jews were expelled from England, another song from Spain, the familiar Adon Olam, was being sung at the end of services in London.
As we sing this wonderful song El Nora, and realise that it was written by someone who had many difficulties in his life, we will be aware that at this time on Yom Kippur our bodies are empty, our brains tired, our minds worn out by this long day. Yet in a strange way it is perhaps only at this moment that we can grasp what true contentment is, the peace that comes from inner searching, from a life fulfilled, from the yearning of the human for the spiritual. May we go forward from this place to our homes in peace, and come back to celebrate together Sukkot and Simchat Torah, which the rabbis called the season of our joy.
[1] Bahat, Avner (2007). ‘El Nora Alila (God of Might, God of Awe) – From Spain to the Four Corners of the Earth’, Inter-American Music Review, 18:1-2, 77-89.