This “praying translation” of the piyyut El Adon appears in Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi’s Sabbath Supplement to his Siddur Tehillat Hashem Yidaber Pi ~ As I Can Say It (for Praying in the Vernacular) (2009).

Note that in El Adon, the acrostic line for the letter samekh uses the sin in it’s stead, the two being phonetically equivalent.

Macy Nulman writes in his entry on “Ayl Adon” in Encyclopedia of Jewish Prayer (1993, pp. 61-62):

A Piyyut arranged in alphabetical acrostic form recited in the Yotzayr benediction on Shabbat and, according to the Ashkenazic rite, on a festival day when it coincides with Shabbat. If the festival day is a weekday, it is omitted. Sephardim recite Ayl Adon (“God, the Master of all works”) on Shabbat and even on festivals that occur on weekdays. The poem is alluded to in the Talmud^[1] Hagigah 3b.  and appears in the Zohar,^[2] Terumah 132a, Vayakhayl 205b.  and it is generally attributed to the Yorday Merkavah (the Riders on the Chariot), mystics of the eighth century. The chariot referred to in the Piyyut (“and is splendrous in glory above the chariot”) is derived from the vision of Ezekiel in his Ma’asayh Merkavah prophesy (Ezekiel chaps. 1 and 10).

The poem, introduced into the Sabbath liturgy by the Ge’onim, has no uniformity in meter. Its alphabetical arrangement is to illustrate that God created the world for the sake of the Torah, which is written in twenty-two letters of the Hebrew alphabet.^[3] Abudraham. ) The first verses (Ayl and Barukh) each contain five words, adding up to ten and alluding to the “ten words” by which God created the world.^[4] Avot 5.1.  The two final verses (Shevah and Tiferet) have six words each, a total of twelve, to correspond to the twelve zodiacal signs.^[5] Berakhot 32b.  The intermediate eighteen verses (from Godlo to Ra’ah) contain four words, the total adding up to seventy-two, which corresponds to the Divine Name of seventy-two letters.^[6] Cf. Kol Bo; see also Zohar, Parshat Terumah. 

The poem is an homage to God for the creation of the heavenly hosts–the sun, the moon, and stars. After having mentioned the sun and moon, whose functions are well known, the author also alludes to the five planets, Shabtai (Saturn), Nogah (Venus), Kokhav (Mercury), Tzedek (Jupiter), and Ma’adim (Mars) by means of the initial words of the next to the final verse, Shevah Notnim Kol Tzeva Marom.^[7] Iy Tef, vol. 1, p.682; cf. also Shabbat 156a.  Although there are several textual variations between Ashkenazim and Sephardim , both have the same number of words in the poem, based on the dictum that one not alter the number of words in Ayl Adon.^[8] Magen Avraham to OH, chapter 281. 

Source(s)

“אֵל אָדוֹן (אשכנז) | El Adōn, a piyyut attributed to the Yordei Merkavah (interpretive translation by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi)” is shared through the Open Siddur Project with a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International copyleft license.

Aharon N. Varady (editing/transcription)

Aharon Varady (M.A.J.Ed./JTSA Davidson) is a volunteer transcriber for the Open Siddur Project. If you find any mistakes in his transcriptions, please let him know. Shgiyot mi yavin; Ministarot naqeni שְׁגִיאוֹת מִי־יָבִין; מִנִּסְתָּרוֹת נַקֵּנִי "Who can know all one's flaws? From hidden errors, correct me" (Psalms 19:13). If you'd like to directly support his work, please consider donating via his Patreon account. (Varady also translates prayers and contributes his own original work besides serving as the primary shammes of the Open Siddur Project and its website, opensiddur.org.)

Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

Rabbi Dr. Zalman Meshullam Schachter-Shalomi, affectionately known as "Reb Zalman" (28 August 1924 – 3 July 2014) was one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal movement. Born in Żółkiew, Poland (now Ukraine) and raised in Vienna, he was interned in detention camps under the Vichy Regime but managed to flee the Nazi advance, emigrating to the United States in 1941. He was ordained as an Orthodox rabbi in 1947 within the ḤaBaD Hasidic movement while under the leadership of the sixth Lubavitcher Rebbe, Yosef Yitzchok Schneersohn, and served ḤaBaD communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. He subsequently earned an M.A. in psychology of religion at Boston University, and a doctorate from the Hebrew Union College. He was initially sent out to speak on college campuses by the Lubavitcher Rebbe, but in the early 1960s, after experimenting with "the sacramental value of lysergic acid", the main ingredient in LSD, leadership within ḤaBaD circles cut ties with him. He continued teaching the Torah of Ḥassidut until the end of his life to creative, free and open-minded Jewish thinkers with humility and kindness and established warm ecumenical ties as well. In September 2009, he became the first contributor of a siddur to the Open Siddur Project database of Jewish liturgy and related work. Reb Zalman supported the Open Siddur Project telling its founder, "this is what I've been looking forward to!" and sharing among many additional works of liturgy, an interview he had with Havurah magazine in the early to mid-1980s detailing his vision of "Database Davenen." The Open Siddur Project is proud to be realizing one of Reb Zalman's long held dreams.

Unknown Author(s)

Sometimes the best we can do in attributing a historical work is to indicate the period and place it was written, the first prayer book it may have been printed in, or the archival collection in which the manuscript was found. We invite the public to help to attribute all works to their original composers. If you know something not mentioned in the commentary offered, please leave a comment or contact us.

Works of related interest:

 

אֵל אָדוֹן (אשכנז) | El Adōn, a piyyut attributed to the Yordei Merkavah (alphabetic acrostic translation by Rabbi Sam Seicol)

אֵל אָדוֹן (מנהג הספרדים) | El Adōn, a piyyut attributed to the Yordei Merkavah (translation by Sara-Kinneret Lapidot)

אֵל אָדוֹן | 上帝，主 | El Adon (Shàngdì, zhǔ) — Chinese translation by Richard Collis (2022)

אֲדוֹן עוֹלָם | Adōn Olam, interpretive translation by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

יוֹם זֶה לְיִשְׁרַאֵל | Yom Zeh l’Yisrael, a Shabbat hymn attributed to Rabbi Yitsḥaq Luria (interpretive translation by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi)

יְדִיד נֶפֶשׁ | Yedid Nefesh, a piyyut transmitted by Elazar ben Moshe Azikri (ca. 16th c.) interpretive translation by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

יוֹצֵר אוֹר | Yotser Ohr, interpretive translation by Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi

prev next