An original Hebrew translation of the popular medieval commercium song and graduation anthem “De Brevitate Vitæ,” more commonly known as “Gaudeamus Igitur.” First attested in 1287, this Latin poem is irrevocably associated with college life for academics all over the world. It has been translated into many languages, and this Hebrew edition can be added to the list.

Azharot are a genre of piyyut today associated almost exclusively with the grand lists of mitsvot recited on Shavuot, but this is not strictly accurate. An azharah is any poetic listing of mitsvot, and often would be recited on the Shabbat before a holiday as a reminder of the halakhot of the upcoming day. In Western Ashkenazi practice, for instance, an extensive azharah by Joseph Bonfils is recited for Shabbat haGadol before Pesaḥ. Presented here is an azharah and pizmon for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, by the 13th century Toledan payṭan Pinḥas ben Yosef ha-Levi. This text was published in the old Salonika Catalonian rite at the beginning of this maḥzor. Much of the translation is based on the work of Prof. Yaakov Shmuel Spiegel, published in Hebrew in 1985.

Ana is a poem for the first commandment, that discusses all that God did for the ancestors.

A complete poetic translation (all six verses) of Maoz Tsur. As far as the editor knows this is the first translation of Maoz Tsur to both (a) cover all the verses relatively accurately and (b) preserve the strict ABAB-BBCCB rhyme scheme of the original. (Reb Zalman’s comes close but it goes ABAB-CCDDC instead). If it sounds violent, that’s because it *is* violent. Ḥanukkah is a holiday about actively fighting against assimilation and abuse. A lot of Maoz Tsur translations are censored, but it’s a powerful, loud, and even nationalist statement.

This is a complete poetic rhyming translation of Maoz Tsur with all six of its stanzas including a seventh, final stanza written by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer specifically for Yom ha-Atsmau’ut.

A Ladino translation of Brikh Shmei d’Marei Alma.

“Ar’a Raqda,” a piyyut read directly before the Ten Commandments in the Targum, uses wedding imagery and language from the Shir haShirim to paint Sinai as a ḥuppah.

“Af Oraḥ Mishpatekha” is an ofan, a type of piyyut recited as a part of the Ḳedushah d-Yotzer liturgy as an introduction to Ezekiel 3:12. Specifically, it is an ofan written by the Rokeaḥ, R. El’azar ben R. Yehuda of Worms, for the morning liturgy on Shabbat Ḥazon, the Shabbat before Tishah b’Av. It is here included along with an original translation and with cited verses marked. Also included is a series of images from a 1714 maḥzor printed in Frankfurt au Main that includes the piyyut. To note, the text included above is not exactly the same as that of the 1714 maḥzor, having been edited in accordance with Isaac Meiseles’s 1993 critical edition of the Rokeaḥ’s work.

The text of the popular piyyut “Adir Bimlukhah” (a/k/a “Ki lo na’eh”) in Hebrew, with a Latin translation.

This is the second piyyuṭ in a yotsrot cycle for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, according to Minhag Polin (as traditionally practiced in the Ashkenazi communities of northeastern Germany and Poland), all written by a Rabbi Yitzḥak ben Moshe haLevi according to the authorial acrostic. Zunz identifies the author as Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Mainz, who died in the Gzerot Tatno of 1096. Fraenkel disputes this and suggests Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (a/k/a the Or Zarua), of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, who died in around 1270. The ofan is an invocation to the listener to repent, calling upon specific angels by name. Also included is the German text of Isaac Seligman Baer’s Avodat Yisrael translation, in modernized spelling.

This is the third piyyuṭ in a yotsrot cycle for the Shabbat before Rosh haShanah, according to Minhag Polin (as traditionally practiced in the Ashkenazi communities of northeastern Germany and Poland), all written by a Rabbi Yitzḥak ben Moshe haLevi according to the authorial acrostic. Zunz identifies the author as Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Mainz, who died in the Gzerot Tatno of 1096. Fraenkel disputes this and suggests Rabbi Isaac ben Moses of Vienna (a/k/a the Or Zarua), of the Ḥasidei Ashkenaz, who died in around 1270. This zulat piyyuṭ, citing Psalms 119 repeatedly, begs for divine justice, invoking martyrs’ memories (and perhaps endorsing Fraenkel’s suggestion that its authorship must postdate the Gzerot Tatno!).

This is a portion of the tenth gate from ספר תחכמוני Sefer Taḥkemoni of Yehudah Al-Harizi (ca. 1179-1235), narrated by The Farmer. The transcription and English translation was made by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer. Isaac adds, “While Israel Davidson in Parody in Jewish Literature (1907) considered this satire, the imagery of a rooster so desperate not to be killed and eaten that he is begging humans to kill and eat his children instead is horrifying.”