This is the prayer, Yishtabaḥ, in its Latin translation by Johann Stephan Rittangel as found in his translation of the Pesaḥ seder haggadah, Liber Rituum Paschalium (1644).

Transcription of the Latin by Isaac Gantwerk Mayer, and of the Hebrew by Aharon Varady. Unfortunately, my Latin is not sufficient for completing a secondary translation. If you can make one, please contact us.

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Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, z”l, included his adaptation of the liturgy for the final section of liturgy from the Pesukei Dezimrah, “Yishtabaḥ Shimkha,” in his Siddur Tehillat Hashem Yidaber Pi (2009). To the best of my ability, I have set his English translation side-by-side with these verses in Hebrew from Exodus and Neḥemyah. I have replaced anglicizations and removed capitalization for divine pronouns. –Aharon N. Varady

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The differences…lie in the use made in each of the biblical verses and in the prose passages which separate the poetic strophes. In the Rosh ha-Shanah liturgy the prayer serves to introduce the declaration of God’s kingship (the malkhuyot verses), which in turn precedes pleas for God’s remembering His relationship with Israel (zikhronot) and salvation (shofarot). To serve this function Alenu l’Shabe’aḥ reminds God of the worshiper’s devotion, in contrast to the idolatry of the nations. This theme is accented by the use of Deut. 4:39 and is echoed in ‘al ken neqavveh, in which the prayer turns to the hope for God’s sovereignty over the nations. In the context of Ma’aseh merkabah, Alay l’Shabe’aḥ serves as a prayer of praise in gratitude for God having spared the traveler to the Merkabah.

The transcription of Alai l’Shabe’aḥ here is a reconstruction deriving largely from Oxford 1531 f.51a-b supplemented by text from MS NY 8128 (Jewish Theological Society) — with only minor exceptions, the text of Alai l’Shabe’aḥ provided by Gershom Scholem in his appendix to Jewish Gnosticism, Merkabah Mysticism, and Talmudic Tradition (1960). Scholem writes,

The following…contain the transcription of the text as I have restored it from the two manuscripts, Oxford 1531, folios 50a ff., and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America 828, folios 29a ff. Both manuscripts are from the circles of the German Ḥasidim, who preserved material that came to them from the Orient through southern Italy. Both manuscripts belong to the 14th century, the New York manuscript possibly to the beginning of the 15th. I have used the Oxford manuscript as a base for the transcription because in those parts which it contains it has, for the most part, the obviously better readings. But not a few lines, and even complete paragraphs (such as §§ 18-20), are missing in this manuscript whereas they are preserved in the New York manuscript. All additions in brackets are taken from this manuscript.

The English translation is adapted from that of David de Sola Pool, and that of James Davila in Hekhalot Literature in Translation: Major Texts of Merkavah Mysticism (Brill 2013), p. 259-261, while looking at the wording found in the variations of Alai l’Shabe’aḥ published by Peter Schäfer in Synopse zur Hekhalot-Literatur (Tiibingen, 1981), §550-551. I have replaced default male divine pronouns in the translation of the Hebrew grammar with “Hashem.” –Aharon Varady

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