Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries Blog //DataDeepDive: Piyyut
Blog //DataDeepDive: Piyyut

In this series, we take a deep dive into the Talk boards tags to look at how volunteers classify the fragments. You can read an overview of our Talk boards tags in the Sorting Phase Data review.

A piyyut (also spelled piyut; plural: piyyutim) is a Jewish liturgical poem, usually designated to be sung, chanted, or recited during religious services. They were written to be performed by the leader of the service, with the congregation repeating the refrain. Piyyutim often reference midrash, biblical allusions, or rabbinic traditions. Geniza scholars have learned so much about the purpose and piyyut from collections like the Cairo Geniza.

So far, volunteers have tagged 95 subjects as #piyyut — below are six piyyutim found in the project.

Subject 21953571 includes a Yotzer piyyut for Yom Kippur by Shmuel Bar Hosha’ana. The Yotzer sequence includes blessings surrounding the morning recitation of the Shema. The author, Shmuel ben Hosha’ana, was one of the most important Hebrew liturgical poets of the tenth century. Subject 21953571: MS-TS-H-00005–00009, Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library

This piyyut is a selihah(plural: selihot), or a penitential poem read leading up to the High Holy Days or on Fast Days. This piyyut is written by Sahalan ben Avraham, a liturgical poet and leader of the Iraqi congregation in Fustat from during the 11th century. Subject 12506514: ENA 2841, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

This is a piyyut by Isaac Kanzi. (In doing a little research, we found another Kanzi piyyut from the University of Pennsylvania collection that hadn’t been tagged yet!)

Edit (5/16/19): One of our volunteers attributes this piyyut to Judah ibn Ghiyyat. The Hebrew text is here , although this one has a few changes. Subject 12499342: ENA 641, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary Descriptive Catalogue of Genizah Fragments in Philadelphia: III: Liturgy on JSTOR
_B. Halper, Descriptive Catalogue of Genizah Fragments in Philadelphia: III: Liturgy, The Jewish Quarterly Review, New…_www.jstor.org

Raav Saadia Gaon, of early 10th century Babylonia, wrote this piyyut, “Hosha’anot”. It’s another selihah. Saadia Gaon is known for prolific writing in Jewish philosophy, Talmud, and Halakhah. Subject 12506806: ENA 2889, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

This includes the end of a selihah by David b. ha-Nasi. Subject 21708277: MS-MOSSERI-IA-00030, Genizah Research Unit, Cambridge University Library

This piyyut by Yehuda Halevi comes from the Kedushah section of the Yom Kipur Musaf service. One of our moderators noted that the smaller text in the middle of the left image says “Seder kedusha le-R. Y.Halevi” (Kedushah service by R. Y. Halevi). Subject 11605565: ENA 1269, Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary

👉 Read more Talk conversations or start your own by participating in Scribes of the Cairo Geniza on Zooniverse!

By Judaica DH at the Penn Libraries on .

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Exported from Medium on April 14, 2020.

Cite this post: admin. “DataDeepDive: Piyyut”. Published May 14, 2019. https://judaicadh.github.io//blog/2019-05-14-datadeepdive/. Accessed on .