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Yedid Nefesh (Hebrew: יְדִיד נֶפֶש, lit. 'beloved of the soul') is the title of a piyyut and zemer. It is usually sung on Shabbat.

Traditions and origin

Some sing it between Minchah (afternoon prayer) of Friday and the beginning of Kabbalat Shabbat (literally: receiving or greeting the Sabbath—a collection of psalms usually sung to welcome in the Shabbat queen, as it were, the restful contentment that descends from above during nightfall on Friday).

It is sung by many Jews during Seudah Shlishit (the third meal on Shabbat; the first is on Friday night, the second on Saturday lunch, and the third on Saturday before nightfall).

Many Chassidim say or sing it every morning before beginning to the Pesukei dezimra section of Shacharit in order to arouse their love of God in preparation for the praises of Pesukei dezimra.

This poem is commonly attributed to the sixteenth century Sephardic kabbalist, Rabbi Elazar ben Moshe Azikri (1533-1600), who first published it in Sefer Charedim (published in Venice 1601), but Azikri did not claim authorship of it and there have been other suggested authors (e.g. Judah Halevi, or Israel Najara). Azikri's philosophy centred around the intense love one must feel for God, a theme that is evident in this piyyut (see references). The first letters of each of the four verses make up the four letter name of God, known in English as the tetragrammaton.

Text

The words are as follows:^{[citation needed]}

Hebrew Wikisource has original text related to this article:

ידיד נפש

Notes on the text

The text above is the "conventional" text appearing in most Ashkenaz liturgies (including the ArtScroll siddur) down to our day. There have been, over the centuries, many variants in different published prayerbooks. The conventional text differs from the text first printed in 1601, and both the conventional and the 1601 texts differed from Azikri's manuscript (both the manuscript and the 1601 printing were in unpointed Hebrew).

Verse 3, line 2: בּן אהובך (bein ahuvekha), translated here as "the son of Your beloved" is, in other translations of the same text, rendered as "your beloved son" (or child) or "your loving son". Some Sefardic/Mizrahi prayerbooks rewrite this phrase as עם אהוּבך (am ahuvakh), "your beloved people" (e.g. The Orot Sephardic Shabbat Siddur, ed by Rabbi Eliezer Toledano (1995) p. 571). But the first printing and Azikri's manuscript both have bein ahuvekha.

In 1985, the Rabbinical Assembly of the Conservative Momement included a version of the hymn in Siddur Sim Shalom based on the author’s autograph manuscript, found in the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary. Rabbi Azikri's manuscript of this song (viewable on opensiddur.org) varies in several spots from the conventional text. The Hebrew and English text used in the Koren Sacks Siddur (2009) followed this manuscript—although the Authorised Daily Prayer Book (4th ed. 2006, pages 576-577) translated and annotated by the same Rabbi Jonathan Sacks used the conventional printed text. The significant changes include: Verse 2, line 6, שׁפחת shifḥat (your maidservant) replacing simḥat (gladness, joy), and the pronoun "her" with "your", so the line would read "She will be your maidservant for eternity," mirroring the phrasing in Deuteronomy 15:17, והיה לך עבד עולם (he will be your slave forever), but in feminine. (This was also the reading found in the first publication in 1601 and in Siddur Sim Shalom.)

Verse 3, line 4, both the manuscript and first printing omit m'heirah (speedily), but in line 6 חוּשׁה ḥushah (hasten) in the manuscript and 1601 publication was replaced in the later printings by v'ḥusah (take pity).

Verse 3, line 5, both the manuscript and the 1601 printing had אנא אלי An[n]a Eli instead of Eileh, so the line changes from "These are my heart's desire" to "Please, My God, [You are] my heart's desire". So the manuscript says, for verse 3 lines 4 & 5, "O, my Lord, [You who are] my heart's desire, hurry please." But the conventional printings (such as ArtScroll) have it, "My heart desired only these, so please have pity."

The 1601 printing indicated that the last line of each verse (in the printing above, the fifth and sixth lines of each verse) was to be repeated. Jacobson mentions an earlier (apparently circa 1870) prayerbook that similarly attempted to restore the text according to the 1601 printing, which met with such condemnation (mostly over the substitution of "maidservant" for "gladness", though both the 1601 printing and Azikri's manuscript support this) from influential Hasidic rabbis that the editor was forced to print replacement pages with the conventional (if erroneous) text.^[1]

Azikri's handwritten manuscript of this poem was discovered (by the great scholar Meir Benayahu) in the library of Jewish Theological Seminary of America in the mid-20th century. As a result, the Siddur Rinat Yisrael (Ashkenaz ed. by Rabbi Shlomo Tal, 1977) p. 189, the Koren-Sacks, and the Conservative movement's Siddur Sim Shalom, used the same Hebrew text as handwritten original. In a subsequent commentary to his prayerbook, Rabbi Tal published a photocopy of that handwritten original (Tal, Ha-Siddur Be-histalsheluto, 1984, page 68). Tal also noted that a few earlier prayerbooks (Livorno 1910 and Jerusalem 1953) also printed versions that restored "maidservant" from the 1601 edition.