Yetziv Pisgam- Shavuot - 5785

Yetziv Pisgam- Shavuot - 5785

Rabbi Hal Miller

  Yetziv pisgam l'at ugam b'ribo riv'van i'rin

Piyutim are "liturgical poems". We see them appear spread throughout the various holiday machzorim, usually in grey, and usually with an annotation saying that those congregations who do not recite them should turn to page such-and-such. Most congregations do just that, skipping each piyut. There are usually only one or two exceptions, and both are contained in the service for Shavuot. Nearly all Ashkenazim and Chassidim say Akdamus on the first day, although few Chabad congregations and very few Sephardim do so. Outside of the land of Israel where we have two days for Shavuot, many also say Yetziv Pisgam on the second day. The Mishneh Berurah (494[1][2]) notes these customs as the legitimate practices. (Note that since this is basically an Ashkenazic tradition I have retained the S sound of the final sof in the word, but have used the T sound in Shavuot.)

One might wonder why poems were allowed to be read as interruptions to any Torah reading. At the time they were written, the common practice was for the reader to read one verse, then have a translator translate it from Hebrew to Aramaic, the language most people spoke. The translator did not limit himself to a word-by-word rendering, but occasionally added a few explanatory remarks. This was not considered an interruption, rather an explanation, and the reader would then continue. Yetziv Pisgam, like Akdamus, is written in Aramaic and explains something about the haftorah reading, so it fit the bill. However, once the practice of translation was dropped, these piyutim were seen as interruptions although for the haftorah reading it was not considered as serious as that of the Chumash reading. There was a practice in some places to read three haftorah verses before each translation, so the piyut here sometimes would be read after the third verse of the haftorah, but that does not seem to have been a majority view. In most places it was left to after the first verse.

But it isn't quite that simple. The haftorah reading for the second day of Shavuot is the third chapter of Chabakuk, but in some places they insert at the beginning the last verse of the second chapter. Thus some read Yetziv Pisgam after the last verse of chapter 2, and some read it after the first verse of chapter 3, whether it is the first or the second verse of the haftorah.

As with so many piyutim, the author of Yetziv Pisgam gave us his name as an acrostic, the first letter of each stanza. Those fifteen letters yield: Yaakov son of Rabbi Meir Levi. Tradition has it that this Yaakov ben Meir is the one well known as Rabbeinu Tam, grandson of Rashi. But he was not a Levi, so this seems confusing. There were other Yaakov ben Meirs living in France at the same time, at least one of whom was also known in some circles as Rabbeinu Tam, but there is no indication that they were Leviim either. This might not have been a problem since in most piyutim, the acrostic only applied through the name, and first letters of following verses just were not important, thus the "Levi" part might not mean Levi. Yet, it isn't so simple here either since originally there were sixteen stanzas, not fifteen. The second-to-last originally read "As I stand and translate with the words that the scribes chose", but that verse was dropped when the translations stopped. There was also a change in the first letters of two of these last stanzas (possibly a printer error), and the original four letters were vov-yod-kof-yod, which does not have any meaning. Thus the acrostic should end with just the author's name, and Rabbeinu Tam is likely the author.

Akdamus is directly connected to Shavuot, but Yetziv Pisgam is more generic. Some commentators go to lengths to find ties, and they are there, but not necessarily any stronger than they would be to any other holiday. The last stanza is interpreted in two ways, one as praise for Yonatan ben Uziel for giving the Aramaic translation of the haftorah, and the other as praise to God for giving us the Torah through Moshe. The first way seems obsolete now that we do not use the translations for the haftorah reading, but the second ties Yetziv Pisgam to Shavuot.

The stanzas each have three parts, the first two rhyme with each other, and the third ends with "rin" for consistency throughout. "Rin" comes from "rinun", Aramaic for the Hebrew word "rinah" referring to joyous song, meaning the Torah. The fifteen stanzas are broken down into five sections: introduction (1-2), praise to God (3-6), requesting permission for the translation (7-8), asking God to protect and bless the Jewish people (9-14), and conclusion (15).

Although the actual purpose of Yetziv Pisgam, requesting permission to interrupt the haftorah reading for the Aramaic translations, is no longer relevant, this piyut is still recited in many congregations as a beloved tradition, one of the two piyutim (Akdamus) still retained by large numbers of the Jewish people.