As Liturgical Poet
Eliezer wrote numerous yoẓerot, seliḥot, and other piyyuṭim; very few of them, however, have been incorporated in the German and Polish liturgy. The Akapperah Pene Melek in the seliḥot to the musaf of the Day of Atonement is an example. His poetical productions are valuable only as an index to his devout nature and to his estimate of the importance of the liturgy. They are distinguished for neither originality, elevation of thought, nor elegance of diction. With their allusions to haggadic interpretations, their employment of payyeṭan phraseology, acrostics, rimes, and similar mechanical devices, they differ little from many other liturgical productions. Some of these poems he seems to have written on special occasions. Thus, one piyyuṭ composed for a circumcision occurring on the Sabbath bears at the close the cipher "ABN," and the words "Long live my child Eliakim." Altogether twenty-five piyyuṭim of his are known. One of his seliḥot depicts the persecutions of the First Crusade (1096); another, those of 1146.
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