Yedid Nefesh - Notes On The Text

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 אוֹהבך bein ahuvechaw, 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 ahuvoch, "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 ahuvechaw.

Rabbi Azikri's manuscript of this song (reproduced in Chwat) 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 shifchas (your maidservant) replacing simchas (gladness, joy), so the line would read "She will be your maidservant for eternity." (This was also the reading in the 1601 first publication.)

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

Verse 3, line 5, both the manuscript and the 1601 printing had אנא אלי Awnaw, Ali instead of Ayleh, so the line changes from "These are my heart's desire" to "Please, My God, my heart's desire". So the manuscript says, for verse 3 lines 4 & 5, "O, my Lord, 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.

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 had the same Hebrew text as Koren-Sacks, namely the text of the 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.