abstract
| - Lekhah Dodi (Hebrew: לכה דודי; also transliterated as Lecha Dodi, L'chah Dodi, Lekah Dodi, Lechah Dodi; Ashkenazic pronunciation Lecho Dodi) is a Hebrew-language Jewish liturgical song recited Friday at dusk, usually at sundown, in synagogue to welcome Shabbat prior to the Maariv (evening services). It is part of the Kabbalat Shabbat ("acceptance of Sabbath"). Lekhah Dodi means "come my beloved," and is a request of a mysterious "beloved" that could mean either God or one's friend(s) to join together in welcoming Shabbat that is referred to as the "bride": likrat kallah ("to greet the [Shabbat] bride"). During the singing of the last verse, the entire congregation rises and turns to the open door, to greet "Queen Shabbat" as she arrives. It was composed in the 16th century Ottoman Empire land Edirne by Rabbi Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, a Safed Kabbalist. As was common at the time, the song is also an acrostic, with the first letter of the first eight stanzas spelling the author's name. The author draws much of his phraseology from Isaiah's prophecy of Israel's restoration, and six of his verses are full of the thoughts to which his vision of Israel as the bride on that great Shabbat of Messianic deliverance gives rise. It is one of the latest of the Hebrew poems regularly accepted into the liturgy, both in the southern use, which the author followed, and in the more distant northern rite.
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