Anim Zemiros – A Poem for All Ages

By Rabbi Elchanan Adler

Feldheim Publishers, New York, 2020, 192 pages

Reviewed by Myron Wakschlag

Rabbi Myron Wakschlag is a musmach of Rav Ahron Soloveichik zt”l at Yeshivas Brisk of Chicago, and is currently an IT executive in the Washington, DC area. He has researched and published on the early Orthodox rabbinate in America.

It is rare to find a book that is able to successfully illuminate a complex topic, yet still remain captivating and easily accessible. Rabbi Elchanan Adler’s new sefer on Anim Zemiros is just such a book. While Anim Zemiros is familiar to most people, its contents remain largely enigmatic due to its challenging Hebrew terminology and its esoteric meaning. Rabbi Adler has opened up new pathways that enable the reader to unlock both the simple meaning and the profound concepts lying beneath the surface of the text.

In this beautiful volume, Rabbi Adler notes how each stanza of Anim Zemiros is based on specific verses from Tanach or Talmudic/Midrashic passages. This itself is a valuable tool that sheds light on the underpinnings of the text. But the real strength of the book is in its ability to be megaleh amukos, to uncover the deep hidden beauty of the poem and make it accessible to the average reader untrained in the analysis of medieval liturgical poems. Rabbi Adler’s analysis weaves together explanations offered by traditional sources with his own fascinating insights. Rabbi Adler, an esteemed Rosh Yeshiva at Yeshiva University’s Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary for over 20 years, is an erudite scholar and master teacher who has an unusual gift for presenting difficult material in a way that is easy to understand.

The sefer begins with an overview that describes the origin of the formal name Shir HaKavod, the authorship and dating of the work, the origins of its inclusion in the liturgy, and the manner in which it is recited in the synagogue. It then transitions into an analysis of the overall themes, structure, and style of the text, including many interesting observations about the common ideas that are expressed within each section, and numerical allusions that emerge from the text. The next section transitions into the essence of the book, which comprises a textual analysis of each stanza, offering unique insights, explanations, interpretations, and suggestions to explicate the poem based on the full range of rabbinic literature. While it is not an exhaustive treatment of every word in the poem, Rabbi Adler’s choice of what to include helps to capture and hold the reader’s interest.

The book is valuable on many levels. In addition to its primary objective of elucidating both the plain and hidden meaning behind Anim Zemiros, a careful reading of the book allows the reader to acquire a methodology for analyzing piyyutim. Determining exactly what the author of Anim Zemiros meant to convey and what messages he buried beneath the surface is much like solving a mystery. Rabbi Adler employs many analytical tools to uncover the clues and piece together the various threads. It is enlightening to study the manner in which he carefully examines the text to identify nuances and different shades of meaning based on the poem’s rhythm, meter, textual variances, word roots, grammar, alternative translations, vowelization, allegory, and symbolism. He also often adduces prooftexts from Tanach, and contrasts the opinions of the various early and later commentaries to suggest various possibilities in the text. Utilizing this methodology, Rabbi Adler is able to “connect the dots” and uncover the concealed gems that are impossible to discern at first glance.

I owe a great debt of gratitude to Rabbi Adler, not only for giving me a much greater understanding of the magnificence of Anim Zemiros and its prominent place in our liturgy, but also for imparting his approach to analyzing piyyutim and understanding their significance. He has given me a derech to better appreciate medieval liturgical poems in general, and has also provided me with the tools to be able to analyze them on my own.