Maimonides's thirteen principles, which this hymn versifies, were not universally accepted within medieval Judaism as either correct or as an appropriate undertaking in the first place. Later medieval and early modern Jewish thinkers, including Isaac Abravanel, criticized the very project of reducing Jewish belief to a fixed, numbered creedal list modeled on a format closer to Christian and Islamic theological practice than to earlier Jewish tradition, arguing that Judaism's essential content could not be adequately compressed into thirteen enumerated articles without distortion, and proposing alternative shorter or differently organized lists of their own. That this hymn nonetheless became, and remains, the most widely recited liturgical expression of Maimonides's specific thirteen principles, despite this real internal Jewish theological objection, reflects Yigdal's success as memorable devotional poetry more than it reflects unanimous doctrinal agreement on the principles it sets to verse.
Daniel ben Judah Dayyan's version, composed in Rome around 1300, was not the only attempt to versify Maimonides's principles, but it became the standard one, and even its standard use varies by community: Ashkenazi practice generally places Yigdal at the opening of the morning service, while many Sephardi communities instead recite it at the service's close or on different specific occasions, a liturgical placement difference that means the same thirteen line poem functions as either an opening framing statement or a closing summation of the service depending on which community's siddur a worshipper is using.