Tradition

This article records tradition as it has been passed down and reported. Its sources are not yet part of the atlas's verified catalogue.

Judaism Hymns gathers fourteen of the atlas's Jewish liturgical hymns, moving through the week, the life cycle and the Jewish year.

Adon Olam closes the Sabbath morning service and Lekha Dodi, composed in the Kabbalistic circle at Safed, welcomes it on Friday evening, addressing the Sabbath as a bride; Shalom Aleichem, also from Safed's kabbalistic customs, greets the Sabbath angels believed to accompany worshippers home. Modeh Ani, twelve words said on waking, is built to contain no divine name so it may be said before ritual washing, and Yedid Nefesh, composed by the sixteenth century kabbalist Elazar Azikri, is sung at the Sabbath's threshold and its closing meal. Aleinu moved from the Rosh Hashanah service to close nearly every service in medieval Ashkenaz, and Amidah, the standing prayer, is the fixed center of every service, its petitions reworded or shortened differently across Orthodox, Conservative and Reform practice.

Kaddish and Kol Nidre mark distinct communal moments, Kaddish turning private grief into communal obligation through its quorum, Kol Nidre annulling only a narrow class of vows at Yom Kippur's opening despite centuries of hostile misreading. Birkat Hamazon, the grace after meals, is the one food blessing the Torah itself commands. El Malei Rachamim, composed in the seventeenth century after mass killings in Ukraine and Poland, is chanted at funerals and Holocaust commemorations. Hallel is sung on festivals with an abridged form on Passover recalling that God rebuked the angels for singing while the Egyptians drowned. Psalm 23 and Yigdal close the group, the psalm among the most widely known religious poems in the world and Yigdal setting Maimonides's thirteen principles of faith to song.