Yedidi Ro'i Mekimi
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Hebrew: ידידי רועי מקימי (My Friend, My Shepard, My Support). Circle dance by Mitch Ginsburgh, 2026.
Each element of this work is independently interesting. We take them one by one.
The Lyrics
The words were written by Rabbi Israel ben Moses Najara, who was born in Damascus in about 1555. He later moved to Safed, but after a pogrom there in 1579 his family moved to Gaza, where Najara eventually succeeded his father as Chief Rabbi of Gaza (a position which is currently vacant).
Najara was among other things a liturgical poet. He wrote hymns, poems, piyyutim, sermons, and commentary. His best-known work is Yah Ribon Olam, sung by Jews of many traditions on Friday night.
This particular poem, Yedidi Ro'i Mekimi, describes the yearning of the people of Israel for redemption and the glory of God as sheep yearning for their shepherd. The allegory with sheep and shepherds is pervasive—indeed, every stanza ends with the word "tzoan" (sheep). As in Yah Ribon Olam, the first letters of the first five verses form an acrostic for Najara's first name. There is also a lovely connection with the Tanach: the end of the first stanza is "עַל מִי נָטַשְׁתָּ מְעַט הַצֹּאן" ("with whom have you left those few sheep [in the wilderness]?"). These are the exact words of Eliav, oldest brother of David, upbraiding David for abandoning his post as shepherd to battle Goliath (1 Samuel 17:28). Similar allusions are rife in Najara's works.
(Not everyone was a fan of Najara. Hayyim Vital, a contemporary and a Kabbalist, accused Najara of using foul language, drunkenness, homosexuality, and having sexual relations with non-Jewish women. It's hard to take these denunciations seriously since Vital based them on mystic revelations rather than on fact. Najara was also criticized for poetry describing God and Israel as a married couple.[1])
The Music
The tune we dance to is a baqasha, a song sung in some Sephardic Jewish communities on Shabbat morning before dawn, especially in winter when the dawn comes late. The order and structure of the baqashot can be extremely complex. This particular baqasha comes from the Moroccan sequence, which was heavily influence by Najara. In that tradition each baqasha is associated with a particular parsha of the Torah. The melodies are taken from Andalusian classical music and popular Arabic tunes, transmitted orally with no specific known composer. The melody for this dance is the Moroccan baqasha for parshat Vayeira (Genesis 18:1–22:24, including the Akeda).
Yedidi Ro'i Mekimi is also sung in Lubavitch communities to a completely different tune that has its own interesting story.[2]
The meter of the tune is unusual, as is common in the Moroccan tradition of baqashot. It consists of two measures of three beats followed by four measures of two beats: 3-3-2-2-2-2. The recording we dance to is performed by Yigal Haroush, from his album A'ira Shachar ("I Will Awaken Dawn"), a collection of Moroccan baqashot. In the original, the meter of the intro is different; it's 3-3-2-2-2 until the singer enters; similarly, the meter of the outro is 3-3-2-2-2 once the singing ends. In the recording we dance to, Mitch has made the meter uniform by changing both to 3-3-2-2-2-2, though it's very hard to hear in the outro. Mitch says:
The “hook” for me that led me to go forward with the dance was the unusual rhythm itself, as I knew it would feel like learning a new rhythmic language. Like in my 5 months learning Spanish, each part/bit gets a little more complex, with the 5th part putting together many of the elements found in the previous 4 until you get to the ultimate challenge of the outro: having to internalize the rhythm and not rely on clear musical cues, just as a language learner must learn to produce language on their own outside of the controlled classroom environment.[3]
The Dance
The dance consists of five parts, which Mitch calls "bits"[4] rather than "sections" or "parts". The entire sequence repeats twice and then ends with the second bit in the third repetition.
Footnotes
- ↑ But there is a longstanding tradition of the sexuality metaphor, especially in the Song of Songs; explanation here.
- ↑ This commentary on the song by Rabbi Shais Taub includes discussion and performance of the Lubavitch tune.
- ↑ Personal communication, 9 June 2026
- ↑ Mitch says: "If I had opened the teach saying that the dance has 5 “parts,” most of the dancers would’ve left the floor right then and there." (Personal communication, 9 June 2026)
Links
The original: Yigal Haroush singing Yedidi Ro'i Mekimi (includes Hebrew lyrics)
The entire album A'irah Shachar, including other Moroccan baqashot (like Yedid Nefesh) for awakening dawn, in unusual meters
Rabbi Israel ben Moses Najara at Wikipedia (English)
The first book of Samuel, chapter 17 (Hebrew)
Yedidi Ro'i Mekimi at israelidances.com
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