Lekha Dodi — Come, My Beloved, to Greet the Bride
The hymn sung to open Shabbat services was written by a single Safed mystic as an acrostic love song addressed to the Sabbath itself, imagined as a bride arriving to meet her people.
Lekha Dodi was composed by Shlomo Alkabetz in sixteenth-century Safed; the poem's eight stanzas form an acrostic spelling his own name, a common convention for liturgical poets asserting authorship. Its central image draws on the Talmudic call to greet the Sabbath queen but casts the encounter as a romantic meeting between the community of Israel and the Sabbath bride, closely identified with the Shekhinah, consistent with the Zohar's habit of reading Sabbath observance as a moment of divine union. The refrain is repeated after every stanza, structurally reenacting the going-out-to-greet gesture the Safed circle once performed literally in the fields. The poem also weaves in messianic longing, linking the weekly arrival of the Sabbath bride to the future, final redemption it is understood to prefigure.
Come, my beloved, to meet the bride; let us welcome the presence of Shabbat.
Lekha Dodi
Written about in
- What Kabbalah says about love
The hymn that opens Shabbat in most synagogues was written by one mystic in sixteenth-century Safed as a love song to the day, imagined as a bride arriving. Its stanzas spell out his name.
- What Kabbalah says about rest
Shlomo Alkabetz wrote eight stanzas whose initial letters spell his own name, addressing the day itself as a beloved. Rest is courted rather than scheduled. The poem also folds in messianic longing, so each week's arrival is treated as a rehearsal of a final one.