Musical Settings: Yigdal
In his essay on closing hymns, Rabbi Richard Sarason enumerates the Maimonidean Thirteen Principles of Faith as rendered in Yigdal Elohim Chai (“May the living God be exalted”), the poem attributed to Daniel b. Judah. Has so much theology ever been compressed into so few words? This is a didactic text, filled with cognitive language. How then are we to feel about this eternal, incorporeal, singular, omniscient and just God who has created all things, and who has invested the people of Israel with a prophetic vision, transmitted by Moses through the Torah as an immutable revelation, and in whom we find hope for ultimate redemption and eternal life? With what qualities of expression do we interpret these words through music?
