Ahot Ketannah

The Ahot Ketannah ("Little Sister", אחות קטנה) is a pizmon of eight stanzas sung in the Sephardic ritual before the commencement of the Rosh Hashanah evening prayer.

The refrain runs "May the year end with her woes!" and is changed in the last stanza to "May the year begin with her blessings!" The poem symbolizes Israel by a little sister, who must suffer greatly yet remains faithful to her heavenly lover. The author, Abraham Ḥazan, a cantor born in Thessaloniki in 1533, probably also composed the melody, which is in the hypodorian mode.  His name appears in acrostic form in the poem.

The melody has points of similarity to contemporary airs from the Greek archipelago.

References

Category:Sephardi Jews topics
Category:Jewish liturgical poems