רבי שלום שבזי

Rabbi Shalom Shabazi is the soul of Yemenite Jewry, the poet who turned the longing for redemption into song that every Yemenite knows by heart. He lived in the seventeenth century in the time of the harsh Mawza exile, when the Jews of Yemen were driven into the desert and many died, and out of this suffering he composed hundreds of piyutim that became the heart of his community's prayer and joy.

His poems, gathered in the 'Diwan,' are woven of Hebrew, Aramaic and Arabic, and all are longing for Jerusalem, for redemption and for closeness to God. 'If the doors of the generous are locked, the doors of Heaven are not locked,' he sang, teaching an entire people that even when all the doors of the world are shut before the Jew, the gate of heaven is always open.

Tradition crowns him with a halo of holiness and wonders, and many ascend to his grave to this day. But his true greatness is that he gave a persecuted community, dwelling at the edge of the world and guarding an ancient, unbroken tradition, the voice in which it prayed, wept and rejoiced for centuries.

What do we learn from him? That out of the greatest suffering the most beautiful poetry can rise, and that a single piyut can hold up the faith of an entire community. Rabbi Shalom Shabazi teaches that the gate of Heaven is never locked, and that the power of a faithful poet is to give a persecuted people words in which to keep hoping, generation after generation.