Eli Tzion ve'Areha – A Song for Tisha B'Av

It’s difficult to wrap one’s head around the fact that today we continue to shed tears, as we sing lamentations written more than 500 years ago to mourn the destruction of Jerusalem and the Temple. However, that is the case with Eli Tsiyon ve-Areha (“Wail, Zion and Its Cities”), the piyyut that closes the series of kinnot, the somber elegies recited on Tisha B'Av, chanted in the Ashkenazi tradition.

Eli Tsiyon ve-Areha was most probably created in Europe during the Middle Ages, when Jewish poets wrote Zionides – words of longing to return to Zion – to comfort and console the Jews in the diaspora. These songs were so powerful that they became part of the liturgical traditions of Tisha B'Av.

This beautiful and extremely sad lament, containing twelve stanzas, lists the disasters that befell Zion, arranged alphabetically as an acrostic. It received its melody later on. According to researchers, the melody’s origin wasn’t Jewish at all, but rather came from Southern Germany. Nevertheless, it made its way to the synagogue.

Listen to Israeli musician Rona Kenan, whose moving rendition so poignantly expresses the pain of loss.