“Eleh Ezkerah”: Re-reading the Asarah Harugei Malkhut - Hakirah

“Eleh Ezkerah”: Re-reading the Asarah Harugei Malkhut : 255
[ די יספמ]
to the heel of his foot… he removes the anxiety of the coat of
color [םיספ תנותכ].
D. Goldshmidt 20 sees this as atonement for wearing clothes of
mixed linen and wool, citing Lev. Rabah 10:6. But the reference to
ketonet pasim (Joseph’s coat in Gen. 37:3) would parallel the Bavli
and Yerushalmi sources. Michael D. Swartz and Joseph Yahalom 21
in fact understand it as a reference to atonement for Joseph’s sale.
(Of course, it could allude to both atonements; Yose b. Yose in 4th-
5th century Israel presumably had both the Lev. Rabah and Talmud
Yerushalmi.)
But it is explicit in another of Yose b. Yose’s Avodahs, “Azkir
Gevurot Eloha” (“I Shall Recount the Wonders of God”), his “masterpiece,
perhaps the most influential Avodah Piyut, that was probably
the best known of the ancient Avodah piyutim and set the pattern
for subsequent compositions” 22 :
. די יספ לע\
תצבושמ הלופכ\
תנותכב
אלמי\
המוק תומלע
. םיספ
תנותכ לע\
קידצ ירכומ\
תאזב רפכי\
בקעי תיב ןוע
Strong of stature/he will fulfill with the coat [תנותכ]/doubled,
woven/as far as the sleeves of his hands [ די יספ לע].
The sin of the House of Jacob/he will atone for with this/of
the sellers of a righteous one/for a coat of many colors [ תנותכ לע
ם יספ].
And the connection is clear in the medieval Ashkenazic Avodah,
“Asoh�eah� Niflaotekha” 23 :
לוגד\
שבכנה חצר
תולבטה ימד\
שבולמ םידב שיאה ןוימד\
שבל תנתכ ויתודמ יד
. שבלתה תוצלחמב חידי
His fitting coat he [the High Priest] wore/in the image of the
man dressed in linen [Gabriel: Dan. 10:5]/the bloods of the
19
The length of the ketonet according to the baraita in Bavli Yoma 72b.
20
Goldshmidt, Mah�zor, p. 465.
21
Swartz and Yahalom, Avodah: An Anthology of Ancient Poetry for
Yom Kippur, p. 316
22 Swartz, Yahalom, Avodah, p. 263.
23 Goldshmidt, Mah�zor, p. 447.