Last year, on the occasion of Shavuot, I wrote about Yetziv Pitgam, which is said on the second day of the festival after the reading of the first verse of the Haftarah. While discussing the English translation of the Piyut, I pointed out that Yetziv Pitgam was a Reshut – a request for permission – by the reader to recite in public the Aramaic translation of the Haftarah.
I stressed that scholars were confirmed in their view about this piyut by the publication of the Machzor Vitry. The version of Yetziv Pitgam, contained in this work (p. 162), includes several words which explicitly refer to the public recitations of Jonathan ben Uzziel’s Targum.
These words are not found in our version of the Piyut. They were deleted after the public reading of the Targum of the Haftarah was discontinued.
When I wrote this, I was not aware of another English translation of Yetziv Pitgam, published in recent years. The author of this translation recognized that Yetziv Pitgam was a Reshut but didn’t realize that it related to the translation of the Haftarah. Consequently, like others before him who were in the same situation, he mistook the reference to Jonathan and incorrectly rendered the final lines of the Piyut.
***
Jonathan (ben Uzziel) is described in Yetziv Pitgam as a modest man. Where in the Talmud or Medrash is this indicated? The author of the Piyut probably had in mind the statement of the Babylonian Talmud (Megillah 3a): “The Targum of the Prophets was composed by Jonathan ben Uzziel… and the Land of Israel was shaken over an area of four hundred Parasangs by four hundred Parasangs. A voice came forth from Heaven proclaiming: Who dared reveal My secrets to man? Jonathan ben Uziel rose and said: I revealed Your secrets. It is known to you that I did not do it for my honor or the honor of my father’s house but for Your honor, to prevent disagreement from spreading in Israel.”
Who was the author of Yetziv Pitgam? The Piyut had been attributed to Rabbenu Tam, the greatest of the Tosafists. The initial letters of the verses form the name: Yaakov BeRabbi Meir Levi. Yaakov BeRabbi Meir was indeed the name of Rabbenu Tam but he was not a Levi. For these reasons some scholars have doubted Rabbenu Tam’s authorship of this Piyut.
Many year ago the late Rabbi Shaul Hone Kook dispelled the doubts regarding Rabbenu Tam’s authorship. The medieval poets indicated their names in acrostics formed by the initial letters of the verses of their poems. If a poem had more lines than were letters in the poet’s name, the remaining letters did not have to form a word.
The original version of Yetziv Pitgam- as mentioned before– contained additional words: as a result of this, the initial letters of the final lines in the original and in the present versions are not the same. “The initial letters of the final lines of the original version do not form the word Levi” — writes Rabbi Shaul Hone Kook. There is no indication in the acrostic of the original version that Rabbi Yaakov ben Rabbi Meir was Levi. the author of the Piyut was Rabbenu Tam! (The word Levi in the acrostic of the present version is the casual outcome of the deletion of several words.)
The late Rabbi Sh. H. Kook was a younger brother of the late Chief Rabbi Abraham Yitzchak HaKohen Kook. A great scholar as well as a businessman, he devoted all his free time to study and research and contributed important studies and notes on Talmudic and Rabbinic literature, customs and Piyutim, Jewish history and other areas of Jewish knowledge , to a wide variety of periodicals. He resided in Tel Aviv, where he died in 1955 at the age of seventy-eight. Two volumes of his collected studies were published by Mossad Harav Kook.
Jewish Press, June 12, 1987, page 8E