Yah shema' evyonekha (Ya Chema Evyoneho)

This piyyut by Yehudah Halevy (ca.1075-ca.1141) is an introduction to the seliḥot in the afternoon service of Yom Kippur. This melody may be one of the most ancient ones in the extant pan-Sephardi liturgical repertoire. A variant of it was already documented in a Western Sephardi version in a musical manuscript dated in Hamburg in 1827. Haim's recording represents a rather unusual variant when compared with the more widespread versions documented from Sephardi hazzanim throughout the twentieth century.