Song of Songs שיר השירים
The song of love that Rabbi Akiva called "the holy of holies" of the entire Tanakh.
Shir haShirim is a dialogue of lovers: she searches for him through the night city, he calls her out to the fields, they lose and find one another. God's name is never mentioned, and in the Yavne period the sages debated whether it belonged in the canon. Rabbi Akiva ended the argument: "all the writings are holy, but Shir haShirim is the holy of holies".
Tradition reads it as a conversation between God and Israel: the Exodus, Sinai, distance and search, exile and longing. It is therefore read on Pesach, where that history begins.
Read plainly it is great love poetry; read as allegory it is the strongest account of the bond between a people and its Creator, containing closeness, grievance and waiting alike. Many communities recite it before the Sabbath begins.
On the timeline
Related
Sources
Chazal: Mishnah, Talmud, midrash, Zohar
- Shir HaShirim Rabbah 1 — the midrash on the book
- Mishnah Yadayim 3:5 — Rabbi Akiva: “the holy of holies”
- Bava Batra 15a — the book was written down by “Chizkiyahu and his company”
Rishonim
- Rashi on Shir HaShirim 1:1 — reading it as an allegory of the love between God and Israel
Basis: tradition.