Years: c. 1555–c. 1625
Primary city: Gaza
A leading paytan and darshan of the late Ottoman period, Rabbi Yisrael ben Moshe Najara is best known for his extensive corpus of Hebrew liturgical poetry collected in his sefer Zemirot Yisrael. He served as rabbi and preacher of the Jewish community in Gaza, where his integration of biblical, rabbinic, and contemporary melodies into piyyut deeply influenced later Sephardi and Eastern Jewish song traditions. His writings also include halachic and exegetical works, though these remain secondary to his enduring reputation as a composer of devotional poetry and zemirot.