El Nora Alila, also transliterated as Ayl Nora Alilah, is a piyyut (liturgical poem) that begins the Ne'ilah service at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. The piyyut is recited as part of the Sephardic and Mizrahi liturgy, and has been adopted by some Ashkenazic communities. The English translation offered below is a lyric rendering, reproducing a rhyme similar to the Hebrew. A more literal translation makes the title and recurring line, "God of awesome deeds". It consists of eight stanzas, each stanza consisting of four lines of five syllables to the line. Each line (in Hebrew) has three words and the fourth line is always two words, "as Thy gates are closed at night" – the gates being shut are presumably those of Heaven's gates for receiving prayers of repentance (modelled after the gates of the Temple, Ezekiel 46:2), and the hymn is one last impassioned plea for Divine pardon in the last minutes of the Day of Atonement. The initial letters of the eight stanzas of the piyyut spell out משה חזק תם, "Moses, may he be perfectly strong", in reference to the piyyut's author Moses ibn Ezra (ca. 1055-1138) of Granada.

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Melodies

El Nora Alila has been described as "that powerful and all-engulfing hymn of the Sephardim ... ascendant and aggressive in the highest degree." There are at least eighty versions of the melody sung across four continents. The melody for El Nora Alila is generally sprightly, as is much of the Ne'ilah service, deliberately, coming at the end of a 25-hour fast, when the congregants are probably feeling fatigue and weakness.