Israel ben Moses Najara (Hebrew: יִשְׂרָאֵל בֵּן מֹשֶׁה נַאגָּ֗ארָה, romanized: Yiśrāʾēl bēn Mōše Najjārāh; Arabic: إسرائيل بن موسى النجارة, romanized: ʾIsrāʾīl bin Mūsā n-Najāra; c. 1555 – c. 1625) was a prolific Jewish liturgical poet, preacher, Biblical commentator, kabbalist (although this is disputed), and rabbi in Gaza.

The rabbinic Najara family was originally from Nájera, a Spanish city in Northern Spain on the Najerilla river. Nájera was the former capital of the Kingdom of Navarre and in the 11th century it was incorporated into the Kingdom of Castile. In the rabbinical literature of the 16th-19th centuries, Najaras are found in Algiers, Tunis, Damascus, and Gaza.

It is believed that Najara's grandfather, rabbi Levi Najara, was born in Spain and fled to Damascus due to the 1492 expulsion of the Jews from Spain. His father, rabbi Moshe ben Levi Najara, was born in Salonica, Greece, and in his later years moved with his family to Safed and was involved with the kabbalistic circles of the Arizal. Rabbi Israel Najara was born in Damascus around 1555. He lived most of his life between Safed, Damascus, and Gaza. Many details of his life can be inferred from his poetry. After an attack on the Jews of Safed by an Arabic tribe in 1579, Najara left with his family and settled in Jobar on the outskirts of Damascus, where he served as a sofer and rabbi. He experienced unusual personal tragedy; his first wife died at a young age, and his only daughter from this marriage died at the age of ten. He eventually remarried, and some of the children from his second marriage survived into adulthood. In his later years, he was a rabbi in Gaza, where he is buried. One of his sons, Moses Najara, was also a poet, and succeeded his father as the chief rabbi of Gaza. His grandson Yaakov Najara was embroiled in the Sabbatean controversy.

From his secular poems, which he wrote in the meters of various Ladino, Turkish, and Greek songs, it is evident that he was familiar with several foreign languages. He traveled extensively in the Ottoman Empire; there is evidence that he visited Salonica, Istanbul and Bursa. Due to his upbringing in Safed, he came under the extensive influence of Lurianic Kabbalah.

As may be seen from his works, he was a versatile scholar, and he corresponded with many contemporary rabbis, among others with Bezaleel Ashkenazi, Yom-Ṭob Ẓahalon, Moses Hamon, and Menahem Ḥefeẓ. His poetic effusions were exceptionally numerous, and many of them were translated into Persian. While still young he composed many hymns, to Arabic and Turkish tunes, with the intention, as he says in the preface to his Zemirot Yisrael, of turning the Jewish youth from profane songs. He wrote piyyuṭim, pizmonim, seliḥot, vidduyim, and dirges for all the week-days and for Sabbaths, holy days, and occasional ceremonies, these piyyuṭim being collected in his Zemirot Yisrael. Many of the piyyuṭim are in Aramaic.

Najara's letters, secular poems, epigrams, and rhymed prose form the work entitled Meimei Yisrael (מימי ישראל) are published at the end of the second edition of the Zemirot Yisrael (זמירות ישראל). Najara's other works are as follows:

His unpublished works are:

M. Sachs attempted to render some of Najara's piyyuṭim into German.