Origins of tradition
The origin of the tradition could potentially be explained in the context of certain rulings of the Geonim discouraging the use of piyyutim in core parts of the prayer service. These rulings were taken seriously by the Kabbalistic school of Isaac Luria, and from the sixteenth century on many hymns were eliminated from the service. As the community did not wish to lose these much-loved hymns, the custom grew up of singing them extra-liturgically. Thus, the original core of the pizmonim collection consists of hymns from the old Aleppo ritual (published in Venice in 1560) and hymns from the Sephardic service by Yehuda Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol and others. A few hymns were also taken from the liturgy of the Romaniotes.
Further pizmonim were composed and added to the collection through the centuries. This practice may have arisen out of a Jewish prohibition of singing songs of the non-Jews (due to the secular character and lyrics of the songs). This was true in the case of Arabic songs, whereby Jews were allowed to listen to the songs, but not allowed to sing them with the text. In order to bypass the problem, many composers, throughout the centuries, wrote new lyrics to the songs with the existing melodies, in order not to violate the tradition of not singing non-Jewish songs.
The Red book
In 1959, the Syrian community of Brooklyn, New York, acted on the need of compiling their own pizmonim book based on their ancient traditions from Aleppo. Prior to this, there were many older pizmonim books circulating around the community, but they didn't have Hebrew vowels, and were generally difficult for the masses to utilize.
The book, which was published by the Sephardic Heritage Foundation, was started in 1949 by Gabriel Shrem and was completed in 1964. It aimed to include the ancient (Baqashot and Petihot), the old (Israel Najara, Mordechai Abadi, Raphael Tabbush, Moshe Ashear), and the new material (Raphael Yair Elnadav, Ezra Dweck, Gabriel A Shrem, Ezekiel Hai Albeg, Abraham Cohen Saban, Ezra Mishaniye, and other modern Israeli melodies). The book also has innovative features very useful for a cantor, such as a list of maqams to go with the specific perasha, as well as which pieces of Sabbath prayers fit with the melodies of certain pizmonim. In later editions, more songs were added to the book in their appropriate sections.
The classic red pizmonim book mentioned above serves Syrian Jews of Brooklyn as their official canon of pizmonim.
The book is currently in its ninth edition.
Sephardic Pizmonim Project
The Sephardic Pizmonim Project, is a website dedicated to the scholarship, restoration and preservation of the ancient music of the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community. The project, founded by David Matouk Betesh, is dedicated to the memory of his great-grandfather, cantor Gabriel A Shrem, a former instructor at Yeshiva University's Cantorial Institute (Philip and Sarah Belz School of Jewish Music), cantor of B'nai Yosef Synagogue and editor-in-chief of the "Shir uShbaha Hallel veZimrah" pizmonim book. The website is also dedicated in honor of cantor Isaac J. Cabasso of Congregation Beth Torah in Brooklyn, New York.
Preludes to the project began in the late 1970s when Shrem started teaching a course at Yeshiva University. As a demonstration tool, Shrem recorded the bulk of the pizmonim for classroom distribution. The collection resulting from these recordings encompassed roughly 65% of the Sephardic pizmonim liturgy. Since 2004 and over the course of about seven years, Isaac J. Cabasso, on behalf of the Sephardic Pizmonim Project, has provided approximately 200 more recordings of pizmonim not recorded by Shrem.
The Sephardic Pizmonim Project organisation re-released all of Shrem's recordings on a large CD collection in September 2004 selling approximately 7,000 CDs. The organisation launched a website in 2006 with the goal of "preserving all [Middle Eastern Jewish] liturgical traditions". In the process, cantors throughout the world have contacted the organisation to provide recordings to further enhance the project. The project's website (www.pizmonim.com) contains recordings of the Biblical taamim and the baqashot, together with pizmonim not included in the CD collection. In January 2012, the website, under web designer Sam Franco, received a major facelift to advance the organization into the next decade.
In 2020, the project announced that it had reached the benchmark of only missing 65 melodies of pizmonim from the 'Shir Ushbaha Hallel VeZimrah' pizmonim book. When the project first began, they were missing over 300 pizmonim. The last 65 pizmonim that are still missing will be more difficult to obtain due to the aging population and the general difficulty of those specific pizmonim. In addition to preserving "Red Book" pizmonim, the project also attempts to preserve pizmonim from "Old Shir Ushbaha" (Cohen, 1905, 1921) as well as melodies whose names appear in the weekly Hazzanut notes of H Moses Ashear (1877-1940).
Sephardic law and customs are the practice of Judaism by the Sephardim, the descendants of the historic Jewish community of the Iberian Peninsula. Some definitions of "Sephardic" inaccurately include Mizrahi Jews, many of whom follow the same traditions of worship but have different ethno-cultural traditions. Sephardi Rite is not a denomination or movement like Orthodox, Reform, and other Ashkenazi Rite worship traditions. Sephardim thus comprise a community with distinct cultural, juridical and philosophical traditions.
The Ketuvim is the third and final section of the Tanakh, after Torah ("instruction") and Nevi'im ("prophets"). In English translations of the Hebrew Bible, this section is usually titled "Writings" or "Hagiographa".
Hebrew cantillation, trope, trop, or te'amim is the manner of chanting ritual readings from the Hebrew Bible in synagogue services. The chants are written and notated in accordance with the special signs or marks printed in the Masoretic Text of the Bible, to complement the letters and vowel points.
Israel ben Moses Najara was a prolific Jewish liturgical poet, preacher, Biblical commentator, kabbalist, and rabbi of Gaza.
It is a custom among religious Jewish communities for a weekly Torah portion to be read during Jewish prayer services on Monday, Thursday, and Saturday. The full name, Parashat HaShavua, is popularly abbreviated to parashah, and is also known as a Sidra or Sedra.
Hoshana Rabbah is the seventh day of the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, the 21st day of the month of Tishrei. This day is marked by a special synagogue service, the Hoshana Rabbah, in which seven circuits are made by the worshippers with their lulav and etrog, while the congregation recites Hoshanot. It is customary for the scrolls of the Torah to be removed from the ark during this procession. In a few communities a shofar is sounded after each circuit.
"Ma'oz Tzur" is a Jewish liturgical poem or piyyut. It is written in Hebrew, and is sung on the holiday of Hanukkah, after lighting the festival lights. The hymn is named for its Hebrew incipit, which means "Strong Rock " and is a name or epithet for God in Judaism. It is thought to have been written sometime in the 13th century, although recent research suggests the 12th century. It was originally sung only at home, but has been used in the synagogue since the 19th century or earlier. In more recent years, of its six stanzas sometimes only the first stanza is sung.
The Syrian Cantor is the hazzan who leads the traditional prayer rituals in the synagogues of the Syrian Jews. He conducts the services using ten maqamat or musical modes. A cantor must be fully cognizant of these maqamat and their applications to the prayers. A different maqam is used each week, depending on the week's Torah portion.
The baqashot are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian, Moroccan, and Turkish Jewish communities for centuries each week on Shabbat mornings from the early hours of the morning until dawn. They are usually recited during the weeks of winter, from the Jewish festival of Sukkot through Purim, when the nights are much longer. The baqashot services can last for three to four hours. The Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem is the center of the Syrian practice today, and communities in Ashdod and Montreal are the center of the Moroccan practice.
The B'nai Yosef Synagogue, formerly Magen David Congregation of Ocean Parkway, is an Orthodox Sephardi synagogue at the 1616 Ocean Parkway and Avenue P in Brooklyn, New York. It is considered "America's busiest synagogue for Middle and Near Eastern Jews", with over 30 prayer services daily.
Syrian Jews are Jews who lived in the region of the modern state of Syria, and their descendants born outside Syria. Syrian Jews derive their origin from two groups: from the Jews who inhabited the region of today's Syria from ancient times ; and from the Sephardi Jews who fled to Syria after the Alhambra Decree forced the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492.
In Mizrahi and Sephardic Middle Eastern Jewish prayer services, each Shabbat the congregation conducts services using a different maqam. A maqam (مقام), which in Arabic literally means 'place', is a standard melody type and set of related tunes. The melodies used in a given maqam aims effectively to express the emotional state of the reader throughout the set liturgy. This article primarily describes the musical practices of Syrian Jews, though the musical traditions of other Mizrahi Jews communities are also based on the maqam system. Ashkenazi nusach includes a simplified system including three main modes or steyger and several minor variants. Muslims share the same practice of conducting services using the maqam, but differ substantially in many ways.
Jewish music is the music and melodies of the Jewish people. There exist both traditions of religious music, as sung at the synagogue and domestic prayers, and of secular music, such as klezmer. While some elements of Jewish music may originate in biblical times, differences of rhythm and sound can be found among later Jewish communities that have been musically influenced by location. In the nineteenth century, religious reform led to composition of ecclesiastic music in the styles of classical music. At the same period, academics began to treat the topic in the light of ethnomusicology. Edward Seroussi has written, "What is known as 'Jewish music' today is thus the result of complex historical processes". A number of modern Jewish composers have been aware of and influenced by the different traditions of Jewish music.
This article describes the principal types of religious Jewish music from the days of the Temple to modern times.
The Ades Synagogue,, also known as the Great Synagogue Ades of the Glorious Aleppo Community, located in Jerusalem's Nachlaot neighborhood, was established by Syrian immigrants in 1901. It is considered to be the center of Syrian Hazzanut in Israel.
Barukh she'amar, is the opening blessing to pesukei dezimra.
Segah is the name of a Dastgah in Persian and related systems of music.
Minhag Morocco refers to the religious customs adopted by Moroccan Jewry, from the Hebrew "Minhag", or custom. Although in the Middle Ages, there was a unique Nusach Morocco, unrelated to Sephardic liturgy, this original minhag has not been practiced since shortly after the Expulsion of Jews from Spain, and it is not well documented. Since this time, the Moroccan rite has been a subset of the Sephardic rite, but with certain customs of its own. Many sources contributed to and influenced the development of Moroccan religious customs, including the Shulchan Aruch, the Livorno minhag, the Ashkenazic minhag and even the presence of the Chabad-Lubavitch movement in Morocco. Minhag Morocco can be considered a sub-class within the Sephardic minhag but has many differences and unique traits. A related concept that falls under Minhag Morocco is the Moroccan Nusach, which more specifically refers to the variations in the prayer service.
The Baladi-rite Prayer is the oldest known prayer-rite used by Yemenite Jews, transcribed in a prayer book known as tiklāl in Yemenite Jewish parlance. "Baladi", as a term applied to the prayer-rite, was not used until prayer books arrived in Yemen in the Sephardic-rite. The Baladi version that is used today is not the original Yemenite version that had been in use by all of Yemen's Jewry until the end of the 16th century and the beginning of the 17th, but has now evolved with various additions under the influence of Sephardi siddurs and the rulings passed down in the Shulchan Aruch. In the middle of the 18th century, Rabbi Yihya Saleh (Maharitz) tried unsuccessfully to create a unified Baladi-rite prayer book, since he devised a fusion between the ancient Yemenite form and Sephardic prayer forms that had already integrated into Yemenite Jewish prayers a hundred years or so years before that.
Chaim Shaul Abud was an Israeli poet, rabbi, educator, and philanthropist. Abud was the author of the book "Shirayi Zimra Ha-Shalem", which combines the poetry of Baqashot form the Jewish community of Aleppo and songs that he wrote himself. He also served as founder and director of several Torah schools in Jerusalem.
