Journal of Synagogue Music Fall 2013 Volume 38 Traditions This Is the Inside Front Cover
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JOURNAL OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC JOURNAL OF SYNAGOGUE MUSIC NON-ASHKENAZIC TRADITIONS NON-ASHKENAZIC TRADITIONS FALL 2013 VOLUME 38 2013 VOLUME FALL FALL 2013 VOLUME 38 ISSN 0049-5128 THIS IS THE INSIDE FRONT COVER EDITOR: Joseph A. Levine ASSOCIATE EDITOR: Richard M. Berlin EDITORIAL BOARD Rona Black, Shoshana Brown, Sanford Cohn, Gershon Freidlin, Geoffrey Goldberg, Charles Heller, Kimberly Komrad, Sheldon Levin, Laurence Loeb, Judy Meyersberg, Ruth Ross, Neil Schwartz, David Sislen, Sam Weiss, Yossi Zucker TheJournal of Synagogue Music is published annually by the Cantors As- sembly. It offers articles and music of broad interest to the hazzan and other Jewish professionals. Submissions of any length from 1,000 to 10,000 words will be consid ered. GUIDELINES FOR SUBMITTING MATERIAL All contributions and communications should be sent to the Editor, Dr. Joseph A. Levine—[email protected]—as a Microsoft Word document using footnotes rather than endnotes. Kindly include a brief biography of the author. Musical and/or graphic material should be formatted and inserted within the Word document. Links to audio files may be inserted as well, along with a URL for each. Footnotes are used rather than endnotes, and should conform to the fol- lowing style: A - Abraham Idelsohn, Jewish Liturgy (New York: Henry Holt), 1932: 244. B - Samuel Rosenbaum, “Congregational Singing”; Proceedings of the Cantors Assembly Convention (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary), February 22, 1949: 9-11. Layout by Prose & Con Spirito, Inc. Cover Design by Replica, based on the interior of the Synagogue of Santa Maria La Blanca, 12th century, Toledo, Spain. Copyright © 2013 by the Cantors Assembly. ISSN 0449-5128 ii FROM THE EDITOR The Issue of Non-Ashkenazic Musical Traditions: Sephardic Dream Time ......................................... .5 MUSIC THROUGHOUT THE JEWISH WORLD The Song of the Mizrahi and Sephardi Jews Edith Gerson-Kiwi. .9 Sephardic Musical Repertoire Susana Weich-Shahak. 27 A Competition for the Office of Hazzan in the “Great” Portuguese Synagogue of Amsterdam in the 18th Century Israel Adler .............................................. 31 Leitmotifs in Sephardic High Holiday Liturgy Maxine R. Kanter ......................................... 34 On the Trail of Mizrahi Music Johanna Spector. 54 The Middle Eastern Roots of East European Hazzanut Edward W. Berman ....................................... 72 Hazzanut in Iran a Generation Ago Laurence D. Loeb ......................................... 85 Grandees and the Rest of Us: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Self-imagery through Ladino and Yiddish Folksong Joseph A. Levine ......................................... 89 Jewish Music in the Italian Renaissance Joshua R. Jacobson ....................................... 105 Back to Life, Twice: The Revivals of Ladino Song in 20th-Century Italy Francesco Spagnolo. 109 1 A LITERARY GLIMPSE Ever Since Babylon: Granada Samuel Rosenbaum. 121 D’VAR K’RI’AH Popular Tradition and Learned Knowledge: Sephardic and Ashkenazic Biblical Chant Hanoch Avenary ........................................ 129 MAIL BOX A Serbian Weekend Set to a Sephardic Beat Daniel S. Katz ........................................... 135 A Sephardic Community S’lihot Service in London Eliot Alderman .......................................... 136 From the Yizkor Book of Staszow, Poland Helen Winkler .......................................... 139 D’VAR N’GINAH The Uniqueness of Sephardic Prayer Melodies Gleaned from various sources. 141 RECENT ETHNOMUSICOLOGICAL RESEARCH K’riat ha-torah in the Maroka’i Community of Brooklyn: Negotiating New Boundaries of Diaspora Identity Samuel R. Thomas ....................................... 146 The Provenance, Dating, Allusions and Variants of U-n’taneh tokef and Its Relationship to Romanos’s Kontakion John H. Planer .......................................... 163 Hasidism and Mitnagdism in the Russian Empire: the (mis)use of Jewish music in Polish–Lithuanian Russia Stephen P. K. Muir ...................................... 193 2 REVIEWS Daniel Halfon’s CD—Kamti Lehallel—The Musical Tradition of the Spanish and Portuguese Jewish Communities of Amsterdam, London and New York Charles Heller. 213 Italian-Jewish Musical Traditions—a CD from the Leo Levi Collection (1954-1961) Gerard Edery ........................................... 215 Judean-Caribbean Currents: Music of the Mikvè Israel-Emanuel Synagogue in Curaçao Judith Naimark. 217 David Muallem’s The Maqām Book: A Doorway to Arab Scales and Modes Mark Kligman .......................................... 223 Shmuel Barzilai’s Chassidic Ecstasy in Music Shoshana Brown ........................................ 225 Va’ani t’fillati: Siddur yisraeli Geoffrey Goldberg. 228 Stuart Joel Hecht’s Transposing Broadway: Jews, Assimilation and the American Musical Robert S. Scherr ......................................... 235 The CD—Rabbi Isaac Algazi Singing Ottoman-Turkish and Ottoman-Jewish Music Alberto Mizrahi. 239 IN MEMORIAM Macy Nulman (1923-2011) ............................... 247 3 MUSIC Hatsi-kaddish Settings in Sephardic Usage, plus Shokhein ad Section for Shabbat and Festivals 1. Weekday (Biarritz) ...............................251 2. Shaharit l’shabbat (Aleppo) ..............................252 3. Musaf l’shabbat (Spanish-Portuguese). 254 4. Special Shabbatot (London/Gilbraltar) . 255 5. Shalosh r’galim (Italian) ...............................256 6. Yamim nora’im (Evening) (Balkans) .............................257 7. Yamim nora’im (Shaharit) (Bukhara) .............................259 8. Yamim nora’im (Musaf) (Amsterdam/London/New York) . 260 9. Birth (Amsterdam/New York) . 261 10. Eve of Rosh ha-shanah/l’ilanot (Constantinople/Venice) .. 262 11. Shokhein ad Section . 264 Opening of Shaharit for Shabbat and Festivals (After Moroccan-born Jo Amar) Shokhein ad . 266 U-v’mak’halot . 267 Yishtabah . 268 4 The issue of Non-Ashkenazic Traditions: Sephardic Dream Time Jews have historically seen themselves as living somewhere between the perfection that was at the beginning and the perfection that will recur at the end of days. But one Jewish subgroup has recalibrated Eden forward in time to correspond with the 10th-to-12th centuries, and transposed it westward in space to Moorish Spain. Among that subgroup, called Sephardim, dreams endured until quite recently of again traversing the bleached- white plazas of Malaga, of re-entering flower-bedecked habitations in Cordoba, of once more inhaling the fragrance of Granada’s orange blossoms, or of negotiating tenebrous stairways in the cobbled lanes of Gerona. Descendants of Medieval Spanish Jewry were able to sustain this yearning for a return to the pre-Expulsion paradise of their forebears only by overlook- ing the periodic encroachment of religious persecution upon their accom- plished ancestors’ fabled garden. Throughout 900 years of Jewish settlement in the Iberian Peninsula, mistreatment by rulers of other faiths was the norm. At regular intervals during the early Christian period, the lengthy Islamic interregnum and the later Christian reconquest, Spanish—and later Portu- guese—Jews faced exile or death if they refused to forsake Judaism. Those were their only options in the early 7th century under Visigothic kings, in the mid 12th century under fanatical Almohad princes, and again in the late 14th to late 15th centuries under militant Catholic monarchs. That final stretch of unabated persecution reached a climax in the bloody riots of 1391, 1413 and 1456, after which most of Spain’s once proud Jewish population was left destitute. There resulted a massive rush to abandon the faith rather than perish, perhaps half of the Sephardim officially embrac- ing Christianity out of desperation. Of the so-c alled Conversos (converted ones), a small number continued to practice Judaism as best they could, in secret. But even for the valiant few who attempted to uphold both religions simultaneously—the new one openly, the old one clandestinely—such a peril- ous subterfuge could not succeed beyond a generation or two. Cut off from rabbinic texts or teaching, the covert Jews’ only access to Mosaic Law would have been through the Bible, which was forbidden to laity under 16th-century Catholicism. The obsessive fear of being reported to the authorities by one’s domestic servant over so innocuous a practice as laying out fresh table linen 5 on Friday nights became unbearable. Inevitably, the grandchildren of those who had submitted to baptism would break all connections with a reviled Jewish heritage which they were forced to mime, imperfectly at best, in ter- rified privacy, but never allowed to live publicly. Moreover, the late Israeli historian Benzion Netanyahu disputed the cherished myth of Converso martyrdom on the altar of Judaism even prior to 1391. In uncovering the roots of Spanish-Catholic animosity toward Jews, he found more cause to label the majority of earlier converts as “conscious assimilationists who wished to merge with Christian society,” a goal in which they succeeded spectacularly right up to the mid-15th century. Their rapid ascent to the highest positions in Spanish society, including the royal court, incurred an almost insane jealousy on the part of clerics who had converted the New Christians to Catholicism. Among the incensed churchmen were a number of apostate Jews who now turned against their former coreligion- ists and—invoking the racist pretext limpieza de sangre (purity of blood) as bogus justification—raised a canard over the Conversos’