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MELODIES AND PRAYERS
On Saturday night I was listening to one of the motzei shabat programs on Israel radio while waiting for some inspiration to write my weekly article on a Jewish topic. The program featured prayers, hymns and melodies sung by a young Sephardic chazzan. The young man had a beautiful lyric tenor voice but the melodies that he sang were certainly strange to my Ashkenazic ears. The music was exotic sounding, distinctly Middle Eastern in tone and pitch and in a strange way, very provocative and unsettling. I then wondered whether this music and melodies, put to the words of Psalms and our traditional prayers, was perhaps more authentic than the melodies that I am accustomed to hearing being sung in our synagogue.
Perhaps the songs of the Levites in the Temple long ago were more closely allied with the Sephardic type prayer music of today than with the Ashkenazic tunes that are routinely sung in Ashkenazic synagogue prayer services. And I was then struck by a heretical thought – does it make a difference which tune or melody is allegedly more authentic? Who can say?
Music and melody has certainly evolved over the past millennia so that there is probably no really authentic melodies and music from the Temple still extant amongst us. There is an opinion that I heard taught in the name of a great sage of the sixteenth century that the haunting melody used by Ashkenazim for the Kol Nidrei prayer as well as the lilting tune used for the kaddish on the High Holy Days are vestiges of melodies of the Levites in the Temple. But as I mentioned, there can be no proofs regarding this matter any longer.
The evolution of synagogue music is readily visible in our very own times. Fifty years ago there were no “Carlebach” melodies sung in the Ashkenazic synagogues. Today these melodies are sung regularly in all Ashkenazic synagogues the world over. The melodies of the current popular singers of Jewish music – Chasidic, yeshivish, even pop music and Israeli songs – are also part of the melodic liturgy of Ashkenazic synagogues.
In the Sephardic world as well, new melodies, though similar in tone, pitch and style to the traditional ones, have also entered into the services in some Sephardic synagogues. A great deal of this change is due to the influence of the dramatic change in popular music in the non-Jewish world over the past half century. The “golden oldies” aren’t so golden any longer.
Thus to a generation whose ears have been trained to hear the current types of music and melodies, the synagogue service to be meaningful has also had to adapt and change its musical component. It is no secret that synagogues that are sparsely attended on most Shabatot are filled to overflowing on a “Carlebach Shabat.” Demand influences supply and this is true even when synagogue liturgical music is concerned.
And there is no doubt that melody and musical tone and atmosphere enhance the synagogue prayer service and encourage the participation of all those in the synagogue in the fervent recitation of the prayer service itself.
This phenomenon of new music entering the liturgical services of Israel is not a new one restricted to our times. Rather, it has a long and continuing history. Many of the more popular and traditional Chasidic melodies sung in the courts of the various Chasidic groups during prayer services are melodies borrowed – some adapted and some taken whole cloth – from Napoleon’s French army, Russian, Polish, Romanian and Hungarian peasant songs and other varied sources of Eastern European non-Jewish origin.
Becoming part of the liturgical treasure of Jewish prayer has now sanctified these melodies. It has become such a fixture of Jewish prayer service to include these melodies that many a Chasidic youngster, upon somehow hearing the original non-Jewish song, is convinced that they must somehow have borrowed it from us. Once at a concert when the orchestra was playing The Moldau from which the melody of Hatikvah was taken, I heard a young Israeli say to his friend; “Look they took that melody from our anthem!”
It seems that music is also fungible and once the melody is out there then anyone can adapt it to one’s own particular needs and purposes. The task of the Jewish people in the world is to take the mundane and elevate it spiritually and to convert the seemingly profane into holy vessels. Our synagogue melodies and music stand as testimony to this effort of ours over the ages.
Shabat shalom.
Berel Wein
