21th August 2020 – Shabbat is almost here
And food will have a special attention today, with a zemirot set sang by a non-professional artist whose singing is delighting and deep: Gadi Erenberg
Hello, how are you? I hope well. The last days we are not having very good news in Sepharad about the pandemic. Things are getting more complicated and it is making me quite sad. I am used to work with much time in advance, to build plans involving travels and many people and now we don’t know if we will even be able to cross the border with another country next week.
In this context, we can find relief in music. And also in food and wine! Zemirot music pieces are sang around a table in Shabbat. I hope you’ll enjoy this edition of MBS 🙂
What is a zemirot
I am subscribed to the emailing of My Jewish Learning and they dedicated recently a post about zemirot. It gave me the idea for this edition. I recommend you to take a look at their website.
According to Jewish Encyclopedia, the zemirot are the Hebrew hymns chanted in the domestic circle, particularly those which precede or follow the grace after the chief meal on the eve and the afternoon of the Sabbath.
There are zemirot for the dinner on Shabbat’s evening and different ones for the lunch of Sabbath day. Later, they appeared also some zemirot to sing at the end of Shabbat. Many of the melodies used in the zemirot are folk songs from the time they started to be sung. The lyrics are also not very old. There is one identified from the Middle Ages but most of the lyrics use to be from the time of the last payyeṭanim (authors of piyyutim). So, mainly from the XVII and XVIII centuries.
The zemirot Asader L’Seudasa by Gadi Erenberg
Somehow I reached the recording of a suite of zemirot at Youtube, by Gadi Erenberg. He is a not professional artist who sings wonderfully. In his channel Epes-A-Nigun, he shares prayers and songs from the Ashkenazi tradition that he sings as he heard from his ancestors and other sources.
Asader L’Seudasa means I will arrange a meal. It is the first melody of the suite in the recording by Gadi. He learnt it from his grandfather, who was from Poland but who settled in Jerusalem. You can find many awful versions in Youtube. If you are curious, check them. I wonder how such a beautiful melody can be arranged to become something so ugly.
In the comments of the video, the melody is mentioned to be from Sighet, in the North of Romania, in Maramures region. It was a prosperous city where Jewish, who were near half of the population in the decades of 1920 and 1930, lived in peace until the World War II. At the end of XIX century it was the printing center of Jewish books. In 1944 they were sent by train to Auschwitz. Around the 80% of the 10 thousand Jews from Sighet were killed.
The History of the Jewish people in Sighet is very nicely explained in the website of Foundation Tarbut Sighet. This picture is from that website and I really recommend to take a look:
Back to the song, if you speak Hebrew, the lyrics are available in the website of Zemirot Database. And if you don’t speak Hebrew, in Chabad.org you have the lyrics in English and the transliteration.
In Sefaria.org the lyrics are acredited to Yitzhak Luria, one of the most relevant disseminators of Kabbalah, born in Jerusalem in 1534 and active in the second half of XVI century. His grave in the cemetery of Safed is still a referential pilgrimage site. He is known also as The Arizal and I will come back to him in a near future.
Gadi sings for more than 20 minutes and he combines Asader L’Seudasa with some other zemirot. I just pay attention to this specific one that opens the recording but all of it is really moving.
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by Gadi Erenberg:
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Shabbat Shalom.
Araceli Tzigane | Mapamundi Música