October 2nd, 2020. Shabbat of Sukkot is almost here
Let’s set the mood in our sukkah with some old Algerian music
Hello! How are you? This is the first Sukkot of Music Before Shabbat. I tried to find some specific music for the occasion but I didn’t find any with enough artistic interest.
So I come back to the thread of the Algerian Jewish artists that I started with Reinette L’Oranaise in this previous edition. I am really surprised that there is almost no information at the Internet about these people in English. Their work is outstanding and there are many wonderful recordings, like the one that I share with you today. About our protagonist, there is also not much even in French.
I hope the music will make you feel in the mood for Sukkot, with this Southern taste. In my city the day is stormy, cold, rainy… and it will possible be perimetrically confined soon. So far, no shelter has been enough to keep us save from the pandemic and the data are worriying. I hope I will have better news in one week, after the Simjat Torah. In the meantime, enjoy this beautiful festivity.
If you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
Cheikh, or Sheikh, Zouzou, whose real name was Joseph Moise Benganoun, was born in Oran in 1862. Or somewhere else in the province of Ain Témouchent in 1890? There is controversy. According to the first data, he would have lived 110 years, until he died in 1972! According to the second, he died in Nice on March 18th of 1975, at his 85 years old. Which one do you believe? *
—
* This is an addendum from day 11th of October. I have received a message on the chat of the website by a person who presents herself as Johanna and she explains: “Cheikh Zouzou was my mom grandpa. His name was Joseph Guenoun ( and not Benguenoun) and he deceived indeed at Nice in 1975 at the age of 85. Thank you for reminding him and his great and unique music and way of playing and singing. Best regards.” As you can imagine, this message is very moving for me. Unluckily, Johanna didn’t leave her data and I have no way of answering to her apart from including this addendum here. Johanna, if you read this, please send me your email to info@mundimapa.com so I will be able to thank you and maybe even to make you some questions and make a new edition of Music Before Shabbat about your grand-grandfather.
—
Anyway, what is true is that he was a singer and a violin virtuoso. And as I already mentioned in the chapter dedicated to Saoud L’Oranaise, Zouzou was also trained by that master. He had his own band and was demanded for weddings and celebrations, and that he must have had some acknowledgement as he was recorded by the national television. He is mentioned and the context of the time of his working activity in this post.
The picture is from the blog by Rol Benzaken, the first place where I learn about the story of Saul Bensoussan and the terrible crime.
The song about the crime by Saul Bensoussan
The lyrics of this song is a poem based on real facts. This story is referred in different sources, and the most complete explanation is a post in Facebook by Dz De Luxe. According to that, in 1888 a tragic event took place in Oran, which was at that time a very cosmopolitan city.
In this picture you see the synagogue from Oran, started to be built in 1879 and converted into a mosque in 1975. It is from JudaicAlgeria, where you can read more about this synagogue.
Oran had been under Spanish control from 1509 to 1708 and from 1732 to 1792. Between 1708 and 1732 it was under the Ottoman Empire. The place was lossing the interest for the Spanish government and the last straw was the earthquake that destroyed the city in 1790. It was again under the Ottomans until 1831, when it would become under the French control. Many Spanish settled in the city then.
So, as Dz De Luxe and other sources (like this) explain, the young Oranese Jew Saul Bensoussan, 20 years old, fell in love with a beautiful Spanish Christian woman by the name of Maria Molina. That was a forbidden love, as they were from different communities, and it lasted two years. During a day of bullfighting in the bullring, Maria Molina saw a beautiful bullfighter from Spain and they both fell in love. When Bensoussan was warned, he mercilessly stabbed Maria Molina out of jealousy, love and rage.
The Chief Rabbi of Oran, Calo, obtained a presidential pardon for him, and Bensoussan was sentenced to life imprisonment in a prison in Cayenne, Guyana. Disgruntled Spaniards invaded the Jewish quarter of Oran, which led to a civil war between the two communities. The French sent soldiers (specifically, the tirailleurs Sénégalais, about whose interesting history you can read more here), to protect the Jews.
The poem was written in Arabic and Hebrew by the Chief Rabbi of Oran to stop extra-community marriages and was first sung by Sheikh Redouane Ben Sari in 1930 followed by Sheikh Zouzou in 1938.
Click the picture for more more by Sheikh Zouzour. I took if from the channel of El Hassar Salim.
With Kol Nidre by Yisrael Oshri, getting into the mood for Yom Kippur
Hello! How are you? I have been waiting many months since I discovered this man, Yisrael Oshri, in Youtube and I saved this video for the time around Yom Kippur. I will be very brief in this occasion, in part because I have no information at all about this person. There are some videos in the Youtube Channel but no biographic info. If you know anything about him, please, let me know. I will come back in the future with more Yemenite music, by the way.
Today is Shabbat Shuvah, the Shabbat between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. I have learnt if from MyJewishLearning. And the people in Israel are again in confinement. I am remembering my dear Igal Mizrahi Gulaza and so many friends there that are going through this holy days in this situation. Here in my city, we are not confined so far, but the situation could change at any moment.
I will come back to you next Shabbat, after Yom Kippur. If you are going to make fasting, I wish you an easy fast. And in any case, have a good holy day.
If you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
Shabbat is almost here. Rosh Hashanah is almost here
May you be inscribed in the Book of Life. Let’s begin this time of reflection with a contemporary chazzan of outstanding artistry, Rabbi Hagay Batzri
Hello! How are you? This is the first Rosh Hashanah of Music Before Shabbat and I am thrilled for sharing with you this moment, that is full of meaning. I think you can take advantage of this time to reflect, whether you are religious or not. To find yourself and to consider your contribution to the world. Have a prosperous, a sweet year. Shanah Tovah.
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
“Music crosses all boundaries and unifies us”. The voice of Rabbi Hagay Batzri
I love the old recordings. In previous editions we have listened to Sephardic chazzanim, like İsak Maçoro (don’t miss to listen to his Avinu Malkeinu, in this previous edition) and İzak Algazi (listen him in a love song, here). It is not that easy to find currently alive singers who get close to them and that haven’t tended to a commercial sound. Even so, some are really enchanting, like David Kadosh (listen to him in this edition) and our protagonist of today: Rabbi Hagay Batzri.
According to his Facebook Page (from where I got the portrait), “Rabbi Hagay Batzri was born in Jerusalem into a family of rabbis and cantors. He is descended from the Ben Ish Chai and from Rabbi Yehuda Ftaya, and his father heads the supreme rabbinical court of Israel. In 1997 he received his rabbinical smicha from Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu, Chief Rabbi for the State of Israel.”
Who was the Ben Ish Chai? According to Chabad.org, “Chacham Yosef Chaim (1832-1909), known as the Ben Ish Chai, was a highly-revered Torah scholar and master of Kabbalah. Based in Baghdad, Iraq, he was recognized by the Sephardic community both locally and abroad as an eminent Halachic authority.”
And Rabbi Yehuda Ftaya? According to JewishIdeas.org, Hakham Yehudah Moshe Yeshua Fetaya (in the picture, from Wikipedia, was born in Baghdad in 1860 and was disciple of the Ben Ish Chai.
What is chacham? According to Jewish-Languajes.org, khokhem, chocham, chochem, hacham, haham, chuchum, chochem, means wise, genious and for Sephardic, it is the same as rabbi.
“Rabbi Batzri enjoys teaching what he calls practical kabbalah, the kabbalistic reasons and explanations behind Jewish laws, concepts, and practices. He balances his study of Jewish mysticism and his rabbinical duties with concert performances in the United States, Israel, and other countries. […] He has performed, among other venues, at UCLA with the world-renowned Yuval Ron Ensemble. His musical philosophy is simple and beautiful: “Music crosses all boundaries and unifies us.” For Rabbi Batzri, creating music is a way of expressing gratitude and appreciation for all we have. When we make music, we embrace life and all living creatures.”
What is Keter Musaf? Keter means crown and has a special meaning in Kabbalah. You can learn more, here. Musaf is an additional offering or prayer, for holy days like Shabbat, Shavuot, Pessach or Rosh Hashanah. It is an aditional religious service for those days, added to the usual Amidah. Musaf would be a fourth Amidah (the usual days they are three Amidah).
Keter is part of the Kedushah. Kedushah means holiness and it is the sanctification of God’s name during the Amidah prayer. What is Amidah? According to MyJewishLearning, “the Amidah is the core of every Jewish worship service, and is therefore also referred to as HaTefillah, or “The prayer.” Amidah, which literally means, “standing,” refers to a series of blessings recited while standing.” The part of Keter in the Musaf prayer recited on Shabbat is sang only by Sepharadim, not by Askhenazim.
According to DailyHalacha.com, “The recitation of “Keter” at Musaf thus marks a very significant and sacred moment, when we join together with the heavenly angels for the purpose of declaring Hashem’s sanctity.”
And the life history of Bob Cohen, founder of Di Naye Kapelye, will inspire us with his commitment to an almost, almost lost legacy. An outstanding story, the cherry on top before the Yamim Noraim.
Hello, how are you? I am almost shivering with emotion to share with you the interview with Bob Cohen. Why? I must tell you that my personal background, my family roots, are not connected to music at all and much less with these musics that were very difficult to reach more than 20 years ago. Moreover, I am from the periphery of Europe, a country where there are not Jewish people for more than 5 centuries, apart from the ones that came as inmigrants during the last decades.
In such a context, to discover in 1998 something like Di Naye Kapelye and their powerful rendition of Dem Rebns Tants would cause the piece to be marked in my memory.
And 22 years after, the man behind it is answering my questions with immense generosity and explaining us how the magical mix of commitment, effort, talent and ethics made all that work possible. Enjoy.
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
A few days ago I realiced that Poland and Ukraine were quite present in this MBS. But somehow I was not reaching to so many facts about Hungarian Jewish popular music, a Hungarian cantor or anything recorded before the World War II… While trying to find something I found phrases like there is nothing recorded, nor written in scores and not even described, about the Jewish music from Hungary from before the Holocaust. Heartbreaking.
But I thought what about Di Naye Kapelye? They play Hungarian Jewish music. How did they do that? The answer is this interview with Bob Cohen, founder of the band. This man on the right is he in a profile picture from his Facebook.
Bob was born at the USA. He will unveils his life story for us. If you want to know more, don’t miss a visit to his blog, Dumneazu: Ethnomusicological Eating East of Everywhere. Along the interview I will include also some digressions, in this colouras well as many links (in orange) in case you want to learn more.
I am moved by Bob’s generous answer, so deep and detailed, that is a lesson for life.
When you decided to travel to Hungary to make research, why did you do that? Where your parents from there?
I moved to Hungary in 1989 to teach English at the ELTE Law University and to study traditional Transylvanian fiddle style with friends in the Hungarian Tanchaz movement such as Csaba Ökrös.
.
– This man in the picture is Csaba Ökrös. He passed away last year (2019 June). Click the picture to watch a video with him at his 20 years old, in 1980. Bob has a thrilling tribute in his blog–
.
I wanted to continue to learn Hungarian language and the difficult fiddle style of central Transylvania. My Mother was born in Hungary and left during World War II, but I still have family here and had visited and fallen in love with Hungarian folk music and the “dance house” revival of traditional music during family visits in the 1970s. (My father’s family originates in Bessarabia, today’s Moldova.)
I was raised in the Bronx at a time when Yiddish language culture was still strong among secular working class Jews. My parents and grandparents spoke Yiddish with each other, but they did not want the children to learn it (I spoke Hungarian with my mother.)
.
– In theedition with the greetings from David Krakauerit was mentioned that “His grandparents arrived to the USA from Eastern Europe at the end of XIX century and, after the religious prosecution they had suffered, they decided to leave all that behind and to talk only English.” Now with Bob we see a similar experience of avoiding the permanence of the cultural roots associated to so many disasters, when moving thousands of kilometres trying to create a new future.
.
Like many young New York Jews – Henry Sapoznik (who was with us in a previous edition) and Andy statman, for example – as a teenager I played bluegrass and also listened to a lot of the very active immigrant Balkan musicians in the New York area.
Around 1975 some of these musicians in the folk fiddle scene began to pass around cassette tapes of klezmer recordings at the Appalachian fiddle jam sessions held at the old Eagle Tavern on 9th Avenue. A lot of us folk musicians also went to concerts sponsored by the Balkan Arts Center (now the Center for Traditional Music and Dance) which featured early klezmer revival artists such as Zev Feldman and Andy Statman (in the picture on the right, that is from Discog), who also presented concerts of newly rediscovered Yiddish perfomers such as Dave Tarras.
I then moved to Boston where I became friends with musicians who would play in the Klezmer Conservatory Band (Frank London and I go wayyyy back… we met while jamming in a salsa band) although in Boston my musical life was mostly involved in Greek music, African music, and reggae.
I did not actively pursue Jewish music until I was living in Hungary and traveling to Transylvania to find older Romani fiddlers to learn the Transylvanian village style of violin. They would quickly identify me as Jewish (I had a beard) and begin to play Jewish melodies that they knew. I asked what these were, and they told about playing for Jewish weddings before the Holocaust, so I began to travel around Romania and Hungary actively seeking older musicians to ask if they knew any Jewish music. This led me to do the same when I was back visiting the United States – I went around Brooklyn and the Bronx visiting Orthodox Jewish communities and working with established Klezmer researchers like Michael Alpert and Zev Feldman.
Are you settled in Hungary now, or in the USA?
I have lived in Budapest since 1989, and I am now a dual Hungarian-US citizen. I travel a lot, but most of my time is in Budapest these days. I live right in the middle of the old Budapest Jewish ghetto – 7th district – and there are synagogues, kosher butcher shops, and Jewish bookstores all around this area. Unlike Krakow, where the Kazimerz neighborhood is a highly visable monument to a nearly extinct Jewish past, the 7th district is a living Jewish area with little on the outside to show its Jewish connections. Budapest has at least 50,000 Jews, with 11 functioning synagogues, and three neighbohoods that can be considered “Jewish neighborhoods” with kosher markets, mikvehs, and synagogues. I can walk out my door and speak Yiddish any day – although Yiddish is no longer very widespread. I tend to identify with our local Orthodox community – as opposed to the larger more assimilationist Neolog community – however I am not particularly religious.
.
How did you find the materials? I have read that there was nothing recorded from the Hungarian Jews of before the World War II. Is it true? If so, how did you manage to create your music?
Nobody had sought out Hungarian Jewish folkore, as Bartok had with Hungarian folk music or with other groups. Jews were considered “cosmopolitan” and therefore did not, by the definition of early nationalism, have “folklore.” Hungarian Jews were granted full citizenship rights in 1867 – and defined themselves not as an ethnic minority (as in Poland or Romania) but as “Hungarians of Mosaic faith.” Hungary was a birthplace of the Zionist movement, and Yiddish was looked down upon by Hebrew language supporters. Among assimilated middle class Hungarian “Neolog” Jews, “folklore” was seen as superstition. The Yiddish speaking Orthodox community was concentrated in the rural East and North of the countryside, and had little interacttion with the educated Jewish elite of Budapest. And then the Holocaust arrived and wiped out 80% of Hungary’s Jews.
Dr. Judit Frigyesi had done extensive collecting of Hungarian Jewish religious music before 1990, but official attitudes under communism had kept her research suppressed. So beginning in 1990 I began traveling on a regular basis to rural regions where Jews had been populous: in Romania, especially in Moldavia, Maramures, Crisana, Bucharest. I taped recorded interviews with older Jewish community members, and sought out older professional Romani musicians who remembered repetoire from the past when they had played for Jewish weddings.
I was incredibly lucky to meet the Yiddish writer and theater director Itsik Svarts in Iasi, who was born in 1905 and had taken an interest in Yiddish folklore in the 1920s and actually knew many of the key figures in 20th century Yiddish folklore, such as the poet Itsik Manger.
If you want to learn more, visit this link in KlezmerShackwith a report by Itsik Svarts about Jewish Musicians in Moldavia
.
His wife, Cili, was the best Yiddish folk singer I had ever heard. Itsik guided me and mentored me and was my link to the world of Yiddish Southeast Europe before the Holocaust.
Cili Svarts sings a little piece in the album by Di Naye Kapelye A Mazeldiker Yid (Oriente, 2001)
.
I learned a lot from the musicians of the Manyo Band, also known as the Tecso Band, from Tyaciv, Ukraine. They were Hutsul (Ruthenian) Romani who still played many Jewish tunes they learned from their father. I ended up playing with them on tour a lot and brought them to festivals in Holland and New York.
.
In this picture fromBob’s blog you see the Manyo Band in Greenwich Village, New York, 2010.
.
My Mother was born in Veszprem, Hungary. Her Mom was actually born in Travnik, Bosnia. She came to the USA in 1948.
To learn more about the Jewish people in Veszprem, check this. In advance, I tell you that around the 90% of them didn’t survive the war. And about Travnik, learn more here. It was even worse. For a follow up of the situation about synagogues and Jewish present, check this blog, Jewish Heritage Travel.
.
My Dad’s family came to the USA in 1924. My Grandfather was born in Criuleni, Moldova (Krivlyany in Yiddish.) His name was Onitskansky, which was changed to Cohen (his Jewish/Hebrew paternal name) because the immigration officials could not spell it. Onitscan (nowadays, Onițcani) is a few miles south of Criuleni, and is “famous” as the historical occurrence of the first pogrom in 1726 on accusations of blood libel (killing Christian children for blood for Passover matzoh).
.
You can learn more details about the Jewish communities in the region of Iasi and about this specific event, in the website of Jewishgen.org
.
Just this month I received a message from a Jewish historian from Chisinau that they had discovered the grave stones of the Onițcani Jews and she was amazed to meet descendants of them.
I visited Criuleni in 2008 while participating in Alan Bern’s “the Other European Project” (you can read about it on my blog…). My Grandmother came from the village of Telenesti in Moldova.
.
You can learn a little bit about the Jews in Telenesti, hereand on Bob’s blog.
Around 1993 I formed Di Naye Kapelye in order to play a “klezmer” music based on the descriptions I had gathered from the information on how Jewish music was performed in small towns and villages before the influence of 20th century technology, mass emmigration, and the holocaust. It was a reconstruction, but Itsik Svarts would coach me on how the band sounded – I would tape rehearsals in Budapest and play them when I visited Itsik in Iasi and he would offer his opinions. In this way, for example, we reconstructed the use of the cobza (Romanian lute) as he heard Romani bands using it for Jewish Purim celebrations in his Moldavian village before 1920.
In Di Naye Kapelye our clarinetist and singer was Yankl Falk, who is an orthodox cantor in Portland Oregon and now an archivist of Jewish Music. He has a expert command of Jewish liturgical traditions and of living Hasidic repertoire, and also traveling with him always put us in touch with local Jewish communities (we have to keep our clarinetist supplied with kosher food). We also played several years with Jake Shulman-Ment, a young New York Klezmer violinist who is probably the best in the world without exaggeration. Jake spent a year living in Botosani in northeast Romania researching Jewish influences in Romanian folk music.
I collected most of the material we use from older Romani musicians in Hungary and Romania, several of whom had played in bands with Jewish musicians until the 1960s such as András Horváth from the Szatmar region of Hungary, Ferenc “Arus” Berki from Cluj in Transylvania (who used to actively ask among other Roma musicians for Jewish songs for me to record), Arpad Toni from Voivodeni in Mures County, and many musicians from the Covaci family of musicians in Maramures (the brothers Ioannei, Nicolae, and Rajna Covaci as well as Gheorghe Covaci from Sacel and Ion “Paganini” Covaci from Saliste, and Gheorghe Covaci “Cioata” from Vadu Izei) as well as musicians in the Republic of Moldova (Fanfara din Edinets, Slava Farber, Arkady Gendler, German Goldenshtyen, Adam Stinga, and Marin Bunea). Many of these older musicians have now passed on.
Some people (in the klezmer world) have called us “the right wing of klezmer” and say we are trying to play a museum piece from 150 years ago. My answer has always been simply “Well, we learned this from a living musician three months ago.” At performances I encourage the audience to get up and dance, saying to them that this is not a music museum.
.
I need to comment a reflection about this last paragraph by Bob. I have seen this kind of argumentations in many other occasions and cultural contexts, in different countries: a claim suppossedly againts the “purists”. Most of the times, the ones who claim are the ones who didn’t want to make the extreme effort to learn and interiorize from the sources and the ones that pretend to “renovate” or to “reshape for its use nowadays” without the real knowledge of that tradition they are supossedly renovating. The deep knowledge of the tradition drives to a natural updating. But you can’t renovate something that you don’t master.
.
What about the current activity of life music (I mean, before the pandemic)?
Although the full band of Di Naye Kapelye rarely performs in Hungary – with two members living in the USA we usually get together only for larger festivals and tours – the five Hungarian members of Di Naye Kapelye still play for Jewish community events (but not for Hasidic weddings after the orthodox ban on orchestras in 2006. We used to play a lot of those.) In Budapest I play with accordinist Adam Moser for monthly Yiddish dance parties sponsored by a Jewish feminist collective called “Esztertaska” which are taught by Sue Foy, an American dance ethnomusicologist who studied Yiddish dance in New York with folksinger Bronya Sakina.
I played in a small formation called “Shrayim” which was primarily for the Orthodox Jewish community some years ago – strictly “kosher” music (no secular love songs, for example, mostly Hasidic music and usually in Orthodox community spaces.)I also play with Daniel Kahn, Michael Alpert, Psoy Korolenko and Jake Shulman-Ment in “The Brothers Nazaroff” – a tribute to Yiddish folk singer Prince Nathan Nazaroff (here on the right it is the cover of their album). A documentary made about us called “Soul Exodus” is presently on European Netflix.
.
About the song Dem Rebns Tants, where did you find this or how did you develop it? I like it a lot!!
Its from a gramophone recording of the Art Shryer Orchestra reissued on the CD “Klezmer Pioneers“. Here is the original.
I have chosen the first piece I listened from Di Naye Kapelye, 22 years ago. It is also a special song because we put it some lyrics over it and sang in a jingle of the radio show Mundofonías, that I do with Juan Antonio Vázquez.
Click the picture to listen to the recording:
I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up
And Warsaw and its History of hazzanut at the Great Synagogue will guide us to a vanished time, through the voice of Gershon Yitzchok Sirota
Hello! How are you? Yes, I am a bit delayed today!!! But this is still before Shabbat! I have had very busy days and here I am again.
In this occasion, we follow the thread of Thomas La-Rue, the black cantor’s story, who performed in Warsaw at a time where the Great Synagogue at Tłomackie Street was the landmark of hazzanut. La-Rue didn’t perform there, but many other cantors did, like our protagonist of today, Gershon Sirota, whose life is connected, for better and for worse, with the city.
I won’t hide that I have a special love for Poland, that country in which, according to my dear Janusz Prusinowski, there is still the feeling of something that is lacking: it is the presence of Jews. He also considers that “Polish and Jewish cultures have quite much in common, so I can understand better Polish culture thank to Jewish music/culture knowledge.” Read more about these reflexions by Janusz, here.
I invite you to listen to a recording that takes us back in time to the Wielka Synagoga w Warszawie, with the voice of the hazzan who was its Obercantor from 1907 until 1926.
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
There isn’t any synagogue now in Tłomackie Street. According to Sztetl.org.pl “On 16 May 1943, explosives were set up around the site and the synagogue was blown up personally by General Stroop to mark the end of his mission to exterminate all Warsaw Jews”.
Nevertheless, f*** you, Stroop: the synagogue dissapeared but the headquarters of the Main Judaic Library and of the Institute for Judaic Studies, that are here in the picture on the left, are now the Jewish Historical Institute and the Jews were not erased from Polish land. This picture is from its website:
This is how it looks like today in Google Maps:
The cornerstone of the Great Synagogue was laid in a ceremony held on 14 May 1876. The architect was Leandro Marconi, who also built the Synagogue Nożyków, the only one that survived the World War II (more info, at the website of Jewish.org.pl). The grand opening and consecration of the synagogue took place on the day of Rosh Hashanah of the year 5639 (on 26 September 1878). Find much more information about the building and its history and the use by the community in Sztetl, a website by POLIN Museum.
Pay attention to the face of the chazzan! Doesn’t he look like Gershon Yitzchok Sirota? In fact he does, but note that the singer in this animation is accredited to be another superb cantor, also born in Ukraine, but about whom I haven’t found references of his presence in Warsaw at the Great Synagogue: Yossele Rosenblatt, who will be our star in a future MBS –>
Anyway, immerse yourself in the Great Synagogue!
The great chazzan at the most prestigious position in the cantorial world
Gershon Sirota became the Obercantor in the Great Synagogue in 1907. The World War II brought the end of the Synagogue and also of Sirota.
According to Rabbi Geoffrey Shisler, “Not without good reason was Gershon Sirota spoken of as the ‘Jewish Caruso.’ Even with the poor quality recordings that we have of him today, it’s quite clear that he had a most extraordinary voice and since he was a contemporary of Caruso (1873 – 1938), the comparison was bound to be made. An apocryphal story has it that Caruso would come to hear Sirota sing or conduct a service whenever they were in the same town at the same time.”
Gershon was born in Podolia in 1874. His father was a cantor in the local synagogue and, already as a child, Gershon helped his father in the services. The family moved to Odessa, where he would be cantor in Shalashner Shul. Later he gave service at the Shtat Synagogue of Vilna. His performances granted him more and more popularity and was called to make special concerts in many cities around, first in Russia and Poland, and later much further. He was the first cantor to record his voice on phonograph records and he became world famous thanks to this.
Between 1912 and 1927 he toured in many ocassions at the USA. It made him lose his position in the Great Synagogue, because he was absent too much time, specially in the High Holy Days. No problem. He was already a very demanded star.
He toured at the USA for his last time in 1938. It is sad that he didn’t decide to stay there. He had to return to Warsaw because his wife was very ill. The start of the war found him there. The family was imprisoned in the Guetto, where he would conduct the High Holy Day services in 1941.
In the first months of 1943, a strong resistence arised in the Guetto of Warsaw and an uprising started on April 19. The bombing of our Synagogue, that was out of the Guetto, was the symbol of the end of that uprising. Sirota was murdered with his family in the last day of Pessah, during the destruction of the Guetto.
And today we travel with our imagination to the USA of one century ago with Henry Sapoznik to answer this question: How does a non-Jewish African-American boy born at the beginning of the 20th century end up making a living singing liturgical music in Yiddish?
Hello, how are you? I hope well. This week I have had two reasons to celebrate:
my birthday, that is on August 26th
and to discover the amazing blog by Henry Sapoznik and his series of posts about the black cantors in the 1920s and 1930s at the USA.
I invite you to listen to a recording that tells us so many things! It wouldn’t be available without Henry’s work.
.
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
I have the feeling that at the USA, any person interested in Jewish culture knows Henry. Despite the globalization, there is still a big gap between North America and Europe in the field of not mainstream culture, so let me introduce him.
I took this picture from his Facebook profile. It is meaningful: he is a Jew who plays banjo. But he is much more. According with his website, he is a native Yiddish speaker and child of Holocaust survivors, award-winning producer, musicologist and performer, and writer in the fields of traditional and popular Yiddish and American music and culture.
He explained to me that he started his blog as an answer to the situation produced by the pandemic. We are experiencing much suffering because of it but at least some little jewels are being born in this dramatic conditions. He also told me that he has the idea of starting a podcast. I will be checking to update you.
Sapoznik was the founding director of the sound archives of the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research in New York from 1982 to 1995, as well as founder and director of KlezKamp, beginning in 1985 for the next 30 years.
Henry’s parents were both from Rovno, between Lvov and Kiev. It is the region of Volhynia, also known as Volinskaya, Wolin, Wolyn, Wolina, Wolinsk, Volinski, Wolinski, Volenskii, Wolenskj, Wolenskja, Volin and Volyn, according to the JewishGen website. It is a land that has changed from the hands of Poland, Ukraine and Soviets. Nowadays it is part of Ukraine. Apart from the extermination of the Jews of Volhynia, that began in the first days after the outbreak of the war between Germany and the Soviet Union, according to the Jewish Virtual Library, in 1943–44 the region was the scene of ethnic massacres in which some 100,000 Poles died and some 20,000 Ukrainians were killed in revenge. The Polish film of 2016 Wołyń, in which my colaborator Janusz Prusinowski played, shows this situation.
According to JGuideEurope, on 6 November 1941, the 17500 inhabitants of Rovno’s ghetto were executed in a single day and left to rot in a huge, circular mass grave. The Sosonki memorial, on the road to Kiev, around two miles from Rovno, reminds this massacre.
Rovno has a synagogue very near the former (and bigger and newer) synagogue and Google Maps is very nice to show them to us:
You know this Music Before Shabbat uses music for the joy in itself and as the thead to learn more about history and I feel this very close to Henry’s vision. I can’t hide what a big joy it has been for me to meet this man and talk with him at the Facebook.
Toyve Ha’Cohen or the black cantor Thomas La-Rue
This amazing story is widely told by Henry in his blog in this post about Larue, and in this one about the tour he made in 1930. I strongly recommend you to check those links. Here I will just make a brief summary of Henry’s work. This poster is from his website too.
Thomas was born in 1902, son of a single mother. They lived in Newark (New Yersey) and she faced much racism. She could make friends only in the Jewish women. With the time, she started to become into their religious believings. Her son and her daughter received a traditional Jewish primary school education. It is not clear if she converted.
How did he start to become a professional singer in Yiddish?
According to Henry’s blog: «One anecdote about LaRue which was repeated so often it has the burnished patina of a creation myth, concerns a Sabbath service he attended as a young boy. During the service, the cantor was taken ill so LaRue quickly put on a prayer shawl and, before the congregation could orient itself, took to the lectern and in his soprano voice began to intone the prayers. The congregation was ready to storm the podium to take him down but he sang with such great feeling that they remained standing and began praying.» True or false, who knows. Thomas was hired by a manager and his career started in 1921 and soon he became usual at the stage in shows of Yiddish theatre. And the recording below is from June 1923.
In 1930 he made a tour in Egypt, Palestine, Israel, Germany and Poland. He was welcome in Warsaw with big scepticism. It was at the time the landmark for cantorial art, specially by the role of the Great Tłomackie synagogue, that will be our focus in a future edition of MBS. This wonderful picture below is from the website of the Jewish Historical Institute.
For that tour, the productor, Edvin Relkin, invented a totally fake story in which his mother died when he was young and his father was a high official in the local Abyssinian government, they were descendents of the Ten Lost Tribes.
Thomas’ last performance documented is in 1953 in Newark. It is not known his date of death nor where is he buried.
The song encouraging the Polish Jews to keep the hope
From the available recordings by Thomas La-Rue in Henry’s Youtube channel, I have chossen the one that I prefer the least in terms of melody but that has very meaningful lyrics, specially taking into consideration the story of Henry’s parents. The whole lyrics are in this post by Henry and I will just copy a little part. You’ll understand what I mean:
.
Don’t give up hope yet, Mr. Jew
One day it will all work out for you
Pharaoh, Haman and Amolek taught a bitter lesson
But those days are through
Czar Nikolai, has met his destiny
And from Poland, you’ll be free
.
Click the picture to listen to the recording of Thomas La-Rue:
I hope you’ll like it and, if so, feel free to share it and invite your friends to join us.
It is as symple as sending … this link to sign up
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 🙂
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
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.
And I am so happy for talking about the work of my long-admired producer Daniel Rosenberg and the thrilling project Yiddish Glory!
Hello, how are you? I hope well! In this edition I come back to the todays, with artists that are alive but with a project based on Yiddish songs from the World War II. After many decades considered lost, those songs were found at the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine. Read more below.
Daniel Rosenberg receives this weekly newsletter and I hope he will have a nice suprise! I didn’t advice him in advance. 🙂
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
The producer, journalist and publicist Daniel Rosenberg
It seems a lie but there was a time when we were able to travel to other continents easily, without masks and without quarantines. This picture was took in Toronto in 2019, where I attended the Canadian Music Week thanks to Music Export Poland. This picture was done the first time we meet, after a big breakfast in a nice cafe and he is Daniel Rosenberg.
Daniel is graduated in molecular biology and in political science. This might have no relationship with the theme of our email, but I want to highlight what an amazing person Dan is. Apart from that, he has been working for more than 20 years in the dissemination of the musics from all over the world, in radio and in compilations.
He has made the selection of many of the albums of the collection Rough Guides, by World Music Network. He has produced and written liner notes for more than 60 CDs, including this Yiddish Glory. He is the producer of this work. He selected the musicians and organiced all the work to make this idea and this documents become a touchable and listenable album.
Before the beginning of the pandemic, he was working in several projects. One of them was the first album by Taraf Syriana, about the music of the Romani people in Syria from before the war, as well as in another amazing project, related also to Jewish culture and history, about which I hope to talk with him in a near future.
According to the press release by Rob Jacobs from Six Degrees Records, the label that released this album:
“Yiddish Glory: The Lost Songs of World War II is the new recording of music created during the darkest chapter of European Jewish history. In the midst of World War II, a group of scholars led by ethnomusicologist Moisei Beregovsky (1892 – 1961) discovered songs written by Jewish Red Army soldiers, refugees, victims and survivors of Ukrainian ghettos. One song was written by a 10-year-old orphan who lost his family in the ghetto in Tulchin, another by a teenage prisoner of the Pechora concentration camp, and yet another about a Red Army soldier who learns, upon his return to Kiev, that his family had been murdered in Babi Yar. […]
Following the war, the researchers were arrested during Stalin’s anti-Jewish purge. The scholars’ works were confiscated, and they died thinking the collection was lost to history. The songs were discovered in unmarked boxes stored in the archives of the Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine in the 1990s.
In the early 2000s, a lucky coincidence brought Yiddish Professor Anna Shternshis to Kiev where she learned that these songs had survived all of these decades following the researchers’ arrests. Quickly deteriorating, fragile documents, some typed, but most hand-written, contained some of the most poignant and historically important Soviet Yiddish songs of World War II.”
The booklet includes much more information about the work in general and about each specific piece. You can order it here.
The song about the massacre of Babi Yar
Babi Yar means the grandmother’s ravine. It is a ravine in the outskirts of Kiev where in September of 1941 there were killed more than 33 thousand Jews in two days. It is considered the biggest slaughtering in the less time. Until the 6th of November of 1943 the number of Jewish from Kiev and surroundings killed would increase to around 200 thousand. I won’t explain more details, as this events are widely documented and you can find information easily at the Internet.
The lyrics of the song are by Golda Rovinskaya, 73 years old, Kiev, 22 June, 1947, recorded by Hina Shargorodsky. It talks from the poing of view of someone returning to Kiev from the front line, happy for being still alive, but finding that all his family and beloved ones have been killed. The music is based on “In droysn geyt a regn,” a folk song, with instrumental parts and arrangement by Sergei Erdenko.
Pulling the thread of the Algerian Jews artists, we listen Saoud Medioni, or Saoud l’Oranais, the master, the taliba of Reinette l’Oranais, with whom we will travel back in time even to XIII century
Hello, how are you? I hope well. Here, the months without our natural behaviour, without the smiles at the shops and at the streets and now also with new outbreaks of the virus and the return to the confinement of some locations are starting to weight. I began these little emails of Friday in the last Sabbath of Hannukah. Will we have recovered our lifes in the next Hanukkah?
I don’t know when but I know this will end. In the meantime let’s try to celebrate each little joy. In this ocassion we will go back in time to listen Saoud l’Oranais, the master of Reinette, who was our star of this edition.
Pupil and master of masters, Saoud’s end was dreaful but his contribution to the world brings him back to life again, today with us.
As usual, you have the video at the bottom. And if you like this, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
The music master from the historic city of Tlemcen
Despite being known as Saoud l’Oranais, Messaoud El Médiouni was born in Tlemcen, in the North West of Algeria, two hours from Oran, near Morocco. A land, like mine, with olive trees and vineyards.
Tlemcen was the capital city of an independent kingdom from 1236 (when it became a Ziyyanid kingdom after its declaration of independence from the Almohad califate) until it became part of the Ottoman empire in 1554. In 1830, France takes Alger. Our star was born at the time when his land was controlled by France.
Saoud was the grandson of the great master of Andalusian music in Tlemcen Ichou Mediouni, known as ‘Maqchiche’ (1829-1899). At a very young age he settled in Oran, where he ran a café in the Jewish quarter of that city. He would distinguish himself as a musician thanks to his wide Andalusian repertoire and his haouzi and aroubi (different styles from the Andalusian music, in this occasion we listen an aroubi) renditions. Saoud settled also a music school in which he teached Reinette l’Oranaise and other artists, like the also great Cheikh Joseph Moise Guenoun, knows as Cheikh Zouzou. Listen to him, here.
The city of Tlemcen has a long story of Jewish presence. According to the International Jewish Cemetery Project, “the Jewish cemetery on the outskirts of Tlemcen was the most important place of pilgrimage for Jews and non-Jews. Located there is the tomb of Rabbi Ephraim Enquaua. Sometimes more than 10.000 people from many parts of the world convened there on Lag ba-Omer.”
About the mentioned Rabbi, whose name you will find also as Ephraim ben Israel Alnaqua (and Ainqaoua, Al Naqawa, Alnaqua, Encaoua…), don’t miss this article. This is so interesting that I will come back to this story soon. Alnaqua was born in Toledo, that is, by the way, the city where my company Mapamundi Cultural is settled. Wow, I really feel I am standing over shoulders of gigants.
This wonderful picture of the tomb is from the website of the Beit Hatfutsot museum:
Back to Saoud, as I already explained in the edition dedicated to Reinette, in 1938, he moved to Paris, where he was going to set up a cafe in Montmartre. In January 1943 the German army, after the Operation Torch, made a roundup of Jewish in Marseille’s port and deported Saoud and his 13 years old son Joseph to Drancy camp and later to Sobibor, where they would be murdered.
The aroubi song, from the gharnati school
In Tlemcen it was developed the gharnati music school, which name comes from the city of Granada, in Andalusia. Granada was the last city under Muslim control in Iberian peninsule. In 1492 the Catholic Kings defeated the last stronghold of the Muslims, who had to leave the land. They took the music with them and many of them settled in Algeria.
The relationship between Tlemcen and Granada was strong, as they were allies at the time of the Nazari dinasty in Granada and the Ziyyanid dinasty in Tlemcen. This made of Tlemcen a referential settlement for the Muslims after the 1492 disaster as well as for the Moriscos (the Muslims that stayed in Iberian lands, converted into Catholics, forcibly most of them) who were expelled in 1609. The gharnati music is performed with small line ups of singers and instrumentalist and the soloist singing is fundamental.
This picture of Alhambra in Granada is by Slaunger in Wikipedia.
According to the Youtube channel El Hassar Salim, the aroubi is a musical genre that refers to pastoral poetry that Jewish musicians have largely contributed to popularize, specially in Algeria, Morocco and France. Apart from Saoud, other artists that have played aroubi are Ibého Bensaid (1890-1972) and Joseph Ben Guenoun said Maalam Zouzou (1889-1972). Aroubi songs are played nowadays. Check here to listen to one recording of the song Serej ya fares ltam.
The aroubi as a musical genre started by the singer-songwriters of the old so-called Andalusian tradition who brought them into the urban cultural world. The poems describe Bedouin idylls and the simple life embodied by the peasant life, feelings of honor and bravery through epic songs or chronicles of rural life. It is called the Bedouin genre and some of its poets were Mostéfa Ben Brahim (deceased in 1867) from the region of Sfisef (Sidi Bel Abbès), and Hani Benguenoun (1761-1864), Youcef Bel Abbès (deceased in 1843), both of them from Mascara.
And in this occasion I am very lucky, as I have been able to ask the artists about them and about the music piece as well. Because they are alive, and very alive! The Slovak band Mojše Band accompanies us again in Music Before Shabbat.
Hello! How are you in this very last day of July? Maybe just about to start holidays! In my case I am planning to stay and continue sending this little musical jewels to you every week.
The old recordings are charming and we love them. And we have also contemporary artists that are very inspiring too. Our artist of this edition was with us already in this occasion. Why are they back? Because I really appreciate their work, that I have experienced live twice. Michal Pal’ko, singer and cimbalonist of the band has kindly answered some questions and he also sent me a piece, Niezhuryca khlopcy, from their latest album, to share it with you!
Download it here ⬇️ and watch them in video at the bottom. And if you like it, you can order the full album, here.
And if you enjoy this little musical moment, as usual, please: share it with your friends! Thank you in advance.
Mojše Band are František Kubiš, Jakub Stračina and Michal Pal’ko. To learn more about the band, check their facebook and their website.
Michal Pal’ko kindly answered my questions, so let’s let him talk.
About the song Niezhuryca khlopcy
ARACELI: About the song: where is it from, where did you find or learn it. What does it talk about?
MICHAL: It’s a traditional nigun (song without the words, or with some kind of citation). In this case nign “Niezhuryca khlopcy” has in three sections (A, B, C), three typical kinds of texture:
First: Ruthenian citation from originaly Kharpato-Rusyn text
Second: nigunot sound “NAJ-NAJ…”
Third: and finally, C section, typical Chabad nigunot vovels BOI-BOI, or Bo-Bo-BOI… also means in hebrew “go-go”.
All kinds of text has own mystical meaning. But generaly both Rusyn and Yiddish texts versions have very simply meanings: “Don’t be affraid, guy, of what will happen to us, we will go to the pub and dring a few snaps…”. But is is a kind of metaphora. Pub is the house of great tzadik, snaps-vodka is knowledge, meaning the holy Tora. And if you receive Tora to yourself, you definitelly won’t be afraid whethever, whenever…
It’s a typical Chabad nign famous and well known around the world. We have included it in an album by my band, in the second album from collection Musica Iudaica Monarchiae – SAROSI- SARISSKI, Jewish music from Saris region. It is deeply connected to Kurima village, where Rav Michael is buried, who was the grandson of the great rabbi from Zlochyw, one of the founders of Chabad-Lubawich dynasty.
About the outstanding Michal Pal’ko, by himself
ARACELI: About you: year and place of birth, place where you are settled. Did you receive lessons for liturgic singing or anything like that? I think you can conduct religious services and I know it requires a lot of time for studying. What made you interested in that?
MICHAL: I was born in 1988, in the middle of Slovakia, in a town without Jewish community, without any Jewish cultural or liturgical background, so as I grew up I needed to learn everything… I studied classical music (composition, cimbalom and conducting) and at same time, during my studies in Krakow, I studied Jeshiva pardes Lauder and some private lessons from Tora and Kabala, and cantorial chanting as well. In cantorial chanting, I am the most interested in different ways of how to do service, how to be still in touch with all kehila and G-d. and on the other side with the present and the past. Huge tradition behind you. I used feel like in library, you can choose and create in same time. Still perfectly “on-line”.
About the near future
ARACELI: About your future plans: what are you doing in this time of the pandemic? What are your near future plans, in terms of music?
MICHAL: We are doing well with my band Moishe Band on several projects, like the long time term project of editions (Musica Iudaica Monarchiae, Shlomo ben Rivke edition…). And doing music, researching… We are not so many Jews here in central Europe so we have to work as 5 persons in one man.
Cheikh, or Sheikh, Zouzou, whose real name was Joseph Moise Benganoun, was born in Oran in 1862. Or somewhere else in the province of Ain Témouchent in 1890? There is controversy. According to the first data, he would have lived 110 years, until he died in 1972! According to the second, he died in Nice on March 18th of 1975, at his 85 years old. Which one do you believe? *
The lyrics of this song is a poem based on real facts. This story is referred in different sources, and the most complete explanation is a post in Facebook by Dz De Luxe. According to that, in 1888 a tragic event took place in Oran, which was at that time a very cosmopolitan city.
The poem was written in Arabic and Hebrew by the Chief Rabbi of Oran to stop extra-community marriages and was first sung by Sheikh Redouane Ben Sari in 1930 followed by Sheikh Zouzou in 1938.
I love the old recordings. In previous editions we have listened to Sephardic chazzanim, like İsak Maçoro (don’t miss to listen to his Avinu Malkeinu, in 
And Rabbi Yehuda Ftaya? According to 
Gershon was born in Podolia in 1874. His father was a cantor in the local synagogue and, already as a child, Gershon helped his father in the services. The family moved to Odessa, where he would be cantor in Shalashner Shul. Later he gave service at the Shtat Synagogue of Vilna. His performances granted him more and more popularity and was called to make special concerts in many cities around, first in Russia and Poland, and later much further. He was the first cantor to record his voice on phonograph records and he became world famous thanks to this. 
MICHAL: It’s a traditional nigun (song without the words, or with some kind of citation). In this case nign “Niezhuryca khlopcy” has in three sections (A, B, C), three typical kinds of texture:
ARACELI: About you: year and place of birth, place where you are settled. Did you receive lessons for liturgic singing or anything like that? I think you can conduct religious services and I know it requires a lot of time for studying. What made you interested in that?