Throughout history, music has been a fixture of Jewish religious life. Musical references appear in biblical accounts of the Red Sea crossing and King Solomon's coronation, and music continues to play a central role in virtually every Jewish occasion. Through 100 brief chapters, this volume considers theoretical approaches to the study of Jewish sacred music. Topics include the diversity of Jewish music, the interaction of music and identity, the emotional and spiritual impact of worship music, the text-tone relationship, the musical component of Jewish holidays, and the varied ways prayer-songs are performed. These distillations of complex topics invite a fuller appreciation of synagogue song and an understanding of the ubiquitous presence of music in Jewish worship.

Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music’s intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist Émile Durkeim’s understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.

Social Functions of Synagogue Song: A Durkheimian Approach by Jonathan L. Friedmann paints a detailed picture of the important role sacred music plays in Jewish religious communities. This study explores one possible way to approach the subject of music's intimate connection with public worship: applying sociologist mile Durkeim's understanding of ceremonial ritual to synagogue music. Durkheim observed that religious ceremonies serve disciplinary, cohesive, revitalizing, and euphoric functions within religious communities. Drawing upon musical examples from different composers, regions, periods, rites, and services, Friedmann demonstrates how Jewish sacred music performs these functions.

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Audio disc contains: musical examples.

Although in Second Temple literature we find a variety of songs concerned with the future of Jerusalem, little attempt has been made to analyse these comparatively as a generic group. In this study, three songs have been selected on the basis of their similarity in style, ideas and their apparent original composition in Hebrew. The texts have been subjected to a literary analysis both individually and then comparatively.

Sara Manasseh brings a significant, but less widely-known, Jewish repertoire and tradition to the attention of both the Jewish community (Ashkenazi, Sephardi, Oriental) and the wider global community. The book showcases thirty-one songs and includes English translations, complete Hebrew texts, transliterations and the music notation for each song. The accompanying downloadable resources include eighteen of the thirty-one songs, sung by Manasseh, accompanied by 'ud and percussion. The remaining thirteen songs are available separately on the album Treasures, performed by Rivers of Babylon, directed by Manasseh - : www.riversofbabylon.com. While in the past a book of songs, with Hebrew text only, was sufficient for bearers of the tradition, the present package represents a song collection for the twenty-first century, with greater resources to support the learning and maintenance of the tradition. Manasseh argues that the strong inter-relationship of Jewish and Arab traditions in this repertoire - linguistically and musically - is significant and provides an intercultural tool to promote communication, tolerance, understanding, harmony and respect. The singing of the Shbahoth (the Baghdadian Jewish term for 'Songs of Praise') has been a significant aspect of Jewish life in Iraq and continues to be valued by those in the Babylonian Jewish diaspora.