Cliff Notes to Jewish Liturgy and Chant

Shalom! This video is about kind of cliff notes to Jewish melodies. I do not read music and I do not have a great ear, but I love Jewish music and I love the different sound of the liturgy at different times and the different melodies for bible constellations. It is so hard to try to learn and it is best I could given those handicaps. I want to share with you the basics. These are Eastern European Traditions. A lot of music being used in not Orthodox Synagogues today throughout America, is music from folk singers like W Freedman who was just appointed to the cantorial school faculty of Hebrew year in college. But the basic melody system I am going to teach is eastern European and goes way before mostly before the century or the earlier part of the century. And that you can see from the basic music that you try and create different moods based on the different times. For example, the normal daily melody, for example, the main prayer of the Amidah goes like this. Baruch hata hashen aluheynu, melech ha olam, and a very plain. That same melody on Shabbat, the same words on Shabbat would be sang like this [Singing].

You could hear the difference between [Singing] and [Singing]. Okay, then Shabbat afternoon has a different melody. When I was growing up there was a cereal called in the melody for the jingle on TV was this. [Singing] and that is the melody for the Shabbat afternoon. Maybe the person who wrote that Dee-Dee was a observant Jew. So, it would be [Singing]. To just to review and maybe just learn a couple of word of each and then you can basically you get the basic melodic chant daily [Singing] versus Shabbat [Singing] versus Shabbat afternoon [Singing]. Now that is and then of course the holidays has different melodies all together and festivals have different melodies. Now, for candle lighting, for example the normal candle lighting, there is a lot of different told for candle lighting like, but the one we do not do is the Hanukkah candle lighting which a lot of people by mistake do because that is the only one they do. And on the Hanukkah tape, I did the candle lighting blessing for Hanukkah [Singing].

So, that is basically the melody that we do not do on Shabbat [Singing]. So that is Hanukkah, do not do that on Shabbat [Singing] where for holiday, that works too, you see that different melody pattern. Now, it is a whole different set of melodies for bible readings. Now the are little notes Trop Markers in a printed bible Jewish text which is some, now it is the same notes all the time. Little just squidles they are all the same but their sang differently depending on the bible part that you are reading. I mentioned before that if you go to bible.org.org, you can hear the Eastern European basic melody for Torah reading and Half Torah reading. I will just sing it for you. Now, this is one version of Eastern European kind of the main one that is done all the time except on high holidays and here is the passage [Singing].Try that again, on high holidays, it is sung like this [Singing]. Sounds like that. You could see the basic difference.

Now, the prophetic portions that are done every Sabbath holiday have a different melodic line completely it is a minor people tell me. And here is the basic sound to that [Singing]. That is the melody for Half Torah. So, you can see [Singing] or High Holiday torah [Singing] or Half Torah [Singing]. Now, vendor of other books that are chanted at holiday time, three of them have the same melody that has song of songs, which is done at Passover, Ruth done at Shavout and Ecclesiastes which is done of a holiday of Sukkot and it sounds like this [Singing]. You can see a different melody and this is just basic Eastern European and there is a lot of new lines and differences. And then the book of lamentations Ekha, he has its own melody unique. The only the ad book in a few verses that are done for the torah and the Half Torah on the week before Ekha, very sad melody, because it is a very sad book [Singing], though again, this is just kind of general, each little trop marker like a musical note above each words tells you how to sing it. The markers are all the same. It is sung differently depending on which book it is. Now, for Lamentations, that melody goes for the first two and last two chapter the middle chapter has a different melody. And then finally, you have this scroll of Esther which has its own melody, more kind of festive melody all by itself.

So, hope that helps, those are a little bit about Jewish melodies of course now a days has a lot of more folk music being used in Non-Orthodox Synagogues, I will tell you a funny story funny story. This rare can trough a just a pop of problem It really came to Orthodox Synagogue and a beautiful voice being wanted to. Now if you could lead High Holiday services and they ask me if I was familiar with American music, I said absolutely not. So, it is a joke, where the guys tell them that the use of particular melody in that synagogue and toward them, the music to silent night. He had no idea what it was us is we got up there to lead services and this is a orthodox synagogue and on high holidays and he begin to using the melody to silent night.

I showed you that this is big chuckle and I am sure it is not true, because it is too embarrassing to do that and irritating the congregation but kind of a funny story about Jewish music. And as this kind of folk music works it way into more and more to the American-Jewish scene that sure will had happened to the classic Jewish melodies although, definitely has an effective yet the bible cantelation. Anyway, a little bit of cliff notes on Jewish melodies.