New Article: Yehuda Kurtzer, Dr. Mijal Bitton, and the Erasure of Sephardic Liturgical Music from the Shalom Hartman Institute Ashkenazi NIGGEN
David Shasha
Yehuda Kurtzer, Dr. Mijal Bitton, and the Erasure of Sephardic Liturgical Music from the Shalom Hartman Institute Ashkenazi NIGGEN
In the “Bourekas and Haminados” Sephardischkeit construct it is usual to allow us to at least have music along with our food!
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/zwaRDoJ0IRo/m/-NdTkKFtAQAJ
Now, we are already aware of how Shalom Hartman Institute North American director Yehuda Kurtzer has erased us from his much-heralded New Jewish Canon; a place where only Ashkenazim have anything to say:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1ppIJ5kkel1BtcBDaFoPs4UUHJqYSplQEGlvfVxo7Jkg/edit
In this same vein, Kurtzer’s contribution to the new SHI journal Sources very duplicitously asks: “What Happened to Jewish Pluralism?”
https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/what-happened-tojewish-pluralism
As I have already said, “Pluralism” means White Jewish Supremacy and its many dysfunctional denominations. Sephardim are very emphatically not part of such “Pluralism.”
SHI’s House Sephardi Dr. Mijal Bitton has a piece in the journal on Jewish Sexism that unsurprisingly has nothing much to do with Sephardim, but a lot to do with the New Jewish Social Science:
https://www.sourcesjournal.org/articles/is-jewish-continuity-sexist
And we have seen just how much damage the New Jewish Social Science has done to Sephardim – not that Bitton would care much!
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1_k1I5KoFmIK0Qk7Zfd6HvTPo3iYaWL6YpuRp3VY3tgA/edit
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1l4GaqfTjcBkotDfzurNs8unp9sRA374FLKOmeEBcOkU/edit
It is all about padding the resumé and cashing those White Jewish checks.
Bitton is also a proud contributor to the shameful Orientalist Haggadah produced by photographer Zion Ozeri and SHI’s Sara Wolkenfeld:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/aEQdT7Ye7pc
Just to make things that much worse, Kurtzer has now boldly announced that Sephardim do not even rate when it comes to Jewish music!
https://mailchi.mp/shi.org.il/two-podcasts-for-pesach-listening?e=ce188d0296
Here are the details of his new SHI podcast, which is White Jews Only:
The American Jewish Music Episode
On Identity/Crisis podcast episode #50, Yehuda Kurtzer hosts a lively discussion with music enthusiasts Dovid Bashevkin, Yardaena Osband, Miri Miller, and Shira Hanau about religious Judaism in America and its musical evolution from Mordechai Ben David to Nissim Black and Debbie Friedman - plus a special Spotify playlist of music they discussed.
Yardaena Osband, of something called Talking Talmud Podcast, says it all:
"I think this speaks to all music: a good nigun is a good nigun. There's just something that makes you feel like it was created before Bereshit...that's why it ends up everywhere, because a good song is just a good song."
Here is their playlist – see if you can spot the racist trend:
https://open.spotify.com/playlist/07sZQNNCONxjECFCpg5Cis?si=1d78455f251948dc&nd=1
That’s right – of the 31 songs – almost all of them Haredi Lakewood fodder – we get only one Sephardi – Gad Elbaz – who is really not much of a Sephardi anyway:
https://www.theledger.com/article/LK/20051112/news/608142867/LL
He’s another Justin Bieber, by way of Rabbi Eli Mansour!
For those – not racists like Yehuda Kurtzer – who are actually interested in the classic Arab Jewish liturgical tradition as practiced in the Brooklyn Syrian community, I would strongly recommend reading Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s classic book Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHUpX2lTrVyq3m6lrI7DfzHhSPKIubS6TWuNggHBnH8/edit
https://www.amazon.com/Let-Jasmine-Rain-Down-Ethnomusicology/dp/0226752119
My 1998 essay on the book follows this note.
It is unlikely that anyone at SHI – including Dr. Bitton – has actually read the book. That is what White Jewish Supremacy is all about. No apology necessary.
Included in the book is a CD featuring Professor Shelemay’s field recordings from community cantors that was first presented in truncated form on Shanachie Records’ 1985 LP “Pizmon”:
https://www.discogs.com/Pizmon-Syrian-Jewish-Religious-And-Social-Songs/release/16055055
In order to fill people in who might not be aware of the depth of the classic Sephardic musical heritage and its intimate connection to Arab song, I have written a number of articles that help to explain the situation.
Back in 2009 I wrote an article on the great traditionalist and World Music specialist Simon Shaheen and his wonderful “Aswat” performance at New York’s Town Hall:
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1vixVPPx4qRfOtAHV6alAI8mM9Mf0mLqN/view?ths=true
Shaheen’s most authentic recording of the classic Arab tradition is his seminal 1990 album “The Music of Mohamed Abdel Wahab”:
https://billlaswell.bandcamp.com/album/the-music-of-mohamed-abdel-wahab
https://www.amazon.com/Music-Mohamed-Abdel-Wahab-Shaheen/dp/B000000GBC
In my Tikkun magazine article I laid out the dialectical situation in the following manner:
For those who are not familiar with this liturgical tradition, the songs known in Hebrew as pizmonim, written by the cantors and rabbis of the community, were adaptations of the melodies of songsmiths like Abdel Wahhab. So many of the songs of Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Iraq appear in the contemporary Syrian Jewish liturgy having their Arabic words replaced with sacred texts in Hebrew composed by poets like Refa’el Antebi Tabboush, Moses Ashear and Ezekiel Hai Albeg.
This is the music that we grew up with. At the feet of my grandmother I personally imbibed this music and it became for me – as for many of my peers – a critical part of my cultural identity. There was little sense of a divide between the Arabic originals and the Hebrew adaptations. The only way to understand and appreciate this music was to go back to the originals – and that meant listening to the recordings of Um Kulthum, Abdel Wahhab, Farid al-Atrash and the others who sang this music in the Arab world.
Unlike the insular nature of Eastern European Klezmer music and the “created before Bereshit” NIGGEN, prized by Kurtzer and his White Jewish podcast participants, our Pizmonim are a reflection of Muslim-Jewish Convivencia:
As the orchestra’s sound swelled to crescendo, I found myself welling up and becoming extremely emotional, recalling the moments when I sat with my late grandmother listening to these songs – the 78 RPM records played on an old Victrola that I would crank up on her instructions. When music becomes so much a natural and organic part of our most intimate being, the emotional resonance of its timbres strikes a deep chord within us.
But even more than this, what I have learned over the years in remaining true to my grandmother’s vision of the world is that this music is not merely a static part of my life, but, as the term “Wounded kinship’s last resort” indicates, it is a cultural force that reflects a symbiosis that we are now told never existed – that could never have existed as Jews were never Arabs.
Then in 2010 Tikkun published my article on the excellent ECM album “Siwan,” featuring Jon Balke and Amina Alaoui:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/aEQdT7Ye7pc
For those who would like to purchase the recording:
https://www.amazon.com/Siwan-Jon-Balke/dp/B001PS0EKW
It is a wonderful way to experience the music of Al-Andalus in a way that honors the Convivencia spirit and breathes new life into it.
In 2003 ECM provided us with the extraordinary album “Terra Nostra” from the Greek performer Savina Yannatou, which allows for an even more expansive presentation of the Mediterranean tradition and its wide ethno-cultural scope:
https://www.amazon.com/Nostra-Yannatou-Primavera-Salonico-2003-03-25/dp/B01A9KN32M
The following year I wrote a review on Ms. Yannatou’s concert at SUNY-Stony Brook:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/12IYoBxfsHy0jIsyIVgFE3RCSvGY2MX7L3h_bMZxQgI8/edit
In this context it is worthwhile to remember the great cantor of the Brooklyn SY community Rabbi Raphael Yair Elnadav; an expert practitioner of the many musical traditions of the Middle East, Ottoman Empire, and Iberian Peninsula, whose 1961 album “Ladino Folk Songs” is a lovely rendering of this music:
In 2004 Rabbi David Cohen organized a moving tribute to Elnadav, who passed away in 2011:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1zofMljxHb4rgKGjX3IhN8ys1zwYhHvIV-MsuGtje5YY/edit
We must also recall the brilliant poet, cantor, songwriter, and grammarian Ezekiel Hai Albeg, whose autobiographical maqama Kenaf Renanim still awaits a proper edition and translation from a community that would likely not appreciate its brilliance:
http://www.worldcat.org/identities/lccn-n85-15293/
https://www.worldcat.org/title/kenaf-renanim-haruzim-shirim-u-fizmonim/oclc/41122253
Albeg edited the Holiday mahzorim of the community and helped to mentor younger singers in the classic tradition.
I have discussed the community’s abiding concern for its musical heritage in my tribute to Moe Tawil:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JHUpX2lTrVyq3m6lrI7DfzHhSPKIubS6TWuNggHBnH8/edit
My uncle Isaac Cabasso recounted to me the story of his father Jacob who was tasked with walking the blind Repha’el ‘Antebi Tabboush, the primary writer of the songs in the SY songbook Shir u-Shbaha Hallel ve-Zimra, to the local coffeehouse, Ahweh, in Aleppo where he would stand outside the window and listen to the songs being sung.
http://www.pizmonim.org/hazzan.php?hazzan=RTabbush
Little Jacob would then walk the rabbi-cantor-poet home, where he would adapt the melody he had just heard and compose Hebrew words to fit it.
Careful readers of the SY songbook will notice that in the top left-hand corner of the text is the title of the original song who melody was used by the writer.
Most of the titles are in Arabic, but there is one song “Magen Yish’i” (#146 in Shir u-Shbaha) which is reputedly based on an Italian folk song called “Margarita”:
http://www.pizmonim.org/book.php#127
The song was featured in the 1945 war movie “A Bell for Adano” during a festive communal dance sequence:
https://www.tcm.com/tcmdb/title/68410/a-bell-for-adano
Here is the description of the song from the Pizmonim.org website:
This pizmon, "Magen Yish'ee" (RAST, page 127), is composed by H Moses Ashear (acrostic: Moshe Hazaq), in honor of the wedding of Mr Ezra Obadia Labaton In Brooklyn, NY, circa 1920-25. The melody of this song is from the Dutch folk song entitled "Trip a Trop a Tronjes." As the melody sounds, this is a very happy song that celebrates the occasion of a wedding in the Labaton family. The last stanza contains a reference to H Mordekhai Labaton (1780-1869); the great Aleppian Rabbi and patriarch of this family. The last stanza also contains a prayer to return to the sanctuary of the Temple and to rebuild the city of Zion (Jerusalem). This melody is commonly applied to Shav'at Aniyim on weeks of Maqam RAST. On December 7, 2013, two days after the passing of Rabbi Ezra Labaton, Rabbi of Congregation Magen David of West Deal and the grandson of the individual mentioned above, this song was used as the PIZMON SEFER TORAH in over ten community synagogues as a tribute to the Rabbi.
As with many of the Pizmonim written for happy occasions, the song’s lyrics include the names of relevant family members.
It is worth noting here that Rabbi Ezra Labaton, whose namesake progenitor is being honored in the song on the occasion of his wedding, has a daughter Sara who, like Bitton, is on the SHI staff:
https://groups.google.com/g/davidshasha/c/DX2nwC4r6OI/m/_62mcnyLBgAJ
Both rabbis’ daughters are excellent examples of the loss and destruction of classical Sephardic heritage in our community.
Then there is the playful adaptation of “Frere Jacques” entitled “Ram le-Hasdakh” (#143 in Shir u-Shbaha) which we would often do as overlapping singalongs:
http://www.pizmonim.org/book.php#125
Finally, there is “Shiru Shir Hadasha” (#252 in Shir u-Shbaha), written by Albeg in honor of Congregation Ahi Ezer Rabbi Mordekhai Maslaton, using the melody of Irving Berlin’s “God Bless America”:
http://www.pizmonim.org/book.php#202
Here is how that unique song is described on the website:
The pizmon "Shiru Shira Hadasha" (AJAM, page 202), translated as "Sing A New Song," is a very unique song in our tradition. The melody of this pizmon is from the 1918 American patriotic song “God Bless America” by Irving Berlin. This pizmon is composed by the master poet, Cantor Ezekiel Hai Albeg (1910-1995), in honor of the spiritual leader, H Mordekhai (Mourad) Tarab Maslaton (Damascus, 1876 - New York, 1959), at the inauguration of Congregation Ahi Ezer (2165 71st Street in Bensonhurst) on Sunday, April 8, 1951 (2 Nisan, 5711). Ahi Ezer is a congregation founded by Jews of Damascus origin. H Mourad Maslaton served as Rabbi and Hazzan Sefer Torah from 1920 until his passing in 1959. In this two stanza song commemorating the inauguration of a new building, we “sing a new song to the One who resides in the heavens” and who “listens to our cries.” We also pray for God to “bless our community (“Qahal”) with long lives.” The use of this melody for their inauguration of their building is a testament to this community's patriotism and their love for America; a country that took them in with open arms and a country that they fought for in World War II.
From these few examples we can see the complex organic process of Pizmon creation, that melds traditional Jewish poetry with various cultural influences that reflect an eclectic engagement with the world.
It was a process similar to that used by the great Israel Najara:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel_ben_Moses_Najara
https://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/11301-najara-najar-nijar-nagar-nagara#anchor2
As the JE entry states:
Poet, liturgist, cabalist, preacher, and Biblical commentator; born at Damascus about the middle of the sixteenth century; died at Gaza, where he had officiated as rabbi. According to Franco ("Histoire des Israélites de l'Empire Ottoman," p. 79, Paris, 1897), there is another account which declares that Najara was born about 1530 and that he lived for some years at Adrianople. From his secular poems, which he wrote in the meters of various Turkish, Spanish, and modern Greek songs, it is evident that he knew well several foreign languages. As may be seen from his works, he was a versatile scholar; and he corresponded with many contemporary rabbis, among others with Bezaleel Ashkenazi, Yom-Ṭob Ẓahalon, Moses Hamon, and Menahem Ḥefeẓ. His poetic effusions were exceptionally numerous, and many of them were translated into Persian. While still young he composed many religious hymns, to Arabic and Turkish tunes, with the intention, as he says in the preface to his "Zemirot Yisrael," of turning the Jewish youth from profane songs. He wrote piyyuṭim, pizmonim, seliḥot, widduyim, and dirges for all the week-days and for Sabbaths, holy days, and occasional ceremonies, these piyyuṭim being collected in his "Zemirot Yisrael." Many of the piyyuṭim are in Aramaic.
This tradition was followed by Antebi’s student Moses Ashear, among others:
Finally, it is important to note the prominent use of the classic Um Kulthum song “Inta Omry” in our liturgy:
The various movements of the song have been adapted by some of our clever cantors to fit into different parts of the Kaddish.
I can recall seeing Moshe Mizrahi’s classic “The House on Chelouche Street” at the Lincoln Center Sephardic Film Festival many years ago, and breaking out in tears as the song appeared in the soundtrack:
https://israelfilmcenterstream.org/film/the-house-on-chelouche-street/
I will never forget how the Ashkenazi woman sitting next to me was somewhat perplexed that I was singing the song aloud and had become so emotional about it. I suppose such an “Arab” song should have elicited hatred in me instead!
Just prior to the Pandemic, the song was performed in its complete glory by Faraj Abyad at New York’s Symphony Space:
https://www.symphonyspace.org/events/vp-wmi-faraj-abyad-and-his-orchestra-ente-omri
Naturally, as with all local Arab music concerts, there was a contingent of fans from the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community in attendance.
It is thus a shame that Kurtzer and, conspicuous by her absence, Bitton did not choose to present the music of the Arab Jewish tradition in the SHI podcast. It is a tradition that has much to teach us about Jewish-Muslim relations, and could point us to a much brighter future than the dysfunctional one presented by the Ashkenazim and their Shtetl insularity.
David Shasha
Book Review: Peering into the Mirror of Memory
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews (University of Chicago Press, 1998)
So Jacob drew close to his father Isaac, who felt him and wondered, “The voice is the voice of Jacob, yet the hands are like the hands of Esau.”
Genesis 27:22
Raise their flag
And hear their voice,
In the midst of their city
They shall all sing.
Repha’el ‘Antebi Tabboush, “O Exalted One”
Intellectual pursuit in our community has become a dead issue. With the notable exception of the late, esteemed Joseph A.D. Sutton’s accomplished anecdotal books we have no scholarly histories of our community. One can count on one hand the few individuals who have tried to instill a feeling of pride in our magnificent historical culture. The means to access this culture are meager and few. It is in this context that the publication of a magnificent historical and cultural analysis of some of the community’s musical traditions is a singularly great and wonderful event.
Kay Kaufman Shelemay, a professor of music at Harvard University, first came to Brooklyn some 15 years ago to conduct fieldwork on the Syrian pizmonim.
Pizmonim, as we all know, are those magnificent songs written for our happy occasions by eminent Rabbis and cantors such as Repha’el ‘Antebi Tabboush, Moses Ashear, Ezekiel Hai Albeg, Repha’el Ya’ir Elnadav, Albert Cohen-Sabban and various others. The pizmonim have given us many hours of joy and comfort and instilled in us a sense of continuity with our Syrian/Arab past.
After meeting with Morris and Linda Shamah, who began the attempt to document and preserve the historical and cultural aspects of our community in the Sephardic Community Center, Professor Shelemay interviewed the giants of our community’s musical culture. In her book, Professor Shelemay allows our cantors to articulate, in their own unique words, the significance and meaning of the pizmonim. It is quite rare in ethnic historical scholarship to see the “natives” maintain control of the discourse. It is to Professor Shelemay’s credit that she has respected the autonomy of the individuals of the community and taken her lead from their ideas and opinions.
Unique as well is the manner in which the book is structured: Each of the six chapters is named for a single pizmon and prefaced by the context in which Shelemay first heard the song performed. This lends the book the air of authenticity and establishes the main theme of the book: The manner in which song and musical ritual are transformed into memory in the inner life of a community.
The analysis speaks to the great hybrid culture created in Aleppo as well-articulated by community leader Sam Catton:
Now in the Syrian Jewish community, in our community, we have something that’s a little different. Being that we are Sephardic, and being we are Arabic, of Arabic origin, or we mixed with the Arabic … our ancestors picked up the Arabic music.
Unlike the majority Ashkenazic Jewish culture that is far more insular, our culture is deeply tied to the non-Jewish Arabic context in which it developed.
This cultural mingling between the Jewish and the Arab may be seen as a great symbiosis that exemplifies the best aspects of both worlds. The pizmonim were written from already-existing Arab melodies (many of the songs of Mohammed Abdel Wahhab and other popular Egyptian and Turkish songs have been used as sources). The Hebrew words were fitted to those melodies.
In its printed form, the pizmon marginalia will show authorship, the name of the person that the song has been written for and the original Arabic title of the melody (Arabic, lahn). The pizmon is thus a multi-layered construct signifying various aspects of Syrian Jewish culture.
Therefore, the pizmon is Jewish insofar as its words speak to the legal and spiritual traditions common to all Jews. It is Arab as it borrows its melodies from the Arabic musical tradition. It is communal as pizmonim have been composed to commemorate specific family occasions in honor of people who names may still be found in the words of the pizmon itself. And, finally, the pizmon’s surface impact is aesthetic as its cadence becomes an integral part of the collective (aural/oral) memory of the community.
The pizmonim are a brilliant model of cultural pluralism and tolerance in a time of great anxiety and complexity. We are today confronting issues of what it means to be Jewish and to be human. Many of the answers that are proposed come to limit both our Jewishness and our essential humanity.
The pizmonim – their authors, preservers and fans – have adopted a different solution correctly argued in Let Jasmine Rain Down: We can be many different things at one and the same time. We need not reject components of our identity simply because of the hysteria of the climate we live in. This stands in stark contrast to those pundits who would have us abandon the heritage of the East and make due with the infinitely more limited culture of the Ashkenazim.
Shelemay’s scholarship, far from merely expressing abstract theories, teaches us the wonder of our history through specific instances of the community’s past.
In a particularly moving portion of the work, a pizmon written for the Bar Mitzvah of a community elder named Joe Saff, Yehidah Hitna’ari, becomes the locus of a narrative retelling of Saff’s own family history:
This song was written in 1933. Instead of staying indoors for three months [after the death of her husband], my mother stayed home indoors for ten years. Never went into the street. She had friends, she had sisters – I used to shop for her or let’s say holidays come around – the children needed clothing, they’d take us out, they bought us clothing…
Saff then goes on to explicate, phrase by phrase, how Moses Ashear, the composer of the pizmon, linked this Bar Mitzvah song to the sad life to Mrs. Saff.
We also read the story of my beloved Aunt Sarah Tawil who in her youth performed Arabic songs in Mexico City and New York at the behest of her father.
We learn of the great poet Repha’el Tabboush and his mentoring of the young Moses Ashear and Ashear’s impact on Eliyahu Meneged and Meyer (Mickey) Kairey. Gracia Tabboush Haber tells the stories of her grandfather and her own experience with the musical culture from a female perspective. These stories are vital cultural and historical details that would, without this book, have remained mere family anecdotes.
Professor Shelemay allows her “research associates” – the lay cantors and musicians of the community – to tell the bulk of the story. Deftly interweaving anecdote, historical research, and musical and critical analysis, Shelemay creates a novel way in which to present her scholarship. The unlettered voices of the principals are presented totally unvarnished. The play of these authentic voices is exhilarating and should serve as a critical model for other researchers.
The book permits the reader to understand this precious tradition from the mouths of its very living masters. The author, far from assuming the guise of an invisible observer, plays an active role in the subject matter: We see her interacting with the community and participating in family celebrations. She cannily understands that ethnomusicology must allow the music its context, it must permit the music to live.
To this end, each of the book’s six chapters is prefaced by discussion of a particular pizmon (the recording of which is to be heard on an accompanying CD). This discussion expands to include mention of a particular ritual or social occasion in which the pizmon is performed. The pizmonim are contextualized within the organic life of the community. The dynamic structure of the scholarship redoubles the dialectical nature of the pizmon itself.
Let Jasmine Rain Down is that rare piece of scholarship that seeks both Clio and Proust, history and memory. Scientific rigor does not obviate the need to absorb the traditional ethos of the protagonists of the drama. As one who is well aware of the drama and its stakes, I cannot overstate my admiration for Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s achievement. In her work we have an honest and lively reconstruction of an Arab Jewish community retaining its distinctiveness amidst the melting pot culture of modernity.
Particularly striking in this regard is the fact that, in spite of the current political tensions between Jews and Arabs, the Syrian Jewish community has allowed its Arab component to remain in its full aspect.
In the words of Isaac Cabasso:
Most of the Jewish communities lived, not in a ghetto like it was in Europe which was completely closed off by gates during the night, but they lived close to the Moslem communities and they came in contact with Moslems pretty often.
Some of us have been privileged to grow up in the aura of the pizmon-culture. We got up early on Shabbat mornings to say Bakkashot. We have sat on Saturday afternoons in the legendary “jam sessions” among our cantors.
As expressed by Sheila Schweky:
I never really thought totally consciously about them. They are just part of my life. On Saturday it’s a part of the Sabbath, the Sebet. On holidays, it’s part of the holidays. [So now that you mention it, my eyes are beginning to open.]… I love it! It’s part of me! It’s not that I’m thinking about it, that I want to perpetuate it, no!! I love it, it is part of my home, it’s part of my customs, it’s part of my food, it’s part of my holiday, in other words, this is all combined together. I do not mentally separate it.
But we must remember that what is second nature to Sheila, who is the daughter of the esteemed Moe Tawil, or to myself as nephew of the beloved Isaac Cabasso, is largely a mystery to our community’s youth.
Many of the young people in the community are unaware of the grandeur of the pizmonim. The erosion of our cultural heritage can be measured by the diminishment of groups of young people devoting themselves to this music. With the exception of a small group of dedicated young men, led by the ever-aggressive Joey Mosseri and Morris Arking, the vast majority of our youth can barely get through a few songs at a Sebet.
Recently, I brought our teacher and patron saint Mickey Kairey to teach pizmonim as part of the After-School program at Magen David Yeshivah. We received tremendous enthusiasm from both parents and students indicating that a huge cultural void now exists. When we look around at the way in which institutional business in the community is conducted, we see that very little time is devoted to the aspects of our culture enshrined in this splendid work. Our children have been left in the dark about matters that deeply affect them.
Those who sit on official committees that affect what our children learn must pay careful attention to this problem. Without access to self-knowledge our children have formed a deficient sense of themselves. They live out complicated lives where the traditional values of their community, exemplified by the aesthetic of the pizmon, are offset by the lack of traditional Sephardic orientation in their daily lives as students. Those who have institutional power must honestly acknowledge the damage that has been done to our children by past as well as current decisions and redress the balance using real measures and not mere platitudes. We must not allow the status quo to continue.
Today we have fewer and fewer community elders left who can remember as well as articulate our community’s past. Their eloquent testimony is preserved in the pages of Kay Kaufman Shelemay’s Let Jasmine Rain Down: Song and Remembrance Among Syrian Jews. This work has placed our community in the national and international spotlight. Tens of thousands of lay readers, students and academics will now be able to learn who we really are. It is incumbent upon us to support this work and begin the process of seriously addressing the problems in the community regarding preservation and transmission of our cultural and religious heritage. At the very least we should all get a copy of this book, read it and pass it along to all our friends, family and neighbors.
David Shasha
December 1998