: : The Jewish Melody Gateway Portal Shares The Heritage of Jewish Melody : :
Benjamin J. Weisman - Buckyben1@yahoo.com / Buckyben1@buckyben.com

I must have been 11 years old. I was in synagogue, the Jewish place of worship, and I had no idea what people were saying in Hebrew. I was soothed by the melodic sounds at certain points. This has led me to have a growing desire to explore the relationship of
memory to melody in the Jewish tradition. How a melody can help one to recall the words of a song or ignite a series of memories as a result of this melody is a driving force in my desire to explore the power of this relationship.

I grew up going to synagogue and it was difficult for me to absorb the Hebrew language. I didn’t let the language penetrate into my memory as a spoken language. I was a bit resistant I suppose, it isn’t the easiest language to learn once you have past your early years having learned another language that you not only speak in, but think in as well.
Yet I quickly and easily absorbed the prayers that had melodies to them. When the congregation began a melody I found that miraculously I now knew the words. Or was it that I knew the melody? Surprisingly, once the melody was no longer present, I found it difficult to recall the words, yet easy to recall the melody. As time has passed I have learned smaller patches of the Hebrew language and continued to recall through melodies
the words to prayers.

My relationship to memory and melody became clear through the relationship of these prayers as I left the area I grew up in and traveled to other states and places and found myself on more than one occasion partaking in a service where reciting Hebrew occurred. Visiting another synagogue for a Friday night service or for a holiday when I was away
from home were the most common situations. The group of people or congregation would start the service and I would become out of sorts. To my amazement not everyone used the same melodies. How would I recall the words? I didn’t want people to know I didn’t know Hebrew well. I began to dislike these new melodies I learned. They were inferior, I thought, to the melodies I learned when I was younger, and further more, they prevented
me from reciting the words that I knew, as long as the melody was the one I knew when the melody was unfamiliar.

The issue of recollection of melody to words is a dialectical issue in some ways, and is clearly seem in a piece produced by Richard Kostelanetz, ‘Kaddish’ (1), who’s writings and interviews with John Cage, ‘Conversing with Cage’ (2) and on sound and music, ‘On Innovative Music(ian)s’ (3) are well known. When I was apprenticing to him in 1998, I was able to speak with him about his ideas on sound and video. He wanted to re-edit the
video piece, ‘Kaddish,’ that dealt with the singing of the Kiddush, Friday evening prayer over wine for the Sabbath by many Rabbi’s from all over the world. We collaborated briefly and then began moving into other directions. This work was an extension of, at the time, a recent small body of work I was developing in 1997-1998, ‘Ribbino Shel Olam,’ exploring Jewish words and mantras in Kabbalah. At this time I was studying many writings by Aryeh Kaplan (4); who translated many sacred Hebrew Texts into English and explained the rituals and concepts behind Jewish mysticism. The idea of repetition was important to my ability to recall the words and the melodies of Jewish songs.

The melodies and sounds I learned as a child remain recognizable to me. The same as a cricket creep or a frogs croak. They were learned sound relationships that invoked a memory. These melodies also have a rhythm to them, perhaps primordial. Or, was I just believing that, because I had learned them as a child. A bit of both, it seems, is true. Sounds of nature interact on complex levels and can cause me to recall a visual of an
animal and perhaps a place. In relation to this some of the melodies I have learned help me to recall words and memories old and new. What if a melody is even older than the prayer it is used with or even older than the group of people who us it? Perhaps a melody could be from an old folk song and live on with the words of a new song. Yet other melodies maybe new; added to an old prayer or song after a terrible event like the holocaust to symbolize a renewal.

A melody could be older than the words they recall and older than the memories it may recall for a person. Melodies may sometimes be taken from an older sound because of the thoughts or memories they invoke, and used with a newer song. Could early melodies have been derived from repetitive sounds from natural environments? How are melodies related to sounds in nature? My goal is to create a melody that may recall the words that are meant to accompany them, even tough they may now be veiled from the listener in the melody itself. In exploring these relationships the finished product will stand alone as a piece of its own for a listener who is not familiar with the words that once accompanied the melody.

This piece is a form of a cultural Heritage project. It will focus primarily on the singing of Gerry Snyder, who is representing a period in Jewish cultural history that is on the cusp of disappearing into history as older Jews from the Holocaust era pass on. The project looks at the forms Melodies and song traditions took post Jewish Diaspora and how these melodies held together and connected Jews. It will take the form and title of, “Snyder Sings The Classics.” The desire for the piece is to ultimately expand and include a number of individuals. The piece will be synched with drawn and painted images of Judaica that I have painted and culminate in a multimedia online animated experience. The web is the ideal location for this piece. It enables a sharing of the melodies that may be seen as regional and allow a global audience to experience them as they are now and as they may be regionally shifting. With minimal funding to facilitate travel and compensating other individuals for their time and effort, this piece is intended to expand and change.

Just like a mosaic, many pieces of the Jewish people have been spread throughout the world and are connected by their shared traditions and song prayers. But the melodies that accompany these song prayers have changed with the people that spread forth in the Diaspora. These communities have formed multiple interpretations on the ancient cultural melodies of the Jewish tradition. As the Jewish Diaspora continues to become more integrated with the cultures they exist in, a symbiotic relationship establishes a give and take. Historically with time some Jewish populations stayed more separate from the local regional population and culture, but modernization continues to encroach on The Jewish Village with the New Global Village. The melodies are changing regionally. In some cases, perhaps, from region cultural influence and in others from an internal Jewish community desire to change a song prayer melody. How does this affect interpretation of the pray songs that the melodies are aligned to? And how does this affect Midrash and perception of memories related to the religious experience of a prayer song? Can new interpretations of melodies associated with prayer songs change their affect?

With the project “Snyder Sings The Classics”, I began to explore these as well as personal experience’s of the interviewee. As my exploration into the topic of melody and memory continue, I find in relationship to Jewish melody, that the original region of a group of Jews and family roots to yet another region, from Poland and Russia to the Homeland Israel, people(s) that share that melody(ies) as an experience. The many roots of the Jewish tree that were sprung forth during the Diaspora all share a base that once was the emanation of the core melodic experience. Perhaps with thousands of years of Jewish Diaspora from the base of Jewish culture, melodies that associate song prayers may have drastically changed, even to a point of not being recognizable any longer. But such an oral tradition as The Jewish cultural tradition with its many ceremonial and cultural aspects passed down from generation to generation with words, maybe this culture, even in Diaspora, was able to preserve aspects of these melodies. Visual motifs will unfold in the imagery and text will reflect issues of Diaspora, trees and root systems and how they relate to the Diaspora on earth of the Jewish People. Explorations of connectivity and distribution will be tired together through tree and human integrations. Yet with the Holocaust in Europe, there was large loss of the oral teachers. Jewish culture also went through a period of re-inventing itself after this traumatic loss. Did this happen before when large groups of Jews were lost and a Jewish Diaspora occurred? How many times were Jewish song melodies changed? It may be hard to say, but sampling and sharing even just a few cultural experiences and prayer song melodies and sharing them on the internet, can enable a larger cultural discussion on the effects of Jewish Diaspora on Jewish song melody, from the perspective of similarity and of regional difference. Continuing to explore these relationships will lead to a new interactive project that is intended to stimulate thought on the roots of the Jewish Tree.

Special thanks to Elise Weisman for her support.

This project is made possible by participants like you!

Notes:
(1) - ‘Kaddish,’ Richard Kostelanetz, (1991). http://www.richardkostelanetz.com/histories/index.php
(2) - ‘Conversing with Cage,’ Richard Kostelanetz, (Limelight, 1988; in German as John Cage im Gesprach, DuMont,
1989). http://www.richardkostelanetz.com/histories/index.php
(3) - On Innovative Music(ian)s, Richard Kostelanetz, (Limelight, 1989).
http://www.richardkostelanetz.com/histories/index.php
(4) - Aryeh Kaplan was a Jewish mystic who translated many sacred texts into English and in turn opened up a wealth
of knowledge once only available to the initiated and later only the Hebrew reader. Books I was reading by Aryeh
Kaplan at the time are: ‘Jewish Meditation: A Practical Guide,’ (1985). ‘Meditation and Kabbalah,’ (1982). And ‘Sefer
Yetzirah, The Book of Creation,’ (1997).

Initial exploration can be found here: http://buckyben.com/judaica_project