Pizmonim

Geographical background

Pizmonim are traditionally associated with Middle Eastern Sephardi Jews, although they are related to Ashkenazi Jews' zemirot. The best known tradition is associated with Jews descended from Aleppo, though similar traditions exist among Iraqi Jews (where the songs are known as shbaḥoth, praises) and in North African countries. Jews of Greek, Turkish and Balkan origin have songs of the same kind in Ladino, associated with the festivals: these are known as coplas.

History of texts

The texts of many pizmonim date back to the Middle Ages or earlier. Many have references from the Tanakh, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi and Israel Najara of Gaza. Some melodies are quite old, while others may be based on popular Middle Eastern music, with the words composed specially to fit the tune. A prolific composer of pizmonim of this last kind was Hakham Rephael Antebi Tabbush (Aleppo 1830?-Cairo 1919), who is regarded as the founder of the tradition in its present form. The tradition has since been exported to Syrian Jewish communities in the Americas by his pupils, principally Moses Ashear in New York. Pizmonim are composed for special occasions such as weddings and bar mitzvahs by Cantors in the past, as well as the present, by Ezekiel Hai Albeg, Gabriel A. Shrem, Eliahou Menaged (a student of Tabbush), Rabbi Raphael Yair Elnadav, and others. Most pizmonim are in Hebrew, though a few are in Judaeo-Aramaic or Judaeo-Arabic.

Maqamat (maqams)

All pizmonim can be classified under different maqams (musical modes), of which there are about ten in common use. Maqam ajam, which sounds a little like a Western major scale, is the thematic maqam that contains many holiday melodies. Maqam hijaz, which corresponds to the Phrygian dominant scale, is the thematic maqam that contains many sad melodies. Maqam sikah (or sigah), containing many three-quarter-tone intervals, is used for the cantillation of the Torah. Maqam saba is the maqam used for circumcisions.

Origins of tradition

The origin of the tradition must be seen in the context of certain rulings of the Geonim discouraging the use of piyyutim in core parts of the prayer service. These rulings were taken seriously by the Kabbalistic school of Isaac Luria, and from the sixteenth century on many hymns were eliminated from the service. As the community did not wish to lose these much-loved hymns, the custom grew up of singing them extra-liturgically. Thus, the original core of the pizmonim collection consists of hymns from the old Aleppo ritual (published in Venice in 1560) and hymns from the Sephardic service by Yehuda Halevi, Solomon ibn Gabirol and others. A few hymns were also taken from the liturgy of the Romaniotes.

Further pizmonim were composed and added to the collection through the centuries. This practice may have arisen out of a Jewish prohibition of singing songs of the non-Jews (due to the secular character and lyrics of the songs). This was true in the case of Arabic songs, whereby Jews were allowed to listen to the songs, but not allowed to sing them with the text. In order to bypass the problem, many composers, throughout the centuries, wrote new lyrics to the songs with the existing melodies, in order not to violate the tradition of not singing non-Jewish songs.

Liturgical and non-liturgical use

During typical Shabbat and holiday services in the Syrian tradition, the melodies of pizmonim are used as settings for some of the prayers, in a system of rotation to ensure that the maqam suits the mood of the holiday or the Torah reading. Each week there is a different maqam assigned to the cantor according to the theme of the given Torah portion of the week. A pizmon may also be sung in honour of a person called up to the Torah, immediately before or after the reading: usually this is chosen so as to contain some allusion to the person's name or family.

Pizmonim, or any melodies, are generally not applied throughout the week during prayer services.

Another occasion for their use is at the gatherings some individuals would hold in their homes on Shabbat afternoons. A gathering of this kind may take the form of an extended kiddush, and is known as a sebbet (from the Syrian Arabic for "Saturday").

Red book

In 1959, the Syrian community of Brooklyn, New York, acted on the need of compiling their own pizmonim book based on their ancient traditions from Aleppo. Prior to this, there were many older pizmonim books circulating around the community, but they didn't have Hebrew vowels, and were generally difficult for the masses to utilize.

The book, which was published by the Sephardic Heritage Foundation, was started in 1949 by Gabriel Shrem and was completed in 1964. It aimed to include the ancient [Baqashot and Petihot], the old [Israel Najara, Mordechai Abadi, Raphael Tabbush, Moshe Ashear], and the new material (Raphael Yair Elnadav, Ezra Dweck, Gabriel A Shrem, Ezekiel Hai Albeg, Abraham Cohen Saban, Ezra Mishaniye, and other modern Israeli melodies). The book also has innovative features very useful for a cantor, such as a list of maqams to go with the specific perasha, as well as which pieces of Sabbath prayers fit with the melodies of certain pizmonim. In later editions, more songs were added to the book in their appropriate sections.

The classic red pizmonim book mentioned above serves Syrian Jews of Brooklyn as their official canon of pizmonim.

The book is currently in its ninth edition.

Sephardic Pizmonim Project

The Sephardic Pizmonim Project, located at www.pizmonim.org, is a foundation dedicated to the scholarship, restoration and preservation of the ancient music of the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community. The project, founded by David Matouk Betesh, is dedicated to the memory of his great grandfather, Cantor Gabriel A Shrem, a former instructor at Yeshiva University's Cantorial Institute (Philip and Sarah Belz School of Jewish Music), cantor of B'nai Yosef Synagogue and editor-in-chief of the "Shir uShbaha Hallel veZimrah" pizmonim book. The website is also dedicated in honor of Cantor Isaac J. Cabasso of Congregation Beth Torah in Brooklyn, New York, and the Safra Synagogue in Aventura, Florida.

Preludes to the project began in the late 1970s when Shrem started teaching a course at Yeshiva University. As a demonstration tool, Shrem recorded the bulk of the pizmonim for classroom distribution. The collection resulting from these recordings encompassed roughly 65% of the Sephardic pizmonim liturgy. Since 2004 and over the course of about seven years, Isaac J. Cabasso, on behalf of the Sephardic Pizmonim Project, has provided approximately 200 more recordings of pizmonim not recorded by Shrem.

The Sephardic Pizmonim Project organisation re-released all of Shrem's recordings on a large CD collection in September 2004 selling approximately 7,000 CDs. The organisation launched a website in 2006 with the goal of "preserving all [Middle Eastern Jewish] liturgical traditions". In the process, cantors throughout the world have contacted the organisation to provide recordings to further enhance the project. The project's website (www.pizmonim.com) contains recordings of the Biblical taamim and the baqashot, together with pizmonim not included in the CD collection. In January 2012, the website, under web designer Sam Franco, received a major facelift to advance the organization into the next decade.

In 2015, the project announced that it had reached the benchmark of only missing 80 melodies of pizmonim from the 'Shir Ushbaha Hallel VeZimrah' pizmonim book. When the project first began, they were missing over 300 pizmonim. The last 80 pizmonim that are still missing will be more difficult to obtain due to the aging population and the general difficulty of those specific pizmonim.

Significant contributors to this project include Joseph Mosseri, the founder and moderator of the Sephardic Hazzanut Forum, and Morris Arking.