Nusach (was: Debbie Friedman article)

[Joe Kurland <ganeydn...>]

At 10:33 AM -0400 4/19/99, robert wiener wrote:
>
>Nusah is the same for all Ashkenaz denominations, at least as far as I
>know.

I listened to a Saul Wachs tape about Nusach where he says that you can go
anywhere in the world and hear the same nusach in a synagogue, but even if
you limit that to Ashkenazic synagogues, I don't think that was ever
completely accurate.  I do think there is something about the nusach that
is similar around the world such that even if I walk into a Sephardic
synagogue there is going to be something familiar about the nusach.

Most places I go i find the nusach for the opening of the Amidah to be less
than satisfying.  Last year I went to a synagogue in Tucson, Arizona where
an elderly man who was born in Vilna was leading the davening.  His singing
of the opening of the Amidah was similar to, but also different from the
way I usually hear it, and felt strikingly moving to me.

I believe that there have always been regional and local variations on
nusach.  Earlier in this century when there was also a fear that nusach
might be lost forever, scholars notated a nusach and called it a standard
and taught it.  Some synagogues preserve that  standard, some synagogues
now have their own variations because they don't remember it as it was
taught.  But some people remember the way they heard it in their own shtetl
and sing it that way to this day.


Zayt gezunt (be healthy),

Yosl (Joe) Kurland
The Wholesale Klezmer Band
Colrain, MA 01340
voice/fax: 413-624-3204
http://www.crocker.com/~ganeydn


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