Re: synagogue music - niggun and nusakh

[Rachel Heckert <heckertkrs...>]

Hi Robert and List,

>I hope that your post doesn't mean that musical nusakh is being replaced
in shul by >popular melodies (nigunim) in the Orthodox communities of
Brooklyn.  Is this >happening there or elsewhere?

In shul everything is as traditional as always.  Each shul has its own
nusakh and traditional melodies, usually reaching back to Europe. 
However, when singing around the Shabbos table some people do use popular
(but not rock!) nigunim, and even very traditional people will experiment
a little.  Fortunately there is no dearth of beautiful traditional
singing - the new material is more supplemental.  It's nothing like the
wedding scene where "Chassidic rock" dominates almost to the exclusion of
traditional and klezmer.

>I would be interested in which liturgical (prayer service) melodies
>(nigunim, not nusakh) you and others like best (and least).

This is a matter of tradition, not so much choice, but a lot of the ones
we use can be found in Pasternak's two volumes of "Songs of the
Chassidim."  The important thing in shul is not the melody itself but the
feeling of unity and spirituality that singing the prayers creates, and
that comes from "living" with the music over the years and the
associations it evokes.  Rosh HaShana seems to have the most and most
beautiful singing.

>Also, which zemiros do you like best?

I'm very partial to Modzitz, also the older Chassidic nigunim, like "A
Dudele" - which is great on flute (strangely enough, I happen to play
flute :-) ).

There is a wonderful and moving Modzitzer "Mizmor L'David" (also in the
Pasternak) which the "two-generations-back" Modzitzer Rebbe composed
while a refugee in World War I.  Like a lot of Modzitzer, it's not so
much song-like as operatic, and is sometimes called "the War and Peace"
nigun.  You can almost believe (and some people do) that he foresaw all
the tragedies and triumphs of the coming decades and expressed them in
this piece.  I have another dozen or so favorites - like several for "Kah
Ribon Olam" and some of them aren't so standard.

>What of sephardic zemiros - is that what they call them?

There is a lot of appreciation for Sephardic style nigunim in Ashkenazic
circles around here, but I don't know any Sephardim personally.  I would
assume that they sing, too, though.

>Do the non-Orthodox out there sing zemiros regularly - at
>synagogue/temple or at home?  (Maybe you'd call them z'mirot.)

I don't know first-hand, but in New York there are a lot of non-Orthodox
groups experimenting with various kinds of returning to more traditional
prayer services, and I'll bet they sing.  After all, music is the
language of the neshama.  Back in the late Sixties I went to a
Conservative synagogue in San Diego (before I became Orthodox) and they
sang a lot - mostly melodies that I hear  in Orthodox  shuls, so they
must have been keeping some of the tradition.

>P.S.  What should we do with all the two cents we've collected?  The
>pushka must be full.

Plant trees in Israel!  (what an original idea :-)..)  I think there were
some awful forest fires in the hills west of Jerusalem a while ago, and
the forest is still not recovered.  So as a practical expression of "Eitz
Chaim He"....

Zait gezunt.

Rochel Sara

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