RE: Ovadia Yosef's ruling (Yediot Ahronot)

[Robert Cohen <rlcm17...>]

> > Ovadia Orders Shas Pupils to Study Arab Music
>
>
>Arafat will be pleased.

Though I can understand the (understandable) anger with respect to 
Palestinians and/or the Arab world that perhaps prompts this response, it is 
really not a very thoughtful one.  As the release points out, "many prayers 
in Sephardi synagogues are sung in [they mean "to"] Arabic tunes"--and, 
indeed, in some (or many) Sephardic prayerbooks you find the notation 
"lahan:" next to a hymn or other text, followed by the (often Arabic) tune 
to which the text is to be sung.

(In an exact parallel, so-called broadside ballads--and often political 
candidates' songs--were typically printed--if they referred to a melody at 
all; it was sometimes, apparently, assumed to be known--with the notation 
"Tune: ---" or "Air: ---" next to the text, followed by the tune to which 
*they* were supposed to be sung.  Example:  "The Star-Spangled Banner."  
"Rosin the Beau" and the melody we think of as "Auld Lang Syne" were very 
commonly cited as the intended melody, btw.)

Ovadia Yosef has been a "liberal" voice on the question of borrowing 
melodies for prayer for many years, quite aside from this specific 
application.  Amnon Shiloah cites a 1976 opinion of his approving the 
practice of using in services any melody that inspires religious feeling 
among congregants--*even if they recognize the melody as having secular 
origins*!  That's doubly* "liberal";  more "conservative" psaks on this 
issue might allow any melody *unless* it will be familiar to the 
congregation [e.g., "Scarborough Fair," "Ode to Joy," etc., etc.]; might 
[more conservatively] exclude melodies used by other religions, or melodies 
used for sensual love songs, or both; or might [still more conservatively] 
exclude *any* melody that has origins outside of Judaism.  One can find 
examples of rulings from every point in this spectrum; though the most 
restrictive/conservative opinion does have to deal with the fact that some 
time-honored Jewish liturgical or para-liturgical melodies do, in fact, have 
non-Jewish origins--as we've occasionally discussed on this list.

Ovadia Yosef's feeling about the spiritual potential of Arab melodies is 
intriguing, but it very much falls within the history of Jewish 
liturgical-music practice--and of *his* practice in particular.

--Robert Cohen






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