| Jewish music has been the spiritual bond of the Jewish nation and Judaism, and has reflected the identity of national spirit and heritage of the Sinai spirit. It is closely combined with Jewish rites, reverting back to the history, reiterating the commandments, and maintaining the pure religious institution of monotheism. Synagogue music is the most sacred one of Jewish music with profound national characteristics.In dealing with Jewish musical traditions, we take systematic, geographic, and historical approaches. The systematic approach (see Chapter II) focuses on illustrating the basic components of synagogue music:scale, melody, rhythm, compositional structure, and genre etc., and they are analyzed in a given repertoire to elaborate the role of music plays in Judaism and Jewish religion; the geographic approach (see Chapter III to Chapter V) focuses on the attributes that characterize the music of a particular region after the Diaspora when Jews centered around their local synagogues and formed their residential and cultural centers. The surge of national languages in the 12th and 13th centuries has made Jewish music able to both retain Jewish characteristics and blend into surrounding societies, thus forming distinctive music styles. The Jewish nation, in this historic immigration process, formed three groups:(1) The Ashkenazim which are composed of the Middle and Eastern European Jews and American immigrant Jews, and their Yiddish culture. (2) The Sephardim which are composed of Spanish Jews, and their Ladino culture. (3) The Oriental Jews refer to those in the Middle Eastern countries; their Jewish music which has been influenced by Indian, Arabian, and Turkish music styles possesses more regional features. This paper examines Jewish musical traditions according to the locations where various Jewish groups have lived, life of these groups, their relations with each other, their ties to their regions and the relations of each specific Jewish tradition to all other Jewish traditions."Jewish music is closely bound up with Judaism, it flows in the religion and the religious rites of the Jewish families and communities, therefore Jewish music is on one hand the unified tradition of religious context, and on the other hand the music life combines individuals and the communities." Jewish music is the spiritual pillar of the Israeli nation and the religious vehicle of Judaism. It also plays the role of educating and disciplining; it takes the responsibility of promoting the study of the Bible and other Jewish classics, and also enlightening the participants. Therefore, studying the Jewish music is the most direct way to understand Judaism religious system, and one of the means to experience the power of Judaism. By studying the Jewish music, we can grasp the overall historic development and evolvement of Jewish nation, and the heritage and transmission of its religious belief and this is of vital importance to the study of Judaism. |
