Turning Traditional Liturgical Poetry into Modern Music

The musician and vocalist Yair Harel performs Sephardi and North African piyyutim (religious poems), basing his arrangements on traditional melodies. He has also been involved in creating educational resources to preserve and disseminate information about these songs and their history. In an interview with Sephardi Ideas Monthly, he discusses their appeal:

The music is melodic, dynamic, and even ecstatic. It’s rooted in popular music of the past and also includes a variety of influences—Spanish, Arab, African, Amazigh (Berber), and, of course, Jewish—so there are different musical elements that engage and communicate with the audience. Most deeply, for Jews today, the music facilitates a spiritual language that people are looking for. It gives voice to prayer. . . .

Historically, piyyut absorbed popular music from the surrounding environment. Take the piyyutim of Rabbi Israel Najara [ca. 1555–1625]. Najara lived in the cosmopolitan Ottoman empire and converted popular love songs into piyyutim that then became part of the ritual lifecycle. This meant that the piyyutim were sung in various contexts, from the synagogue to the Shabbat table to wedding parties. So the music was popular before it even entered the synagogue. . . . Then, once it became part of the religious ritual it assumed the status of sacred song, or prayer, which also affected the way it was musically performed. If it succeeded in touching people’s hearts across the generations, it became part of the tradition and was preserved.

Read more at Sephardi Ideas Monthly

More about: Arts & Culture, Israel Najara, Jewish music, Judaism, Mizrahim, Piyyut, Sephardim

What a Strategic Victory in Gaza Can and Can’t Achieve

On Tuesday, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant met in Washington with Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin. Gallant says that he told the former that only “a decisive victory will bring this war to an end.” Shay Shabtai tries to outline what exactly this would entail, arguing that the IDF can and must attain a “strategic” victory, as opposed to merely a tactical or operational one. Yet even after a such a victory Israelis can’t expect to start beating their rifles into plowshares:

Strategic victory is the removal of the enemy’s ability to pose a military threat in the operational arena for many years to come. . . . This means the Israeli military will continue to fight guerrilla and terrorist operatives in the Strip alongside extensive activity by a local civilian government with an effective police force and international and regional economic and civil backing. This should lead in the coming years to the stabilization of the Gaza Strip without Hamas control over it.

In such a scenario, it will be possible to ensure relative quiet for a decade or more. However, it will not be possible to ensure quiet beyond that, since the absence of a fundamental change in the situation on the ground is likely to lead to a long-term erosion of security quiet and the re-creation of challenges to Israel. This is what happened in the West Bank after a decade of relative quiet, and in relatively stable Iraq after the withdrawal of the United States at the end of 2011.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Gaza War 2023, Hamas, IDF