Rabbi David Buzaglo

Rabbi David Buzaglo is one of their most iconic twentieth-century Moroccan Jews. The publication of an extensive new essay,^[1] the first one in English, about him, is an opportunity to revive his biography in our website.

A musical and rabbinical prodigy since his early days, Rabbi Buzaglo was born in 1901 or 1903 (no records indicating a precise date are available) in the small village of Zawya, southeast of Marrakesh.^[2] He was orphaned from his mother and father at an early age and sent to study in Marrakesh under the guidance of Rabbi Haim Attar, one of the most important religious poets and singers of Morocco in the early twentieth century. Under Attar, Buzaglo became a foremost performer of Andalusian Hebrew music in its southern tradition from Marrakesh and Essaouira. He also became an accomplished Hebrew and Judeo-Arabic poet as well as the mentor of an entire generation of cantors and singers of sacred Hebrew poetry centered in Casablanca, where he settled in 1919. His immigration to Israel, in 1965, marked the final transfer of the center of Andalusian Hebrew music from Morocco to Israel. Since his death, in 1975, his fame has grown exponentially in the collective memory of the Moroccan Jewish diaspora.^[3]

After receiving a traditional Jewish religious training, as was customary in the precolonial era, Buzaglo moved to Casablanca in 1919, while still in his teens. This dramatic step exposed him, among many other Moroccan Jews from rural areas migrating to this emergent modern metropolis, to new political and educational trends.^[4] In 1923, Buzaglo became secretary and teacher of Magen David, an educational organization founded by modernizing, Hebrew-centered, Zionist-oriented European Jews. This was not a simple step to take, because Zionism had been formally banned by the Moroccan authorities and also faced resistance by conservative elements within the Jewish community of Casablanca.

Buzaglo promoted modern Hebrew, which he taught himself, becoming one of the first teachers of the language in the city. He was also one of the first musicians in the Hadida Brothers troupe. The brothers founded the Jewish theater in Casablanca and promoted modern Hebrew poetry through their short-lived but epoch-making newspaper Or Hama’arav (Light of the Maghreb).^[5]

The interwar period in Casablanca—from the mid-1920s to the late 1940s, the “vision” period of Buzaglo’s life—was a crucial one. This is when he first became known as a rabbinical luminary and a champion of modern Hebrew language renewal in the rapidly expanding Jewish community of this cosmopolitan metropolis, whose Jewish population grew from 6,000 to 75,000 between 1900 and 1950. Yet during this same period he also performed as a musician in various entertainment venues outside of the synagogue and Jewish family celebrations, focusing on popular music genres, both Moroccan and other, in addition to the Hebrew and Arabic repertoires of classical Andalusian music. In these “extramural” performances, Buzaglo was accompanied by Muslim musicians.

During the 1930s and early 1940s, Buzaglo capitalized on his exceptional musical abilities and focused less on the rabbinate, in spite of his prodigious knowledge of religious matters. He was able to support himself comfortably as a cantor, a paytan, and a singer, and his fame grew steadily throughout Morocco among Jews and non-Jews. An expert of the Shir Yedidot repertoire of the bakkashot, Buzaglo advocated for this compendium, which originated in Marrakesh and Essaouira, to become the universal canon of Andalusian Hebrew music for the synagogue. He also introduced it to the schools of Casablanca and eventually to the Israeli, French, and American Moroccan Jewish diasporas.

Moreover, he dedicated substantial efforts to the education of a new generation of synagogue singers, teaching prayers and piyyutim to children at Ne’im Zemirot, a society maintained by the Jewish community of Casablanca. His frequent appearances in hillulot throughout Morocco as well as on Jewish radio programs boosted his public persona. Through his music, Buzaglo was a unifying agent for a multidimensional Jewish community in transition.

Buzaglo was also fond of composing Hebrew texts to be adapted to pieces that were originally instrumental, a task that demands great poetic dexterity. This practice was common in the Ottoman Empire but much less so in the Maghreb. By setting text to originally instrumental pieces, he allowed them to be performed on the Sabbath and on holidays when musical instruments were not allowed to be played. He wrote these texts not only for Moroccan tushiyat—instrumental overtures from the Andalusian repertoire—but also for Egyptian pieces, such as “Fantasia Nahawand,” by Mohammed Abdel Wahab.^[6]

It would be a mistake to restrict Rabbi Buzaglo’s musical output to the sphere of the piyut. He is considered by Moroccan cantors in Israel to be one of the most accomplished ḥazzanim that the Moroccan Jewry ever had. Some cantorial pieces that Rabbi Buzaglo introduced to the synagogues of Casablanca are today considered utterly traditional by his followers.

Rabbi Buzaglo’s proficiency in modern Hebrew songs and possible liturgical adaptations has been little explored. His expertise in this area may be traced back to the late 1920s, when he became involved in the circles promoting modern Hebrew language and culture in Casablanca. For example, the repertoire of the Moroccan liturgy as practiced today in Israel includes a qadish and a qeddusha, based on the Hebrew song from the Land of Israel “Ḥamesh shanim ‘al Michael,” written by Itzhak Katzenelson; this song itself originates from a Russian tune.^[7] Moroccan cantors do not know how this melody entered their repertoire, but it seems reasonable to attribute this contrafactum (setting of religious texts to secular melodies) to Rabbi David Buzaglo, who was exposed to Zionist cultural agents already in his youth.

Losing his sight in 1949 was a cause of great distress and frustration for the rest of Rabbi Buzaglo’s life. It caused him to shift his career from the public entertainment venues to a more secluded environment, in which he focused on religious leadership. Now dependent on others and suffering from deteriorating health due to chronic bronchitis, he spent more time at his home in the drier region of Settat, from where he was driven back and forth to Casablanca for the Sabbath.^[8]

Why he did not join the massive waves of Jewish immigration to Israel in the mid-1950s, which removed a large portion of his supporting public from Casablanca, is also a matter of contrasting narratives. On one hand, it was the policy of the Jewish Agency in Israel to favor the healthy and young, who were able to contribute to the building of the new state and would not become a burden for the social services. On the other hand, according to his own testimony, Rabbi Buzaglo feared being unemployed in an unknown and foreign social setting. He could not anticipate his enormous success among the Moroccan immigrants in Israel.

The combination of Rabbi David Buzaglo’s innovative Hebrew poetry, which, composed in Israel, focused on the immediate geopolitical realities in the wake of the 1967 Six-Day War, and the Andalusian Hebrew repertoire of Shir Yedidot brought new attention to him. A result of Rabbi Buzaglo’s exposure to the modern Hebrew song, a process that had started in Morocco, is his cover of “Bab el Wad,” a poem by the Israeli poet Haim Guri set to a Russian melody that marks a key event in the 1948 War of Independence. Guri’s poem memorializes the heroism of those who fell in the battle for Jerusalem during the conflict.^[9]

Rabbi Buzaglo’s voice was absent from the public sphere—due to his refusal to be recorded, but it was nourished by his disciples, followers, and family members, as well as by movie makers, politicians, and academics in Israel, Morocco, France, and Canada. In spite of his refusal, Rabbi Buzaglo’s voice was eternalized in several rare recordings carried out with or without his consent. He appeared, for example, in the Jewish Hour of the radio station in Casablanca as early as 1952. Two pieces from this period have survived; in them, he performs with other paytanim accompanied by a qanun player named Salim Ezra or Azra.^[10]

At least twice before his immigration to Israel, Rabbi Buzaglo agreed to be recorded in formal sessions. A Moroccan Jewish scholar from France, Dr. Haim Zafrani, recorded a session with him in 1957. These sound documents were not made available to the public in Israel until 1981, at which point they were released with annotations by musicologist Dr. Abraham Amzallag.^[11]

An additional recording session by R. David Buzaglo that probably took place in 1963, rather unknown until recently, was the initiative of the entrepreneur Abraham Pinto from Tangier, undertaken as part of a wider ethnography of the Moroccan Jewish liturgy that he initiated and funded. The Pinto recordings were donated to the Archive of American Folk Song (today the American Folklife Center) at the Library of Congress in 1970 and at the same time to the Jewish National and University Library at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem (today the National Library of Israel) as well as to Yeshiva University in New York. You can hear Mr. Pinto’s own voice praising R. Buzaglo (in Spanish) at the end of the recording, describing him as the greatest living Moroccan Jewish singer.

Hereby follows a selection of R. David Buzaglo’s recordings from the Pinto collection. The first example shows R. Buzaglo as a cantor, a role that is not emphasized enough due to his prominence as a paytan, a singer of paraliturgical poetry. His recording of “Kol Nidrei,” the solemn opening of the Yom Kippur order of prayers is exemplary. This is a precise performance of this unique prayer in the traditional and peculiar nusah (version) of the Moroccan Jews that differs from the Ashkenazi version and even from other Sephardic and Oriental versions. In real time, three cantors standing on the bimah would perform each repetition of “Kol Nidrei.” The cantor is joined by the congregation in the declamation of the final sentence, the declaration of annulation of vows (“kulhon yitharatana behon”).

In the Moroccan tradition, “Kol Nidrei” is immediately followed by a responsorial insertion consisting of four sentences that grow incrementally in length. In this insertion, the individual and the congregation ask that the previous prayer will stand for them and the whole people of Israel, and that they will be all absolved by low and higher courts. Each sentence is recited with a fixed rhythmic phrase in alternation by the cantor and the congregation (in this recording, one person acts as the congregation). This section ends with the biblical verses from Numbers 14, 19-20: “Forgive the sin of these people, just as you have pardoned them from the time they left Egypt until now. [As it is written there:] And Adonai replied, I have forgiven them, as you asked.”

שָׁרוּי לָנוּ, מָחוּל לָנוּ וּמֻתָּר לָנוּ.
שָׁרוּי לָנוּ וְלָכֶם, וּמָחוּל לָנוּ וְלָכֶם, וּמֻתָּר לָנוּ וְלָכֵם.
שָׁרוּי לָנוּ וְלָכֶם וּלְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל, וּמָחוּל לָנוּ וְלָכֶם וּלְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל וּמֻתָּר לָנוּ וְלָכֶם וּלְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל.
שָׁרוּי לָנוּ וְלָכֶם וּלְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל מִפִּי בֵּית דִּין שֶׁל מָטָּה. מָחוּל לָנוּ וּמֻתָּר לָנוּ וְלָכֶם וּלְכָל יִשְׂרָאֵל מִפִּי בֵּית דִּין שֶׁל מָעְלָה.
סְלַח נָא לַעֲוֹן הָעָם הַזֶּה כְּגֹדֶל חַסְדְּךָ וְכַאֲשֶׁר נָשָׂאתָ לָעָם הַזֶּה מִמִּצְרַיִם וְעַד הֵנָּה.
וְשָׁם נֶאֱמַר: וַיֹּאמֶר ה' סָלַחְתִּי כִּדְבָרֶךָ.
 

The Pinto recordings also reveal the multifaceted musical world of Rabbi Buzaglo, who could easily be described as a “musical omnivore.” The presence of the Spanish-speaking northern Moroccan Jewish traditions that took roots in Casablanca are noted. His recording of “Asaper tehillot El” from the Pinto collection, a piyyut by R. Yaacov Elmaliah that related to the genre of Coplas de Purim, Judeo-Spanish Purim songs, is exemplary. These songs retell the Book of Esther in Judeo-Spanish or Hebrew verse. Buzaglo sings this Hebrew song to the traditional melody of the Purim copla “Con gran placer señores,” documented in Tetuan and Gibraltar, a song whose structure and rhyme pattern not unsurprisingly parallels those of “Asaper tehillot El.”

A notable contrafactum by R. David Buzaglo is the setting of the piyyut “Yigdal Elohim hay” to the tune of the Scottish song “Auld Lang Syne” by Robert Burns (another version appears in the LP Chants Hébreux de la Tradition des Juifs Marocains Chantés par Rabbi David Bouzaglo mentioned above.) It is hard to know when and where this tune was adapted to the piyyut and if in fact it was actually R. Buzaglo the one who joined text and melody. The song, with different texts in diverse languages, became a staple of the repertoire of the boy scouts’ movement that spread to the French colonies as well. Another possibility is that the tune was learned from a famous scene of the very popular American film Waterloo Bridge (1940) that was distributed in French as La valse dans l’ombre (A dance in the shadow), a title that precisely references the scene in which the two leading actors dance to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne.” This romantic film about separation and tragedy caused by war enjoyed a significant reception in France and its colonies towards the end of World War II and immediately after.

For more information about Moroccan Jewish liturgy, see the project A Moroccan Synagogue Service on our website.