The preparation of this song of the month was inspired by several recent inquiries regarding the musical manuscripts of Obadiah the Proselyte. The staff of the Jewish Music Research Centre hopes that the information provided in the introduction, the accompanying recordings, and the bibliography will provide a general picture regarding this interesting set of early Hebrew musical manuscripts.
The original German version of the epoch-making monograph by Robert Lachmann (published originally in 1942 in English without musical examples and photographs) on the musical culture of the venerable Jewish community from the Island of Djerba, off the southern coast of Tunisia. Reaching far beyond this specific case, which served Lachmann as a kind of pilot project, the book has become a model that scholars may find applicable to other issues in ethnomusicology.
This rare recording of one of the last surviving singers of the Maftirim choir (Edirne, Turkey), Samuel Benaroya, documents a mostly unrecorded tradition dating from the 17th century of Hebrew & sacred poems set to Ottoman classic music. Recorded by Moshe Kirschbaum, annotated by Edwin Seroussi.