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DANIEL BEN JUDAH. (fourteenth century). Daniel ben Judah is thought to have been a Roman dayan (or dayyan, a rabbi and judge) who composed the Yigdal, a metrical paraphrase of the thirteen articles of Jewish faith drawn up by Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, 1130-1205). The Yigdal is known to Christians through a further paraphrase by Thomas Olivers*, with its first phrase 'The God of Abraham praise'*, often sung to LEONI.
Little is known about Daniel ben Judah. Indeed, it appears that only...
WERNER, Eric. b. Lundenburg, (Břeclav), 40 miles north of Vienna, Austria-Hungary, 1 August 1901; d. New York City, 28 July 1988. Werner was a distinguished and controversial musicologist, ethnomusicologist, and liturgiologist whose life-long goal, as stated in his The Sacred Bridge (Werner 2:x-xii), was to correct the errors and misrepresentations of European scholars, especially of those who were anti-Semitic. Werner's parents (his father was a scholar of Greek) nurtured him in classical...
COOPERSMITH, Harry. b. Russia, 2 December 1902; d. Santa Barbara, California, 31 December 1975. Coopersmith was a pioneer in the dissemination of Jewish music in America. The hymn tune YISRAEL V'ORAITA (TORAH SONG)*, introduced by Coopersmith, is one of the most widely sung Jewish melodies published in Christian hymnals.
Harry Coopersmith immigrated with his parents, Max Coopersmith (1868? - ?) and Pauline (Liptzen) Coopersmith (1878? - ?) in 1911, and settled in New York, where Harry...
Although the concept of 'hymnody' has been applied to Hebrew sacred poetry in modern times, the specifics of this phenomenon in Jewish culture differ in many aspects from the sacred poetry of other monotheistic religions. Hebrew sacred hymns are generically known as piyyutim (liturgical or religious poems; sing. piyyut, from the Greek poesis). These are lyrical compositions intended to embellish obligatory prayers and paraliturgical or religious events, communal or private, in Jewish life. In...
This essay examines Jewish hymnals, primarily English language ones, published in the United States and represents to a large extent the Reform tradition and only to a lesser extend the Conservative branch of Judaism. Traditional Jewish hymnody is covered in two articles: Hebrew hymnody* (piyyut) and Jewish Sabbath hymns*.
19th century
Although Jewish communities existed in the United States as early as 1654, the early settlers were primarily Portuguese (Sephardic) and hymnody beyond the...
Introduction: Hebrew hymns and the problem of English nomenclature
In discussions of Hebrew liturgy, the designation hymn poses a linguistic challenge. Neither the English term—especially in its modern Western connotations—nor its classical root has a precise or exclusive equivalent in Hebrew. Struggling to provide translations, modern Hebrew dictionaries give a series of generically loose Hebrew counterparts, none of which adequately captures the nature of the specific Hebrew liturgical forms...
MOISE, Penina. b. Charleston, South Carolina, 23 April 1797; d. Charleston, SC, 13 September 1880. Penina was the sixth of nine children born to the union of Abraham (1736-1809) and Sarah (1762-1840) Moise (Moïse). She left school at the age of 12 upon her father's death but continued to study on her own. She suffered from poverty throughout her life; she suffered severe attacks of neuralgia and lost her eyesight completely by 1865. Her first published volume, Fancy's Sketch Book, appeared in...
'Shalom' is the Hebrew word for peace, used at meeting, or at a farewell; it conveys the sense of a wish, to mean 'peace be with you'. It occurs in the Hebrew Bible in various places, as an individual greeting or referring more widely to a general sense of peace and justice. In the New Testament, when Jesus used the phrase 'peace be with you, or 'my peace I give to you', he was using the concept implied in the word Shalom. It occurs with other Hebrew words: thus 'Shalom Aleikhem' ('Peace be...
DAUERMANN, Stuart. b. Brooklyn, New York, 1944. Stuart Dauermann is a Messianic Jewish Rabbi. His education includes BA and MM degrees in music theory and music education, and MA and PhD degrees in Intercultural Studies. He has published several books on interreligious relations between Jews and Christians. He is Director of Interfaithfulness, an organisation dedicated to advancing interreligious relationships between Jews and Christians, and serves as Rabbi of Ahavat Zion Messianic Synagogue,...
YISRAEL V'ORAITA (TORAH SONG)
The earliest appearance in a hymnal of the tune YISRAEL V'ORAITA is probably as 'Song of Good News' in Orlando Schmidt's (1924-2002) Sing and Rejoice! (Scottsdale, Pennsylvania and Kitchener, Ontario, 1979), with copyright 1967 by Willard F. Jabusch*. Probably the copyright covers not only Jabusch's hymn ('Open your ears, O Christian people, Open your ears and hear good news!') but also the combination of the hymn and tune, which is printed as melody-only with...