After the fall of the Second Temple (70 CE) the Jews were still a majority in the Land of Israel. First, they lived under the authority of the pagan Romans. When the Romans then converted to Christianity, these same Jewish communities found themselves living under the religiously hostile regime of the Byzantine Empire. This corresponds to the period of the finalization of the Talmud during the first five centuries CE.

Ethnomusicologists and historians of liturgy should therefore not be surprised that this period coincided with the creation of a new form of religious poetry and song called Piyyutim in the plural and Piyyut in the singular.

My late mentor, the Israeli ethnomusicologist of the Near East, Amnon Shiloah, might have explained this as radical changes in social structure and authority inevitably produce their artistic correlates, as creative types try to make sense of the world they live in. And so, the Jews of that historical period that scholars now call Late Antiquity, created the Piyyut.

A Piyyut is a Jewish liturgical poem. Most have been written in Mishnaic Hebrew or Jewish Aramaic (the language of the Talmud), and they follow various poetical schemes. Traditionally, they have been chanted as part of a service and much later took on a life of their own being sung, often with near eastern musical instruments on non-Sabbath days.

Here is one example from the traditional Ne’ilah service which is recited at the end of Yom Kippur, the annual Jewish day of fasting and atonement. The piece was recorded in Egypt about a century ago. It was sung by a father and a daughter who were soon to become singing stars in the post WWI rising Egyptian recording and film industry, namely Zaki and Leila Mourad. The Piyyut is called El Nora Alila. The words were written by the Spanish Jewish poet Moses Ibn Ezra, who lived between 1070 and 1138 CE.

Ibn Ezra in his own day was as big a star as Zaki and Leila Mourad. He was a polymath, a friend of the great poet Yehuda ha Levi, author of the Kuzari. He was from a prominent Jewish family and wrote 220 sacred Piyyutim, often mimicking the rhyme schemes of classical Arabic poetry but using Hebrew and in this case, always praising or asking God for something. We call this religious song.

Here is just one verse of El Nora Alila to give you a sample of the mood of these kinds of pieces.

Gathe​r Judah’s scattered​ flock Unto Zion’s rebuilt site. Bless​ this year with grace divine, As Thy are closed this night. May we all, both old and young, Look for gladness and delight In the many years to come, As Thy gates are closed this night. Micha​el, Prince of Israel, Gabriel Thy angels bright, With Elijah, come, redeem, As Thy gates are closed this night.

There are no wine, women, and song in these verses nor sex, drugs and rock and roll. It is purely religious, but the music is chock full of emotion and the way it is sung filled with longing and hope.

During the last eight hundred years Piyyutim have been sung by Jewish men living in Islamic societies, during services as well as outside of the Synagogue for entertainment or celebrations of various kinds. They have often adopted the Near Eastern scales with quarter tones (makam) and use instruments like the oud, kemence (violin) and darbuka to accompany them. The melodies are often similar to the music of their Muslim majority hosts, especially in Morocco, as it is well known that Jewish musicians were disproportionately active in the secular music world of their Muslim........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)