Hebrew Voices #179 – Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 2

Dr. Nehemia Gordon - Bible Scholar at NehemiasWall.com

In this episode of Hebrew Voices #179, Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 2, Nehemia continues the exploration of piyyut with expert Dr. Gabriel Wasserman. They discuss the historical need to keep things fresh within a traditional framework, the room for improvisation within ancient Jewish prayer, and a demonstration of Gabriel’s own modern spin on the art.

I look forward to reading your comments!

PODCAST VERSION:https://audio.nehemiaswall.com/Hebrew-Voices/Hebrew-Voices-179-Rapping-Ancient-Hebrew-Poetry-Part-2-NehemiasWall.mp3Download Audio

Transcript

Hebrew Voices #179 – Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 2

You are listening to Hebrew Voices with Nehemia Gordon. Thank you for supporting Nehemia Gordon's Makor Hebrew Foundation. Learn more at NehemiasWall.com.

Nehemia: Yeah, for sure.

Gabriel: That’s really important, that if the whole idea is, “Ugh! To have the same service every day is boring, so we’re going to write piyyutim.” And then people selected which piyyutim they say, and they said the same ones every year!

Nehemia: And they made it boring!

Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices, where I’m here today with Dr. Gabriel Wasserman, who got his PhD from Yeshiva University in New York and then did a post-doc at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. Shalom, Gabriel.

Gabriel: Hi!

I’ll mention, yesterday a friend of mine said, “Oh, there’s this WhatsApp group, Last Minute Shabbat Meals. Let me find you a meal to go to.” And I said, “Okay, that’s cool. I’ll go.” The average age of the people at this meal was probably around 23, and there were some quite immature people there. And when they went around the room and said, “What do you do?” And I said, “I study piyyut.” And there was this immature young man, and first he’s like, “You’re into that garbage! How can anybody be into piyyut?”

And I said, “Well, since I was a child, I’ve felt that when you have the same liturgy every day, day after day, week after week, it gets boring. It gets fixed. But the idea of keeping the structure so that you’re still very much within the tradition, but the words change, that, I find, is very inspiring." So, he said, “Oh yeah! Saying it in your own words,” he says, “God made butterflies! That's awesome! God, butterflies are so cool!” And he’s saying it in that kind of voice.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: So, the host, who himself was only 25 years old but was more mature than these others, he says, “What are you doing?” He says, “I’m saying a piyyut!” And I said, “That’s not a piyyut.” I mean, aside from everything else, it wasn’t poetry.

Nehemia: Right.

Gabriel: And of course, he was intentionally trying to mock. But the main thing is, there was no structure to it. Now, I don’t want to say that later on stand-alone piyyutim don’t get written; they do. Ezra Fleischer, according to his strict definitions, would probably not use the word piyyut for them, and I hesitate for that. A piyyut that’s just a prayer on its own…

Nehemia: So, when I was growing up, we went to the synagogue on Yom Kippur. I’m like, “What is taking 10 hours or 8 hours?” And that was the piyyut. So, that’s not considered piyyut?

Gabriel: But what it was, it was the regular services expanded by piyyut. The brachot were the same, “Baruch atah haShem, magen Avraham,” “Baruch atah haShem, mecha'yeh meitim.”

Nehemia: It just took an hour-and-a-half to get to Magen Avraham.

Gabriel: Exactly.

Nehemia: Okay, fair enough. So, it wasn’t really a stand-alone piyyut.

Gabriel: But that’s very easy to miss when the only time you say piyyut is on Yom Kippur. Because when the whole year everything is very bare bones… If you go to a community where there’s piyyut very often, then you see on Yom Kippur the piyyut is much longer, but it’s still that same phenomenon of expanding…

Nehemia: So, what you’re saying is that if you went to synagogue in the Galilee in the 5th, or 6th, or early 7th century, when you heard the cantor reciting the Shemoneh Esreh, he would also intersperse it with piyyut. Or piyyut will be part of the structure of the Shemoneh Esreh.

Gabriel: A piyyut would be the Shemoneh Esreh. The only thing that wouldn’t be were the very short doxologies at the end.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. That’s really interesting. You’re saying the intention really was to keep it interesting.

Gabriel: I think so. And that’s what Fleischer thinks.

Nehemia: So, look, we have the classical paytanim, the poets, Kalir and Yannai.

Gabriel: His name was El'azar be-Rebbe Kilir.

Nehemia: Kalir or Kaliri.

Gabriel: Or Kaliri, yeah.

Nehemia: I say Kalir. Alright, in any event.

Gabriel: I say Kalir too, but the point is his name was El'azar.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: His father’s name was something like Cyril, Kürillos (Κύριλλος)

Nehemia: Interesting.

Gabriel: And so, he was El'azar ben, be-Rebbi, El'azar son of my master Kilir, Kelir, however you want to pronounce it. The point is his name was not Kalir. It’s not a last name… people say ha’Kalir, “the Kalir”. No! His name was El’azar, Lazarus.

Nehemia: Okay. So, did he write these piyyutim, these liturgical poems, because he was a cantor in a synagogue? Or was he writing it for other people?

Gabriel: Almost certainly.

Nehemia: Oh, really? Okay, I didn’t know that. So, he was doing it for his own usage is what you’re saying.

Gabriel: Yes.

Nehemia: Wow!

Gabriel: And by the way, the piyyutim of the… I don’t want to say kerovot. A kerova is a sequence of piyyutim that’s meant to cover the whole Shemoneh Esreh.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: And there are other kinds of piyyutim, like yotzer. But the kerovot of the Kaliri, that made it to European Rites… generally, you would have one for the first service on Rosh Hashanah, and one for the second service on Rosh Hashanah, and one for the service on… So, here’s the problem; on the first day of Sukkot and on the second day of Sukkot… this is getting a little involved, but Rabbanite Jews within the Land of Israel have one day of the festivals. There are also week-long festivals, but the middle days are of less stringency. And Rabbanites in the diaspora have two days of festivals. This is a simplification. I don’t want to get further into it because it’s a real digression.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: The point is, when, in the 19th century, scholars were trying to figure out who was El'azar be-Rebbi Kalir and where did he live, they noticed that they had one Kerova for him for Shavuot, for the Pentecost, and they had two for Rosh Hashanah. But one was for the morning service and one was for the second day, the Mussaf, the “additional service”. But they noticed there were two for Sukkot, which in Ashkenazic Machzorim, Ashkenazic Festival prayer books, are recited on the first day and on the second day. So, they said, “Wait a minute. If he wrote two, he must have had two days. He must not have lived in Palestine.” So, now we know this is all completely wrong because we see that, if you look in the Cairo Genizah, which is a storeroom, you’ve probably talked about it before…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: It’s a storeroom in a synagogue in Cairo where so much has been discovered that wasn’t known at all before.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: We spoke earlier, and you asked about… Oh, this wasn’t recorded, right? About Shmuel Hashlishi, that book?

Nehemia: Yeah, we talked before the recording about how there was this paytan, this liturgical poet, who was completely unknown, and his writings were discovered only in the Cairo Genizah. And you were involved in a book written about him.

Gabriel: Yeah. So, we now see that there are five or six Kerovot by El'azar be-Rebbi Kalir for Shavuot. There are… I forget how many for Yom Kippur. So, did he keep five days of Shavuot? No. Clearly, every time he got up, maybe sometimes he reused an old one, but sometimes he would get up, and probably people loved that, when he got up and said, “There’s going to be a new one this year.” And people were probably thrilled, enthralled to hear the world premiere.

Nehemia: Interesting, very interesting. So, before the Cairo Genizah, they had this very small corpus, this very small repertoire of his material, and they jumped to incorrect conclusions based on that. That’s really interesting.

Gabriel: Partly because what piyyut had been meant to be, to constantly refresh the service, but then it had gotten fixed.

Nehemia: Now, I want to ask a question…

Gabriel: You see what I’m saying?

Nehemia: Yeah, for sure.

Gabriel: That’s really important, that if the whole idea is, "To have the same service every day is boring, so we’re going to write piyyutim." And then people selected which piyyutim to say, and they say the same ones every year.

Nehemia: And they made it boring!

Gabriel: Again, it’s not the same thing... what?

Nehemia: And they made it boring.

Gabriel: And they got bored again. But I’ll tell you, it’s not the same thing to have the same prayer every single day and to have the same prayer every single year.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: To have a composition that you haven't had recited in a whole year is still something refreshing and renewing, which is not the same as having the same service every day. Agreed?

Nehemia: Or every week, yeah.

Gabriel: Or every week, or every month. Meaning, it’s still even more amazing when the poet can just get up, and he’s just like… what would you call it?

Nehemia: Ad-libbing?

Gabriel: Rap duels. Do you know rap duels?

Nehemia: So, you’re not suggesting that they were ad-libbing these…

Gabriel: I think the really talented ones might have.

Nehemia: Really? Wow.

Gabriel: In fact, hold on, in Megillat Achima’atz there’s the story of someone who did… No, the story is that he changed some of the words.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: He had upset someone, and they were really angry at him. And then he came from Italy to the Land of Israel, and he was there. And he changed some poem, which was a known poem, at least known to him. He changed the words so instead of cursing the enemies of the Jews, he cursed the Karaites instead, because he was trying to suck up to the rabbis in Jerusalem because they didn’t like him. And when he did that, they made up to him. So, it was an ad-libbing of a line, but I think there was probably some ad-libbing.

I want to screen share something with you.

Nehemia: Sure. Let me ask you this. So, when Kaliri or Yannai wrote a poem, did they actually write it down and bring that parchment into the synagogue with them? Or do we have no idea?

Gabriel: How should I know?

Nehemia: We don’t know, okay.

Gabriel: I will tell you a story though. It’s from hundreds of years later, in Europe. It takes place in northern Italy.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: Shlomo ha’Bavli, Shlomo ben Yehudah, spends a year writing the Yotzer sequence. Yotzer Or is the first blessing before the Shema, a different part of the liturgy, actually both in Rabbanite and in Karaite liturgy. So, Yotzerot, we were talking about Kerovot, which are called in the Shemoneh Esreh, Yotzerot, go through the various blessings, the brachot around the Shema. Fine.

He wrote this very, very complicated poem which goes through every single verse of the Song of Songs and uses each verse either as a beginning of a line of a stanza or the end of a stanza. So, the Song of Songs, which is Solomon’s, “He will kiss me with the lips of his mouth.” So, it will say like, “The light,” he’s talking about light, because the first bracha Yotzer is about light, “The light and rescue of the happy ones, of the fortunate ones who observe this observance,” Passover, “I will thank him with songs like those that sing the Song of Songs.” So, you see the words “Song of Songs” at the end of that stanza.

The next stanza of the last clause will be “His kisses." Then, "May he kiss me.” So, they say he spent a year writing it. It's an extraordinarily complicated piyyut, and if you want to understand it, you really need to spend a lot of time. And there’s a lot of scholarly debate about lines in it and what they mean.

So, his student, Meshullam son of Kalonymus, was there, and he said, “That was really good. Tomorrow,” they had two days of the festival in Italy, “tomorrow I’m going to do the same.” So, given the prohibition of writing on the festival, he wouldn’t have written it down. He would have composed it in his head. That second night, keep in mind, would have been the Passover Seder. It would have been quite occupied. He got up the next morning and he said his piyyut, which also is based on all the verses of the Song of Songs, and that in Ashkenazic communities today… sadly today very little. But certainly in my community in Washington Heights, and in communities that perpetuate the tradition, that one’s said the first day, and that one’s said the second day. So, you see? What he did in a year, he composed in his head…

Nehemia: Overnight.

Gabriel: Either over the day or on the spot. But let me show you a screen share.

Nehemia: That’s a great story.

Gabriel: It is a great story. Does it matter if it’s true? No. The point is that people could envision people making up on the spot, or practically on the spot… no?

Nehemia: Mmm.

Gabriel: Because we can’t know if it’s true.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: How would we know? How could we?

Nehemia: So, it’s a legend told about those two piyyutim.

Gabriel: Right.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: But the fact that it could be told shows that, in the consciousness of the times, this is the kind of thing that could go on.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: You see why that’s important, yes?

Nehemia: For sure.

Gabriel: Like today, probably no one would make up that story, because everyone knows how you pray. You pray straight out of the Siddur like that Karaite rabbi told you. He said, “You didn’t pray.”

Nehemia: Right, exactly.

Gabriel: This is a world where you could get up and in front of everybody you could… what is it called, like a rap battle?

Nehemia: Well, you ad-lib.

Gabriel: You ad-lib, yeah.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But again, it’s within the structure of the alphabet, it’s within the structure of the brachot. That’s what’s very important. It’s not just getting up and saying “Butterflies!”

Nehemia: Right. No, it has to have a fixed structure and a poetical meter and a rhyme or something.

Gabriel: Right, okay. It may follow the verses of a Biblical book. Here, I am going to… do you see my screen?

Nehemia: It’s starting to come up. I see it now, yeah.

Gabriel: Okay. So, this is of me serving as cantor. “...b’rachamim rabim, somech noflim v’rofe cholim...” This is the regular second blessing of the… Ah, I should say this. Later on in Europe what happens is, because the day-to-day texts get sanctified, and the idea, which we’ve been talking about a lot, this idea, “Oh my gosh, you didn’t actually say the words that have been fixed! You didn’t pray.” This becomes more and more of an idea, and therefore what ends up happening is that… the tradition developed such that the standard text of the bracha is said, with few exceptions. There are cases where the standard text gets dropped and only the piyyut is said, but where the standard text is said, and then before the closing doxology, the piyyut is recited, and then the doxologies.

So, the first thing you’re going to see here is…

Nehemia: Give us the commentary before we see it, and then just play the video and then give a commentary after.

Gabriel: What do you mean?

Nehemia: Meaning, don’t try to talk over the video or nobody is going to hear you.

Gabriel: No, no. The first thing you’re going to see here is, you’re going to hear the words of the… it starts with the second bracha of the Shemoneh Esreh because the video got cut off.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Meaning, the video didn’t start until the second one. But it’s going to start with the regular words that are said every day, “Atah gibor l’olam ha’Shem, me’chayeh metim atah, rav l’hoshiya,” “You are mighty, You resurrect the dead.” And then before the Chatimah, I’m going to pause, the congregation is going to say the piyyut. Which is, again, definitely not historically how they were intended, because how is the congregation supposed to know the words, especially if you’re ad-libbing it? But it did become, because… again, there’s this idea that once you print them in the book, how can you rely on the cantor to say them? Everyone has to say them!

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: But what I did here, actually, was still nonetheless very creative and somewhat revolutionary in that once they say it, I don’t just say the last line and then go to the Chatimah, I say the whole piyyut, and then what you’ll see with some of the harchavot, “expansions”. So, in the blessing about God vanquishing evil, which actually is what we talked about, it’s part of the same bracha. We talked about Birkat ha’Minim, but it’s not just about heretics, it talks about evil and the evil empire. So, on Purim, which celebrates the vanquishing of the evil enemies of the Jews at the time of the Persians, what the Kaliri did is… El'azar be-Rebbi Kalir… is, for each bracha there’s a little piyyut. And then he made a huge expansion in that blessing so he could tell the whole story.

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: Look. “...b’rachamim rabim. Somech noflim v’rofe cholim, u’matir asurim, u’mekayem emunato lishnay afar. Mi kamocha ba’al gevurot u’mi domeh lach, melech memit u’mechayeh u’matzmiach yeshuah. V’ne’eman atah l’hachayot metim.”

Synagogue Attenders:

Ha'melech be'kes Yah chak le'zerah ko yihiyeh

Ba'kamim kol-neshem lo techayeh

Ben-be'chorat chal d'var eheyeh

Be'kotz asher nichmar va'yechayeh

Be'chen tzif'o tzatz le'tzidim she'yihiyeh

Yatzah le'marero mor bi'gshamim mechayeh

הַמֶּֽלֶךְ בְּכֵס יָ"הּ חַק לְזֶֽרַע כֹּה יִהְיֶה
בַּקָּמִים כָּל־נֶֽשֶׁם לֹא תְחַיֶּה
בֶּן־בְּכוֹרַת חַל דְּבַר אֶהְיֶה
בְּקוֹץ* אֲשֶׁר נִכְמַר וַיְחַיֶּה
בְּכֵן צִפְעוֹ* צָץ לְצִדִּים שֶׁיִּהְיֶה
יָצָא לְ֯מָרֲרוֹ מוֹר בִּגְשָׁמִים מְחַיֶּה.

[translation:]

The King [God] – inscribed, on Yah’s Throne, for the progeny of [Abraham, who had been told] “Thus will be your descendants”:
Among your enemies, do not keep any soul alive!
[Saul], descendant of Bechorath, violated Ehyé’s word,
For he pitied the thorn [Agag], and kept him alive.
Therefore, his serpent spawn [Haman] sprouted up, to be [a thorn in the Jews’] sides –
[Mordecai] went forth to embitter [Haman], [with the help of God, who] brings resurrection through rain.

Gabriel:

Ha'melech be'kes Yah chak le'zerah ko yihiyeh

Ba'kamim kol-neshem lo techayeh

Ben-be'chorat chal d'var eheyeh

Be'kotz

הַמֶּֽלֶךְ בְּכֵס יָ"הּ חַק לְזֶֽרַע כֹּה יִהְיֶה
בַּקָּמִים כָּל־נֶֽשֶׁם לֹא תְחַיֶּה
בֶּן־בְּכוֹרַת חַל דְּבַר אֶהְיֶה
בְּקוֹץ

Synagogue Attenders: BOOOO!

Gabriel:

Asher nichmar va'yechayeh

Be'chen tzif'o

אֲשֶׁר נִכְמַר וַיְחַיֶּה

בְּכֵן צִפְעוֹ

Synagogue Attenders: BOOOO!

Gabriel:

Tzatz le'tzidim she'yihiyeh

Yatzah le'marero mor bi'gshamim mechayeh

צָץ לְצִדִּים שֶׁיִּהְיֶה

יָצָא לְ֯מָרֲרוֹ מוֹר בִּגְשָׁמִים מְחַיֶּה.

Baruch atah Adonai

בָּרוּךְ אַתָּה יי

Synagogue Attenders: Baruch hu u'baruch sh'mo

ברוך הוא וברוך שמו.

Gabriel: Mechayeh ha’metim.

מְחַיֵּה הַמֵּתִים.

Synagogue Attenders: Amen.

אמן

Gabriel: So, in that one, it was telling various things. It began with the word “ha’melech” because the way this piyyut works is, the Kaliri found two verses with exactly 18 words in the Book of Esther. One of which talks about the rise to greatness of Mordecai, the other of which talks about the rise to greatness of Esther. It’s genius! He found verses with the right number of words which had just the right topics, the two main heroes… One of them is “Va'ye’ehav ha’melech et Ester mi’kol ha’nashim va’tisa chen va’chesed lefanav mi’kol ha’betulot,” “The King loved Esther out of all the women, and she found favor in his eyes out of all the virgins.” And the other is, “U'Mordechai yatza mi’lifney ha’melech bi’lvush malchut techelet va’chur,” “Mordechai went forth in front of the king in royal raiment, royal blue and white linen.”

So, these are perfect verses, and he splits them up such that the first word of the piyyut in the first bracha is “va'ye’ehav”, “and he loved”. Now in the verse, “va'ye’ehav” is talking about the king. The king loved Esther, and the kind of love it's talking about, it means sexual lust, but he weaves it into a sentence. He starts, “Va’ye’ehav omen yetomat hegen,” “The omen, the one who raised Mordechai, loved the wonderful orphan.” And it’s a very different kind of love there, leaving aside the Septuagint, which translates it as, “Mordechai took Esther as a wife.”

But in the next stanza, the one which you heard here, I begin, “Ha’melech b’ches Yah chak devar eh'yeh,” “The King declared that the throne of God,” the king there is God. In the verse, it was “the king loved Esther,” the king was the king of Persia, the emperor of Persia, Ahasuerus, Achashverosh. So, he’s using the skeleton of the verses, but the words don't have to mean what they meant in the verse.

And the last line before the conclusion, “Yatzah la’marero Mor bi’geshamim mechayeh.” Mor, Mordechay was called Mor, like myrrh, the fragrant myrrh, “he went forth to imbitter Haman,” “le’marero”, which is, again, playing with the sound of the words because bitterness is the opposite of the fragrance of myrrh. I guess if you tasted it, it probably wouldn’t be very sweet.

Nehemia: But they sound similar, is the point.

Gabriel: They sound similar, and what did he do? “Bi’geshamim mechayeh”, “With the power of God, who is the one who resurrects with rain.” So, he’s talking about the rain because in the winter you’re supposed to mention rain, and in the summer dew, because of the seasons. So, he worked that in, and he mentioned resurrection there at the end. “Bi’geshamim mechayeh” doesn’t even have to mean resurrecting, it just means giving life. Rain gives life in the world as it is, but it fits with resurrection.

I’m going to skip now to, as we said, the harchavot, the expansions in the bracha about vanquishing evil. So, he has, as we see here, a short stanza which fits this whole structure where you’re going. Each stanza has a successive word from this verse and from that verse, Biblical verses, and it has the successive letter of the alphabet in the acrostic and an acrostic from his name. And then it expands. So, where is this?

“Baruch atah Adonai, melech ohev tzdakah u’mishpat,” Okay, we’re almost at it. That was the blessing, “the King who loves righteousness and justice”. Now, this next bracha is Birkat ha’Minim, which again, is against heretics, but the focus here is more against evil.

“…malchut zadon meherah te’aker u’teshaver… bi’mherah b’yamayenu.”

Synagogue Attenders: [to mutter the following:]

Va'yasem layla u'tnuma himane'a

Leil asher tannin va'yarev heniya

La'dorot oto hitzniya

Lihiyot le'pil'o tzanua

La'chad zed-yahir u'be'ashmuro hichniya

Va'tachrich yechumav shach zedim machniya

וַיָּֽשֶׂם לַֽיְלָה וּתְנוּמָה הִמְנִֽיעַ

לֵיל אֲשֶׁר תַּנִּין וְיָרֵב הֵנִֽיעַ

לַדּוֹרוֹת אוֹתוֹ הִצְנִֽיעַ

לִהְיוֹת לְפִלְאוֹ צָנֽוּעַ

לָכַד זֵד־יָהִיר וּבְאַשְׁמוּרוֹ הִכְנִֽיעַ

וְתַכְרִיךְ יְ֯חוּמָיו שָׁח זֵדִים מַכְנִֽיעַ.

[Translation:

[God] made it at night that He prevented [Ahasuerus’s] sleep,

The same night [Passover] when He had shaken up the dragon [Pharaoh] and Yarev [=Sennacherib].

[God] filed away this night, for [all] generations,

For it to be filed away for miracles to happen on it.

He entrapped the haughty foe [Haman], and in the wee hours he humiliated him;

The bundle of [Haman]’s children – [God] brought them down, He who humbles the wicked.

Gabriel: [Repeats that stanza allowed, distinctly chanting:

Va'yasem layla u'tnuma himane'a

Leil asher tannin va'yarev heniya

La'dorot oto hitzniya

Lihiyot le'pil'o tzanua

La'chad zed-yahir u'be'ashmuro hichniya

Va'tachrich yechumav shach zedim machniya

וַיָּֽשֶׂם לַֽיְלָה וּתְנוּמָה הִמְנִֽיעַ

לֵיל אֲשֶׁר תַּנִּין וְיָרֵב הֵנִֽיעַ

לַדּוֹרוֹת אוֹתוֹ הִצְנִֽיעַ

לִהְיוֹת לְפִלְאוֹ צָנֽוּעַ

לָכַד זֵד־יָהִיר

Synagogue Attenders: BOOOOO!!!!!! [Noisemaking, because of the mention of the “haughty foe”, Proverbs 21:24, here referring to Haman, our arch-enemy.]

וּבְאַשְׁמוּרוֹ הִכְנִֽיעַ

וְתַכְרִיךְ יְחוּמָיו שָׁח זֵדִים מַכְנִֽיעַ.

Synagogue Attenders: [Begin to recite the following lines, but don’t get very far, because after a few seconds Gabriel starts reciting them out loud:]

Gabriel:

Ezrach bat chutz / Be'chesel gahutz

Bi'ntiv nachutz / Sachat tze'et chutz

Bama eda / Pitul yidah

U'pilulo nodah / Be'yado'a tedah

Gmulav chiba / Be'ol ha'mesubal

Ve'unu bi'sval / Kodei nisbal

Daliyav be'lud de'ot / Arba'a me'ot

Be'livant yaven le'ot / Ahd yuchash ot

Harim tzach dileg / U'gva'ot bileg

Va'anam mileg / Be'tzalmon mashleg

Ve'tanin kezamam / Bo ba'yom zumam

Be'gicho umam / Be'etzbah humam

Zoru lo'azim / Metzah me'izim

U'kaf'u be'azim / Ke'nevel re'uzim

Cheil tzavah Far'o / Be'sasa'a pera'o

U'bat be'nas u'kra'o / Mool av ve'zar'oh

אֶזְרָח בָּט חוּץ / בְּכֶֽסֶל גָּהוּץ

בִּנְתִיב נָחוּץ / סָכַת צֵאת חוּץ.

בַּמָּה אֵדַע / פִּתּוּל יִדַּע

וּפִלּוּלוֹ נוֹדַע / בְּיָדֹֽעַ תֵּדַע.

גְּמוּלָיו חִבַּל / בְּעֹל הַמְסֻבָּל

וְעֻנּוּ בִּסְבַל / קוֹדֵי נִסְבָּל.

דָּלְיָו בְּלוּד דְּאוֹת / אַרְבַּע מֵאוֹת

בְּלִבְנַת יָוֵן לְאוֹת / עַד יוּחַשׁ אוֹת.

הָרִים צַח דִּלֵּג / וּגְבָעוֹת בִּלֵּג

וַעֲנָם מִלֵּג / בְּצַלְמוֹן מַשְׁלֵג.

וְתַנִּין כְּזָמַם / בּוֹ בַּיָּם זֻמַּם

בְּגִיחוֹ עֻמַּם / בְּאֶצְבָּע הֻמָּם.

זֹרוּ לוֹעֲזִים / מֵֽצַח מְעִזִּים

וְקָפְאוּ בְעַזִּים / כְּנֵֽבֶל רְעוּזִים.

חֵיל צְבָא פַרְעֹה / בְּסַאסְּאָה פְּרָעוֹ

וּבָט בְּנָס וּקְרָעוֹ / מוּל אָב וְזַרְעוֹ.

[Translation:

Ezraḥ [Abraham] looked outside at the clear constellations,

In their hasty path. He heard [from God]: “Go outside!”

“How will I know?” He showed his mischievous [doubt].

And his judgment [for doubting] was: “Surely know [that your children will be enslaved.”

[Thus doubting, he] brought harm to his descendants, in the yoke that they bore;

They were punished with burdens [imposed by] the people that bow to idols.

His offspring flew off to Lud [=Lydia, here Egypt], for four hundred years,

Weary with mud for bricks – until the sign [of redemption] was hastened!

The shining One jumped over mountains [in the merit of the patriarchs, called “mountains”], and he strengthened the hills [the matriarchs],

And he scalded ‘Anam [=Egypt] into snowy silence.

And when the dragon [Pharaoh] plotted, he himself suffered a plot, into the sea,

In his battle, his lights were put out, and he was confounded by [God’s] finger.

The foreign speakers [Egyptians] were scattered, for they had been brazen with their foreheads;

They froze in the fierce waters, crushed like a wine-vessel.

Pharaoh’s armed forces – God took retribution from them.

And He looked at the fleeing [sea] and split it – in the [presence of] the patriarch [Jacob] and his descendants.]

Gabriel: I like to imagine…

Nehemia: So, you were rapping that!

Gabriel: …that when the Kaliri got up and said it, the first time ever and no one had heard the words, that it was something like that. The power of it. First of all, the short lines with the “la” with the constant rhymes, totally fit the genre of rap. But the expressiveness… again, we can’t know what their music was like, but the problem is today, most of this would just be, as you saw, the congregational mumbling, often without even the cantor saying it all. Which makes no sense, since first of all this is the cantor’s prayer, and second of all, how were the people supposed to know it?

Now, today we have prayer books, so today, when it’s fixed and it’s printed, everyone can follow along. Here’s the problem; people can’t really… it’s really hard. They’re stumbling over the words, and nobody is interpreting it for them because, as you see, in rapping it and in singing it, I was interpreting it. But cantors don’t know how to interpret it because they don’t understand the words either. And if it just goes silent then the cantor doesn’t have to understand it because the cantor doesn’t have to do anything.

Ultimately, I think this, in the long run, is what led to the demise and what led to the dropping of piyyut in most communities outside of certain occasions, as you mentioned, Yom Kippur. And even then, there was more and more cutting and replacing it with other things like very long silent prayer.

Let’s watch a little more of this.

T'vu'im az k'sharu / Tofefot be'chen sharu

U'paz ba'sof usharu / Ve'el-shur nusharu

טְבוּעִים אָז כְּשָֽׁרוּ / תּוֹפֵפוֹת בְּכֵן שָֽׁרוּ

וּפָז בַּסּוּף אֻשָּֽׁרוּ / וְאֶל־שׁוּר נֻשָּֽׁרוּ.

[Translation:

When [the Israelites] saw the drowned [Egyptians], the women sang with drums.

And they were made happy with gold at the sea, and to [the Wilderness of] Shur they were eagled.]

Nehemia: Okay.

Gabriel: This is talking about the Israelites. He starts the story of Purim with Abraham.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: And it goes very quickly from Abraham to going out of Egypt. And he was just talking about, “ve’elnusharu”, “and to Shur,” to the wilderness of Shur, which is the crossing of the sea, it says, “vayetz’u el midbar shur.” Hebrew is, of course, written without vowels, typically. The next word is nosharu, nusharu or nasharu, and most likely I think it’s nusharu, and it means, “they were eagled”. It’s a nonce word, it’s an invented word. They were brought, “al kanfay nesharim”, God says, "I will bring you out on eagle’s wings.” So, he makes a verb from it, “they were eagled”.

Now, there are other interpretations on whether it should actually be pronounced slightly differently and mean something different. That’s my favorite. But it just shows you how each of these words, because they’re invented words, he’s using all of the tools he has in his toolbox to create. And so, you get questions like, what does the word mean? What is he alluding to? What is the Biblical verse? Is there a Rabbinic tradition that he’s alluding to? Maybe it’s a tradition we don’t even know about.

Nehemia: Gabriel, let’s…

Gabriel: So, at this point right after they cross the Red Sea, that’s when Amalek comes, and that’s the beginning of the story of Haman, because Haman was called “the Agagite.” Agag is the king of Amalek.

Yakshu amarim / Shuv le'gei chamorim

U'mi chashuvim morim / Nitmeru le'marim

Kisher tzir tachan / Lut be'ushei tzachan

Lehamtik mar le'machan / Le'bal lakut be'bochan

Luvu le'elim / Ve'af lahat ha'elim

Ve'nekavu elim / Be'tzedek b'nei elim

Miharu le'alush / Ve'kol-batzek milush

Ve'ragnu be'pilush / Adei dok chalush

יָקְשׁוּ אֲמָרִים / שׁוּב לְגֵיא חֲמוֹרִים

וּמֵי חֲשׁוּבִים מוֹרִים / נִתְמְרוּ לְמָרִים.

כִּשֵּׁר צִיר תַּֽחַן / לוּט בְּאוּשֵׁי צַֽחַן

לְהַמְתִּיק מַר לְמַֽחַן / לְבַל לָקוּט בְּבֹֽחַן.

לֻוּוּ לְאֵילִם / וְאַף לַֽהַט הֶאֱלִים

וְנֻקָּֽבוּ אֵלִים / בְּצֶֽדֶק בְּנֵי אֵלִים.

מִהֲרוּ לְאָלוּשׁ / וְכָל־בָּצֵק מִלּוּשׁ

וְרָגְנוּ בְּפִלּוּשׁ / עֲדֵי דֹק חָלוּשׁ.

[Translation:

They fell into the trap of words: “Let’s go back to [Egypt], the land of asses!”

The significant waters indicated [this folly], by turning to bitter [water].

[Moses] the emissary made appropriate prayer, to cover up the stench [of sin],

To sweeten the bitter [waters] for the camp, so that they would not quarrel with and test [God].

They were accompanied [by angels] to Elim, and [God’s] blazing rage was strong against them,

But they were called elim, in the merit of being descendants of the elim [patriarchs].

They hastened to Alush, and there was no more dough from their kneading.

So they complained in public, until their portion [manna came] from heaven.]

Nehemia: Gabriel, we’ve got to wrap it up here. So, this has been amazing Gabriel. You’re a philologist who studies piyyut, liturgical poetry, and here we had a poem from El'azar Kalir who wrote that poem.

Gabriel: 6th to 7th century, yes.

Nehemia: 6th to 7th century.

Gabriel: El'azar ben — be-Rebbi — Kalir, El'azar son of Kalir.

Nehemia: So, it’s from around, let’s call it 1,300 years ago, or 1,400 years ago, actually.

Gabriel: Yes, we’re in the 21st century now.

Nehemia: 7th century would be the year 600.

Gabriel: What?

Nehemia: So, a 1,400-year-old liturgical poem, and you are not just researching it and interpreting it, and deciphering it, you’re actually reciting it as part of an actual liturgical service, and you’re doing it in a modern way with rap. I think that’s a beautiful combination. I think if I had gone to a synagogue like this as a child, I might not have been so bored out of my mind.

Gabriel: And maybe piyyut would have been your favorite part.

Nehemia: It might have been.

Gabriel: If it was done like this.

Nehemia: But instead, they literally had an opera singer who would come in. And I called it the yodeling. Maybe he wasn’t yodeling technically, but he would do all these flourishes where it would take him like three minutes to say one word. And I said to my mother, “I’m so bored.” And she said, “Well if God likes opera, we’re all going to have zchus. We’re all going to be blessed.”

Gabriel: Let’s just say that the cantorial style that you’re talking about was also something very powerful in the 19th, early 20th century. By the time we were kids, it had become Rococo, and the practitioners… there were some people who could do it well; most couldn’t. The congregations didn’t appreciate it anymore because, again, like rap, it all depends on the… what is the word? It’s a word with an R, I think it’s a French word. The interplay between the performer and, in this case, the cantor and the congregation, and understanding what… Because again, I’m sure the one in your synagogue when you were growing up was probably not very good at it.

Nehemia: He was actually a very skilled opera singer, and I mean he was literally an opera singer.

Gabriel: Literally that’s what he did.

Nehemia: But he didn’t understand any of the words…

Gabriel: That’s the worst!

Nehemia: I’m sure he didn’t. And we certainly didn’t understand because he was yodeling.

Gabriel: So, I actually go to Baltimore every two weeks, and I meet with an old cantor who’s 93 years old, and he’s really into preserving the lost tradition of Eastern Ashkenazic cantorial art. And he says, “The most important thing is, you understand the words, you interpret the words, and you have that feeling, that yir'at shamayim”, that “fear of heaven”, “that when you’re saying them that you mean the words.” You understand them, and literally what you’re doing is interpreting the words. And I think that’s also what I was also doing in the rapping.

Nehemia: That’s beautiful.

Gabriel: And then when you interpret them, the people don’t need to understand the meaning of every single word because you’re communicating…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Gabriel: I’m just thinking, if that opera singer had been a rapper, and didn’t understand the words of this piyyut… And by the way, the number of people who do understand the words of this piyyut in the world today is probably under 15. And it would just be awful! I can just imagine having no idea… it’s not about the genre, it’s about knowing what you’re doing.

Nehemia: Right. This has been wonderful, thanks so much, Gabriel, for joining us. And this has been a wonderful conversation, not the kind of conversation the audience would normally have access to. So, I really want to thank you.

Gabriel: Thanks.

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VIDEO CHAPTERS

00:00 Keeping things interesting
09:48 Improvisation
15:55 Demonstration of piyyut
25:06 The rapping philologist
32:52 Outro

RELATED EPISODES
Hebrew Voices #178 – Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 1Hebrew Voices #151 – Royal Attire 1: Lost Tribes and Magical Names
Support Team Study – Royal Attire 2: The Karaite-Rabbanite Schism
Hebrew Voices #160 – Does God Have a Body?
Support Team Study – Rabbinical Necromancy
Hebrew Voices #165 – Open Siddur Project

OTHER LINKS
The Karaite Press
Dr. Wasserman's YouTube Channel

The post Hebrew Voices #179 – Rapping Ancient Hebrew Poetry: Part 2 appeared first on Nehemia's Wall.