;The Maftirim phenomenon, an association of Jewish singers, poets and composers dedicated to the creation and performance of Hebrew sacred poetry according to Ottoman classical music in paraliturgical gatherings, is one of the unique forms of Jewish piety in the Ottoman Empire. Not much has been written about this phenomenon, which as the present recordings testify, still attracts the keen attention of all those who are interested in the musical culture of the Ottoman Jews.

Regretfully much information about the history of the Maftirim phenomenon has been lost in the course of time. On the other hand, pieces of unfounded information regarding this topic are still being reproduced once and again. Without pretending to be a definitive study of this musico-poetical religious phenomenon, in this essay I will attempt to summarize most of the available data on the topic. We hope that further studies, especially those based on the unread documents that are still extant, will shed more light on this phenomenon.

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The adoption of the Turkish makam (plural makamlar) by Jewish Ottoman musicians since at least the mid-16th century is one particular manifestation of the unique circumstances under which Jewish culture flourished in the Ottoman Empire. The refined and complex qualities of the Turkish makam tradition, a product of the Ottoman urban elite which demanded high standards of musicianship both in performance and composition, was favored by the predominantly urban Ottoman Jewish communities, especially after the massive immigration of Sephardi Jews to the Empire following their expulsion from Spain and Portugal in 1492-1497. Jews rapidly became proficient in the courtly makam, actively participating in the actual shaping of the musical culture of the non‑Jewish aristocratic society, especially within the Seraglio, together with musicians from the other religious minorities of the Ottoman Empire. By the 17th century, music composition and performance in the makam style had become important professions for Ottoman Jews.

The expertise of Jewish musicians in the Ottoman makam tradition was reflected in the use of makamlar in the performance of the liturgy and most especially in the development of a distinctive Hebrew musical repertoire for performance in the synagogues or in private homes. This repertoire was performed in special religious events, usually in the early morning hours or in the afternoon of the Sabbath. Gatherings of this nature apparently developed among the kabbalistic (mystical) circles of Sephardi Jews in the Upper Galilee towards the mid-16th century. Indeed, the central role of music and sacred poetry in these Jewish religious events bear some common characteristics with the Sufi sema (see Fenton; Shiloah). Although the primordial mystic rationale of these gatherings eroded since their heyday in the 16th-18th centuries, Jewish singers faithfully continued to carry on with this musical tradition well into the contemporary period. Preserving a venerable religious tradition (minhag) and the aesthetic pleasure provided by the music to performers and listeners alike were among the strong reasons for the resilience of this practice.

In spite of the many close musical correlations between this Hebrew religious repertoire and the general Turkish makam repertoire, the Jewish tradition bears specific characteristics, one of which is its exclusive vocal and choral character. The performance of a Hebrew vocal fasıl, an Ottoman suite following the makam rules, forms and genres, became the task of a selected group of singers who were specially trained within choral associations that developed in the synagogues. The most celebrated among these choral organizations, but certainly not the only one, was the Maftirim association of Edirne (formerly Adrianople).

The main source towards a comprehensive historical study of the repertoire of the Maftirim of Edirne and, in general, of all the Ottoman Hebrew music tradition are manuscripts and printed collections of Hebrew sacred songs (piyyutim and pizmonim) containing indications pertaining to their musical performance, such as the names of makams, usuls and musical genres, and/or references to the opening lines or title of compositions in Turkish written in Hebrew characters. These compilations of Hebrew sacred songs classified according to the Turkish makams dating from the late 16th to the early 20th centuries can be called mecmuas as their Turkish counterparts (see Wright).

These manuscripts were generally overlooked by scholars of Ottoman Jewish culture in general and sacred Hebrew poetry in the Ottoman Empire in particular. Historians and students of literature were incapable of evaluating such documents because they ignored their crucial musical background. Moreover, the growing influence of musical creativity was detrimental to the literary quality of sacred Hebrew poetry in the Ottoman Empire after the early 17th century. As a result of their submission to the musical composition, piyyutim very often acquired awkward forms, e.g. stanzas of different number of lines, lines of different number of syllables within the same stanza, different rhymes in one stanza and many stanzas or verses of non-sense syllables (terrenüm). This awkwardness can now be explained by an interdisciplinary approach that considers the musical context of this Hebrew sacred poetry (see, for example, Beeri 1994a).

The literally thousands of Hebrew poems composed to be performed with Ottoman classic music throughout the 16th to the early 20th centuries remained unpublished until the 20th century. Moreover, only a minuscule fraction of these songs remained alive in oral tradition. This living repertoire is reflected in the most important, and practically only, printed Hebrew mecmua that appeared in Istanbul c. 1921 under the title of Shirei Israel be-Eretz ha-Qedem (hereafter SHIBHA). This collection reflects the repertoire performed by the association of Jewish singers active in Istanbul in the 1920s under the leadership of immigrants from Edirne. Printed by the printer from Edirne Binyamin Bekhor Yosef at the initiative of the journalist, scholar and poet Isaac Eliyahu Navon, another native from Edirne, SHIBHA is based on the repertoire of the Maftirim from Edirne. This repertoire was brought to Istanbul after World War I when many Edirneli Jews moved there in the aftermath of the devastation of their city. In addition to the specific repertoire of the Maftirim from Edirne, SHIBHA incorporated additional pieces composed by contemporary musicians from Istanbul and Izmir who were active in the same circle of musicians. Beginnings of the Maftirim/SHIBHA tradition: the contribution of Rabbi Israel Najara.

It is not improbable that the Jewish involvement with Ottoman courtly music started before the arrival of the Sephardi Jews. Early records of Hebrew sacred poems sung to Turkish music are found among Romaniote (Byzantine) Hebrew poets who were influenced by the Spanish style of Hebrew poetry in the early 16th century. In his collection Shirim ve-zemirot u-tushbahot (Constantinople 1545), the poet Shlomo Mazal Tov includes a section of poems (nos. 233‑244) bearing the superscriptions "be‑niggun ishma'eli" or "be-shinui niggun yishma'eli" ("[to be sung] with a Muslim melody). The historian Salomon Rozanes deduced from these superscriptions that Mazal Tov was the first Jewish poet to use the makam. Rozanes' assumption, however, has no solid foundation and therefore Mazal Tov's involvement with the then emergent Ottoman classical music is impossible to determine. (see Beeri 1994) Following the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula and their resettlement in Ottoman lands in impressive numbers, there is an influx of Andalusian Jews who brought with them a Western style of music whose nature is also impossible to establish. Yet, this Western style may have had a certain impact in Istanbul as revealed by the following story included in Seder Eliyahu Zuta by Rabbi Eliyahu b. Elkanah Capsali (1483-1555; see Capsali, vol. 1, pp. 91ff): a Jewish musician from Spain is discovered by the Sultan during one of the monarch's clandestine visits to his new Jewish subjects. After being summoned to the court a day after, this Andalusian Jew first fails to perform but eventually recovers from his initial shock and becomes the chief musician of the court. Even if apocryphal, this story is indicative of some early involvement of Spanish Jews in the music of the Ottoman court.

Lacking any tangible information prior to the late 16th century, we can firmly establish that the genuine initiator of the Ottoman Jewish music tradition is Rabbi Israel Najara (c. 1555-1625). Considered by scholars for the past hundred years or so as the most outstanding poet of the Sephardi Jewry in the Eastern Mediterranean after the expulsion from Spain, Najara’s main novelty consisted of adopting the emergent Ottoman makam system to Hebrew sacred poetry (see Bacher; Benayahu; Gaon; Idelsohn; Rozanes; Seroussi 1990; Yahalom). A close examination of the two compendia of religious poems written by Najara, Zemirot Yisrael (published in three different editions: Safed 1587, Saloniki 1599/1600 and Venice 1600) and She’erit Yisrael (published in a very partial version by M.H. Friedlander as Pizmonim, Vienna 1858; mostly still in manuscript) shows his progressive involvement with Ottoman music. Zemirot Israel is divided in three sections containing respectively piyyutim for the early morning (Olat ha‑tamid), the Sabbath (Olat ha-shabbat) and the New Moon (Olat ha‑hodesh). The piyyutim in the first section are those arranged according to the Turkish makams. Twelve makamlar are employed by Najara in Zemirot Israel: Rast, Dügah, Hüseyni, Buselik, Segah, Segah‑Irak, Nebrus‑Acem, Mahur, Neva, Uzzal, Naks‑Hüseyni, and Nikriz. During Najara’s youth, the Turkish makam tradition, which emanated from the medieval Arabic and Persian musical systems, was in a process of consolidation. Thus, although the makam names appearing in Zemirot Yisrael are found in modern Turkish practice, any projection of present day musical practice to Najara's time is conjectural.

It is still a matter of conjecture too how Najara managed to be so updated on this music while he carried his activities mostly along the Damascus-Safed axis. The possibility that Najara may have traveled to Turkey and even to Saloniki may account for his remarkable expertise in the makam system.

During the first stages of his work, his models were Turkish songs from two sources: the coffee houses, particularly those of the Janissaries with whom the Jews had close ties in Syria and, in some cases, from the Sufi sects, as testified by the mention of songs by Sufi poets such as Pir Sultan Abdal of the Bektaši order in Najara’s mecmua (see Tietze and Yahalom). Later writings by Najara show his awareness of more modern musical forms. In She’erit Yisrael, his last, and mostly unpublished, collection of religious poems, he mentions, in addition to the makamlar, few usuls (cyclic rhythms) and instrumental musical genres (particularly the peşrev) which compose the compound form of Ottoman court music, the fasıl. In the manuscript of Sheherit Israel in the K.K. Hofbibliothek (now National Library) in Vienna (printed by M. Friedlander in 1858 as Pizmonim) we find superscriptions such as "yasadeti 'al peşrev Kabul Hassan" ("I based [this song] on the peşrev [by] Kabul Hassan"). The peşrev is a Turkish instrumental form favored by Jewish composers since Najara (Seroussi 1991). She’erit Yisrael can then be considered as the first truly Hebrew mecmua, and as a model and inspiration for Jewish composers and poets throughout the Ottoman Empire.

In conclusion, Najara achieved the following accomplishmen

Established a tradition of Ottoman Hebrew music. This tradition is reflected in the compilation of his Hebrew sacred poems following the Turkish pattern, i.e. according to the makamlar.

Assigned specific religious contexts for the performance of this Ottoman Hebrew vocal music, such as the early Sabbath morning vigils;

Composed melodies for the piyyutim, for in manuscripts of Sheherit Israel he often writes "lahan hidashti ani" ("melody composed by

Had disciples who continued to compose Hebrew sacred poetry set to Ottoman art music and even refined the musical aspect of this tradition according to the latest developments in the Ottoman court. This musical refinement was usually at the expense of the level of the poetry that was in a constant decline since the peak achieved by Najara.

Consolidation of the Ottoman Jewish musical tradition after Israel Najara

By the early 17th century, while Najara was still alive, Jewish musicians from Constantinople who were proficient in the popular and courtly musical traditions of the Ottoman Empire had become main figures at the seraglio. Describing the reception of Alomoro Nani, the new Venetian ambassador to Constantinople, in 1614, the traveler Pietro della Valle testifies that “after the meal, all left the palace in order to watch Jewish entertainers for an hour or two playing instruments, singing and dancing, all in the Turkish manner”. This proficiency was also applied to the area of sacred Hebrew songs.

Three important facts should be pointed out in the development of the singing of piyyutim according to Ottoman courtly music after Najara:

Edirne gradually became the center of Ottoman Hebrew music creativity after the early 17th century; however, the geographical span of this tradition expanded to other Western areas of the Ottoman Empire (such as Bulgaria and Bosnia) and even beyond, to the important Levantine Jewish community in Venice as well as to Egypt.

Since the second half of the 17th century Jewish poets and composers became closer to Muslim and Christian musicians serving at the seraglio and to the musicians of the Mevlevi tarikat

Ottoman Jewish musicians were bi-cultural: they served the Jewish community and at the same time they appeared before non-Jewish audiences.

We can trace the development of this musical tradition from the 17th century on by studying dozens of Hebrew mecmuas that survived the passing of time and are scattered today in many libraries in Israel, Europe and the USA. The earliest manuscripts consist of expanded versions of She'erit Yisrael by Najara, emanating from circles of poets and musicians from Damascus who were very close to him. Among them we can mention Najara's own sons, Levi and Moshe (named after his grandfather and father respectively) who were almost unknown until recently (Beeri 1995 and 2000/2001), the renowned kabbalist, poet and physician Shmuel Vital (1598-c. 1678), the younger son of the great kabbalist Rabbi Haim Vital, and Yehuda ben Noaj, a prolific poet about whom we hardly know anything.

Najara's influence and the wide geographical distribution of the type of Hebrew poetry and musical practice that he developed are reflected in other manuscript mecmuas. Two among the most important of these manuscript collections dating from the mid-17th and early 18th centuries originate in the confines of the Ottoman Empire, at the Levantine Jewish community of Venice.

The first manuscript is a hymnal compiled by David ben Abraham de Silva, cantor in Venice circa 1650. The poems in this manuscript are classified as in Najara's Zemirot Yisrael, i.e. according to functional (for the Sabbath, the New Moon, the High Holidays, Purim, Hanukah, etc.) and partially musical (makam) criteria. De Silva employs the following Turkish makamlar: Buselik (pronounced by the Jews as Puselik), Rast, Uzzal, Dügah, Hüseyni, and Neva-Irak. The second manuscript from Venice was compiled by cantor Moshe Hacohen who was originally from Sarajevo. The manuscript dates from 1702 and contains additions by several later hands of the Hacohen family. The overall organization of this codex follows the format set by Zemirot Israel. The first part, entitled by the compiler Ne'im zemirot, is divided into two sections: the first contains piyyutim arranged according to ten Turkish makams and the second includes piyyutim classified according to liturgical or life cycle events. The makams mentioned in this first part are: Rast, Dügah, Hüseyni, Neva, Sikah, Acem, Irak, Segah, Puselik, and Uzzal. The second part of the manuscript, named Na'avah tehillah, contains several indices which show the dominant role of the makam system in the musical performances of the cantors of the Levantine synagogue during the 18th century. One index lists groups of melodies of piyyutim in the same makam to be used to sing prayers in prose at specific liturgical events. From this information one can assume that the cantors unified the performance of entire liturgical events by employing a single makam, a practice that has survived in Sephardi synagogues to this very day.

Another important source for the study of the legacy by Najara is the manuscripts of one of his apparently closest disciples, Avtaliyon ben Mordecai. The precise dating of Avtaliyon’s life span is still very problematic. A detailed and yet totally undocumented account of Avtaliyon's life is presented by Rozanes and is worthwhile to quote here:Avtaliyon ben Mordecai was from a family originating in Constantinople.

He was born in Constantinople in 1570, and moved to the Land of Israel where he was educated at the yeshiva [religious school] of the poet Rabbi Israel Najara. After the death of his rabbi he returned to the European part of Turkey settling in Adrianople. His successors settled in Ruschuk, and they are until the present well-known and celebrated businessmen and bankers in Burcharest, Ruschuk and Paris. According to the testimony of Rabbi Moshe Halevy from Bosnia [Sarajevo], a manuscript found in possession of the community there was written by this poet and at the end of the manuscript it is written: "This is my share in the effort I made in the sacrifice for the Torah and wrote with my hands [this manuscript] to my teacher and light, the crown of the splendor of youth, the learned teacher and rabbi Rabbi Israel Najara, may he live forever… Avtaliyon ben Mordecai."

This poet was famous among the Turks who called him Küçük Hoca Hakham Avtaliyon and is noted by all for his musical compositions [in the form of] peşrev, yürük semai, fasıl Kurdaniani, etc., and his songs were in manuscripts for many years and were published in SHIBA and in the collection Ne'im Zemirot [Salokini 1929]. From the Land of Israel these songs and melodies were spread over to European Turkey (Rumelia) and Asian Turkey (Anadol). When the poet Avtaliyon ben Mordecai came to Adrianople he brought [these songs] with him and introduced them to the [local Jewish] community. And he was constantly in the monastery of the dervishes, the mystical monks, founded by Celaleddin Rumi, called Mevleya. This sect was called Mevlana after him; its members gather each Friday and dance to the sound of musical instruments (Rozanes 1929, introduction; a succinct version of this passage appears in French, without crediting Rozanes, in Nehama, pp. 185-186).

Regretfully the manuscript from Sarajevo that Rozanes mentions is now lost. While according to this source Avtaliyon appears to have been a younger disciple of Najara, the same Rozanes (in his short introduction to SHIBA) places him as living in Edirne around 1760! In the notes to the CD Maftirim, the year 1747 is given for Avtaliyon's birth, again with no documental support. Be as it is, the musical terminology employed by Avtaliyon in his manuscript collection (see below), a tangible piece of evidence, reflects the state of Ottoman art music in the second half of the 17th century. For this reason we propose the following hypothesis: there were two poets named Avtaliyon, a famous grandfather (late 16th to mid-17th century) and a less famous grandson (late 17th- first half of 18th century) who apparently used the name Avtaliyon ben Mordecai Avtaliyon, to differentiate himself from his grandfather, Avtaliyon ben Mordecai.

We have located so far four manuscript copies of Avtaliyon’s impressive mecmua titled Hadashim la-bqarim (“[They are] new every morning”, after Threni 3:23, a reference to the urge that the poet felt to innovate because of the demand of his public). The most complete version of this collection is Ms. Sassoon, no. 1031, the only copy that contains the detailed introduction by the author (see Sassoon, p. 818). We assume this manuscript to be an autograph.

Even a superficial examination of Avtaliyon’s work shows that his involvement with the courtly tradition is far more deep and advanced than Najara's. He uses a much larger number of makamlar (including compound ones), as a rule his compositions bear in their title the correspondent usul and the musical forms employed by him are the standard ones used in the Ottoman court in the late 17th century. While Najara composed only vocal peşrevs and very few semais, Avtaliyon’s collection includes, in addition to many peşrevs and semais, pieces in other genres such as beste, kâr, nakş, yürük semai and the peşrev semai, the latter a form mentioned only in Hebrew sources from the late 17th century on. Avtaliyon's pieces were intended to be performed in cycles based on one makam, as in the courtly fasıl, the Mevlevi ayin and the Maftirim gatherings.Another Ottoman Jewish poet/musician worth mentioning here is Yosef Ganso from Bursa. He is the only poet from this period, besides Najara, who succeeded in publishing a collection of Hebrew poetry from the 17th century set to Ottoman music. Only a single, partial copy of this printed collection titled Pizmonim u-baqqashot (Constantinople ca. 1648) is preserved at the library of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America.

On the footsteps of Najara, Avtaliyon and Ganso, a school of Ottoman Jewish musicians was established in Edirne as well as in other cities of the Ottoman Empire. Some of these Jewish musicians attained fame in non-Jewish circles and are mentioned in Turkish sources of the late 17th and 18th centuries (see Feldman, pp. 48-50). Among them are instrumentalists such as miskali Yahudi Yako and tamburi Yahudi Kara Kaş. But most Jewish musicians were both performers and composers, such as Çelebiko (a teacher of Cantemir); Aharon Hamon (known as Yahudi Harun, died in 1721; see Schirmann) a member of a distinguished Jewish family from Istanbul (also active in Edirne at the end of the 17th century) whose widely popular poems were included in several later collections, as well as in the Karaite liturgy; Moshe Faro (known also as Musî or tamburi hakham Muşe, d. 1776), a player of the long-necked tanbûr mentioned by the French Orientalist Charles Fonton, who was in Istanbul between 1746-1753, as a leading musician at the court of Sultan Mahmud I (reigned 1730-1754); Isaac Fresco Romano (Tanbûrî Izak or Ishak, c. 1745-1814), chief musician at the court of Sultan Selim III (reigned 1789-1807), teacher of the sultan and innovator (he designed the makam Gülizar). Hebrew mecmuas show that some of these Jewish masters, including Isaac Fresco Romano, wrote piyyutim too. However, most of the prolific composers appearing in the Hebrew Ottoman mecmuas of the late 17th and 18th centuries are not mentioned in Turkish sources at all. Among these poets/musicians we can mention Isaac Amigo, Abraham Toledo, Abraham Reuven, Aharon bar Itzhak Alidi, Moshe Shani and his son Shlomo Moshe Shani (called in Hebrew sources by the acronym Sheme"sh), Yaakov Amron, Eliyah Walid, Moshe Yehuda Abbas, Shelomo Rav Huna, Eliyahu Falkhon, Moshe ben Shlomo ibn Habib, Mordecai Shimon ben Shlomo and others.

Almost no biographical details related to these musicians/poets/rabbis are extant. According to Rozanes (1929), Amigo lived in Eretz Israel during Israel Najara's lifespan. According to Rabbi Moshe Halevy from Sarajevo, eighty four of Amigo's poems were appended to Najara's collection (he does not specify which, but apparently he refers to the Sarajevo manuscript credited to Avtaliyon) and others appear in SHIBA. Moshe ben Shlomo Ibn Habib (1654-1696) is the author of Get pashut (Ortaköy [Constantinople], 1719/1720). Abraham Toledo, who lived in the late 17th century, was one of the most prolific writers of new poetry in Ladino. His masterpiece, Coplas de Yosef Hasadic (published in Saloniki in 1732, long after his death; see Peretz), is a massive Biblical epos set within a musical framework that shows his expertise in Ottoman classic music (see Seroussi 1996; Peretz). Abraham Reuven is the author of Beit Abraham (Constantinople, 1741/2) and was cantor at the Ahrida synagogue in the Balat district. Aharon Alidi and Shelomo Rav Huna were his colleagues and contemporaries (they wrote an introduction to his work from which we learn that they were still alive around 1740), i.e. cantors active at the first half of the 18th century. Moshe Yehuda Abbas, one of the most prolific Ottoman Hebrew poets, was active towards the mid-17th century in Egypt and Syria (see Wallenstein 1944-1950). Mordecai Shimon ben Shlomo is the author of Mate Shim'on (Saloniki 1797-1819).

In the late 18th and 19th centuries the Maftirim of Edirne produced new generations of poets/composers, many of them members of the major rabbinical families of the city, whose poems appear in SHIBA. Among them we can mention members of the Mordecai and Geron families who shared since 1725 the rabbinical leadership of the city, such as Menakhem ben Shimon Mordecai, author of Divrei Menakhem and Shmuel Geron. Members of the Ben Aroya family also played an important role, most especially Yehuda ben Israel Ben Aroya (late 18th century) and Abraham Ben Aroya (rabbi in Tatar Bazarcik). Other authors from Adrianople in SHIBA are Mehakhem and Isaac Dabah, Haim (d. circa 1885) and Mordecai ben Basat, Shlomo Moshe Mitrani, Refael Yosef (grandfather of the printer of SHIBA, Binyamin Yosef), Bekhor Yosef Danon (d. 1905) av beit din (member of the rabbinical court) of Adrianople, Bekhor Mevorakh, Israel Hasid, Bekhor bin Nun (cantor and composer from the synagogue in Ortaköy), Rabbi Bekhor Papo (a force behind the Maftirim organization in Istanbul) and Rabbi Haim Bejerano (born in Zagora, Bulgaria, 1846 - died in Istanbul 1931), active in Ruschuk (1874-1879) and Bucharest (after 1887), and eventually rabbi of Edirne (after 1910) and Chief Rabbi in Istanbul (from 1920 onward). We may attribute the lack of any mention of these Jewish masters in Turkish sources to the fact that they only composed Hebrew pieces for the internal use of their community.

In the late 19th century Jewish composers in Turkey split into two groups: those who wrote songs in Turkish and instrumental compositions, such as Abraham Levi Hayyat, alias Mısırlı Ûdî Avram İbrahim (1872-1933) and Isaac Varon (b. 1884 in Gallipolis, moved in 1918 to Istanbul were he passed away in 1962), and those who wrote Hebrew pieces, such as Moshe Cordova (1881-1967) in Istanbul and Isaac Algazi (1889-1951) from Izmir. This split reflects a break between secular and religious Jews in the sphere of music.

During the 19th century, and certainly by the early 20th century, the role of the Maftirim as a purely religious association was expanded. Many of the new songs being composed reflected social concerns and current events affecting the members of the community rather than theological or eschatological concerns. We find songs about the appointments of rabbis to important offices, the departure of important figures in the community to the Land of Israel, miracles that occurred to the leaders of the community such as the survival from a road ambush by robbers, and a song (by Yehuda ben Israel ben Aroya) about the truce between the two antagonistic rabbinical families in Adrianople, the Menahem and the Geron families, after a strife that lasted for about one hundred and fifty years (SHIBA, p. 203). Put differently, the piyyut had become a vehicle for recording the chronicle of the community, expanding dramatically its original religious role. It is therefore not surprising that modern scholars, such as Abraham Danon and Isaac Eliyahu Navon, composed Hebrew songs included in SHIBA. These songs stand already on the border between traditional piyyutim and modern, non-religious poetry. We can add to this last trend that the role of music as an object of pure enjoyment certainly was an important factor in maintaining this tradition alive in a period of social and religious upheaval.

A description of the Maftirim

Information regarding the Maftirim is scattered in few sources, most of them very late (1920s). Abraham Danon, a scholar who grew closely associated with the Maftirim, offers us a relatively detailed description in his introduction to SHIBA:

The institution for which these songs [SHIBA] were intended is the choir called Maftirim, who are the singers or assistant cantors. From ancient times this was the custom in Adrianople: each Sabbath morning, before the morning prayer (in recent times they set it to the time of the Sabbath eve), the Levite's disciples gathered at the Portugal synagogue and sang with their throats songs to praise the Lord and afterwards each one walked to his synagogue (which were thirteen in number before the great fire) where the [opening] prayer Barukh she-amar did not start before the ending of the Qaddish by the Maftirim. In the course of time, the cantors joined with the Levites' assistants (mezammerim) and sang together songs to the joy of the listeners gathered around them who were avid for the songs and they opened their mouths as if they wanted to swallow the rain. This is the reason the majority of the [Jewish] inhabitants of Adrianople had some expertise in the art of song, because since their youth they were educated on the laps [of music]. I heard that the refugees who flew from that city due to the War moved to Constantinople where they reestablished the gathering of the Maftirim at the Galata quarter.…..

Why did [Adrianople have] the exclusive privilege [of being a center of music and poetry] unlike any other city? Because for a long time the whirling dervishes (monks) were found there, the disciples of the mystic (Sufi) Mevlana Celaleddin Rumi who dance every Friday to the sound of musical instruments in their sanctuary called by them tekke… And the persecuted [Jewish] refugees who came [to Adrianople] from Spain and Portugal, exhausted and fatigued from their journey, found a tradition ready for them [to adopt] and they too established a choir of musicians in the format of the Muslims in order to forget their sorrowfulness.

Each Sabbath the Maftirim performed a fasıl in one makam. The event started with a prayer in Aramaic Beresh ormanuta and a freely improvised vocal piece on two fixed Biblical verses (Psalms 69, 31 and Judges 5, 3) performed by the choir director in the makam of the week. The event ended with Mizmor shir le-yom hashabbat (Psalm 92) and Qaddish (doxology) in the same makam. This last text, which marks points of articulation in regular liturgical events, emphasizes the para‑liturgical character of these gatherings.

The Maftirim played an important socializing role in the very stratified Jewish community. It granted access to its poor members to musical performances of high quality. Members of the lower classes of the Jewish community could hear this type of elevated music in the synagogue, unlike their poor Muslim counterparts who depended on getting access to the performances of music at the saloons of the aristocracy or the Mevlevi tekke.

Most members of the Maftirim choir moved to Istanbul during World War I due to the devastation of Edirne and its Jewish community. They continued to gather in this city, although their activities declined in the following decades. To what extent the materials included in SHIBA were actually performed is hard to know. It is certain however that these pieces were printed for their historical value and not necessarily because they were performed. Perceived from such a perspective, SHIBA is as much an anthology for singers as it is a modern edition of old poetry from manuscripts, in the spirit of the philological concerns of the modern Science of Judaism.

Some informants knowledgeable of the Maftirim repertory live today in Israel, but they do not perform it on a regular basis. One of the most illustrious members of the Maftirim association in Istanbul during its flourishing in the 1920s was the poet and journalist Isaac Eliyahu Navon, the editor of SHIBA (see Navon's report on Mafitirm in Navon 1930; see also Avenary 1972; Geshuri 1930, all based on information brought to Israel by Navon after his immigration in the late 1920s). Navon taught a few songs from the Maftirim repertoire to the famous Jewish singer Bracha Zefira. One of these songs, Ysmah har tziyon, a yürük semai in makam Segah, became an Israeli folksong (Seroussi 1991a). The SHIBA/Maftirim tradition in other Ottoman cities In the 19th century we also witness the development of two other important Jewish centers of musical activity similar to the Maftirim of Edirne. In Izmir, following the leadership of the composer Rabbi Abraham Ariyas (late 18th century), named by the Turks hoca‑i berzukar ("consummate master"), a strong school of composers and poets developed a distinctive style that reflected the local circumstances, most especially the strong presence of Greek Orthodox Church in that city. Rabbi Israel Moshe Hazzan, in his responsum of 1848 printed in his Kerah shel romi, (Livorno, 1876, fol. 4b; see Seroussi 1997) testifies that cantors from Izmir (he specifically mentions Rabbi Abraham Ariyas) used to listen to holiday services of the churches of the Greek Byzantine rite by standing outside their walls in order to learn new tunes for the High Holidays. Jewish musicians from Izmir composed both instrumental music and Hebrew sacred songs. The most outstanding among them were the members of the Algazi family, Salomon ("bulbuli Salomon," "Salomon the nightingale," died in Izmir, 1930) and Isaac (Izmir, 1889 - Montevideo, 1950), Shem Tov Shikiar (Santo Şikiar or Hoca Santo, Magnesia, 1840- Izmir, 1920), Isaac Barki, a violinist and composer of fasıls and Haim Alazraki (known as Şapçı Haim, d. 1913).

Also the Jewish community of Saloniki had a rich tradition of makam performance and composition. Societies of Jewish poets and composers were active in this city in the 19th and early 20th century. The school of Saloniki was founded by the violinist and cantor Aharon Barzilay (second half of 19th century) who studied in Istanbul. His grandfather, Abraham ben Barzilay, was a famous musician from Izmir. This tradition was maintained by Sa'adi ben Betzalel Halevy Ashkenazi, Aharon Barzilay's disciple, who was a learned scholar, poet and printer of the local collections of piyyutim. Rabbi Abraham Shealtiel (d. 1891) promoted the organization of the society Hallel vezimra, who was the Saloniki counterpart to the Maftirim of Edirne and Istanbul (see Seroussi 1998).

According to Recanati, each Sabbath's prayer in Saloniki used to be performed according to a different Turkish makam. In addition, special programs of paraliturgical gatherings on Sabbath afternoons opened with the text Shime'u malakhim (as the meetings of the Maftirim in Turkey did), and continued with a choral peşrev conducted by the leading singer, a classic beste and kâr, a more joyful semai and nakş, and a closing Qaddish performed as a taksim by the leader singer and called Qaddish cantado (Spanish for "sung Qaddish"), also following the Maftirim model.

The singing societies of Saloniki published the texts of the new compositions produced by their members. A specimen of one such publication is a fasıl in makam Nihavend by the composer Zadiq Nehemia Gershon with texts by Yaacov Cohen and Barukh ben Yaacov, premiered at a meeting of Hallel vezimra in the synagogue Beit Shaul in March 1918. The program for this event included a fasıl in five movements (peşrev, beste, kâr, nakş, and semai), the Greek national hymn, a speech by a rabbinical authority, a conference on a secular topic, and Hatikva, the hymn of the Zionist movement. Thus, sacred poetry and music served as a framework for the public display of religious, ethnic, and national ideals. Also in this respect, the Saloniki society was similar to the Turkish Maftirim.

Relations of the SHIBA/Maftirim tradition to non-Jewish Ottoman music

A recurrent theme in the development of the Jewish school of Ottoman classic music from its inception is, as we have seen, the close relations of Jewish musicians to the Ottoman court and the Mevlevi tarikat. Even musicians whose activities were limited to the synagogue were in one way or another exposed to the non-Jewish soundscape.

We have already mentioned Najara's awareness of Sufi Turkish poetry and Avtaliyon's close contacts with the Mevlevi tekke in Edirne. These connections are further testified by mentions in Hebrew manuscripts of musical compositions by court and Mevlevi composers from the late 17th to the early 18th centuries. The names of specific pieces by Ottoman composers, many of which appear in the manuscript collections by Ali Ufqi and Prince Cantemir, are mentioned in these Hebrew manuscripts as musical references for the singing of piyyutim.

Two Hebrew mecmuas (Ms. 1214 of the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York and Ms. Heb. 3395 of the Strasbourg Municipal Library) are particularly rich in the number of non-Jewish Ottoman compositions mentioned in them. Just as an example, the pešrev in makam Bestenigar (Besteni gyar in Hebrew sources), usul berefšan by Cantemir (Cantemir 1992, no. 281) is mentioned as the music used by Aharon Hamon for one of his Hebrew compositions. Other Ottoman composers, besides Cantemir and Ali Ufqi, whose compositions are mentioned in Hebrew manuscripts are Mehmed Kasım (d. ca. 1730), Osman Dede (1652-1730), Baba Zeytun, Aga Mumin, miskali Şolakzade (d. 1658), the Greek tamburi Angelos; Selim-zade Aga, Aga Reza and Husni Hoca. Pieces of this type appear in SHIBA, such as the peşrev Feriade Yusuf (p. 104) by Aharon Alidi and the peşrev Sultan zade set to a text by Najara (p. 96). Sometimes the name of the non-Jewish Ottoman composer is not mentioned, as in the case of the famous peşrev in makam Segah by Yusuf Paşa set to the piyyut by Najara "Yeheme levavi" (a recording of this piece by the late Samuel Benaroya can be heard in the CD Ottoman Hebrew Sacred Songs)

The close relation of Jewish Ottoman musicians to the Mevlevi tarikat continued well into the 20th century. Testimonies of these ties were reported by cantors such as Moshe Vital, originally from Magnesia and later active in Izmir, Rhodes and Jerusalem. He used to attend in his youth (ca. 1920), as did other Jewish cantors in Turkey, the Mevlevi gatherings on Friday afternoons to learn melodies for the synagogue (see Vital).

Rabbinical attitudes to the SHIBA/Maftirim musical tradition

he growing presence of learned music based on the makam tradition in the religious services of the Ottoman Jews was not accepted without any opposition. Some rabbinical sources offer us a glimpse of such negative attitudes to makam-based music.

Rabbi Eliyahu Hacohen, in his influential morality compendium Sefer shevet musar (Constantinopla 1712, fol. 77v), warns against the "hazzanim (cantors) who engage in sinful behavior by wasting their time with melodies, adapting their voices to those of the lower class masses, saying tir tir tir many times and i-o for an hour and bini bini bino, each one submerged in his dreams". Notice the association that Rabbi Eliyahu Hacohen makes with music and the lower classes, as if this art was a distraction for the ignorant masses that cannot understand the liturgical texts.

In his Zobeah torah (Costandina [Constantinople] 1732/3, fol. 7v), Rabbi Mordekhai Atzban explicitly complains against synagogue cantors who are fully engaged in the makamlar and pay less attention to religious piety: "a calamity expanded among those who are accustomed to wake up early in the morning to expand the number of supplications and the poems of atonement during the month of Elul… and with their drowsy eyelids they sing poems with different melodies and prepare for each day what they are going to sing the next day… long makams. The cantors will not achieve fame if they think that this is their responsibility, even if they see that their fame grows in the eyes of those passionate for songs and melodies… and they have no shame in inventing a new melody for each morning".

Rabbi Haim ben Yaacov Palache from Izmir, one of the most respected rabbinical authorities in 19th century Turkey, also shows a hostile attitude to makam oriented music, especially in the liturgy. In his Kaf ha-hayyim (Saloniki 1859/1860, chapter 13, 6) he says: "Who will allow and warn poets and singers [payytanim ve-meshorerim] that they should not sing the qaddish and the qeddushah [among the most important liturgical texts] in the manner of the gentiles with makam [because] it is known that [singing in makam] leads [the singer] to evil contemplations".

Musical transcriptions of the Maftirim/SHIBHA repertoire

Few musical notations of makam Hebrew compositions from the Maftirim/SHIBA repertoire in the old Turkish system of Western notation were published until now by scholars and by Jewish Turkish musicians. The earliest publications date from around 1925, when the renowned singer Isaac Algazi from Izmir printed in Istanbul two Hebrew fasıls: 1) Makam Hüsseyni deriving from the SHIBA repertoire and including pieces by Avtaliyon; 2) Fasil de Bestinigar, consisting of Algazi's own compositions (a rare autographed copy of this fasıl that belonged to Moshe Cordova is in possession of Rabbi Refael Elnadav in Brooklyn. I thank Rabbi Elnadav for preparing for me a copy of this precious document).

Other scattered, poor musical transcriptions of sacred Hebrew Ottoman songs were printed as illustrations to books and articles. Theodor Fuchs published in Zagreb in 1936/7 three songs in the makam style, two by Israel Najara (Shaday el mah norah and Matai tishlah yah el) and one by Rabbi "Avdalim" (most probably Avtaliyon), the last one without text underlay. Two other songs by Najara, also transcribed without text underlay by Yossef Fleischman of Vienna from the singer Rabbi Eleazar ben Nessim of Ruschuk (Bulgaria), are appended to one of Rozanes' volumes (Rozanes 1938).

However, the vast majority of sacred Hebrew Ottoman songs in musical notation still remain in rare manuscripts. Four main collections of music manuscripts are now extant, the fruit of our research for the past twenty years: The Algazi collection, the Cordova/Elnadav collection, the Uzziel collection and the Behar collection.The personal library of Isaac Algazi, found in Montevideo (Uruguay), where Algazi spent the last fifteen years of his life, included several priceless music manuscripts. They contain unpublished compositions by the most distinguished Jewish composers from Izmir, Abraham Ariyas, Santo Şikiar, and his father Salomon Algazi. The collection also includes compositions by his colleague in Istanbul, Moshe Cordova and by other anonymous composers. These compositions were apparently prepared for publication in Istanbul after Algazi's arrival to the city. This project never materialized.

The Cordova/Elnadav collection was discovered very recently in the possession of Cordova's nephew in Israel, Mr. Nissan Galili. It was supplemented by precious materials in possession of Rabbi Refael Elnadav of Brooklyn, New York, Moshe Cordova's most outstanding disciple in Israel. Our research has shown that the Algazi and Cordova collections complement each other. Many pieces are written by the same music handwriting. We assume that upon leaving Istanbul almost in the same year (1932/3), Algazi and Cordova split the musical scores in possession of the Maftirim society and took them to their new places of settlement, Montevideo and Tel Aviv respectively. Another substantial section of this collection includes Elnadav's own transcriptions of the legacy of Moshe Cordova.

The Uzziel collection was in the hands of the family of the great cantor from Saloniki Simon Uzziel from Tel Aviv. It consists of several items related to the repertoire of the Hallel vezimra society in Saloniki transcribed by Uzziel and dating from the 1930s and 1940s. It also includes copies of few pieces from the Maftirim repertoire transcribed by Refael Elnadav, a close associate of Uzziel in Tel Aviv.

The David Behar collection is of a later period and preserves the repertoire of the Maftirim in Istanbul that was still alive in the memory of the very few singers who remained in Istanbul, such as Hazzan Izak Machorro and Hazzan David Sevi. Kanuni David Behar is a conservatory trained expert in Turkish classical music and therefore his comprehensive musical transcriptions are of primary importance for the performance of this repertoire today.

The living legacy of the SHIBA/Maftirim tradition

During a short period in the 1920s, the three hundred year old Maftirim tradition of Edirne flourished for the last time. A rare confluence of the best singers from most of the major cities of the former Ottoman Empire created the soil for this short lived renaissance. At first the Jewish immigrants from Edirne met in a private house in Sirkeci. In 1926/7 they started to meet at the Kneset Yisrael synagogue in Şişhane under the leadership of Rabbi Behor Papo. Towering figures, who immigrated to Istanbul from other cities, such as the composer Moshe Cordova, the singer/composer Isaac Algazi, and cantor Nessim Sevilla, joined this group.

The motivation of Sephardi intellectuals, such as Isaac Eliyahu Navon, who perceived the tremendous historical value of this musical tradition, provided further impetus for this renaissance. SHIBA is but one of the expressions of this renewed interest. But one cannot explain the phenomenon of the Maftirim/SHIBA as a simple continuation of older religious practices. The impact of current events such as WWI, the final disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and the influx of contemporary Jewish movements such as Zionism and the emancipation from religion are reflected in the literary output of the Maftirim in Istanbul of the 1920s. We find, for example, a march about the suffering of the war composed by Moshe Cordova to words by Isaac Eliyahu Navon (p. 87). Other modern, non-religious poems by Isaac Eliyahu Navon are included, such as a song praising the Baron Hirsch and his wife Clara cherishing their philanthropic support for the Bikur Holim hospital in Istanbul (p. 66). The Zionist anthem Hatiqva (p. 89) is included in SHIBA as well, as an expression of the political orientation of the Maftirim leaders.

However, the social and economical difficulties and political pressures created by the post-WWI transition from the old Ottoman Empire to the new Republic forced most of the Jews from the former Ottoman lands to immigrate to Western Europe, the Americas or Israel. Cordova, Algazi, the young Samuel Benaroya (see below) and many others left during the short period of 1932-1935.

A small group of dedicated Jewish singers remained in Istanbul and continued to gather in the 1940s at the Ahrida synagogue in Balat under the leadership of Nessim Cohen.

SHIBA was intended for the professional performers who took part in the gatherings of the Maftirim in Istanbul during its short heyday. It is arranged in chapters, each one based on a single makam. Forty makams are mentioned in this collection: Rast, Rehavi, Yegyah, Dugyah, Segyah, Chergyah, Penchgyah, Hüseyni, Acem, Acem Aşiran, Muhayyer, Nihavend, Isfahan, Neva, Saba, Hicaz, Şehnaz, Hüzzam, Ferahnak, Nigris, Bayati, Evic, Uşşak, Tahir, Araban, Sazgyar, Suzinak, Mustar, Buselik, Buselik Aşiran, Bistiniar, Nühüft, Arisbar, Neşabur, Uzzal, Hisar. Three fasıls composed and compiled by Isaac Algazi from Izmir in makamlar Suzidil, Bestenigar and Şevk‑Efza are appended to the main collection of SHIBA (pp. 241-247). This impressive diversification of the makam repertoire, which includes rare, compound makams, is a sign of the development of the musical art among the Ottoman Jews since Najara's days. Following a long standing tradition, certain makams are associated with Jewish holidays, such as Saba for Purim and Uşşak for Hanukah. The usul of most songs is also written down. Within each chapter the poems are ordered by musical genres as in the Turkish fasıl. The genres mentioned are: peşrev, kâr, beste, ağır semai, yürük semai, and şarkı. For each Sabbath the performers selected a piece from each genre in order to compose a suite in one makam.

This precious collection reflects three hundred years of musical creativity among the Turkish Jews, specifically among those involved with the "Portugal" synagogue choir of Edirne ‑‑ the Maftirim. Its poetry focuses on messianic redemption and the restoration of the Temple in Jerusalem, topics which were also treated intensively by Najara and his followers. In more modern periods the poetry of the Maftirim started to reflect the concerns of the contemporary Jewish society.

In the late 1970s, when I began to be interested in the SHIBA repertoire, hardly any document was available. Few Turkish Jewish singers in Israel who had participated in the Maftirim performances in Istanbul as youngsters had recollections of this repertoire. The interest of scholars on this repertoire was almost nil. Therefore this musical tradition was considered, for all practical purposes, extinct.

Several events, however, dramatically reversed this situation. In 1987 the Algazi collection was brought to Israel and in 1989 I heard for the first time the voice of the Reverend Samuel Benaroya of blessed memory. Benaroya was hazzan at the Bikur Holim Sephardi community in Seattle, where he settled in the early 1950s after leaving Turkey in 1935 and spending the WWII period in Switzerland. Benaroya was the last member of the famous lineage of poets and singers. He was educated in Edirne and moved to Istanbul as a child. There as a teenager in the 1920s he attended the Maftirim gatherings and was an apprentice, sitting next to the great masters of the period, Nissim Sevilla, Moshe Cordova and Isaac Algazi. For this reason, Benaroya's legacy was of extreme value in the preservation of the SHIBA/Maftirim repertoire. During the last decade of Benaroya's life, numerous pieces sung by him were recorded, even though his voice was failing.

In 1995 I learned about the musical transcriptions by Kanuni David Behar and received a copy of this precious collection. The exact musical transcriptions of David Behar, who is approximately fifteen years younger than Benaroya, are corroborated by the performances of the same pieces by Benaroya.

The precious recordings included in these CDs are a living testimony for one of the most venerable Jewish musical traditions and owe much to the efforts of David Behar and his associates. They bear witness to the unique cultural crossroads that the Ottoman Empire created.