Monday, September 24, 2012

A Yom Kippur Special: Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot and Violinist Itzhak Perlman


At sundown on Tuesday evening, Jews all over the world will gather at their synagogues to attend the start of Yom Kippur services, beginning with the singing of Kol Nidrei. As we pointed out in a blog post two years ago, Kol Nidrei is a medieval annulment of vows set to a melody composed as Opus 47 for cello and orchestra by a German protestant named Max Bruch in 1881.

There are almost as many recordings of Kol Nidrei as there are cantors to sing it. This year, lovers of cantorial music were given a special treat because the prayer is included in a new CD by Cantor Yitzchak Meir Helfgot and master violinist Itzhak Perlman titled Eternal Echoes: Songs and Dances for the Soul.

We found the Kol Nidrei cut from the CD on YouTube, along with a short video of Perlman and Helfgot preparing for the 2011 concert at which the CD was recorded. Both videos appear below. We hope they enrich your Yom Kippur experience.

We will be attending Yom Kippur services in Jerusalem this week, so there will be no posts on Tuesday and Wednesday. We'll be back on Thursday with our usual Jewish Humor Central mix, with an emphasis on the holiday of Sukkot, which starts next Sunday evening.

We wish all of our readers a G'mar Chatima Tova, a wish that even the buses in Jerusalem are carrying this week.

(A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS:  THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS.  YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.)




3 comments:

  1. Your blog is wonderful just the way it is -- the right mix of humor, pathos, information and culture.
    Happy New Year and thank you.

    ReplyDelete
  2. The Pearlman-Helfgot video is outstanding.
    Many thanks

    ReplyDelete
  3. Max Bruch wrote an arrangement of Kol Nidre. He didn't compose the melody -- the melody (or more likely, melodies that were later stitched together into one) arose between the 12th and 15th century in the Germanic regions of Europe. We know the text predates Rav Amram (9th century) because he is familiar with it and, like many early rabbis, was highly critical of it. Other than that, we really don't know for certain when, where, or even why the text was originally composed, since it doesn't actually conform to any formula for annulling vows that halacha would accept. That being said, this is a beautiful rendition.
    Rabbi Daniel Swartz -- Temple Hesed of Scranton

    ReplyDelete