Every year, around Chanukah, our family sits at the Shabbat table and sings nearly every song from Tim Rice and Andrew Llyod Weber’s Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat. If I get particularly lucky, sometimes in shul the chazzan will lead kedusha to a tune of Close Every Door to Me. The perfect (Gentile) tune to a perfect (Jewish) prayer. Which brings us to this week’s Torah reading, where we learn of the prohibition of, well, just what I described.
דברים 12:31
הִשָּׁמֶר לְךָ פֶּן־תִּנָּקֵשׁ אַחֲרֵיהֶם אַחֲרֵי הִשָּׁמְדָם מִפָּנֶיךָ וּפֶן־תִּדְרֹשׁ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם לֵאמֹר אֵיכָה יַעַבְדוּ הַגּוֹיִם הָאֵלֶּה אֶת־אֱלֹהֵיהֶם וְאֶעֱשֶׂה־כֵּן גַּם־אָנִי׃
לֹא־תַעֲשֶׂה כֵן לַיהֹוָה אֱלֹהֶיךָ כִּי כל־תּוֹעֲבַת יְהֹוָה אֲשֶׁר שָׂנֵא עָשׂוּ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם כִּי גַם אֶת־בְּנֵיהֶם וְאֶת־בְּנֹתֵיהֶם יִשְׂרְפוּ בָאֵשׁ לֵאלֹהֵיהֶם׃
ּBeware of being lured into their ways after they have been wiped out before you! Do not inquire about their gods, saying, “How did those nations worship their gods? I too will follow those practices.” You shall not act thus toward the Lord your God, for they perform for their gods every abhorrent act that the Lord detests; they even offer up their sons and daughters in fire to their gods.
Commenting on this verse, the thirteenth-century Chezekiah bar Manoah, known as the Chizkuni wrote
אשר שנא אפילו אתה עובד הקב’ה באותה עבודה שהם עובדים את אלהיהם אתה מכעיסו
אשר שנא– “which He hates;” Even if you were to serve God with the same service that they [idol-worshippers] serve their gods, this is repulsive
The suggestion here is that even with the best of intentions, the Jewish People should not emulate the religious services of those outside of their own faith. This week on Talmudology on the Parsha we will take a brief look at the evolution of this prohibition, and the ways in which it has been ignored over the centuries.
The Permissive Bach
Let’s begin with Rabbi Yoel Sirkus (1561-1640), one of the most important poskim of the 16th-17th centuries, who is better known by the the acronym of one of his works, the Bayit Chadach - Bach (like the composer). He was asked whether it was permitted to borrow a Church tune for a Synagogue service. Yes, it was, he wrote, but only if the tune was not uniquely used in a non-Jewish religious service. אבל אם אינם מיוחדים נראה דאין בזה אוסיר -”but if it is not only used by them, there appears to be no prohibition.”
שו׳ת הב׳ח ישנות ס׳קכז אות ה׳
The Prohibitive Ma’aseh Roke’ach
Rabbi Mas’od Chai Roke’ach (b. 1690) took a completely opposite view In a very lengthy responsum, he rejected the Bach as a “lone opinion” that was not to be relied upon:
The conclusion of this matter is that I see no reason for any shaliach tzibbur [prayer leader] to do this. Rather they should use the tunes that are used by all of Israel, each to their own dialect, Sephardim, Ashkenazim, and Italian Jews. For all of these are the words of the living God…
(Fun facts about Rabbi Mas’od: He was born in Izmir, Turkey in 1690 and settled in Israel in 1749. He then spent time in North Africa raising funds for the yishuv, after which he was appointed the Chief Rabbi of Tripoli, as in Libya. He died in 1768.)
The Normative Halakha (at least for Ashkenazim)
In the section in the Shulchan Aruch about “Who is Permitted to Lead Services (דין מי הראוי לירד לפני התיבה) the Polish decisor Rabbi Moshe Isserlis, known as the Rema, wrote the following:
וש"צ המנבל פיו או שמרנן להבשירי הנכרים מוחין בידו שלא לעשות כן ואם אינו שומע מעבירין אותו
The shaliach tzibbur [prayer-leader] who fouls his mouth (ie. uses foul language) or sings non-Jewish songs, we warn him not to do this, and if he does not listen, we remove him
The seventeenth-century Polish rabbi Zechariah Mendel ben Aryeh Leib of Krakov wrote the Be’er Heitev, a halakhic commentary on the Shulchan Aruch. In his note to Orach Chaim 53:25 we find his ruling that this prohibition is to be thought of as normative:
בשירי העכו"ם. ר"ל בניגון שמנגן בו לע"א מ"א בשם ת"ה. וב"ח בתשובה ס"ס קכ"ז כ' דוקא ניגון שמיוחד בבית ע"ז.
The Baal Shem Tov and His Gentile Tunes
In his highly entertaining work Otzar Nifla’os Hatorah, Ze’ev Zickerman cites the story of the founder of Hasidism, the Baal Shem Tov, who was wont to appropriate non-Jewish tunes which “he elevated into holiness, and a number of these tunes are now widely sung among Jews.” As an example he cites the song גלות – Golus [Exile] which according to legend was composed by Rabbi Yitchak Isaac Taub of Kalov (1751-1821). He heard it being sung by a young shepherd “and he bought the tune from the shepherd and added his own words גלות גלות, ווי גרויס ביסטו - “Oh, exile, exile, how vast you are!”” (You can hear a version here, sung from his armchair by Moshe Laufer, and here is the original Hungarian tune Erdo erdo on which it was based.)
Zickerman also cites the current Rebbe of the hasidic Munkács dynasty, Moshe Leib Rabinovich who testified that his grandfather, Chaim Elazar Spira (1868 –1937) the Rebbe of (the currently Ukrainian town of) Munkács, would sing the davening on Yomim Nora’im to tunes that were based on the military songs of the Hungarian army.
“I, too, used non-Jewish melodies in my duties as a shliach tzibbur in my shul in XX, NJ, especially on Simchat Torah. Once, I used to the tune to Amazing Grace for Kedusha of Shacharit (try it... it fits perfectly). My Rav came up to me afterwards and told me he never heard such a beautiful Kedusha in his life. Then someone told him the origin of the tune.... after shul he came up to me and said, “As beautiful as it was, don’t you ever do that again!”. It was beautiful, and still is....”
The State of Contemporary Jewish Music
It doesn’t take long to find “traditional” Jewish tunes that are in fact taken from non-Jewish melodies. Consider, for example, this Yiddish song which I am sure you will recognize. Jewish? Nope. It the beautiful Greek song Misirlou, which was popularized outside the Greek-Armenian community by Dick Dale’s 1962 unforgettable rock version. (And you can learn more about the history of this song, and hear Jewish versions at this NPR piece from 2006.)
“A few years ago I gave a class on Zmirot and one of them was Yah Ribon by Israel Najara. He was a popular Hazan and teacher but did not escape controversy. ...
One thing that made Najara controversial was the fact that he was concerned that the youth of Turkey were listening to popular Turkish and Greek songs instead of Jewish ones. So he wrote Hebrew words to these popular songs, which made some people accuse him of abetting what he was claiming to address...
Of course by the time he wrote Yah Ribon nobody was speaking Aramaic, but I guess he wanted it to sound traditional. ”
Ghengis Kahn and Mordechai ben David
But perhaps the most surprising and egregious example of Jews using a non-Jewish tune is the Yiddish song Yidden sung by Mordechai ben David. Now of course this is a song to be sung at weddings and bar-mitzvahs, and it is not part of Jewish liturgy. As such, perhaps it falls outside of the prohibition that originates in this week’s parsha. But it is an example of how our tunes continue to be influenced by the wider culture that surrounds us. Here is Mordechai ben David, back in 1989 on a Chabad Telethon:
And here, for your delight, is the original, from where MbD either purchased or stole the tune. It is called Dschinghis Khan, and was performed by a German pop group of the same name. Rather remarkably, they were Germany’s official entry to the 1979 Eurovision Song Contest, which means that what you are about to see was the best that country had to offer. Be warned. There are several bare-chested men in this performance, one of whom has peyot and is wearing what appears to be a plastic Barbie crown. There is also much hoo-ing and haa-ing. Do not try this at home. Or in shul.
