In Memory of R’ David Bouzaglo, ZT”L.
13 July 2015
Sephardi Ideas Monthly is a continuing series of essays from the rich, multi-dimensional world of Sephardi thought that is delivered to your inbox on the second Monday of every month.
This month we continue our journey into the world of piyyut. In May, our feature article, Basmat Hazan Arnoff’s “The Piyyut is Jewish Soul Music,” offered an introduction into Israel’s popular piyyut revival. Last month’s “Jazz, Piyyut, and Jewish Identity” was a music-infused discussion between Omer Avital, a world-class jazz musician and master of classical Arabic music, and Aryeh Tepper, ASF’s Director of Publications and Online Educational Programming.
Our feature for July is an extended interview with one of the leading lights of the contemporary piyyut movement, Hebrew University Professor of Philosophy Meir Buzaglo.
Professor Meir Buzaglo
The son of the great 20th century Moroccan-Jewish payytan, R’ David Bouzaglo, Prof. Bouzaglo has written extensively about the import and impact of piyyut and actively promotes Israel’s piyyut revival.
This interview with Prof. Bouzaglo touches on a variety of events and topics, from R’ David Bouzaglo’s response to the Yom Kippur war—“There are some people who experience what the Jewish people experience in their very bones and with unbounded intensity. When my father heard that war had broken out on that day, he simply could not continue singing”— to the sobriety of R’ Buzaglo’ s universalism—“My father had two dimensions: he called the Arabs ‘our brothers,’ but on the other hand argued that we must fight our enemies.”
Prof. Bouzaglo also treats the potentially transformative power of piyyut. He understands that introducing an artistic genre into Israel’s public sphere that’s often animated by a distinctly Middle Eastern character does more than tweak the public’s taste in entertainment: “Plato says: ‘When modes of music change, the laws of the state always change with them.’ The reason is that music is the soul of the nation. Clothes and food might be the outward signs of culture, but a nation’s soul is in its music.”
In the present case, piyyut not only influences Israel’s soul by artistically celebrating the Middle Eastern dimension of Jewish culture and, as such, viscerally emphasizing Israel’s rootedness in the region, it also connects the Jewish people to particular dimensions of Israel’s national character: Piyyut “is a key to understanding the Hebrew language, its nuances and layers. It is a key to understanding Jewish history and to understanding people’s connection with (the land of) Israel.”
Piyyut belongs to the Jewish people as a whole, Sephardi and Ashkenazi alike, and this month Sephardi Ideas Monthly invites you to explore the national treasures of piyyut through an enlightening interview with one of the leaders of Israel’s piyyut revival, Prof. Meir Bouzaglo.
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