Wednesday, March 4, 2015

In the Jewish Tradition

In the book I chose for my research project, there are a lot of explanations to many important Jewish holidays.  I found this book to be quite helpful because it had specific prayers that went with specific holidays as well as some informative facts about the history of why we celebrate certain holidays. The prayers in the book were transliterated and then translated so they were easier to understand. Along with history, prayers, holiday descriptions, and countless Jewish recipes, this book showed certain significant symbols like the shofar, that are very sacred to the Jewish people.  A shofar is preferably made of a rams horn and makes distinctive sounds during certain holidays. This book was great because it gave me some specific details about multiple different topics that I could have for my research paper.
After reading my first book for my research paper, I decided that I really want to look specifically into the music of Jewish prayer.  This book did not have specifics on that topic, but it gave a nice starting point for my second book to read.  I still want to keep some of the information about the history and meaning of the prayers, but my main focus is going to be about music. In the back of this book, there were many prayers with the tunes and lyrics.  I found this the most fascinating because I wanted to see if I recognized any of the tunes.

2 comments:

  1. Chelsea,

    I have to say that I've always found the topic of Judaism fascinating. Being one of the oldest monotheistic religions alive, it certainly retains a lot of creditability. I'm interested in knowing how you will interpret the tunes and lyrics in your research in relations to the humanities. I've been involved with musical instruments, particularly the piano and am curious at what instruments you'll mention, as -- based off of my assumption -- some will not noticeably recognizable like, for example, the piano or violin. I'm also interested as to how you'll present the lyrics and the rhythm and rhyme possibly associated with them. I'm very curious and excited as to how your research will evolve as you focus more on your topic. Good luck with it!

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  2. Chelsea, this sounds like a really interesting topic. I was wondering if there are differences in the different sectors of Judaism. Are you going to consult a rabbi or cantar for additional research? I have always found Jewish prayer to be beautiful and it has been a very important part of Judaism for me so I cannot wait to read your pape. Good luck!

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