At a concert commemorating 700 years of the Lublin Jewish Community, the Lublin Philharmonic joins forces with Maestro Eli Jaffe and Cantor Yaakov (Yanky) Lemmer. The festival was conceived by a group of Jews formerly from Lublin led by Yossi Dakar and this concert was produced by Yossi Notkowitz of Hallelujah Productions. The text from the Yom Kippur Liturgy depicts the frailty of our physical existence and begs meritorious forgiveness through sincere repentance.

chazzanut from an unexpected source...

kol isha warning:

in two weeks, on "Shabbos Nachamu", in honor of Tu b'Av, the city of Rishon Letzion will be putting on its now annual "Shabbat Chazzanut and Piyut" in the Heichal Hatarbut (cultural center) of the city.

Entry to the davening is free of charge. Davening will begin on Shabbos morning at 8:30am, to be lead by Shlomo Glick and Yaniv Ben Mashiach,, and conducted by Dr. Mordechai Sobol. There will be a kidudsh at 11am, followed by Mussaf at 11:20am.

As you can see at the bottom of the flyer, it even includes the little fact of not involving any chilul shabbat.




Rabbonim in Rishon Letzion have called for the cancellation of the Shabbat Chazzanut. They claim that it will definitely involve and  cause chilul shabbos, and should therefore be canceled to prevent that. They think it is inappropriate to hold this event in the same place that during the year hosts missionary events and other events that cause chilul shabbos.

Rav Shmuel Toledano, rav of the Abramovitz neighborhood, says he participated last year but later discovered that the event did involve chilul shabbos, and therefore will not be participating this year.

It seems that despite assurances, in previous years, that workers would be non-Jews, they actually had Jews doing some of the work. The chilul shabbos included driving to the location, turning on and off alarms, electricity, clocking in and out as employees, setting air conditioners, etc.
source: Kikar

A "Shabbat Chazzanut" event should definitely not involve chilul shabbos. It is not worth hosting such an event if it means Shabbos is being desecrated in the process. It is one thing to say the water park is open, the movie theater is open, on Shabbos, and there is nothign we can do about it. It is another thing to host an event that is meant to involve dvarim she'bkdusha and accomplish it via chilul shabbos. And the religious community desecrating Shabbos to have its own events weakens it in the efforts against others desecrating Shabbos.

That being said, I see no reason why the event must include chilul shabbos. All the issues mentioned above seem easy to resolve. In Bet Shemesh, in the RBS A neighborhood, there is an annual Shabbat Chazzanut that takes place in the Matnas and Ulam Sport - community center and in the Sport Center - and no chilul shabbos is involved, and that even includes Friday night services (rather than just daytime services as in Rishon Letzion). Lights can be set in advance, as can air conditioners. In the 21st century we even have something known as "shabbos clocks" that can help with that and waste less electricity. Any city employees needed can be told not to clock in to work or out, and non-Jewish workers should be hired if necessary. Alternatively, don't use city employees at all. In Bet Shemesh they did not. Let the gabboim of the participating shuls get together and make the arrangements and find volunteers (or even pay people) to set up the chairs and the kiddush.

It is a shame to have to cancel such an event because they think they cannot do it without chilul shabbos, but if they are too pig-headed to find the easy solutions to the issues, then it should be canceled.

I would like to hear similar calls to cancel the big hilulas in Meron or elsewhere when Lag B'Omer falls out on Shabbos or Motzei Shabbat and that causes chilul shabbos on a much larger scale.

this is a great chazzanut choir and they are performing at the Waldorf Astoria in Jerusalem on Pesach Chol Hamoed. They recently organized a Shabbat Chazzanut in RBS on Shabbat Shira, and then recently were guests of the Great Synagogue in Jerusalem for a Shabbos there...

I was there. it was a great concert.

chazzanus alert :-)

Hundreds of people, men, woman and children attended at congregation Anshey Sefard for a stirring and moving prayer service, last evening July 14, 2014 in Borough Park Brooklyn.

The event was organized in response to the escalation of the fighting in Israel and the dangerous predicament that the country finds itself in.

Cantors from across the spectrum lead prayers accompanied by a choir.

enjoy!

Jerusalem of Gold

sefira alert, though I consider this "tefilla" rather than "music"

this was at a chazzanut concert recently held in honor of the great chazzan Moshe Stern

By the way, the mens choir supporting Helfgot is from RBS...

wow! he is young but has a powerful voice and a lot of confidence!

Researchers and students of the American Jewish experience often examine the community's music as a way of expressing the historical development of the community. The first Jews in North America arrived in the 1600's, refugees whose families had fled the Spanish Inquisition to Holland and then South America and then moved north to escape as the Spanish and Portuguese brought the Inquisition to the South America continent.

The early American Jewish community was identified as Sephardic and until the 1800's almost all of the synagogues and Jewish communal traditions followed Sephardic traditions. By the mid-1800's, German Jews began to immigrate to America and brought their own customs. The wave of Jewish immigration continued in the late 1800's and early 1900's with a influx of Eastern European Jewry that was estimated to include almost a million Jews.

Among the wave of European Jewish immigration were some of the greatest hazzans -- cantors -- of the day. Singing during worship can be traced back to Temple times and continued well into the Middle Ages but hazzanut began to come into its own in 19th century Europe. During this time it became customary for hazzans to chant the services, oftentimes in Hassidic courts or before the great rabbis of the era.

The "Golden Age" of hazzanut in American is generally agreed to have peaked in the early 20th century when cantors such as Yossele Rosenblatt, Gershon Sirota, Zaval Kwartin, David Roitman and Yankev Shmuel Maragowski performed in synagogues and Jewish community centers as well as in American cultural venues before the general American public.  The Holocaust took a tremendous toll on the world of Ashkanazi hazzanut as the traditional centers where Ashkanazi hazzanim were trained had been destroyed. However, a new generation of American hazzanim has contributed to the resurgence of the craft.

One of today's most prolific and talented hazzanim is Benzion Miller who is favored by many Hassidic rebbes in America and in Israel. Benzion Miller was born in December 1947 in a DP Camp in Fernwald, Germany.  His family immigrated to America and he began singing when he was five years old, often accompanying his well-known father, Cantor Reb Aaron Daniel Miller, at public gatherings, such as Bar Mitzvahs, "Melave Malka" gatherings, and other Jewish functions. Miller studied music theory and voice production in Montreal with some of North America's foremost cantors and he served as the head soloist in the Yeshiva Choir. He was also invited to sing in many solo performances.

When Miller was 18 years old he accepted the position as Cantor at the Hillside Jewish Center in Hillside, NJ. Since that time he has filled positions in the Bronx, Montreal and in Toronto. He presently serves as full-time "shaliach tzibur" at the prestigious Beth-El Congregation of Borough Park/Young Israel Beth-El of Borough Park where he also functions as a mohel and as a shochet.

Miller considers himself a follower of the Bobover Rebbe. He attended the Bobover Yeshiva in Brooklyn, NY and the Bobover Yeshiva Kedushat Zion in Bat Yam, Israel and often performs for the Bobover Rebbe. He is recognized as one of the modern era's foremost interpreters of Liturgical Music and is equally at home in Operatic Repertoire and Jewish and Chassidic Folk Music. He has appeared with the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, the Rishon L'Tzion Symphony, the Haifa Symphony, the Jerusalem Symphony  and with members of the London Symphony. Following the fall of communism in Eastern Europe Miller began to appear before Eastern European audiences including in Romania, Russia, Poland and Hungry, where he sang liturgical, Chassidic and Yiddish music with the Budapest State Opera Orchestra.

In November 1998 Miller recorded some of his best-known pieces for the Lowell Milken Archive, an archive of American Jewish music, with the Barcelona National Symphony Orchestra.