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Founded in 1982 and directed until 1999 by musicologist Dr. Avner Bahat,  and till now by Yuval Shaked , the Feher Jewish Music Center of Beth Hatefutsoth, the Museum of the Jewish Diaspora in Tel Aviv, Israel, is engaged in the preservation, recording, and promotion of Jewish music, both among the Museum’s visitors and the general public.

The center maintains a collection of some 7,000 recordings of Jewish music – traditional songs, tunes and prayers, and musical compositions – as well as a computerized data bank containing some 2,600 bilingual (Hebrew and English) entries on Jewish musicians and poets, and approximately 2,600 registrations of various texts set to music.

Visitors to the Center may personalize their visit by requesting recordings at individual listening booths, each equipped with a touch-screen monitor. They can browse through the database of biographies; find any single piece of music by its title, opening words, textual source, composer and writer, ethnic or religious tradition, geographical origin, language, period, content, performer, and more; listen to music pieces or view films featuring musical performances, traditions and musicians.

Traditional pieces of music in the collection fall in the following three categories:
 Liturgical songs Synagogal songs in Hebrew and Aramaic; Torah readings and prayers
Paraliturgical songs Sacred songs in Hebrew sung at home as part of the yearly cycle – the Sabbath and festivals, or the life cycle – circumcision, wedding, death

· Everyday songs Usually sung by women, some in Hebrew, though most are in the vernacular languages spoken by Jews throughout the Diaspora – Yiddish, Judeo-Espagnol, Arabic, Geez, Juhuri and many local dialects

 All information and recordings are accessible to the Museum’s visitors, at the listening center, located in the Culture Section of the permanent exhibition. The database will in future be accessible on the internet.

The Feher Jewish Music Center hosts concerts and produces recordings. To date, it has released 20 CDs and cassette recordings covering the vast scope of Jewish music: traditional singing of the Jews of Morocco, Yemen, Bombay, Florence and Spain; the music of communities that vanished in the Holocaust – Koenigsberg, Danzig and Berlin; compositions in Hasidic style by Joachim Stutschewsky and others; choral music based on Jewish traditional themes by Yehezkel Braun and others; as well as works by Jewish composers, among them Bloch, Copland, Glanzberg and Partos.

Contact Informatrion :

Yuval Shaked

Feher Jewish Music Center, Beth Hatefutsoth,

POB 39359 Tel Aviv 61392 Israel

Tel. +972-3-6406886

Fax. +972-3-6405727

e-mail : bhjewmus@post.tau.ac.il  

Web: www.bh.org.il 

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