Event Details

The British Friends of the Hebrew University in partnership with the Institute of Jewish Studies, University College London

Invites you to a special lecture with:

Professor Edwin Seroussi

Emanuel Alexandre Professor Emeritus of Musicology and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Jewish Music Research Centre both at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A Spark of King David: Rabbi Israel Najara's Musical Poetry

Born to a Sephardi family in the Galilean city of Safed, Israel of Najara (ca. 1555-1625) spent much of his life in Syria and Gaza, where he worked as both a scribe and a rabbi and built a reputation as a talmudic and biblical scholar. But Israel’s real passion was for poetry, and he composed numerous works of Hebrew verse, all meant to be set to music. His most famous poem, Yah Ribbon (“God the Master”), is often sung at Sabbath meals today.

Who Will You See There?

Professor Edwin Seroussi is the Emanuel Alexandre Professor Emeritus of Musicology and Chair of the Academic Committee of the Jewish Music Research Centre both at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Visiting Scholar at Dartmouth College and, in 2023/4, Fellow at the Herbert G. Katz Center for Advanced Judaic Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

His research focuses on Jewish musical cultures of the Mediterranean and Middle East and their interactions with Islamic cultures, Judeo-Spanish song and music in Israel. He explores processes of hybridization, diaspora, nationalism and transnationalism in diverse contexts and historical periods such as the Ottoman Empire, colonial Morocco and Algeria, Germany’s Second Empire and the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Zionist settlement in Palestine and the Judeo-Spanish-speaking diaspora.

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