Prayer in Tel Aviv

A new CD, with the music of Beit Tefilah Israeli, conveys the experience of the Kabalat Shabbat Service at the Tel Aviv Port.

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF
Beit Tefilah Israeli 311 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Beit Tefilah Israeli 311
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The new CD A Tel Aviv Prayer, with the music of Beit Tefilah Israeli, conveys the experience of the Kabalat Shabbat Service at the Tel Aviv Port. It includes original tunes to ancient and modern prayers, as well as prayers composed for Beit Tefilah by Israeli musicians Yoni Rechter and Shlomo Gronich. The lead vocalist of the Beit Tefilah ensemble is Atalya Lavi.
The album includes 17 tracks of prayers and songs. Most of the texts are well known but have received a new melody or a new arrangement that gives them a new meaning. The CD features songs by leading figures and poets such as Shlomo Elkabetz, Leah Goldberg, the poets of Psalms, Ali Mohar, Isaiah the Prophet, Louis Armstrong, Efraim Shamir, Shlomo Bar, Amir Gilboa and Avraham Chalfi. Most of the arrangements and adaptations were created by the Beit Tefilah Ensemble, except for those composed for Beit Tefilah by Rechter and Gronich.
Esteban Gottfried, along with Rani Yeger, established Beit Tefilah Israeli and leads the Kabalat Shabbat services at the Tel Aviv Port. He says the CD was born as a way of adhering to the needs of the services’ participants, who continually expressed their desire to bring something back home with them from this extraordinary Shabbat experience, which takes place at sunset every Friday. The combination of the old and the new, of the traditional prayers, Hebrew secular texts and current Israeli tunes creates an uplifting experience that brings the Jewish prayer closer and makes it more accessible, relevant and meaningful to the lives of secular and traditional Israelis alike.
The CD and the Siddur Erev Shabbat prayer book, also issued by Beit Tefilah Israeli, along with the massive Kabalat Shabbat services at the Tel Aviv Port, create a cultural web of a Tel Aviv-inspired prayer that is fresh and original and brings together some 1,000 secular and traditional people in song and prayer.
Listen to the CD online at the Beit Tefilah website: www.btfila.bandcamp.com.