The return of the Levites

A museum of Jewish music in Jerusalem harks back to Temple times when the Levites would sing and play with divine harmony.

By MORDECHAI BECK
Hebrew Music Museum (photo credit: WWW.HEBREWMUSICMUSEUM.COM)
Hebrew Music Museum
(photo credit: WWW.HEBREWMUSICMUSEUM.COM)
Most of us no doubt will be unfamiliar with the kinkin, the adonedo, the azuz or the charongo. Even the baglama, the Turkish saq, the guitacello, and tampura will present difficulties for some. Rare plants, exotic foods? No, they are all musical instruments – many of them strange and unusual – assembled in the Hebrew Music Museum in downtown Jerusalem.
The above-mentioned are only part of the collection of 260 instruments, which are housed in the beautifully renovated and technologically rich museum on Yoel Salomon street. The founder and brains behind this undertaking is Eldad Levy, a musician and a baal teshuva of the Breslov Hasidic community. “Some 12 years ago, I had an idea, a desire. Our Rebbe – Rabbi Nachman of Breslov – stated that if a person has a desire, then he can realize it because power flows through desire. If he has no desire, then he can't do anything. This is the way that our rabbi taught.
“I had this desire to do something good for the people of Israel. I asked myself what? Since I am a Levi (from the ancient tribe of Levites) and I play on the Persian santoor and the kemanche, I understood that the way I could have an influence was through music. This is the amazing aspect of music: it can fill the whole world and yet it takes no place! This is the way that God reveals Himself in the world, by way of His still, small voice. I understood from all this that the way to reach people’s desires is through music.”
As luck would have it Levy's desire was picked up by another Levite, Laurent Levy, a French developer who has made something of a stir in Jerusalem by buying out a well-respected restaurant and making it kosher, and by opening the latest branch of his opticians chain of shops and distributing spectacles to poor people.
“I was playing my music at his house and I spoke to him about my idea for a museum of Jewish music. He was very warm to the idea and asked me to write a proposal with details as to what was needed. He then gave the money we needed to buy up all this area bit by bit.”
The area that he refers to is the space between the Italian synagogue and Yoel Solomon Street in the very center of Jerusalem.
It was very rundown. However, Laurent Levy saw in it great potential. So in addition to the Museum, which is upstairs to the main entrance, the Music Square includes a synagogue, five restaurants, a shop of music-related art and another selling recorded music and related items. The whole complex has been beautifully renovated at a cost of $120 million.
The museum itself is a model of up-to-date technology. On entering it, each visitor is handed a tablet with headphones. He or she then stands in front of each exhibit, presses on the tablet and hears the instrument being played. This brings the whole experience of the museum to life. In addition, there are films projected on the wall in which various groups from different cultures perform their music. One of the rooms is a restored room from Morocco complete with an elaborate, hand-carved ceiling. Other rooms have interactive games based on kabbalistic motifs. This is aimed at younger visitors but adults can presumably partake of them with enthusiasm, too.
The instruments, which took Levy over four years to either collect or to have made, include familiar instruments, such as the shofar, the mandolin, the bouzouki, the kanon, the sitar, the dulcimer and the oud. However, along with these are instruments which the average visitor will never have heard of, let alone seen. Such are the charongo – a stringed instrument formed from an armadillo shell – the surmandel, the fifa, the karot, the dunra, a collection of African drums including the kinkin and adonedo, a large variety of flutes and so forth. The oldest of the instruments on display is the Babylonian harp, which is 3,000 years old and may be the sounds that the Biblical Daniel, Ezra and Nehemiah heard.
After completing a tour of the seven rooms, which symbolize the seven areas of the Jewish Diaspora where some of these instruments (but not all) were played by Jews, the visitor is then confronted by another room in which sits a model of the Second Temple. This, too, is accompanied by headphones and virtual reality goggles. What the visitor then sees is a reconstructed Second Temple complete with the priestly service, Levites singing and playing, alongside the daily sacrifices. The whole journey takes approximately an hour and a half.
The final Temple touch is very much ingrained in Eldad Levy’s vision of the purpose behind the museum.
“When the Temple existed,” he explains, “the Levites possessed the secret of the Temple music. Levites with their music had the power to replace what was missing in mankind and to etch on their souls that which they lacked. This brought about an outpouring of the soul which led to repentance.
“When the Temple was destroyed and the people sent into exile, they took their music with them. Much of it was lost. In the Temple, the Levites knew 400 movements in the music. Thus, a name could be pronounced softly or harshly, depending on what you wished from the person. What changes is the meaning. The same is with the notes with which the Torah is chanted. There is a different note, a different meaning, for each word. In ancient music, there is a different meaning to each note. There is a note/mood for the moon, another for quiet, one for joy, another for song, depression, sadness, and so forth – 400 in all.
In Eastern music we have 95 makamim. That is already a lowering of the number, but it indicates the complexity of the system. Each of them is equal, a true democracy. Harmony comes about in ancient music when each realizes its potential, then all the notes are equal. That is harmony. All of them are reaching upward to the One.
“The loss of the Temple was therefore much more than just the loss of a building,” Levy says. “It affected a whole complex grid of feelings, sensitivities, healing for the soul and spirit. For 2,000 years, each community kept their memory of the music of the Temple. When they began returning to the land, there was nothing here, no work, little water, no agriculture, no language, nothing. What did they have? Music. They listened to this small voice. This is the voice I heard. I realized, too, that now is the time to realize all these things and put them into practice.”
With approximately 400 visitors a day since its opening in April 2016, Levy emphasizes that the museum is dynamic in its very creation. “We already hold days for workshops, days for piyyutim (Jewish liturgical chants) and also events in the evenings. We even made a CD using all sorts of songs, even secular, Israeli songs, and turned them into something sacred. I like to think of them as music for the Temple. Some of Israel's finest musicians such as Shuli Rand, Shlomo Gronich David D’Or and Ehud Banai participated. The final song was a song for Shabbat, which unites all of the musicians, with every singer – whether secular or religious – singing two lines.”
The Music Square, which is what the entire area is now called, also includes two or three live performances a day in the square of the central restaurant. There are four other restaurants; all of them strictly kosher with each one catering to a different palate. From 11 pm at night there are further performances in the pub-cum-night club, which is situated below ground.
In addition to the existing structures Levy is now building an auditorium for 400 seats above the central square. “We also plan a hotel for musicians, which will include 50 boutique rooms, each one dedicated to a Jewish musician who has influenced music in the world – Arik Einstein will have a room with his discs. There will be rooms, too, for non-Israelis such as Leonard Cohen, Bob Dylan, Reb Shlomo Carlebach and so forth. At one point, too, we plan to open a school for Jewish music so that people can learn the essence of Jewish music in all its varieties.”
The museum has already made an impact on a wide variety of people. “Everyone comes,” notes Levy, “children, adults, secular, ultra-Orthodox and non-Jews. It is a wonderful way of bringing people together. Music belongs to everyone.”