Curated by Enrico Fink, Shirat Hayam: The Song of the Sea (Centro Primo Levi, 2023) inaugurates the Erna Finci Viterbi Chàzanut Roundtable, a workshop and program series on Italian Jewish music and liturgy established by Centro Primo Levi in memory of a dear friend and board member whose love for tradition and dedication to learning have profoundly contributed to shape the center’s principles.

This project aims at facilitating new recordings of Italian and Mediterranean cantorial music and circulating the existing ones.

Publications, recordings and essays collected for this program are available through the Online Thesaurus of Italian Jewish Music (www.jewishitalianmusic.org) designed to provide tools to those interested in learning, practicing or simply enjoying this art, including scholars, musicians, cantors and bar/bat-mitzvà students wishing to include some of this beautiful music in their liturgical repertoire.

The Thesaurus was created by Centro Leo Levi in collaboration with Centro Primo Levi, and the generous contribution of the Viterbi family of San Diego. It is being developed in collaboration with the Jewish Music Research Center of the University of Jerusalem and in partnership with the National Library of Israel, CDEC, and the Fondazione Beni Culturali Ebraici Italiani.

Sharing and participating were among Erna’s most cherished values and she regarded them as an indispensable foundation of human relations and endeavors.

For centuries, partaking in the communal prayer through the knowledge of its musical canons and variations has been an essential component of Jewish life. The repertoires that flourished in small communities throughout the Mediterranean reflect trade, travels and exchanges and resulted in a tapestry of sounds that, still preserved within local communities, can become an inspiration outside of their native environment.

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