(Source unknown)
In honor of March Madness, I thought I would do a series of posts asking you to choose which Karaite songs you like best.
Today’s contest is between two different renditions of the same song. The song is Lahatany Mivhar Banay, which translates to To my Groom, the Choicest of My Sons.
Filed under poetry, Rotem Cohen, Simha Lutski
A beautiful book for the feasts of the Seventh Month, produced by the Karaite community in Israel.
I really wanted to hate this song. And I really wanted to be frustrated at the Israeli Karaites who published it. These are not ideal qualities; I know. But once I took a deep breath, I realized that the song is absolutely beautiful; the Karaite sage who wrote about a shofar in a song about Yom Teruah (“Rosh Hashanah”) is a great poet; and I am a better person because of it.
Filed under Mordecai Ben Nisan, poetry, Rosh Hashanah, Shofar, terua, Yom Teruah
In my last post, I demonstrated how I believe the Karaite siddur contains a beautiful error with respect to a single letter in a biblical verse. Today, I want to demonstrate that everyone and – as far as I can tell – I mean everyone who is singing some version of Shelomo ibn Gabirol’s She’areikha (“Your Gates”) is singing a version that is unattested to in the fragments that are publicly available through the Friedberg Geniza Project.
Despite this, I would wholeheartedly be honored if you would sing the Karaite transmission of the poem. And I would be equally honored if this post encouraged you to learn and sing any of the versions that appear in Rabbanite siddurim or in the Geniza fragments.
Filed under Gabriel Wasserman, poetry, Prayer, Rotem Cohen
