Pizmonim

Similar songs sung in the synagogue on the Sabbath morning between midnight and dawn are called baqashot (שירת הבקשות).

The texts of many pizmonim date back to before the Middle Ages, while others were composed by poets such as Yehuda Halevi and Israel Najara of Gaza after the Spanish Inquisition.

[1] A prolific composer of pizmonim of this last kind was Hakham Rephael Antebi Tabbush (Aleppo 1830[2]-Cairo 1918), who is regarded as the founder of the tradition in its present form.

Pizmonim are composed for special occasions such as weddings and bar mitzvahs by Cantors in the past, as well as the present, by Ezekiel Hai Albeg, H Ezra Mishaniye, Rabbi Raphael Yair Elnadav, and others.

The origin of the tradition could potentially be explained in the context of certain rulings of the Geonim discouraging the use of piyyutim in core parts of the prayer service.

Prior to this, there were many older pizmonim books circulating around the community, but they didn't have Hebrew vowels, and were generally difficult for the masses to utilize.

It aimed to include the ancient (Baqashot and Petihot), the old (Israel Najara, Mordechai Abadi, Raphael Tabbush, Moshe Ashear), and the new material (Raphael Yair Elnadav, Ezra Dweck, Gabriel A Shrem, Ezekiel Hai Albeg, Abraham Cohen Saban, Ezra Mishaniye, and other modern Israeli melodies).

The book also has innovative features very useful for a cantor, such as a list of maqams to go with the specific perasha, as well as which pieces of Sabbath prayers fit with the melodies of certain pizmonim.

The Sephardic Pizmonim Project, is a website dedicated to the scholarship, restoration and preservation of the ancient music of the Sephardic-Syrian Jewish community.

The project, founded by David Matouk Betesh, is dedicated to the memory of his great-grandfather, cantor Gabriel A Shrem, a former instructor at Yeshiva University's Cantorial Institute (Philip and Sarah Belz School of Jewish Music), cantor of B'nai Yosef Synagogue and editor-in-chief of the "Shir uShbaha Hallel veZimrah" pizmonim book.

The Sephardic Pizmonim Project organisation re-released all of Shrem's recordings on a large CD collection in September 2004 selling approximately 7,000 CDs.