Mi El kamokha - Geremia Mario Castelnuovo, Siena

Mi El kamokha - Geremia Mario Castelnuovo, Siena

EF

Y 00174(11)
990002221400205171

racc. 52, 886

racc. 52, 801

Geremia Mario Castelnuovo, born in Siena on September 13th, 1915, to Azeglio Castelnuovo and Olga Procaccia. His maternal grandfather is Naoleone Procaccia, chazan at the Siena synaoggue. After Geremia's father death in 919, Napoleone Procaccia will remain as a fundamental figure in Geremia's childhood, he is the one who instructs him for his bar mitzwah; and who often arranges for Geremia, to officiate as a shaliach tzibbur during the following years. Geremia continues to live in Siena, and the Leo Levi recordings were done in the RAI studios in Torino, probably on occasion of one of Geremia's frequent family visits to his inlaws, parents of his wife Marcella Servi – they were originally from Pitigliano but had moved for work related reasons to Torino.

Here we do not follow Leo Levi who, both in the "Catalogo" and in what can be found in the NLI metadata, ascribes this item to the Italian rite. In the complex and multi-influenced ritual in Siena as is reported in Castelnuovo's recordings, this particular item seems more of Sephardic infuence as this form of he widespread poem "Mi El Kamokha" is the text used, for example, in the Spagnolo ritual in other Tuscan communities, whereas the minchah version in the Italian ritual, that Levi indicates should correspond to this item, has a different text.