Shir ha-ma'alot mi-ma'amaqim (Psalm 130) — David Meghnagi, repertoire of the Libyan Jews in Rome

Shir ha-ma'alot mi-ma'amaqim (Psalm 130) — David Meghnagi, repertoire of the Libyan Jews in Rome

EF

130

Born in Tripoli, Libya, in 1949, into a family closely involved in music and liturgical chant. Brother of the musician and scholar Miriam Meghnagi. His family escaped the anti-Jewish persecutions of 1967 and settled in Rome. A psychologist and scholar, he has cultivated the traditional Libyan synagogue repertoire and recorded his own singing on the CD Shiru Shir (2006).

Recording at Or Yehuda synagogue in Rome, as part of the "new minhagim" campaign by OTIJM project for Centro Leo Levi. Director of campaign: David Meghnagi, audio by E. Fink.

David Meghnagi recalls that, in some synagogues of Tripoli, congregants prepared to welcome Shabbat late on Thursday evening by singing the Songs of Ascents, including Psalm 130 to this elaborate melody. He describes the melody as beautiful, complex and difficult, and believes that he may be its only remaining interpreter in Italy. He also reports that the custom survives at a Tripolino synagogue in northern Herzliya, which he visited with his brother Isaac, himself a cantor, and where he has sung this setting on several occasions.