So says Poppa at the end of the Jazz Singer as he hears the strains of Kol Nidre being sung with gusto by Al Jolson.
Kol Nidre is a prayer that basically ‘kicks off’ a day and an hour of fasting for the most holy day in the Jewish Calendar, Yom Kippur.
It is, however, also our not so secret guilty pleasure, whether you are a Ashkenazi or a Sephardi Jew. The Ashkenazi melody especially when sung by a half way decent chazzan is simply beautiful, and is known worldwide. The Sephardi, especially Moroccan version also wows the senses.
There is a lot of controversy over the prayer itself over the years but here are things you may not know about the tune.
The Ashkenazi Kol Nidre tune does not get mucked about.
There are several versions of every Hebrew tune. In my time I have listened to Adon Olom sung to the tune of “Match of the Day” (when the Cup Final was on) and the Gospel version of “Ein Kayloheynu” (Oy!!!!!!) sung in the Ben Stiller film Keeping the Faith.
The one that has stayed pure, at least in my lifetime, is the Ashkenazi version of Kol Nidre. Whether you are Conservative, Orthodox, Reform, Liberal, Masorti, Lubavitch, French, Australian, British, Canadian, Russian, or whatever, the tune is the same.
According to the Jewish Encyclopedia it is likely that some parts have remained unchanged for hundreds of years - “Thus, then, a typical phrase in the most familiar Gregorian mode, such as was daily in the ears of the Rhenish Jews, in secular as well as in ecclesiastical music, was centuries ago deemed suitable for the recitation of the Absolution of Vows”.
There was the album by the Electric Prunes called The Release of an Oath, but we’ll let that one pass.
So whether it is Kol Nidre sung by a Reform Lady Chazzan (Angela Buchdahl) who has a Korean Buddhist mother or the famous Yossele Rosenblatt you get the same tune. You’ll find both on Youtube.
Incidentally, there is the story that In 1927 Warner Brothers offered Rosenblatt $100,000 to co-star with Al Jolson in ‘The Jazz Singer,’ but they could not persuade him to sing Kol Nidrei. He felt that it was much too sacred to be used as entertainment. Whether you believe that or not it’s still a nice story.
There are other versions besides the Ashkenazi one
Sephardic versions are wonderful, but you cannot tie the music down. The notes vary from Community to community and accordioning to various sources they range from fairly simple chants from the Babylonian (Iraqi) tradition to a whispered chant with no melody at all in the Carpentras (Provencal) tradition of southern France to a fairly elaborate melody of the Spanish-Portuguese Jews which is stylistically reminiscent of the Ashkenazic tune but substantively different.
As said, the Morrocan Sephardi one, is very nice indeed (it can be easily found on Youtube), but perhaps the reason fore Ashkenazi version being the best known is this diversity of tunes in the Sephardic Tradition.
Beethoven writes “Jewish”
Turning back to the Ashkenazi version, non-Jews have enjoyed the music for many years. Tolstoy once described as “one that echoes the story of the great martyrdom of a grief-stricken nation”, and the composer Max Bruch used it in his Kol Nidrei, Op. 47, a composition for cello and orchestra - perhaps most famously played by Jacqueline DuPre
Bruch completed the composition in Liverpool, England, and published it in Berlin in 1881. He said “Although I am a Protestant, yet, as an artist, I fully appreciate the extraordinary beauty of these songs, and have happily employed them in my compositions”
It also seems to have found its way the work of such non-Jewish composers as Beethoven (the penultimate movement of the G minor Quartet, opus 131). It is known that he had Jewish contacts - e.g. the noted Jewish pianist, Ignace Moscheles,and the cantor, Salomon Sulzer. and that he had studied Jewish Liturgical music.
At least that is what various articles say. I have no way of knowing whether or not this is true but nonetheless t makes a good story (as good as the folk song Shpil Mir a Lid being the basis for Chim Che Ree in Mary Poppins), and I like the idea that someone who could write as Beethoven did had a touch of understanding of the beauty of the melody of Kol Nidre
In any case it is particularly appropriate that this music is played in the Band of Brothers episode “Why we Fight” where they discover the concentration camp. Look out for it at the beginning, where the quartet are playing it amongst the rubble, and at the end. When you listen to it, it is clear to me that it has some of the sadness that is evident in Kol Nidre. If Cole Porter could write “Jewish”, why couldn’t Beethoven?
4. The Jazz Singer and others
One of the reasons why it is so well known in the Western World is the part it played in the first talkie - the Jazz Singer, where poppa pops off after hearing Al sing the tune (spoiler)
It was remade with Laurence Olivier (who had just played a Nazi-killer in the Boys from Brazil) playing poppa, and Neil Diamond being the Jazz Singer. In between the two was a perfectly dreadful 1959 remake with Jerry Lewis, which not only goes over the top, but into the next universe. If you really hate someone buy them a copy of this film.
It has also been recorded by Johnny Mathis and Perry Como.
In the Jewish Journal of September 2011 Rabbi Jeffrey Salkin mentions that Perry Como not only recorded Kol Nidre; he also sang it every year around Yom Kippur on his television variety show, He was apparently “enchanted by the Aramaic words to Kol Nidre – in Aramaic, which a Jewish member of the Mitchell Ayres Orchestra taught him to pronounce – and perhaps even more so by its melody”
I’m still waiting for the Adele or Ed Sheeran version.
END
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Jews and the Sea
The Definitive Guide to Jewish Miscellany and Trivia
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