Herv\u00e9 Roten – Proceedings of the 19th Congress of the AIBM – July 2001<\/p>\n
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The origins of the Jewish community in France are very old. It was in the year 6 A.D. that Archelaus, Ethnarch of Judea, banished by the Roman Emperor Augustus, settled in the town of Vienne (Is\u00e8re). Under the Merovingian kings, Jewish families took up residence in the Frankish territories. During the following centuries, these groups, generally small, developed or disappeared according to the vicissitudes of history.<\/p>\n
At the dawn of the French Revolution, the Jewish community numbered around 40,000 members, mainly established in Alsace-Lorraine, the Comtat Venaissin and in the South-West of France. With the emancipation, French Judaism was enriched throughout the 19th century with people from Central Europe and, in particular, Germany. In 1880, the pogroms in Russia led to the emigration of Polish, Romanian and Russian Jews to France. From 1908 onwards, Jews from the Ottoman countries (especially from Salonika, Constantinople and Smyrna) passed through France and sometimes settled there. Between the two wars, several successive waves brought more than 100,000 Jews from Italy, Central and Eastern Europe (Germany, Austria, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Russia, Poland, Ukraine, Latvia, Lithuania…), to which were added Sephardic Jews from Greece and Turkey.<\/p>\n
After the Second World War, the Jewish community in France was greatly weakened. The Rabbinate was decimated and the disaffection with religious practices was complete. It was not until the arrival of nearly 200,000 Jews from North Africa between 1956 and 1967 that French Judaism began a religious and cultural revival.
\nToday, French Judaism is particularly composite. Estimated at between 600,000 and 700,000 people, it constitutes a real mosaic of communities with varied traditions and origins.<\/p>\n
I. Jewish music in France: an overview Jewish musical traditions in France reflect the multicultural dimension 1) Religious music Liturgical music represents the essence of Jewish musical practice. Singing is omnipresent in the synagogue or at home and gives rhythm to the life of the faithful. Every religious Jew goes to the synagogue three times a day to recite the tunes learned from his fathers according to the oral tradition. The Jewish festivals give rise to a more or less pronounced musical flourish depending on their significance and importance within the liturgical calendar.
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\nof Judaism. From synagogal chant to Yiddish folklore, from oriental dances to Eastern European klezmer music, an uninformed spectator will be somewhat disarmed by the heterogeneity of the musical practices. However, they can be divided into two genres: religious music for internal use and secular music that draws on the sources of ethnicity.<\/p>\n
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\nThe cantors take on the vocal parts of the service alongside the rabbi. The congregation responds by singing different parts of the prayers. Among these congregants, the importance of the Ba’ale massore<\/em> [1]<\/sup><\/a>Textually: possessor of the tradition<\/span><\/span>