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Newsletter         September 28, 2010 - 20 Tishrei 5771
   

Strings


A Fifth Pair of Strings
Perhaps the most influential person in medieval Spain, when Muslims, Christians and Jews lived side by side in freedom and tolerance, was a Moorish liberated slave known as Ziryab. He influenced cuisine, fashion, personal grooming, manners, and, most of all, music.

Before Ziryab, the lute, or oud, as it is known in the Arabic world, an instrument that dates back as far as 1500 BCE, had four pair of strings. Historian Titus Burckhardt wrote that these strings "answered to the four elementary principles of the body, the four humours, and expressed the four natural sounds." Ziryab's greatest innovation was to add a fifth pair of strings to the middle of his lute, which gave the instrument greater delicacy of expression, improved its sound, and endowed it with a range far greater than had been attainable with any previous instrument of its kind. Ziryab, it is said, "had given the lute its soul."

He is considered the father of the carrizo (reed), the kanun (harp), the quinera (zither),the zolami (oboe), as well as the tambourine, brass rattles, castanets, and more.

Born a slave, uneducated, Ziryab played the lute and sensed that there was more music for the soul to be found inside. He added a fifth pair of strings to his lute, and numerous instruments to our world.

I dance with my fifth pair of strings when I dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah. I rejoice in the Torah that adds soul to my physical world. I thrill with the dimension added to all I do by the Torah's living wisdom. It is the Torah that opens my mind, soul and heart to creativity, that allows them to express their deepest yearnings, and empowers them to always reach for more. It is Torah that gives my soul greater delicacy of expression, improves the music of my heart, and extends the range of my mind.

I dance on Simchat Torah night to celebrate all that this fifth pair of strings added to the past year. I dance in the morning in expectation to all it will add to the coming year. And, there's more...


Rabbi Simcha L. Weinberg
President          
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