c. 1999 Religion News Service

JERUSALEM _ It’s the one book of the Bible that Jews and Christians alike have turned to over the ages as a source of inspiration for liturgical song. Now, Gershom Ha Cohen Tzipris is hoping the Book of Psalms can also offer a spiritual meeting ground for peoples of both faiths at the onset of the new millennium.

Tzipris, a Baroque musician and observant Jew, recently completed an ambitious recording of all 150 psalms, as they are sung in the musical traditions of Jerusalem’s major Christian denominations and Jewish synagogues.

The psalms are to be published just before Christmas 1999 as the”Jerusalem Psalter”in a set of five or six compact discs by the large German- based Haenssler Publishing House, one of the world’s foremost producers of liturgical music.”Most of the books of the Bible represent messages that God gave to his people, either via Moses or the prophets,”Tzipris said.”The Psalms of David are the only book which comes from the heart of man straight to God.”Musically, it’s also the only book that both Christians and Jews sing. All of the other books of the Bible are read. Most of the other books are laws, prophecy and history. The psalms are poems and prayers. I claim that we hardly need any other prayers.” The recording project was co-sponsored by Tzipris’ grass-roots organization, known as Hallelujah Jerusalem, and the German Association for the Holy Land. Recordings were made during a week of public concerts of the psalms in the Old City’s churches and synagogues. Tzipris hopes to make the concerts a regular feature of Jerusalem’s musical scene.

Nearly a dozen church and synagogue choirs took part in the recordings. They ranged from the Benedictine monks of the Church of the Holy Sepulcher to a Syrian Orthodox lay choir, Ethiopian Orthodox monks and nuns, and six different Jewish communities, including Moroccan, Kurdish, Yemenite and Ashkenazi (European).

Catholics, Protestants and Orthodox communities sang the first three major sections of Psalms (1-89). The Jewish denominations completed the set with psalms 90-150.

For some churches, the recordings will help preserve an oral tradition of song that is slowly slipping away, Tzipris said.”Leaders of some of the Orthodox churches told me that 50 years ago they knew how to sing all 150 psalms, but today many of the original melodies have been lost to them,”said the musician, who is of Russian Jewish origin and makes a living today performing Baroque flute concerts in Europe.

The musical styles on the recording range from the classical and Western tones of the Protestants like the Dutch Reformed Church, to the minor-key dirges of the Orthodox Churches.

All are what Tzipris describes as”authentic music”that has been part of church and synagogue traditions for centuries. And all are sung by choirs based in Jerusalem’s Old City, the nexus of the holy city disputed by Jews, Muslims and Christians.

Tzipris also hopes to undertake recordings here of more classical and modern renditions of the psalms, from Stravinsky’s”Symphony of Psalms”to Leonard Bernstein’s”Chichester Psalms.””Composers have been writing music for the psalms since the Middle Ages,”Tzipris said.”Musically and textually, they are at the juncture of Christian and Jewish liturgy. And even the Muslims refer to the psalms in their tradition with a special respect. We want all three religions _ Jewish, Christian and Muslim _ to meet in Jerusalem and to pray together each in his own way. The psalms can be a link.”DEA END RNS