Psalms - ספר תהלים

Tehillim, or the Book of Psalms, represents the large sacred song collection of Ancient Israel during Biblical times. Though many of the psalms indicate which instruments to apply, the original melodies of the psalms chanted during the Temple services have been lost for thousands of years. Despite this loss, the Tehillim text has continued to serve the Jewish people as their primary source of hope, inspiration, prayer, petition, and praise to their Creator.

Apart from the daily liturgical services (which consists of many Psalms), it is a revered custom for the Syrian Jewish community to gather as a community and recite the entire Book of Tehillim in memory of a family member that has recently deceased and then each annual anniversary to elevate the departed's legacy. It is also the custom to chant various psalms in order to petition to God for the speedy recovery of someone who is in ill-health or during times of national, communal, or personal crisis. There are those who gather in the synagogues for the communal recitation of Tehillim each Shabbat afternoon whether or not they are reading in memory of someone. One such person to organized this practice ("Tehillim Congregation") in Congregation Magen David of 67th Street (New York) in the 1940s was Abraham Eliahou Shrem.

Regarding Miqra, it is the standard of our community to expect that each adult student develop the skills to pronounce each letter and word of the Tehillim correctly and with the proper traditional Syrian chant and cantillation notes. In order to facilitate this process, the recordings of H Max Ezra Tawil, the expert Ba'al Qoreh of Congregation Shaare Zion (New York), have been provided. They were recorded in 2001 and are dedicated in memory of his parents, Ezra and Rachel Tawil. In addition, included here are also the recordings of H Barukh Ben Haim, former assistant Chief Rabbi of Congregation Shaare Zion.

Despite there being a few different versions of the Tehillim, the text that the Syrian Jewish people are loyal to is that of the Masoretic Text as preserved in the Aleppo Codex. The Aleppo Codex, which dates to the 10th century CE, is considered to be the most accurate existing version of the Masoretic Text. For this reason, for each chapter of Tehillim (except Psalms 15-24, which are missing), we have included images from the Aleppo Codex that can be read and followed while listening to the recordings. The text of the Tehillim obtained for our digital book is from the "Tehillat Yesharim" Tehillim book edited by H Saleh Jacob Mansour (Jerusalem), the same editor of the "Shir Ushbahah Hallel VeZimrah" Red Pizmonim book.