Case Study No. 3 | Sound Objects

Many of the objects used in the course of synagogue rituals generate sound.

Some of these objects are musical instruments, such as the shofar, the horn blown in the synagogue during the month of Elul (preceding the New Year), and on Rosh Ha-shanah and Yom Kippur, or the noisemakers used during the reading of the Book of Esther on Purim. During the process of Jewish Emancipation in 19th-century Europe, many synagogues accommodated musical instruments dedicated to accompanying the ritual, including… Show more the organ.

But there are many other ritual objects, especially those pertaining to the storing, carrying and reading of the Torah scrolls, as well as to the havdalah ceremony, that are often designed to emit sound.

Jewish ritual sound objects are not musical instruments per se. Rather, they are made with movable parts, and at times are adorned with bells. These objects rattle, ring, or otherwise make sound when they are used. Even thought their main purpose is to embellish the Torah, and to help with storing and reading it, their sonic power is only apparently unintentional. The sounds they emit cannot be avoided, and sound-making parts are constitutive of their shapes and forms.

While sound emission by voices and musical instruments is closely regulated by rabbinic authorities, the sounds made by objects are not. A performative approach to their study thus opens a window on an important aspect of Jewish life outside the scope of normative religion, and yet located at its very core: ritual, and the public reading of the Hebrew Bible in synagogue liturgy.

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