The Bakashot

Petitionary poems sung through the night from midnight until dawn on winter Sabbaths, in Aleppo, Morocco and their diasporas — a fixed sequence of piyyutim set to the Arabic maqamat.

⭐⭐ THE PRACTICE THAT ANSWERS THE NIGGUN FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE JEWISH WORLD, AND IT ANSWERS IT WITH WORDS. Where the Hasidic melody strips language away to get above it, the Sephardi night piles language on — dense, rhymed, allusive poetry, sung for six hours in Arabic modes, in company, to be awake at dawn. ⭐⭐ And the Kabbalistic pedigree here is direct rather than inferred: the custom of rising for a midnight vigil is tikkun ḥatzot, a Safed practice, and Israel Najara — whose poems are still sung — was in Luria's orbit and set sacred Hebrew verse to the popular tunes of his day, which got him criticised for it in his lifetime.