Baqashot

The baqashot (or bakashot, Hebrew: שירת הבקשות) are a collection of supplications, songs, and prayers that have been sung by the Sephardic Syrian, Moroccan, and Turkish Jewish communities for centuries each week on Shabbat mornings from the early hours of the morning until dawn. They are usually recited during the weeks of winter, from the Jewish festival of Sukkot through Purim, when the nights are much longer. The baqashot services can last for three to four hours. The Ades Synagogue in Jerusalem is the center of the Syrian practice today, and communities in Ashdod and Montreal are the center of the Moroccan practice.

The custom of singing baqashot originated in Spain towards the time of the expulsion, but took on increased momentum in the Kabbalistic circle in Safed in the 16th century. Baqashot probably evolved out of the tradition of saying petitionary prayers before dawn and was spread from Safed by the followers of Isaac Luria (16th century). With the spread of Safed Kabbalistic doctrine, and coffee consumption—which allowed devotees to stay awake through the night—the singing of baqashot reached countries all round the Mediterranean and became customary in the communities of Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Rhodes, Greece, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Turkey and Syria. It also influenced the Kabbalistically oriented confraternities in 18th-century Italy, and even became customary for a time in Sephardic communities in western Europe, such as Amsterdam and London. (In Amsterdam the Shabbat service still begins with a small number of baqashot. In London the tunes for one or two of them have been preserved in the literature but the practice no longer exists.) By the turn of the 20th century baqashot had become a widespread religious practice in several communities in Jerusalem as a communal form of prayer.

In communities such as those of Aleppo, Turkey and Morocco, the singing of baqashot expanded to vast proportions. In those countries special books were compiled naming the tunes and maqamat together with the text of the hymns, in order to facilitate the singing of baqashot by the congregation. In these communities it was customary to rise from bed in the night on Shabbat in the winter months, when the nights are longer, and assemble in synagogue to sing baqashot for four hours until the time for the morning service.

Each country had its own collection of baqashot, and there is often little or no overlap between the collections of different countries. The Moroccan collection is known as "Shir Yedidot" (Marrakesh 1921): unlike in the Aleppo tradition, where the baqashot service is the same every shabbat, the Moroccan tradition has a different set of baqashot for each week. The Amsterdam collection is set out in the first part of Joseph Gallego's Imre No'am: the contents of this were probably derived from the Salonica tradition.

The equivalent tradition is known as "Shirat Hamaftirim", and the songs are performed by choirs of maftirim. The music and style of singing are based on Sufi and Ottoman classical music. This tradition flourished in Adrianople (present-day Edirne) in European Turkey, as well as in Salonica and Istanbul from the 17th century until the beginning of the 20th century.

The scholar Abraham Danon attested to the Edirne (Adrianople) maftirim tradition in this source from the late 1920s:

The institution for which these songs were intended is the choir called Maftirim, who are the singers or assistant cantors. From ancient times this was the custom in Adrianople: each Sabbath morning, before the morning prayer (in recent times they shift to the time of the Sabbath eve), the Levite's disciples gathered at the Portugal synagogue (and sang with their throats songs to praise the Lord and afterwards each one walked to his synagogue (which were thirteen in number before the great fire) where the [opening] prayer Barukh she-amar did not start before the ending of the Qaddish by the Maftirim. In the course of time, the cantors joined with the Levite's assistants (mezammerim) and sang together songs to the joy of the listeners gathered around them who were avid for the songs and they opened their mouths as if they wanted to swallow rain. This is the reason the majority of the [Jewish] inhabitants of Adrianople had some expertise in the art of song, because since their youth they were educated on the laps [of music]. I heard that the refugees who flew from that city due to the War moved to Constantinople where they reestablished the gathering of the Maftirim at the Galata quarter...

In both Edirne and Salonica, the maftirim would sing a fasıl for each Shabbat in a different makam. The maftirim would begin with a prayer in Aramaic Beresh ormanuta, followed by vocal improvisations of Biblical verses. Finally, the service would end with Mizmor shir leyom hashabbat and Qaddish.