In the Shadow of Death: Jewish Affirmations of Life

The Book of Genesis reports that “On the sixth day of Creation “God saw everything that he had made, and behold, it was very good” (1:31). The very, so a Talmudic sage taught refers to “death”. We are to share God’s exultant affirmation of His work of creation as culminating in death. For death is intrinsic to the blessings of life. As Buber notes in the epigraph cited above, life is “unspeakably beautiful because death looks over our shoulder”. The seeming paradox—an existential antinomy—inflected the vernacular Yiddish of my late father which was also that of Buber’s youth “the one thing needful” (Luke 10:42); “love is strong as death” (Song of Songs; 8:6).

Stimmenarrangement

Frauenlob’s Marienleich has been studied primarily from the perspective of its elaborate metaphors and allegories. Scholars have identified the source of these metaphors in the exegesis of the Song of Songs as well as other Old Testament books and described the overlapping of diverse metaphorical traditions in the text. This paper argues that not only the metaphors, but also the voices of the Marienleich are artfully arranged. The essay shows how switching of the voice, echo effects, and multiplication of the voice create a polyphony that reflects the intertextual underpinning of Marian praise as well as Mary’s mediatory position between God and the faithful who praise her.

Det er jo min elskede Salomon – eller er det?

The new Bible translation, Bibelen 2020, makes biblical books accessible to readers with little prior knowledge of the Bible, in idiomatic, contemporary Danish. However, the article argues that the attempt to make the texts accessible may have problematic consequences when the translation directly reflects one specific interpretation. This is particularly the case in the Song of Songs. Bibelen 2020 indicates the speaker of each passage, and the introduction identifies one female speaker (“Sulamit”) and one male (her beloved “Salomon”). In a very problematic way, this interpretation and the idea that the beloved is “Salomon”, referred to as “king”, have been built into the translation. The article discusses the once popular interpretation of the book as a drama including one woman and two men and argues that elements of such an approach can illuminate important aspects of the text. It is argued that these aspects are largely lost in the translation in Bibelen 2020.

Features of Cadences in Vocal and Choral Music of the Seventeenth Century (on the Example of Giovanni Palestrina’s Motets)

The relevance of the study. The traditional idea of a cadence as a primarily harmonic phenomenon does not completely correspond to some musical styles, including Renaissance and early Baroque. Revealing the polyphonic essence of cadences in vocal works of the Renaissance, which is the aim of the article, allows deeper understanding peculiarities of musical thinking of that period. Scientific novelty. The historical approach to the analysis of cadences is quite common in foreign musicological works; this approach is still new for Ukrainian musicology. The research material is also new: the cycle of motets by G. Palestrina on the text of “Song of Songs” was unfairly ignored by Ukrainian and foreign scholars. Thus, the study is relevant both in relation to the method and in relation to the musical material involved in its approbation. The purpose of the article is to show the specifics of cadences in the style of a strict counterpoint using the motets from the cycle “Canticum Canticorum” by G. Palestrina, to reveal the role of cadences in the modal and compositional processes of a Renaissance work. Research methods. The study systematizes the data obtained as a result of the analysis of the cadences of G. Palestrina’s motets, thus, the main research method is inductive. The main results and conclusions of the study. Cadences in vocal polyphony of the Renaissance have a polymelodic nature, which is realized by combining typical melodic turns (clausulae) in different voices. The clausulae order in the voices and their completeness degree are effective criteria for the classification of cadences (e. g. the classification by E. Rotem). Cadences in which the main clausulae are presented in full (i. e. contain ultima and penultima) are strong. Cadences in which one or more clausulae are incomplete are weak. The role of strong and weak cadences in the composition is different: strong cadences are placed at the nodal points of the piece, they have a dividing function; weak cadences are placed in the middle of the text line and they have a connecting function. Strong cadences are the norm, while weak ones violate the norm, revealing the author’s ingenuity. There are a few ways to weaken the cadence: replacing the ultima with a pause or a different sound, distributing the clausula between several voices, extending the melodic line of one of the cadence voices, etc. Weak cadences significantly outnumber strong cadences. In the Dorian motets from the cycle “Song of Songs” by G. Palestrina weak cadences play an important role in the formation of the mode within the sound scale, as well as in revealing the meaning of the verbal text.

"I Am Black and Beautiful": A Black African Reading of Song of Songs 1:5-7 as a Protest Song

Adamo's article on Ebed-Melech's protest brings fresh insight into my earlier article on Song of Songs 1:5-7, prompting me to reread the text as a protest song (essay) against the racial stigmata that continue to bedevil black people in the world. The current article, using hermeneutics of appropriation, maintains the meaning of שְׁחוֹרָה as a black person, who in the Song of Songs protests against the racism, which transformed her status to that of a socioeconomic other. The study is informed by the contemporary and historical contexts of racial injustices and stigma suffered by Blacks for 'being' while Black. The essay investigates this question: In which ways does Adamo's reading of Jer 38:1-17 influence an African reading of Song 1:5-7 as a protest against racism? The article employs African Biblical Hermeneutics, as part of a creative and literary art in the protests against racism, to read the biblical text as our story-a divine story, which in the language of Adamo, has inherent divine power that can empower oppressed black people.

The Book of Psalms in a New Ukrainian Translation, Psalms 41-71

The new translation of the Book of Psalms is part of a large project to translate the Holy Scriptures into Ukrainian, which has been underway since 2018. The project has already translated the New Testament (the edition is being prepared in 2022), poetic books of the Bible (in addition to the Psalms, the Book of Job, Proverbs, the Book of Ecclesiastes and the Song of Songs), translation of the Pentateuch and the Book of Prophet. The translation of the Psalms offered in Theological Reflections is the first publication of the above-mentioned translated books of Scripture.