The Weekly Maqam

In Mizrahi and Sephardic Middle Eastern Jewish prayer services, each Shabbat the congregation conducts services using a different 'maqam'. A maqam (مقام), which in Arabic literally means 'place', is a standard melody type and set of related tunes. The melodies used in a given maqam aims effectively to express the emotional state of the reader throughout the set liturgy (without changing the text). This article primarily describes the musical practices of Syrian Jews, though the musical traditions of other Mizrahi Jews communities are also based on the maqam system. Ashkenazi nusach includes a simplified system including three main modes or steyger and several minor variants. Muslims share the same practice of conducting services using the maqam, but differ substantially in many ways.

The maqam that is used each Shabbat depends on the theme, story, or main message of the Sabbath weekly Torah portion. The cantor, or hazzan, of the congregation leads the worshippers with the melodies of the particular maqam, which is preset and standardized on an official list.

Widely different lists of maqam are found in different communities, e.g. the Aleppo list does not always agree with the Damascus and Beirut lists, and the Egyptian and Yerushalmi (Jerusalem Sephardic) lists are different again. Even within the Aleppo tradition there is not total agreement among the written sources, though the underlying pattern of the lists is usually the same. Other determinants of the maqam include whether or not there is a holiday approaching in the upcoming week: when this is the case, or there are two Torah portions for the week, the hazzan has some discretion which maqam to use. As a general rule, the same maqam will never be used two weeks in a row. Also, the list tries to rotate the maqamot in such a fashion that the ten maqams are spread out almost equally in time as to avoid the redundancy of hearing the same maqam within a short period of time.

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