Customer Reviews

Shaarei Shabbat: Songs & Blessings For Your Jewish Home

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I was looking for a CD that would help me carry the beauty and spirit of the Shabbat services with me throughout the rest of the week. Unfortunately, this CD doesn't do that.

The CD seems to have very little emotion invested in the singing. I don't feel kavanah in the least. I imported the CD I purchased into my iTunes collection as soon as I got it, excited at the prospect of learning new melodies and reinforcing old favourites; sadly, I have deleted all but two of the tracks, Y'did Nefesh and the Birkot haMazon -- and I kept those two only because I was still trying to learn them. And I haven't listened to either of those tracks in almost two years.

But maybe liking this CD is tradition-dependent. Traditionalists, Conservatives, and Orthodox will be thoroughly unimpressed and disappointed. Reformists, Reconstructionists, and anyone else -- well, I honestly don't know. It seems though that there has to be a better compilation out there than this one.

Some of renditions on this cd are lovely, but the quality of the singing is inconsistent. Even though it is interesting to hear a variety of interpretations and most of these are well done, there is no flow, so the change from soprano to tenor comes a surprise, sometimes a jarring one.