Jeffrey Summit, Singing God’s Word: The Performance of Biblical Chant in Contemporary Judaism. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 293 pp.

At the end of the 12th century, a Jewish scholar from the (then) Provençal town of Lunel left his home to embark on a long journey to the towns and yeshivot of southwestern Germany, northern and southern France, the Provence, England, and Spain. The scholar, R. Abraham ben Nathan (Hayarḥi), compiled his learnings with the great teachers of his time, alongside observations of the local communities he visited, into a book that became a rich source for contemporary liturgical and sociological research in the field of Jewish medieval Europe: his ...