The Development of Shabbat Zemirot: Singing around the Shabbat Table in Medieval Europe

The custom to sing songs, known as Shabbat Zemirot, around the table during sabbath meals continues to this day, yet its roots stretch back into the European Middle Ages. This paper will use rabbinic sources as well as the manuscripts containing Shabbat Zemirot to trace the development of the custom to sing in Ashkenaz and in Italy from the turn of the 13th century though the 16th century, when the songs were printed for the first time. Although Jews were likely singing table songs in celebration of Shabbat before the Middle Ages, our earliest explicit mention of a defined table-singing custom is found in a version of Mahzor Vitry copied in northern France around the turn of the 13th century. From there the custom spread into German-speaking lands and Italy where the repertoire of songs expanded and transformed as it moved between local Jewish communities. While we do not have immediate access to the tunes used for these songs, we know that Jews had established melodies for at least some Shabbat Zemirot and were frequently drawing these melodies from the urban musical environment in which they lived. The custom and its repertoire took the more defined form that it carries to this day over the course of the 16th century when the songs were printed several times. Studying this custom to sing each week as well as the Shabbat Zemirot themselves provide a look at localized domestic piety in the Jewish community of Europe during the Middle Ages.