The Jewish Guide to the Internet

“The American Society for Jewish Music (ASJM) enables the performance, scholarship and dissemination of Jewish music and sustains these initiatives through a variety of activities, including concerts, publications seminars, conferences and other projects.“ The website provides access to the table of contents of their journal, Musica Judaica, and the St. Petersburg Score Collection.

Part of the National Library of Israel, this site in English and Hebrew provides information about the sound archives and sample playlists and song collections as well as the House of Hebrew Songs, a searchable database of Hebrew music.

A browsable collection of popular Chabad niggunim that you can listen to. Site also displays the sheet music.

This Hebrew language monthly electronic magazine offers information about and samples of Chasidic and cantorial music. You can also listen to clips of music. Its archives, which are listed chronologically, date back to the beginning of the magazine.

You will find here a rich array of recordings, some of them rare, dating back as far as 1904. Browsable and searchable database of sound files, graphics of record labels, and details of the recordings and their contents dating back to 1904. Material is available in 8 languages and can be searched by genre, language, theme, holiday, composer and title. Register for free so you can access the audio files.

Listen to these old recordings online.

Located in Paris, the “goals are the preservation and the dissemination of the Jewish musical heritage.” The site in English and French provides access to a vast array of recordings, concerts, radio and TV shows, biographies, and articles. You can search the Halpern Media Library as well.

The searchable site of this music store in Brooklyn, New York allows you to listen to Jewish music for free.

Created by Aura Levin Lipski, this searchable site offers the lyrics of popular Hebrew songs in the original text, in transliteration, and in translation. Information about recordings of the songs is provided, along with details about singers, songwriters, composers, musicians, cantors, and choirmasters from both Israel and around the world involved in creating and performing Hebrew and Jewish music. The songs are arranged alphabetically by title and are also grouped by festivals, and you can submit information as well. An excellent collection of annotated, relevant links is provided as well. This is an excellent site for information about Jewish and Israeli music.

“The Israel Music Institute (IMI) is the first publicly-owned music publishing house in Israel; it also serves as an information centre, dedicated to the promotion of Israeli concert music.” The site in English and Hebrew provides biographical databases about Israeli composers and a searchable database of scores, CDs and books on Israeli music for purchase.

From this site in English and Hebrew you can find out about the history of the opera company, its current productions, education program, national stars, and international co-productions. Ticket and subscription information is provided, along with a seating chart of the opera house.

Information in English and Hebrew on the history, music director, and orchestra members is available at this site along with a listing of concerts and subscription prices. News about the orchestra and a listing of special concerts is also available.

Israel-Music.com is the e-commerce arm of Tamuz Records. From this site you can purchase a wide range of Israeli and Jewish music, mp3 versions of songs and Israeli TV series and movies.

Created by Batya Fonda, this site provides access to her “series of lectures given in either English or Hebrew about the ways folk songs reflect different themes of Jewish heritage.” Lyrics and recordings of some of the songs are available.

Created by Rabbi Joshua Yuter, has an archive of guitar chords for more than 350 songs. The chords are written under the lyrics of the songs.

"The purpose of the Jewish Music Heritage Project is to document, catalog, and disseminate one of the great sacred musical traditions of the world, namely that of the Eastern European Synagogue, which is now in real danger of being lost forever." The project plans to produce a 5-volume, 20-book compilation plus 75 CDs containing all of the music from their collection.

The Jewish Music Institute is an independent arts organisation based at SOAS, University of London. Its site provides information about and access to resources about various forms of Jewish music including classical, Israeli, klezmer, liturgical, Sephardi and Yiddish.

Housed at Hebrew University, this site provides a thesaurus of Jewish music that can be searched by tradition, country, category, and author. Advanced searches are possible as well.

Compiled by Roger Shlomo Harris, this is a browsable list of resources arranged alphabetically by subject. Although it has not been updated since 2012, it is still a useful resource.

Created by Brandeis University librarian Judith Shira Pinnolis, "the purpose of the Jewish Music WebCenter is to support and encourage scholarship and general enjoyment of Jewish music.” It has sections on people, academic resources and libraries dealing with Jewish music.

The Hebrew and English site of this Israeli based company allows you to listen to Jewish music for free online.

Searchable database of this journal published by the Cantors Assembly of the Conservative Movement. Journal entries date back to 1967. The proceedings of the organization are also available here.

The primary mission of the Judaica Sound Archives at Florida Atlantic University is to “collect, preserve, and digitize Judaica sound recordings.” Its website provides browsable and searchable access to thousands of songs and musical pieces as well as information about their composers and performers.

Extensive database of the lyrics to Jewish songs, searchable by a variety of parameters.

This online database of recorded and annotated Jewish music was created by the Jewish Music Institute at the University of London and is searchable by title, performer, ensemble, media type, collection, and company.

Describing itself as “a comprehensive cross-reference of klezmer tune names, recordings, and sheet music sources, this site, created and maintained by Allen Lutins, provides access to more than 1,000 klezmer songs.

Created by Ari Davidow, this site provides links to information about klezmer music including people, and bands by name and location, radio shows, sheet music, recordings, instruments, organizations, and record label contacts.

Created by Gerard Edery, the goal of this project housed at Sefard Records is to “offer all original Ladino Lyrics and my own translations, absolutely free, in one place on the internet.” The database is browsable by alphabetical order.

This Hebrew language site, housed at the University of Haifa, indexes 500 publications published from the 1930s to the present that contain lyrics to Hebrew songs.You can search by keyword, by subject, by the first three words of the song, by the title, the lyricist, or the composer.

This searchable archive is devoted to the recording, preservation, and distribution of American Jewish music from the past 350 years. You can browse by cantor, choir, composer, conductor, orchestra, soloist, or vocalist. There are articles,videos and oral histories.

The Renanot Institute deals with the documentation, research and promotion of Jewish music of the various ethnic Jewish communities, as well as with the promotion of religious Jewish singing and cantorial music in every possible way. Its Hebrew and English website offers a searchable version of its catalog from which you can order audio and video recordings and books.

You can search the Yiddish and Hebrew recordings in this collection, housed at the University of Pennsylvania online using the trilingual database catalog - English, Yiddish, and Hebrew- by the title of each track or band of the recording, composer, performers and keyword. Audio and video clips from the collection are also provided.

Describing itself as the largest repository of Jewish music online, this site provides access to Jewish music and videos iin Yiddish, Ladino, and Hebrew and includes Klezmer and Chazzanut.

Created by Joel Bresler, this website showcases over 100 years of recorded Sephardic music, exploring in detail the earliest Sephardic recordings, the artists who made them, and their repertory and performance practices. The database is searchable by artist, label, and song.

Searchable and browsable database in Hebrew of the words and YouTube videos of popular Israeli songs.

“In the summer of 1948, an amateur folklorist named Ben Stonehill recorded more than 1,000 songs from Holocaust survivors in the lobby of the Hotel Marseilles in New York City.” These songs are now available online.

Founded by Velvel Pasternak, this company in Cedarhurst, New York offers ebooks, mp3 recordings, sheet music and print books about a wide range of Jewish music.

From the National Library of Israel comes this digitized collection of Hebrew and Yiddish songs that you can listen to and search for by a variety of parameters including subject.

The website for this group that promotes Ashkenazic expressive culture provides access to several of the group's projects including two digital humanities projects, the Kiselgof-Makonovetsky Digital Manuscript Project (KMDMP), and the Klezmer Archive Project. Both of these projects have received funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities. They are developing an extensive set of resources, including hard-to-find articles about Ashkenazic Expressive Culture topics on our Articles page.

The National Sound Archive of Israel provides access to thousands of hours of digitized music recordings. It offers access to personal sites of Israeli musicians, music databases and the huge collection at the House of Hebrew Songs.

The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Yiddish Song Collection at the Workers Circle is a free, comprehensive, and searchable bi-lingual digital resource with lyrics, translations, sheet music, and audio and video performances for over 400 Yiddish songs inspired by Workers Circle historical song books compiled by renowned Yiddishists, Yosl and Chana Mlotek z"l.

“The Zamir Choral Foundation, created by Matthew Lazar, promotes Jewish choral music as a vehicle to inspire Jewish life, culture and continuity.” The site provides scheduling information and audio and video clips from performances, as well as a set of relevant links.

Information about the performance schedule of this choral ensemble is presented on its home page along with recordings you can purchase online. A complete playlist and much of the groups sheet music is also available along with several of their newest songs in MP3 format. There is information on the Renaissance composer Salamone Rossi and links to Jewish musical resources. Of particular note are the extensive, hypertext list of Jewish choral sheet music publishers, the lengthy bibliography of materials on Jewish music, and the database Zam`ru. The database, an index of Jewish choral music, is searchable by 9 different criteria and is arranged in alphabetical order by composer.

This Hebrew language open source project is seeking to compile a database of early Hebrew songs. The songs are browsable by title, composer and performer and searchable by keyword. You can also find biographical information about the composers and performers. You can listen to many of the selections. In addition, the site provides the lyrics to the songs.