What is traditional Jewish music?

Traditional Jewish music is the repertoire communities keep by singing it: holiday songs, table songs, and nigunim (ניגון) , in Yiddish, Hebrew, or with no words. A song belongs here when people treat it as inherited, including pieces that began as a signed poem and were then folded into the holiday.

This shelf is wider than any one community. Klezmer (כּלי־זמר) is the wedding trade, Yiddish theater (ייִדיש טעאַטער) is a composed song for a play, and Yiddish folk is the Yiddish-language song as it lived in people’s mouths. Traditional Jewish is the religious and home inheritance those can also join. “A sukkele a kleyne” sits here because Sukkot singers and schools pass it on, beside its life as a Yiddish folk song (פֿאָלקסליד) and as a Chasidic (חסידיש) (חסידי) holiday song.