My Sephardi Identity and the Hidden Power of Sound in Faith and Worship

Yaniv Elijah d'Or is a Portuguese–British–Israeli countertenor, artistic researcher, and university lecturer whose work brings early music into dialogue with Sephardi heritage, cultural memory, and contemporary performance. He holds a Bachelor of Music from the Jerusalem Academy of Music and Dance, an Executive MBA from Tel Aviv University, and the LGSMD qualification from the Guildhall School of Music and Drama in London, where he graduated with honours. He is currently a PhD candidate in Music in the Department of Communication and Art at the University of Aveiro and is affiliated with INET-md's Creation, Performance, and Artistic Research group. His doctoral project, "Tolerance of Old & New Sephardic Music," examines how historically informed and newly composed Sephardi music can contribute to collective memory, cultural identity, and interreligious tolerance. He is also Lecturer in Classical Voice at Ono Academic College. Founder of Ensemble NAYA and a recording artist for Naxos, d'Or has appeared at major international venues, including Wigmore Hall, the Barbican Centre, the Royal Festival Hall, the Mariinsky Theatre, Oslo Opera House, and the Philharmonie de Paris. His recordings have received international recognition, including selection among Gramophone's ten best recordings of 2016 and BBC Music Magazine's Album Choice.

What does it mean to inherit an identity through sound?

This study explores my Sephardi identity through the sounds that have shaped Jewish faith and cultural memory. From the melodies of prayer and the chanting of sacred texts to the rhythms of Ladino and the voices of family and community, sound can carry history in ways that lyrics alone cannot. It connects us to places we may never have visited and ancestors we never knew. In a way it enights the traditions that have travelled across generations and unwritten borders.

For Sephardi Jews, whose history is still very present across Spain and the Mediterranean, sound provides a particularly rich way of understanding continuity and change. Liturgical melodies, piyyutim, cantillation and vernacular traditions have absorbed the cultural influences of different communities while retaining a distinctly Jewish identity. In this sense, sound becomes an acoustic archive and a living repository of memory and faith.

The lecture will consider how listening, singing and prayer can become acts of remembrance and identity making. It will also reflect on what happens when traditions are displaced or rediscovered reflecting the role of personal and collective memory in keeping them alive.

At the heart of the paper is a reflection on thirty years of artistic research and the relationship between sound, cultural memory and Early Music. Through autobiography and artistic practice, I will consider what sounds can reveal about Sephardi history and worship and how they might allow knowledge to survive beyond written records.