Jeffrey A. Summit is Research Professor in the Department of Music and Judaic Studies at Tufts University, where he also serves as rabbi and Neubauer Executive Director of Tufts Hillel. He is the author of The Lord's Song in a Strange Land: Music and Identity in Contemporary Jewish Worship (OUP). His CD Abayudaya: Music from the Jewish People of Uganda was nominated for a Grammy Award.
Scholar, teacher, person of faith-Jeffrey Summit welcomes readers to the spiritual world made resonant through singing God's words. Vast as that world is, Summit draws together its farthest reaches and its most intimate moments, revealing the center that forms around the chanting of the Torah. --Philip V. Bohlman, Mary Werkman Distinguished Service Professor of Music and the Humanities, The University of Chicago, and author of Jewish Music and Modernity (OUP, 2008) With Jeffrey Summit as an expert and sensitive guide, the reader travels a pathway to understanding the public chanting of the Bible as both sacred text and spiritual experience among American Jews. A most impressive exploration of a fast-changing religious world. --Kay Kaufman Shelemay, G. Gordon Watts Professor of Music, Harvard University Singing God's Words is an important and unique contribution to the study of cantillation, the art of chanting the Hebrew Bible. Jeffrey Summit delivers an insightful narrative that will engage musicians and sociologists, Jews and non-Jews, professionals and laypersons alike. --Professor Joshua Jacobson, author of Chanting the Hebrew Bible