Kedmah

Name: Kedmah
Start: 2026-03-15T19:30:00-04:00
End: 2026-03-15T21:00:00-04:00
Location: Multicultural Arts Center

Schedule

Sun Mar 15 2026 at 07:30 pm to 09:00 pm

UTC-04:00

Location

Multicultural Arts Center | Cambridge, MA

Kedmah is an ensemble of Musicians and prayer leaders excavating the power and beauty of Mizrahi Jewish expression through ancient poetry and song. Led by Rabbi Yosef Goldman and Yoni Avi Battat, Kedmah honors the artists’ Iraqi, Syrian, and Yemenite ancestry in conversation with their intersecting musical influences.
From Temple times to today, piyyutim utilize complex and beautiful poetry to infuse spirit and meaning into both sacred and ordinary moments of human experience. The stirring melodies are rooted in the illustrious tradition of maqam- a distinct system of musical expression found exclusively in the music of the Arab world - with similar systems in places like Turkey, Iran, and North Africa.
Kedmah honors and reinvents these living sacred traditions rendered with deep reverence for tradition and boldly adapted with an ear towards our modern musical world.
Schedule
6:30 - 7:15 Pre Concert Lecture / Text Study with Rabbi Yosef Goldman Sponsored by Hadar Boston
7:30-9:30 Performance

Co-sponsored by Hebrew College - Soul Sounds, Hadar Boston, and Base Boston.
Pre-concert lecture / text study with Rabbi Yosef Goldman
Singing Toward Freedom: Unlocking a Pesach Piyyut
Piyyut is a spiritual technology—poetry written to be sung, designed to do something that study alone cannot. Join Rabbi Yosef Goldman to explore Melekh Go’el u-Moshia’, a beloved Baghdadi piyyut sung from Purim through the Seder night. We’ll unpack how the poet artfully weaves together Exodus, Ezekiel, and the Mekhilta, situating us inside the story of liberation and the pivot from embodied memory to preparing for the liberation ahead. This is the perfect preparation for Nisan, the head of months: the season of first and final redemption.