An essential element of Jeff Hamburg's musical esthetics has always been his Jewish background. More than twenty years ago, one finds compositions that in one way or another deal with this theme. Two examples are 'Dibboek', a music-theater production based on the well-known story by An-ski (S.S. Rappaport) and 'Ha-Zohar H-Rakia', a grandiose composition for choir and orchestra based on texts from the mystical book of the Zohar.

In more recent years, Hamburg has turned to liturgical sources, both as a source of inspiration as well as a musical reservoir. Melodies canonized by Louis Lewandowsky, as used in the traditional Reform service, traditional chanting, both Ashkenazy and Sephardic, appear more structurally in his compositions.

But, as opposed to Lewandowsky's desire to fit the melodies into a diatonic mold, Hamburg attempts to revitalize the linear and textual aspects of these melodies, going back to their more modal ancestry. One hears that in, for example, the second movement of the Second String Qua