Acoustics of Voice and Music in Jewish Worship Spaces

Paper in proceeding, 2008

The history of Jewish worship space, the organization, and some of the customs of Jewish worship are discussed. The various strands of Jewish worship are presented as they relate to the worship space and its acoustics. The architectural and acoustic features of the various types of Jewish worship spaces and how these relate to the tradition are then presented. The difficulties and possibilities in using sound reinforcement in Jewish worship spaces are noted. Finally, the noise issues are discussed from the viewpoint of signal-to-noise ratios for speech intelligibility. The intent is to provide a background for thorough acoustical analysis.