Bendigamos by the London Spanish and Portuguese Choir (Bevis Marks)

Le chœur de la congrégation hispano-portugaise de Londres (Bevis Marks) lors du concert d'ouverture de la Deuxième université d'été judéo-espagnole à Paris le 7 juillet 2013. Opening concert of the Sigunda universita d'enverano de Djudyo en Paris. Bendigamos is a popular Sephardi table hymn. According to Revd. Cardozo, Hazan of Shearith Israel, NYC, Bendigamos was first discovered in Bordeaux, France, where there was a Marrano community since the 17th century whose main language was Spanish - unlike London and New York, where the main language was Portuguese. It was imported from France to the USA, via Curacao and Jamaica, and has now been something of an exclusive S&P "club song" at Shearith Israel in New York for many years. I know the hymn from the S&P Community of London in the late seventies, where it had recently arrived from America (possibly via Haham Solomon Gaon); the older generation told me it was unknown to them in the fifties. In those days its use was limited to private homes, and it was not sung at communal events. It is now used in London on all public occasions, where it is evidently considered to strike the right ethnic note. In 2006 it was sung at a televised service at Bevis Marks in the presence of (then Prime Minister) Tony Blair on the 350th Anniversary of Anglo Jewry, and in early 2011 it was sung at the Mansion House, in honour of the Ashkenazi Jewish Lord Mayor Michael Bear, who selected Bevis Marks as his official "church", and Abraham Levy (Proxime Haham of the London S&P) as his chaplain.