https://youtu.be/eTta-W3VM-4NIshmat Kol Chai is an ancient piyyut chanted on Shabbat and Mo’adim at the opening to Shachrit. It also forms part of the Hallel Hagadol sung on Pesach at the Haggadah.In the middle ages there emerged an intriguing, not to say controversial, narrative concerning its authorship. According to an opinion championed by no less an authority than Rabenu Tam, the payytan responsible for the composition of Nishmat Kol Chai was a certain Shimon Kepha, better known to the world as the apostle, St Peter.The back story here is that Shimon Kepha had been recruited by the rabbinical authorities to infiltrate the early Christian community, with the aim of ensuring that Christianity would cede from Judaism rather than remaining a strain within it. For the rest of his life Shimon Kepha lived as a crypto-Jew, and as a penance for publicly renouncing his Judaism he composed Nishmat.This account has not gone uncontested. Notable, and apparently quite vocal, amongst its detractors was Rabenu Tam’s own grandfather, Rashi. His opposition is expressed in a rubric in the Machzor Vitry severely condemning those who endorsed it and warning of the consequences thereof.This melody is based on a Moroccan prototype and the present recording is of the London variant which is almost identical to that of Amsterdam. While the New York version shares a resemblance to these other two, it does bear the scars of the early 20th century surgical intervention carried out by its arranger at Shearith Israel.Please share.