Amen amen shem nora

This is a widespread Sephardi piyyut for Simhat Torah. It was included in the compendium Shirim uzemirot vetushbahot (Constantinople, 1545), one of the earliest printed collections of religious Hebrew poems, many of which were written by Shlomo Mazal Tov, a prominent poet who lived in Saloniki and Turkey. The melody is one of the favorite old tunes of the Western Sephardi repertoire. Variants of it were recorded among the Sephardi Jews in Italy and Southern France too. Rev. Lopes Cardozo learned this melody in Amsterdam from Mr. Leon Palache (see no.5 above).