Chaverotai (My friends):
Its time for music Shabbat. Each year, we set aside one Shabbat to focus on music and the important role that it plays in our communal worship and spiritual life. It is also a time to consider the connections between music and liturgy — between melody and words. Mordecai Kaplan defined Judaism as the “evolving religious civilization of the Jewish people”. In our time, we can easily see how much American and Israeli civilization have influenced the music that we use to express the words of our tradition in an idiom that is accessible. Even more, the changes in Jewish music over the last generation have influenced the way we use liturgy itself. Consider the great popularity of the music of Debbie Friedman, for instance, who has written many musical prayer settings in what many would call an American pop musical idiom. (Think of the melody for her English V’ahavta — And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, etc.) Later in her work, she created a new text version of the misheberach l’cholim - the prayer for healing, mixing English and Hebrew together and introducing us to the idea that healing happens not necessarily because of Divine Intervention, but because of our godly behavior in caring for one another. New music and new words.
We are in for a real treat. This coming March 12 and 13 (Friday night and Saturday morning) we will host two wonderful guests for our annual music Shabbat. On Friday night, March 12, all are invited to a special erev Shabbat service featuring Shai Specht. Shai is a wonderful musician, composer, storyteller and educator. He has recorded three collections of original Jewish music for kids and is now completing a fourth for adults. He will be with us to share some of his new music and to bring a new understanding of our more traditional melodies and liturgy. This Friday night service is planned with families with older elementary and middle school aged kids in mind. Like we do at all of our services, we welcome all of our members regardless of age. This particular one should be especially enjoyable for kids in grades 3-8.
On Shabbat morning, March 13, we will host Linda Hirschhorn and her a capella group, Vocolot. (The group’s name is a sort of pun on the English and Hebrew terms for voice: vocal and ‘kolot’.) Linda has gained an international reputation as a composer and arranger of traditional liturgy, and of new liturgy. Much of Linda’s music is in the form of rather complicated rounds and canons, in which she takes a single line from the liturgy and creates a kind of tapestry of sound, enabling her listeners to find layers of meaning in the one text passage she is setting. Another of her innovations is the use of mainly women’s voices. While this may not seem new to us, it is a big departure for a tradition which banned the use of women’s voices in worship for thousands of years. Members of our community have heard Linda’s music used in our services. The first year that I introduced her “Sim Shalom” with our members Lisa and Pamela Sommers in a three-part round, the positive feedback I got was overwhelming. This music resonated loudly in people’s hearts, it seemed.
Much of Linda’s recent work has been musical settings of liturgy by the well-known Hebrew scholar and liturgist, Marcia Falk. Falk has created whole services based on the traditional Jewish liturgy, but with language that better evokes a more modern, some would say more Reconstructionist, theology. For example, instead of using the traditional “Baruch Atah Adonai” (Blessed are you, my Lord) language, she has employed grammar which enables us to say the liturgy, even if we do not adhere to a traditional theology. Her version of the motzi, which I have begun to use at the end of our Shabbat services, is a good example of this. While the traditional prayer over the bread says, “Blessed are You, Adonai, our God, King of the Universe, who brings forth bread from the earth,” Falk gives us, “N’varech et eyn ha-chayim ha-motziah lechem min ha-aretz”/ “We will bless the Source of Life that brings forth bread from the earth.” On this music Shabbat, we will hear this new music and new liturgy from its original source.
Many of our holiday blessings which recall various events in Jewish history (the exodus from Egypt, the miracle of the oil on Chanukah) end with the phrase, bayamim ha-hem, bazman ha-zeh — in those days at this time. This is an expression of both the timelessness and the timeliness of our liturgy. With the passage of time, each generation’s needs will change; if our tradition were only relevant historically, then it would become a religious museum piece. On the other hand, as we adapt the liturgy to our needs, we must still draw from a firm, unchanging foundation. We can be so thankful to live in a time when there is so much exploration and innovation with regard to our rich tradition. This process of change is essential for Judaism to remain a living tradition, one that truly expresses our sense of awe, gratitude, humility and joy in both an individual and communal way.
Hazzan Rachel Hersh Epstein