An Ancient Melody to a More Ancient Song - Friday Kavvanah, 2/3/12

I love musicals, and have performed in many and appreciated many others.  I can almost sing the lyrics of Fiddler on the Roof in its entirety.  Unlike in musical theater, real people do not break out into spontaneous song to mark special moments or process strong emotions.  However, this does occasionally happen in the Tanakh (the Hebrew Bible).

This coming Shabbat is known as Shabbat Shirah, the Sabbath of Song, for two biblical poems that are recited: the first, in Parashat Beshallah, is the song of victory sung by Moses and the Israelites after successfully crossing the Sea of Reeds; the second is that of Devorah, the prophetess that leads Israel's forces against the Canaanites  perhaps a century after the departure from Egypt.  The first is from the Torah, book of Shemot / Exodus.  The second is the haftarah / prophetic reading, from the book of Judges.

Shirat HaYam, Moses' song, was recited daily in the Temple in Jerusalem by the Levitical choir, when the Temple was standing.  Today it is part of the regular daily liturgy, and here at Temple Israel we sing it every morning to a melody that comes from the Western Sephardic (Amsterdam) tradition, despite the suite of Ashkenazi melodies that make up the rest of our davening.

What is perhaps most appealing about this melody is something that I read years ago in a paper by Cantor Macy Nulman, who was the director of the cantorial school at Yeshiva University.  Cantor Nulman observed that when that popular Sephardic melody is compared with the special chant used by Ashkenazim use when they read Shirat HaYam on Shabbat Shirah and the 7th day of Pesah, we find that they are strikingly similar.  The theory goes that the two melodies were likely identical about one thousand years ago, when Jews were moving northward from Italy and Provence to the lands called Ashkenaz (north-eastern France and Germany).  They took the tune with them, and then the separation of distance and centuries and customs produced the variation that we hear today.

In other words, the Sephardic and Ashkenazic tunes are the same, but differentiated from each other by a real-life game of telephone.  The melody is apparently ancient, though not as old as the words.

The concept of breaking out into spontaneous song, which we might associate with Broadway (or perhaps Glee), is a form of entertainment that is as ancient as the Torah, and the power of traditional melody is undeniable.  It is remarkable that these songs are still part of the fabric of Jewish life; I hope that they continue to resonate for at least another thousand years.


~
Rabbi Seth Adelson

Debbie Friedman's Musical Plea for Peace

(Originally delivered at Temple Israel, Friday evening, January 14, 2011.)

This was a tragic week in the Jewish world, not only because of the near-fatal shooting of the first Jewish representative to Congress from Arizona, Gabrielle Giffords, but also because of the death of the best-known modern composer of Jewish music, Debbie Friedman.

On this Shabbat Shirah, when we chant the oldest song in the book, Shirat HaYam, the song sung by the Israelites upon crossing the Sea of Reeds, it is all the more fitting to honor Debbie Friedman's contribution to the tower of Jewish song of which Shirat HaYam is the foundation stone.

Certainly, you know her work:

Mi Sheberakh - a prayer for healing
Not by Might - Zechariah 4:6; Haftarat Behaalotekha
Im Ein Ani Li - from Pirqei Avot
Havdalah melody
Aleph Bet

And many others.

When I was in cantorial school, we were not taught to love Debbie Friedman's work. She wrote synagogue music that was a break with tradition - she did not use the correct nusah (prayer chant melody), and stated firmly for the record (I was there when she said this at a panel discussion at the Jewish Theological Seminary) that she wrote music that spoke to people today, and that was far more important than the tradition of nusah.

That may or may not be true. To quote the very musical Reb Tevye of Broadway, "Without our traditions, our lives would be as shaky as a fiddler on the roof." But without a doubt, Ms. Friedman's music touched two generations of modern Jews in a way that no set of traditional motifs ever will.

I'd like us to take a moment to sing one of her most touching pieces, a song from the liturgy that many of you know, not only as a tribute to Debbie Friedman, but also a plea for peace in the wake of the shooting in Tucson. May the One who makes peace up in the heavens please make peace for all of us down here. All of us.

Oseh shalom bimromav, hu ya-aseh shalom aleinu ve-al kol Yisrael ve-imru amen.