Shabbat Shalom With A Heart Healthy Dose of Torah - Beshallach

Music is the prayer of our soul. Abraham Joshua Heschel put into concrete words the truth that so many of us have always known deep within. A worship experience with great music and an average sermon is a great service. A worship experience with a great sermon and average music is an average service. In as much as my own musical talent is limited to adjusting the volume on a stereo and clapping at the end of a show, I am envious of folks who can make beautiful music. At the gym, I find motivation in the all too loud music that probably damages my ears, even while it stimulates the movement of muscles not sure they want to go on. In therapy, I evoke the truth of the great sage of modern music, “Meatloaf,” who sang the finest line ever offered to a seeker on a therapist’s couch, “You are never alone when you can put on the phones and let the drummer tell your heart what to do.” Long before the artist wrote the songs making up the albums “Bat Out Of Hell” or “Back Into Hell,” I remember turning off the lights in my room, putting headphones on, blasting music and crying my heart out until whatever emotional demons threatened me passed on.

Imagine the magnitude of global awareness that stems straight from the efforts of “Live Aid” or “Farm Aid.” Imagine what the protest or peace movements would have been without “We Shall Overcome”, “Where Have All the Flowers Gone,” or “Lift Every Voice and Sing.” Imagine … “Imagine” as only a spoken poem of warning. Music sets moods, describes emotion, changes the course of the soul, and creates history.

This is Shabbat Shirah – the Sabbath of Song. Specifically, this is the week we read the Song of the Sea; the piece telling of the Israelites crossing the Sea of Reeds. The prosaic text of the Torah changes, as Israel celebrates its freedom. The text reads, “Mi Khamokha Ba-Aelim Adonai – Who is like You among all the Gods that are worshipped?” As the story plays out, I cannot help but think of the noise of the crashing waters, the prayers and screams of the drowning Egyptians, the trumpets blasting, the sound of fear from the chariots of Egypt, and the celebration of Israel’s salvation.

There is only one problem with this whole story. Until I heard the late Debbie Friedman’s musical rendition of this text, every piece of music for it, that I had heard, was at best pithy, at worst lethargic or depressing. Now, I know that my mother would argue that the melodies of which I just referred are God sent from Sinai, and that my new ones trivialize the text (generation gaps are wonderful). For me, though, they made this magnificent piece of text just boring. I know I was not alone in feeling this way. I have since heard and loved Sam Glazer’s and Danny Nichols’ renderings. Each is high powered and filled with excitement. Then Rick Recht rocked the boat as he wrote a very soft piece to the text as these were the first words that came out of his mouth, as he held his new born child, “Who is like you among all the Gods that are worshipped? Who other than God could make this happen?” What a wonderful lesson in how we use music. Using the same text, people in differing circumstances … and differing spirits will all respond to the music in their own unique way.

I am blessed to be close friends with several of the modern leading Jewish songwriters and musicians. Given my musical talents, this blessing is almost sardonic … a most wonderful blessing none the less.

I often teach that it is hard to make the Biblical text concrete. We must note that even if we could agree to a set text, this evolution of music seems to say that differing generations and different people within the same generations are all going to see different values, settings, and teachings in the text. There are those who insist that they not only know the absolute text, but also the voice with which every word was spoken. The moment that I let someone else tell me the definitive voice with which a biblical character spoke, I abdicate the right to internalize the text. Someone else gets to create the song for my heart to sing with his own - personal interpretative voice. If Heschel is correct, and prayer is the music of the soul, then even where I use someone else’s music, the voice with which I sing it must be my own. If I am bound to someone else’s reading of text, then I am, at best, singing the song of their soul and not my own. I do not sing well, but I sing what I can. Steve Dropkin taught me that a bunch of bad individual voices somehow still blend into a beautiful harmony. Perhaps the spiritual problem we face in this world is that too many people keep trying to pray someone else’s song. No, communal singing is great, but even as we sing a piece written by someone else, we have to hear how it sounds with our own hearts. Steve also taught me that if you love a song and wish your soul had written it, it will as you move forward. The psalmist wrote, “Shiru L’adonai shir khadash - Sing to God; sing a new song.” The words do not change even while the melodies occasionally do, but the hearts that sing them must evolve each piece into their own. When we can own the prayer of our souls, and not mimic the prayer of someone else’s, then we will sing with one great harmony, and on that day, God will be one, and god’s name will be one. Shabbat Shalom.