Rabbi Eliana's Divrei Torah

למד את שפתותי ברכה ושיר הלל
בהתחדש זמנך עם בקר ועם ליל
לבל יהיה יומי היום כתמול שלשום
לבל יהיה יומי עלי הרגל

Teach me to sing You the songs of your praise
for the cycling of the moon and the opening days
so that each of my moments forever be new,
so that each of my moments will always be true,
so that each of my moments I walk here with You.

— Leah Goldberg, Teach me God

***

Rabbi Shmu’el ben Nachman said: At the time that the sea opened before the Israelites on their way out of Egypt, the angels wanted to sing songs of praise to God. [But] God said to them, “My creations are drowning in the sea, and you want to sing?

–Talmud, Sanhedrin 39b

***

When I started rabbinical school, I discovered a problem I did not realize I had when applying. Rabbis sing. A lot. And not just Adon Olam. And I could sing with the radio in my car. Or with my friends at elementary school. But I could not sing in prayer. 

It is, unfortunately, a traditional Jewish thing that though we pray in a group, women are separated from the central space by a mechitza/a partition. The men’s part of the prayer hall is where the main prayer happens and where the singing comes from. The mechitza is not a sound barrier so the women, praying on their side, are supposed to keep their voices down so they are not heard over the voices of the men. Men would also mumble a lot in prayer. The women would do their best to be silent. In some places I’ve been, if you got carried away in song, some of the other women would give you the silencing “look.” 

So when I started rabbinical school and realized I won’t be able to be a rabbi if I can’t sing prayers out loud, I wasn’t sure what to do. The situation was so problematic that I was assigned a singing chavruta – a sweet guy by the name of Jeremy Firestein, whose job as my “study partner” was to stand at the far end of the beit midrash every morning at prayers, and wave at me in a very annoying way whenever my voice lowered to a point where he couldn’t hear it. I hated it. But it worked.

Lately, I’ve been having all kinds of small cognitive effects from the ongoing stress about stuff in Israel, and one of these brain glitches is that now and then, I forget how to sing. Some of you have seen this happen to me in services. It usually happens in the middle of a song. Even one I know as well as Adon Olam. I will forget it while singing it. And I won’t just forget the melody but how to get my body to produce a melody. So even when people remind me of the melody, I would still be unable to continue. 

Which, considering the Talmudic thought on it being inappropriate in general to sing when life and death is in the balance, makes perfect sense to me. My soul does not want to be singing; when I try to force my body to sing, sometimes it collaborates and sometimes it does not. But through this experience, I’ve come to appreciate in a new way how deeply the Jewish experience of singing is connected to the Jewish experience of prayer. So much so that without song, the transformative power of prayer eludes me…

***

Rabbi Abahu said: The angels came before God saying: “Master of creation, how come Israel does not sing before you on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur?” God responded: “Is it to be expected that at a time when a ruler sits on a throne of judgment and the books of life and death are open before God, that Israel would be singing?”

— Talmud Bavli, Rosh Hashanah 32b

From this and the previous Talmudic bit that I shared we learn that:

A) Angels really care about singing.

B) There are times when it is appropriate to sing and times when it is not. 

C) Times of difficulty and seriousness are not times for song. 

D) Yom Kippur is a time of such gravity that we should not sing.

That is: there is no “official” singing for us on Yom Kippur. I say “official” because we sing a whole lot on the High Holidays, but not the part of the prayer that is most defined by singing– the hallel, the special praise section that we sing on all the other holidays.

That’s okay, you’d say. Ashkenazi Jews mostly remember that prayer is a somber, serious thing. And here in New England, even when we do sing at services, we usually try not to get carried away… But is it okay? It seems like it might not be.

Again and again, Judaism teaches us that song is how we praise God. Song is how the angels praise God. There are choruses of angels that work in shifts ensuring that there is always song in heaven. We, humans, have an entire tribe of Israel, the Levites that are designated as a Temple choir. And the midrash tells us that every living being, and even the inanimate creations of God, sing. So even in somber prayer, we are taught to value song, as the most basic form of connecting with God and with God’s creations.

The Hassidic tradition also teaches us that we have to worship God in joy. The Rebbe of Liadi goes as far as to say that joy is the only frequency on which we can connect with God. But joy, and singing as an expression of that joy, is a high bar to set when we know that most people do not choose sadness. And that bringing oneself to a state of joy is not always possible. 

What about all the many people, myself included, that feel closest to God in times of need, in times of trouble? As the psalmist says: ”ממעמקים קראתיך–I call to you from the depths.” (Psalm 130:1)

Can we even imply that when we cry out to God in pain rather than joy, and without song in our hearts, God does not hear us as well? That’s preposterous. It also clashes with some teachings of the Tanach. For example: ”מן המיצר קראתי יה, ענני במרחב יה – I call to God from the narrow places and God responds to me” (Psalm 118:5) So clearly joy is NOT the only way to connect to God. 

Nonetheless, the Hassidim made it sound as if joy is the only good way to connect with God. Song is the soul of the universe, teaches Reb Nachman of Breslov.  He tells us that when a person sings and their voice ascends to heaven, it creates a great joy above, and the person is able to cleave to God through their melody. (see Kitzur Likutey Moharan I, 3:1 and 3)

North American pluralistic Judaism is very deeply steeped with Hassidic ideas. These are simplified Hassidic assumptions that have been internalized by Conservative, Reform, and Reconstructionist Judaism to the point where we take them for granted. For example: God prefers that we treat each other well even more than God prefers that we follow the letter of the law. That the needs of the community are more important than the needs of the individual. And that by serving the needs of the community, you are in fact serving God best.

Before Hassidic thought, there was more openness to a meaningful connection to God through worship that did not put a value on the one mode of prayer.  We see this in Yehudah Halevi’s book, the Kuzari, where he writes: “You can come before God either through joy or through awe. Humbling your heart before God by fasting on Yom Kippur brings you closer to God. But it does not bring you closer to God than your joy on Shabbat and holidays. That is as long as your joy is wholehearted. And how do you know your joy is wholehearted? If it brings you to singing.”

To me, if I had to choose, the idea of coming into the presence of God with song sounds like a better deal than fasting and supplication – and yet, so many of you are here today, fasting, and praying, and you don’t even know you could get all of this *plus* food on Shabbat. As long as it is a joyous Shabbat with singing, of course. But fun or not, we don’t always have a choice about our mood, so to me it sounds reassuring to know that there are also ways to connect with God from a place of sadness and difficulty.

So what is it about Hassidism and joy and singing? Could it be that they were naturally people who were more inclined towards happiness? Sure, it could be. But we have to remember that Hassidism did not originate at some Jewish retreat center, and it is not a hippie, happy movement by nature. In fact, it came about at a time that the world was dark for Jews and people were poor and without their leaders and in despair. 

If anything, it is possible to argue that the Hassidic fascination with joyous worship and happiness *is* a response or a reaction to difficulty, specifically to the harsh conditions following the Chmielnicki pogroms (1648–49) that killed more than half the Jewish population of Poland. As result of the pogroms, many of the Torah scholars and rabbis of the community were killed. The community had turned from a bastion of learning into a much less educated group of people who were no longer sure they had the necessary knowledge to do Jewish in an acceptable way. 

By bringing the ways of worship of “the simple men” into Judaism, they created a folk religion that was accessible to more people and empowered them to not give up on the concept of a connection with God.  So ironically, by recommending worship by song, they were trying to lower the bar on how to connect with God, not raise it. 

So… what is the bottom line? Do we sing because it’s a good way to connect with God as long as life is not in the balance (in which case it is better to not sing), or is it that we sing because it is our only option? Or perhaps we sing because it is a good alternative to the other form of worship like supplication. 

***

Or perhaps it is none of these.  In The Gates of the Forest, Elie Wiesel tells the story of a group of partisans in the forests of Transylvania. The main protagonist, a young Jew named Gregor, survives the war and immigrates to the US. One day Gregor happens upon the house of a rebbe filled with Hassidim. He sees them jump up and down with the rhythm of the music, and he feels a deep sense of longing. But soon after, he is reminded of what has been consuming his thoughts all his waking hours - what happened to the Jewish people. He does not understand what he sees, the Hassidic court going on with joy as usual. So he says to the rebbe:

“So nothing changed?"

The rebbe says, “Nothing changed.”

“And I? I surely changed.”

“You have not changed either.”

“And Auschwitz, what about Auschwitz?”

“Aushwitz proves that nothing changed, that a person is capable of both love and hate.”

When Gregor hears the rebbe say that the horrors of Auschwitz did not change the very essence of creation, he says: “if so, Rebbe, teach me how to pray.” The rebbe shakes his head and says: “That's not enough. I will teach you how to sing.”

The story of Gregor again brings us back to the starting point of this talk – that there are some times when it is counterintuitive to think about singing. Times that are simply too horrible. But it also teaches us that song is not an alternative to somber prayer. That song is the transformation of pain into prayer, so that it reaches God better. Mystically speaking, the song is the finding of holiness in the difficulty of life and elevating that holiness back to God. But perhaps more importantly, sung prayer is the transformation of our pain and the beginning of the healing of our hearts by connecting us to our Source of life. So through the despair and *especially* when it is great, we must sing. It is not an easier way to worship, it is the hardest one. It forces us to step into our pain and transform it, not just survive it. The more difficult the time, the more important it is to learn to sing through the difficulty. Because the more difficult the time, the more we need ways to transform the situation to a better one, and nothing has the transformative power of song.

הפכת מספדי למחול לי פתחת שקי ותאזרני שמחה

King David writes: “You turn my mourning into dance, you remove my mourner's attire and dress me in a garment of joy.”

— Psalm 30:12

And the verse doesn’t end here:

“You turn my mourning into dance, you remove my mourner’s attire and dress me in a garment of joy so that I may sing to you, God, I praise you.”

Does the song transform us? Is the very act of singing a mood enhancer? Or is God transforming us so that we can sing, because God desires our songs so much? 

One of God’s names is: ”הבוחר בשירי זמרה – the One who wants our songs,” and more specifically songs of zimra – which means the songs that can cut through obstacles. Songs that have the capacity to direct our hearts to God. Rabbi Simcha Bunim of Peshischa would say we should not say – shirei zimra – songs of cutting through obstacles, but shyarei zimra – leftovers, remnants. He believes the songs are what comes out of the tatters, the remaining bits of our broken heart – through the sharp edges and all – and that this is what God wants most. The singing that comes out of our pushing ourselves into pain, and elevating ourselves from the pits of despair with the power of song.

That is how we elevate God.

From the words of the Kaddish:

יתגדל ויתקדש שמי רבה… elevated and lauded be the Name of the Holy One, Blessed is God – higher and higher [God's name is elevated] through our blessings and songs, our prayers, praises, and our words of consolation that are uttered in the world… 

May we all find the music in our hearts and the strength to sing through our tears. And may our tears of sorrow be transformed into tears of joy, our mourning attire into garments of joy.

And let it be God’s will. כן יהי רצון

Gmar Chatima Tovah.