Music

Rabbi Melanie Aron

January 12, 2001

It was Saturday December 25th and at Orthodox congregation Shaarei Tefillah in Boston, the member of the congregation who was leading the service decided to try something a little different. It was the custom in that congregation for the shaliach tzibbur, the person who was leading the service, to introduce a melody to the chanting of the musaf kedushah on Saturday morning. Sometimes it was from Israeli popular music, like erev shel shoshanim, sometimes from another section of the liturgy. This morning though, in honor of the day, the shaliach tzibbur chose Silent Night. At first a few worshippers joined him, then several men huffily left the sanctuary, and by the end of the kedushah, he was singing all alone.

Jeff Summit, in his book The Lord's Song in a Strange Land, attempts to explore the question of how music is chosen and how it becomes integrated into the life of a religious congregation. A rabbi and trained ethnomusicologist, he studied 5 congregations in the Boston area, covering the full spectrum: New Age, Reform, Conservative in a Hillel setting, Orthodox, and Hassidic. Summit found more similarities than one might expect in the ways the congregations dealt with music and the role music in played in the life of the congregation. He also found that members of different congregations were aware of the music of other movements, and that tunes tended to move from one community to another. In general he found a tendency in all 5 congregations to move from performance music to congregational participation.

Melodies have moved into Judaism from outside cultures since earliest days of the synagogue. You have heard the cantor and I complain in fact, about how some of the melodies our members hold most sacred, are themselves borrowed from Christian Church music or secular drinking halls. Jewish music in any particular geographical location, tends to mirror the music of the surrounding culture and its values. For example, when the bel canto, operatic style was in vogue in secular culture, then cantors who sang this way were seen as cultured and artistic. Now that this approach is out of style, a cantor who sings that way will often be branded formal or egotistical.

Music holds a special place in worship. One member of one of the Boston congregations asked: "How are we going to transcend if we don't have music". People will pick their congregation and service based on the music. For many Jews, who do not understand much Hebrew, the tune is the prayer. In fact Summit goes so far as to say that it is "style of worship, more than the content of the liturgy which plays a major factor in whether many Jews find prayer meaningful and fulfilling." When the music is unfamiliar people feel that they do not belong. As a Hillel rabbi, this was a constant challenge for Summit, as every student walked in wanting to hear the tunes from their home congregation.

Music plays an important role in the experience of worship "I can start to feel the tension draining out of my body as the music starts and as the voices are raised " one woman noted, "every song of the Kabbalat Shabbat service makes me decompress a little more."

It was not just music that was important, but the power of singing together. "There's some kind of intimacy that happens when you sing together" Sometimes this stress on singing together and participation came into conflict with other values. Sometimes less authentic music was chosen for its sing-ability, as in the New Age congregations where tunes in the major keys were called nusach, if they had flowing rhythms and a cadential formula, even if they were not the traditional musical form. Sometimes in traditional settings the appropriate nusach, the special melody for the three pilgrimage holidays for example, was not used, because it was unfamiliar to the congregation. In particular in the Orthodox congregation there was conflict between the desire to give many people the opportunity to daven and the issue of people davening without enough expertise and making mistakes either in the Hebrew or in the melody.

Something that I had not been aware of was that trophe, the Torah cantillation, is not only making a comeback in Reform Temples but also, has been revived in more traditional congregations. The melody line of the cantillation was not much stressed in Europe, but now in Orthodox congregations chanting correctly has become very much more important.

Summit looks at the Lecha Dodi as an example of an important part of the Friday evening service for which many melodies exist. He notes that we have evidence as far back as 1583 of melodies from other prayers being used for this poem. A collection from the early 18th century has hundreds of tunes for the Lecha Dodi, many reflecting the style of music in the non-Jewish environment and Idelssohn, a twentieth century musicologist, recorded 2,000 different melodies, some common to many congregations and others unique to just one community. We have record of congregations in the 17th century, before the rise of the Reform movement, using musical instruments for the Lecha Dodi as that part of the Kabbalat Shabbat service precedes the formal beginning of the Shabbat.

The Lecha Dodi is actually a late addition to the Friday evening service. Though the image of going out to greet the Sabbath bride can be found in the Talmud, the poem itself was written by Shelomo Alkabetz Halevi a 16th century scholar and kabbalist. He studied with a circle of the students of Rabbi Yosef Cairo, a Kabbalist and author of the Shulchan Arukh, and was a favorite of Rabbi Isaac Luria. In its original nine verses, the poem touches on Messianic themes and relates the Shabbat to the return to Zion. It is full of the male/female imagery of the Kabbalists, the the relationship of God and Israel being consummated through the Shabbat.

The Jewish renewal congregation that Summit studied chose the Zeira Lecha Dodi. They felt it most successfully created the mood they wanted for the beginning of the service, helping people to make a transition to the peaceful atmosphere they wanted to create. In addition it is simple with accessible lyrics.

Temple Israel, a large Reform congregation also stresses communal participation in their Friday evening service and for that reason they do not switch around the music too often. They sometimes use the Zeira, but more often the LEWANDOWSKI. The cantor there discussed the balance between the chorus and the verses, the chorus being so familiar as to allow for participation, while the verses, with their recitative, requiring a bit more expertise and helping to create a transcendent experience in prayer.

The Conservative service at the Tufts Hillel usually used a very simple melody C-E-G which they also felt was very familiar. No one knows where this melody originated but the students believed it was Hassidic from Eastern Europe. In addition many students had learned it in Israel and so associated it with their ties to the Jewish homeland.

The Orthodox congregation Shaarei Tefillah made a very conscious choice concerning the melody they use for Lecha Dodi. In 1984 they had broken away from a larger Orthodox congregation. They are a younger, more observant, more Jewishly knowledgeable group. They felt the melody in the old shul was too slow and dirge-like. They wanted something more Israeli and less Old World. The tune sung in the former congregation, though Orthodox, interestingly was the Lewandowski which was done without accompaniment. However Shaarei Tefillah also had an Orthodox perspective, they did not want to repeat words, nor did they want it to be Hassidic with people loosing themselves in the melody. This is what they chose:

The choir has prepared two more melodies. One originated at a Reform congregation in Jerusalem- Kol Haneshamah, the second is part of a service called Friday Night Live, that has become popular at many Reform congregations. It is a service of music, almost exclusively, most of it in a very spirited mode, encouraging people to lose themselves in the music and even to get up and dance. Please join the choir as the spirit moves you.