Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

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Category: Music (Page 1 of 2)

#BlogElul 5775: When the music brings you home

August 26, 2015 /


Kol Nidre… the anthem with which we begin Yom Kippur. We take the Torah scrolls out of the ark and they bear witness, as if a Jewish court of law – a Beit Din – while we hear these ancient Aramaic words chanted.  What, precisely, do they say? Essentially, that we regret any vows or commitments that we have made, we repent for having made them, and we asked that they be discarded, forgiven, and undone; that they no longer be regarded as valid and binding.

Why would we begin this Holiest of days with such a declaration? Is this one of these Jewish legal loopholes, by which we figured it was easier to just nullify promises we made than deal with the consequences of having made them and failing to live up to them? While that’s not why these words feature in our liturgy, what is clear is that the power of Kol Nidre in our communities today has very little to do with the words themselves. But first, a quick history of this prayer.

“For all of Kol Nidre’s significance and power, its origins are shrouded in mystery. There are two “histories” regarding the prayer, one popular and the other scholarly. The popular version connects the wording of the prayer with the religious dilemma facing medieval Spanish Jews. In 15th-century Spain, at the hight of the infamous Inquisition, the Roman Catholic Church embarked on a determined hunt to seek out and punish all non-practicing Christians. In response to extreme anti-Semitism earlier that century, a sizable number of upper-class Jews chose to convert to Christianity in order to, at the very least, avoid social disdain. For a small number, their religious conversion was genuine; but for the majority, their “conversion” was in name only as they still found creative ways to practice Judaism in the privacy of their own dwellings. These Jews came to be known as “marranos” and became one of the foci of the Church’s inquistory offensive. The Kol Nidre prayer, according to this theory, was created in response to these Jews’ desire to nullify their vows of conversion…
        Scholars do not wholly refute this understanding of Kol Nidre, but they do contend that Kol Nidre has much earlier roots and probably pre-dated the marranos. According to their research, it is unclear exactly when or where the Kol Nidre legal formula was created. The wording seems to mimic other legalistic contracts of the Babylonian Jewish community of the 6th and 7th centuries. The first undoubtable citation appears in an early comprehensive siddur edited by Rav Amram in the 8th century. Over the next few centuries, the prayer became more widespread and a soulful melody became associated with it. Notably, there were some rabbis who disparaged the prayer as a superstitious attempt by Jewish mystics to nullify vows made by evil forces in the universe intent on hurting the Jewish people. These criticisms were muted by the majority of the people who cleaved to the prayer and aided its spread to other communities.” (Rabbi Eric Solomon, 2000, ‘Examining the Mystery of Kol Nidre‘)

By the late Nineteenth Century, as the Jews of Europe and the USA sought greater integration into the societies in which they lived, some felt self-conscious and embarrassed by the words of Kol Nidre. They were concerned that non-Jews might regard them as a people who could not be trusted because they would not keep their word.  In Germany, some early Reform Rabbis sought to remove Kol Nidre from the liturgy. But when a machzor (High Holy Day Prayer book) was published without it, congregations rebelled. They insisted that it be sung anyway. Already, for centuries, Kol Nidre was chanted to a haunting tune. Max Bruch, a non-Jewish composer, set it to the melody (in 1880) that we associate this prayer with today, and it is this that congregations across the world today listen for to announce the opening of Yom Kippur. Many congregations, my own included, begin with the sounds of Bruch’s arrangement, played on cello or adapted for some other soulful sounding instrument.
I think there are few other liturgical moments or melodies in our tradition that is as emblematic and central to us as Kol Nidre. In Mishkan HaNefesh, this introduction conveys something of its power:
Rabbi Leizer survived the death camps and returned to his hometown, Czenstochow, Poland. For years following the Shoah, he roamed the streets playing a hand organ. At regular intervals, amid the numerous tunes he played, he would intentionally play Kol Nidre. As he did so, he would look into the eyes of the children who walked by, looking for a hint of recognition. In this way, he was able to bring many children back in contact with their people.
For us, too, Kol Nidre is a moment of recognition –
a sound that brings us back to our people. (copyright CCAR, 2015, Yom Kippur, p.15)
What other melodies are so part of your sense of identity that they bring you back home in a profoundly spiritual way? What melodies connect you to a sense of your people? When you hear the reverberations of Kol Nidre, what thoughts and feelings are aroused within?
Welcome Home.
Al Jolson in The Jazz Singer, 1927. 

Remembering Debbie Friedman on the 1st Yarzheit

January 27, 2012 /

This post was previously published at myjewishlearning.com and is reprinted here on the eve of the 1st yarzheit for Debbie Friedman



On January 9, 2011, a sweet singer of Israel, Debbie Friedman, passed away. While her Hebrew yahrzeit is at the end of this month, for many this is becoming a month of remembrance. Family gatherings, concerts in her memory, special Shabbat Shira dedications in early February, as her legacy and her songs live on.

On Monday night, I ended my eighth grade class with a brief sharing of some of my own personal interactions with Debbie, and the enormous role she had in pointing the way to the path that became my life as a rabbi. When I teach Torah about m’lachim – angels in Jewish tradition, I often point out how, when they show up in our holy text, they bring a message that redirects the life path of the one being visited. Think Hagar (twice), Jacob wrestling with an angel, Joseph meeting a ‘man’ in a field who redirects him to find his brothers (without which the rest of the Joseph story that we have recently read in this year’s Torah cycle might never have unfolded). When I teach these texts, I ask people to think of the encounters in their own lives that might fall into this domain. Debbie was most certainly ones of those people for me. One of the last songs she wrote was a new setting for Shalom Aleichem – the poem we sing on Erev Shabbat to welcome the Sabbath angels into our homes and our lives … how fitting.

Many have written far more eloquently than I about the legacy of Debbie’s music; how she transformed the way we sang our souls to God, and the sound of prayer in our sanctuaries; and how her blending of English and Hebrew enabled us to understand and connect with the prayers in a deeper way. For me, and for many who had personal encounters with Debbie, whether they were intimate friends, or once-only events, the legacy that we remember goes beyond the gift of the music. In the outpouring of remembrances that were shared online in the days and weeks that followed her passing, what so many shared was the way that Debbie was deeply and truly present to others. She had a gift for seeing within another person and, in that moment, asking the most important question. She was a Spiritual Director of sorts, although she would never have claimed that label.

During this month of January as I remember, sing Debbie’s songs, look through old photographs, and connect with others, I know that all who do likewise, in the USA and beyond, are truly making her memory be for a blessing. ‘And you shall be a blessing’, she sang to us. Now we sing it for her.

At the end of my eighth grade class, I played the original recording of Debbie as a teenager singing the Shema. I told them how young she had been when she began to write these melodies, how she song-lead at camp, how she went on to touch so many thousands of lives. I pray that, while they will never have the blessing of meeting Debbie Friedman, they may still be touched by her gifts and inspired by her life.

Is contemporary Jewish chanukah music ‘going Greek’?

December 23, 2011 /

I love telling the story of Chanukah.  Like so many of our Jewish holidays, it is a wonderful and fascinating study in how rituals and myth and religious experiences come to be.  As we begin our exploration of this holiday, we might think that there is a story that is told, born out of a historical experience, recorded for us in the Books of Maccabees.  We celebrate the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian-Greek empire in taking back control of Jerusalem and re-dedicating their holy Temple, which had been desecrated through a previous re-dedication to the Greek god, Zeus.  The Books of Maccabees never quite made it into the official canon of Jewish Holy books, and the Rabbis reasons for that were partly a matter of dates but mainly a matter of politics.  That’s a longer story, but the result for us is that, while many Jews know the basic story of Chanukah, almost none have read the ‘original’ in the Books of Maccabees themselves.  The story to be found there (and I’m not going to give the game away) is somewhat different from the folk version that most of us have had passed down to us through the ages.  For a detailed review of the historical evolution of Chanukah, take a look at the essays at myjewishlearning.com

One of the things that is often not emphasized in the folk re-telling of the story is the inner conflict between Jews about the extent to which Greek culture – Hellenism – could appropriately be absorbed into Jewish life, culture and practice.  The Maccabees, it seems, may have been zealous to an extreme in their distaste for Hellenism, while there were plenty of Jews in Jerusalem and beyond who embraced Hellenism and sought ways to maintain their Jewish faith and practice but in a way that enabled them to fully participate in the culture that was unfolding around them.  (see here for a longer essay on this).

Today, we celebrate the victory of the Maccabees, and a miracle of light.  But, if the Maccabees represented the anti-assimilationist, anti-Hellenist stance, what are we to make of the way we celebrate Chanukah today? We sing Maoz Tzur to a melody taken from a medieval German marching tune.  We eat latkes and donuts – neither of which are ‘native’ to the Middle East, but represent a claiming of central European food traditions onto which we add a Jewish layer by connecting them to the miracle of the oil.  We play dreidle – an ancient gambling game that can be traced back as far as 11th century England, and probably made its way into Jewish life in the 13th or 14th century in Germany.  We added our own set of 4 letters to remember the Chanukah story (Nes Gadol Hayah Sham – a great miracle happened there).


And this year we see so many new Chanukah songs and videos that engage and delight us, all of which borrow in style and, more often, in actual tune, from the secular pop music world.  I’ve posted some of my favorites from this year below.

So… did the Maccabees really win?  Or have we Jews been ‘Going Greek’ ever since?
I believe that what we see is true of the way we have absorbed the richness of so many cultures through food, music, rituals and games is, in fact, simply a truth about being human.  This is what we do.  Its not ‘good’ or ‘bad’… it just ‘is’.  And the miracle is that we’ve been doing it since the very first generation of Jews and yet, while the Greek, Babylonian and Roman empires (and many more since) have come and gone, we are still here.  Not in spite of our constant adaptations to the world around us and the cultures we come into contact with but precisely because of them.  Well – that’s what I believe.  Feel free to pitch in and add your thoughts in the comments section below.
Happy Chanukah!

The role of music in the healing of Gabrielle Giffords

November 16, 2011 /

Yesterday morning, in a weekly class on Jewish mysticism that I teach in the local community, we were concluding our study of the ten psalms that Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav selected for the practice of the Tikkun haKlali – the Complete Repair.  Rabbi Nachman (1772-1810) was referring to a spiritual repair – healing at a cosmic level – in which all that was broken would be healed and the flow of Divine energy through the sephirotic system found in the teachings of Kabbalah would come down to us unhindered.  This system consisted of 10 Divine attributes which, together, form the kabbalistic Tree of Life.  There are a multitude of explanations and allegorical images used in kabbalistic tradition to try and convey something of the nature of these 10 attributes.  Among them, Rabbi Nachman spoke of 10 melodies – 10 kinds of sound resonance that, when unblocked, would vibrate in perfect harmony with each other, bringing perfection and wholeness to the world.

I sometimes liken the teachings of Kabbalah to that of theoretical or particle physics, not only because there are some truly amazing resonances between some of the teachings in each discipline, but because Kabbalah is very abstract and requires translation into something that we can respond to in the here and now.  Rabbi Nachman, by proposing a ritual practice of the recitation of 10 psalms, sought to provide a spiritual methodology by which even an individual could make a small contribution to the greater Tikkun by speaking words that he believed carried the resonances of the ten kinds of melody.  At the very least, these might help to release some of our own blockages as we seek to be more ‘in tune’ with ourselves and with others.

The last of the ten psalms is Psalm 150:

Hallelujah. Praise God in His sanctuary; praise Him in the firmament of His power.
Praise Him for His mighty acts; praise Him according to His abundant greatness.
Praise Him with the blast of the horn; praise Him with the psaltery and harp.
Praise Him with the timbrel and dance; praise Him with stringed instruments and the pipe.
Praise Him with the loud-sounding cymbals; praise Him with the clanging cymbals.
Let every thing that has breath praise Yah. Hallelujah. (JPS, 1917)
In the context of Rabbi Nachman’s Tikkun HaKlali, this psalm literally vibrates with the sounds of the instruments played in the ancient Temple of Jerusalem.  Rabbi Nachman taught about the spiritual importance of fostering joy, and the power of music and of singing to lift oneself up, even from the most difficult of circumstances.  Our study group considered the power of song and of music at multiple levels.
It was in this context that a member of our study group thought of the example of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, and the role that music and song has played quite literally in her physical healing.  If sound has the power to shatter glass, might it not also have a literal potential to heal, in addition to the emotional and spiritual sustenance that it can provide?
Rep. Giffords has been working with a music therapist, among others also tending to her treatment and recovery.  Music has had the power to tap into her memory, and assisted with regaining language mastery, as the music appears to help the brain to access new ways to communicate.  Her therapist, Morrow, explains: “It’s creating new pathways in the brain … Language isn’t going to work anymore, so we have to go to another area and start singing and create a new pathway for speech… 
Music is also linked to brains areas that control memory, emotions, and even movement. “The thing about music is that it’s something that’s very automatic — part of our old brain system,” Morrow said. “If I play a rhythm, I can affect the rest of the body. The body naturally aligns with a rhythm in the environment.”

Throughout my childhood I often accompanied my mother who would go and sing at Assisted Living and Nursing Homes.  And time and time again, I would witness residents who would not or could not easily speak or communicate any more literally return to full life when the music began.  Intentionally singing a repertoire of music that would be familiar from their youth, my mother would have residents singing along, moving their bodies – even getting up to dance.
The enormous power of music and sound, working at the physical, emotional and spiritual level, has always been evident to me.  It has been an integral part of my Jewish spirituality as I have found ways to access the meaning of our rituals and our prayers through the vehicle of the melodies we bring to them.  Rabbi Nachman understood this two hundred years ago.  We’re just beginning to tap into the potential that vibration, sound, and song have to bring healing to our lives.



Creating Jewish memories this Simchat Torah

October 19, 2011 /

There’s always a lot of energy at B’nai Israel on erev Simchat Torah, which we celebrate this evening at 5.30p.m.  Our Junior choir sings and our Temple Band plays.  It makes for a special service with young and older brought together.

This year we have an additional special component, bringing in some of the youngest people in our community, and their families.  For over a year now, Rabbi Nicole Wilson-Spiro has led a weekly Young Families Chavurah on Shabbat morning.  Breakfast, yoga, music and prayer, stories, crafts, snack and play time – the chavurah offers a rich morning of Shabbat celebration for pre-school aged children. And it offers a great place for parents to meet each other and create new friendships in the Jewish community.

The chavurah has evolved and has generated innovative ideas and ways of celebrating Jewish life that are often out of the box.  A summertime Havdalah gathering included an Earthwalk at a local nature reserve, topped off with making smores around a campfire.  Apple picking before Rosh Hashanah at one of our local (and congregant-owned!) farms, Silverman’s, has been a big hit two years in a row.  In a couple of weeks, when we read the story of Noah, a special convoy of animals from our local Beardsley Zoo are coming to visit the children at the chavurah on Shabbat morning at our Temple.

This Simchat Torah, the creativity and innovation that the chavurah has brought to B’nai Israel will be front and center of our Bima at the start of the service.  After a year of the cuddly torahs that our kids march around the chapel with every Shabbat coming in and out of a large cardboard box, the Young Families Chavurah will be dedicating their very own Ark, especially designed to house these baby torah scrolls.  Sponsored by one of the families, designed by a local artist, and including the artistic contributions of many of the children who attend regularly, this is a very exciting project for our youngest children to see in its completion.

Our services are starting earlier than usual (6pm, after flagmaking at 5.30pm) so that our youngest children can enjoy them.  They’ll get to experience the music, see older children that they look up to singing and leading the prayers, and get to dance with their Torah scrolls when we take out the rest of the Sifrei Torah from our sanctuary Ark.  And then, in a tradition that many congregations are now sharing, they’ll get to see an entire scroll unwrapped around the room.

For children who are 2, 3 or 4 years old, tonight is going to be an exciting night that I don’t think they’ll easily forget – creating a Jewish memory that is special and something that I think they will want to experience again next year.  Their parents too!

But Simchat Torah is not just for kids! For the rest of us for whom this isn’t so new, imagine coming to celebrate Simchat Torah tonight and trying to see and feel the experience as if through the eye’s of one of these children.  What Zen Buddhists would call ‘Beginner’s Mind.’  Imagine the renewed joy we would bring to responding to the music; when we felt our toes tapping, we would get up and dance because we don’t have any layers of self-consciousness that have built up over decades, blocking our access to that joy and movement.  We would sing and clap, because we were moved to do so and we hadn’t built up years of inhibitions about whether our voices were good enough.  We would smile and laugh, because we would find the smiles ad laughs of the children around us infectious.

Now stop imagining.  If you are local, come and join us for Simchat Torah this evening!  And if you are reading from further afield, I hope you have a community close to where you live – check their websites or give them a call, and celebrate like its 5772!  We all deserve new opportunities in a new year to make meaningful Jewish memories.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

And we’ll sing our souls to You – in memory of Debbie Friedman

February 4, 2011 /

Wednesday marks the end of shloshim – the 30 day period of mourning after the funeral of Debbie Friedman.  Many congregations, federations and communities in the USA and abroad have been, and will be having musical gatherings to honor Debbie’s memory.  Some of the larger programs were streamed live and  recorded for subsequent viewing.  You can listen to the Memorial service held at Central Synagogue, New York, here.  There was a concert memorial held at Temple Israel in Boston which you can view here.

Here, at Congregation B’nai Israel, we are gathering at the end of the first Shabbat after shloshim for a Havdalah song-session on February 12, 5-6:30 p.m.  Our focus will be on one thing and one thing only – singing Debbie’s music together in a gathering that is open to everyone.  Helping to lead us will be several local musicians such as Cantor Scott Harris, Rabbi Suri Krieger, Rayhan Pasternak, Rhea Farbman, and Adrianne Greenbaum (in addition to B’nai Israel’s own clergy and educators), and also some special guests from further afield: Kathy Gohr from Allentown, PA, Adrian Durlester from Amherst MA, Arnie Davidson from Glastonbury, CT and Batya Diamond from Wilton, CT.  This latter group are all people that I met at or with whom I share one very special place in common – Hava Nashira.  In fact, Rayhan, who is a Fairfield local, is also someone that I first met many years before I found myself in Connecticut, at Hava Nashira.  I’d like to say a little more about that in a moment.  But first, I hope you’ll be able to join us to sing, learn and share Debbie’s music on the 12th.  So that we can estimate numbers, it would be very helpful if you could RSVP via this link.

Hava Nashira is the program that first brought me to the USA.  It is the annual conference for song-leaders, held at OSRUI camp, Oconomowoc, WI and it is the URJ camp that serves the Great Lakes region.  I came because two years earlier Debbie had visited the UK, performed at the Liberal synagogue in St. John’s Wood, London and run the choir a the UK national Limmud conference.  This was before Limmud became the 2,500-person mega conference that is today.  We were about 750-strong that year, and it was my first time attending the conference.  After Debbie left, a number of us based in London who had sung in her choir were bemoaning the fact that there was no-one like her for us to sing with when she left.  Both the style of the music and the passion and excitement that we felt in just singing our souls to God, experimenting with harmonies, feeling the surge of the voices coming together – we didn’t know of a place in the UK to do that.  There were formal Jewish choirs that one could join and, wonderful though some of them were, it just wasn’t the same.

For whatever reason – perhaps a sense of calling, or perhaps just pure chutzpah, I decided that there was no reason we couldn’t continue to sing Debbie’s music, and music like Debbie’s in an informal musical gathering that had no ‘outcome’ in mind – no concerts, no performances.  Shir B’Yachad (sing together) was born, as a monthly musical gathering (A name suggested by Diane Bramson who still runs the monthly gathering now many years after I left the UK).  Initially I partnered with a friend, Nina Maraney, who was a talented Music graduate who played guitar and had a beautiful voice.  She was just beginning to focus on doing more professional music work for the Jewish community and, after almost a year, she encouraged me to take the helm musically as well as organizationally.  My musical skills were much more limited – some passable keyboard accompaniment and some rhythm, but I learned the songs quickly and gained confidence in teaching them to others.  Another friend and talented song-leader and composer, Jess Gold, encouraged me to join her the following year at Hava Nashira where I could gain some skills training and broaden my repertoire.

Debbie Friedman leading a session at Hava Nashira

Hava Nashira was a life-changing experience in so many ways.  On the first evening when we gathered for our first song-session, I felt like I’d entered some heavenly realm, surrounded by so many folk voices, effortlessly breaking into 6-part (at least) harmony as we sang together.  In addition to Debbie, the faculty included Jeff Klepper, Merri Arian, Ellen Dreskin, Rosalie Boxt, and  Donny Maseng.  There were many talented musicians and composers among the attendees too and it was quite awe-inspiring to be in the midst of it all.  I learned a lot of repertoire and picked up a lot of great advice on how to song-lead effectively in different settings.  Still very much the amateur, I returned to Hava Nashira whenever I could (although its been about 5 years since I was last able to make it).  Reconnecting with old friends became as much a part of the pleasure and, even with those I didn’t see or hear from much in the interim, there was a powerful bond that transcended time and space that connected so many of us who had shared the Hava Nashira experience.  

When Debbie died, the remembrances and stories shared by all those who subscribe to the Hava Nashira listserv continued unabated for well over a week.  So many shared stories of things they had learned from Debbie, things that they had seen her do at Hava Nashira, the jokes she had told, the personal connections she had made with so many, inspiring them or supporting them at vital junctions in their lives.  It was deeply moving.

And so it is that, among the musicians helping to lead us in song next Saturday evening are some of those special connections from Hava Nashira.  Hava Nashira will go on, although Debbie’s absence this year will be enormous.  The faculty in recent years has include Craig Taubman, Peter and Ellen Allard, Dan Nicols, Shira Kline and Josh Nelson – many very talented musicians, composers and song-leaders.  In addition, last year a Fall/Winter gathering was added called ‘Shabbat Shirah’, providing another opportunity to gather at OSRUI.  To learn more click here.

Sharing the joke (one of so many) with Debbie, Jeff, and Dan

Debbie, we will all miss you more than words can say.  Your memory is forever a blessing, and we will honor that memory by continuing to ‘Sing Unto God’.
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz

Debbie Friedman, Inspiration, Teacher, and Friend

January 15, 2011 /
These words were delivered at Congregation B’nai Israel on Friday, January 14th, Shabbat Shirah, before the recitation of the Kaddish

These words, close to the start of the ‘Live at the Del’ album, were my first introduction to Debbie Friedman.  It was around 1992 and I’d been attending a workshop in London about contemporary Jewish female composers who were doing remarkable things.  In the UK Reform headquarters bookstore, this cassette was all they had.  My mother and I put the tape on to drive back home and were singing along within seconds, even though we’d never heard these songs before.  Because that’s what Debbie wanted you to do – sing!  And she knew how to get everyone joining in.  When Debbie came to the UK two years later, to lead a choir and several workshops at the Limmud Conference, she did something transformative.  As Educator, Robbie Gringras notes, she ‘created an astonishing ad hoc choir of Brits who sang to the heavens with a freedom and joy that I’d never heard in the UK’. 
Debbie transformed lives.  I have lost count of the number of postings that I have read in the last few days where, whether someone had sung with her, met her for a moment, worked with her professionally, or knew her as a friend, they felt that she had inspired them to follow their dreams, and fully realize their potential.  I was one of so many.  When Debbie left the UK after that Limmud Conference, I established a monthly music gathering – Shir B’Yachad (sing together), with no purpose other than to sing our souls to God, but that path eventually led me to the Rabbinate, and to the USA.
Speaking about the message of her song, L’chi Lach, Debbie explained that, in the parsha Lech Lecha there are the words ‘veh’yei bracha’ – and you shall be a blessing.  ‘Its not a suggestion’, she said.  ‘It’s in the command form;  Lech l’cha – go within and find that spark, that essence, and let it shine forth in the world – be a blessing.  And that is exactly what she did.
I got to know Debbie as a dear friend over time and by the time I moved to New York in 2003 I felt like I had a big sister, confidant, and special friend in Debbie.  One of the reasons that Debbie moved so many people was because she always spoke from the heart.  She was the most real and honest person.  She could see inside your soul and, when you were not being honest with yourself, she’d help you find yourself again.  She was a private person but, when you had her trust, she would share her world with you and give you the privilege of giving her a little something back.
Debbie was also extremely funny.  She loved slapstick, could tell a joke like few others, and would have audiences in stitches with laughter just as often as she would have them in tears from the emotional outpouring that her songs and prayers gave rise to.  Even in the midst of a healing service there would be laughter and, of course, that was sometimes the most healing of all.
Debbie’s life and legacy were remarkable.  She became ill in the prime of her career, after a reaction to some migraine medication.  It left her with the neurological illness that she had for the rest of her life, and which showed considerable signs of worsening in recent years.  Yet Debbie inspired us all by giving everything that she had.  She did not grumble or complain – her burden became her inspiration, and her Mi Shebeirach blessing for healing, in addition to so much more liturgy set to inclusive, communal music, transformed how we pray, and how we feel when we pray.
Last Saturday morning, for parshat Bo, I had talked about freedom requiring us to confront our inner Pharaohs.  I know from the conversations that I have had with close friends of Debbie’s in recent days that Debbie did exactly that in the last couple of months of her life and, despite her physical deterioration and pain, lived more fully than she had for so long, doing everything she loved with everyone she loved just one more time to the max – no holding back.  She jammed until 4am on the last two nights of Limmud.  When she got back she had a day out with her family doing some of the things that they loved to do together.  This was the day before she was admitted into the hospital. She called and emailed many friends in recent weeks and months and gave each of us one last special gift.  She freed herself from her slavery, even though it meant that as she crossed the parting sea, she left us behind.  She is now dancing on the other shore with Miriam and all the people. 
And the women dancing with their timbrels, followed Debbie as she sang her song.  Sing a song for the one who came before us, Debbie and the people sang and sang the whole night long.’
Debbie Friedman z’l with beloved dog Farfel (now deceased; Gribenez was Debbie’s beloved dog at the time of her death)
Debbie established ‘The Renewal of Spirit Foundation’ a number of years ago.  A donation to this fund will enable projects that she was working on at the time of her death to be completed.  For more information, go to debbiefriedman.com
Rabbi Rachel Gurevitz
Each song mentioned above is linked to an album where you can find that track on oysongs.com  Debbie’s albums are also available on several other sites, e.g. itunes, debbiefriedman.com 

Elul Reflections 5: Rosh Hashanah Kanye West style

August 26, 2010 /

A little bit of light relief today – one of this year’s Rosh Hashanah musical spoof videos.  But the message is no spoof – a nice little message in ‘paying it forward’ or, in the language of Pirke Avot (sayings of the fathers – a chapter of the Mishnah), mitzvah goreret mitzvah  – one good deed leads to another.
Enjoy!

7th candle: God, Humanity & Redemption through partnership

December 17, 2009 /

The 8 blogs of Chanukah. Each night a new blog from the community of Congregation B’nai Israel.


Tonight, the seventh blog of Chanukah is brought to you by Dr. Lisa Grant.  Lisa is a member of both Congregation B’nai Israel and Beth El.  She is Associate Professor of Jewish Education at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, on the New York campus.  Lisa has done extensive research and writing on Israel education.  She regularly chants Torah at B’nai Israel on a Shabbat morning, and has contributed in many other ways since her arrival in our community two years ago, teaching adult education classes and giving several divrei Torah at services.  She is married to Dr. Billy Weitzer, Senior Vice President of Fairfield University, and they have two adult children, Hannah and Nate.

Hanukkah is one of the most celebrated holidays in American Jewish life and there are probably more Jews who know at least one Hanukkah song than for any other holiday.  Even public school Holiday concerts often include a Hanukkah song such as “I Have a Little Dreidl” or “Light One Candle” or my all-time favorite for the silliness factor Debbie Friedman’s “I am a Latke.”  But my favorite Hanukkah song is a Hebrew one and my holiday celebration would be incomplete without singing it at least a few times over the eight nights. It’s called “Mi Yimalel” or “Who Can Retell”. 
I learned this song as a child and confess that I didn’t give much thought to the words for many years.  It has a lively tune with simple words that are fun to sing in a round.  The song doesn’t mention the miracle of oil; it doesn’t talk about religious freedom.  It’s just a gleeful celebration of the heroes who rise up in every age to save the Jewish people from disaster.  Here are the lyrics as they are usually sung in English with the more literal translation included in parentheses:
Who can retell the things that befell us? (heroic deeds of Israel)
Who can count them?
In every age, a hero or sage (arises)
Came to our aid (To redeem the people).
Hark!! (Listen!)
The second part of the song is translated much less often.  These words name Judah Maccabee as the hero of that time long ago, but say that now all Israel must unite together to redeem themselves.
In those days at this season
Judah the Maccabee saved us.
Now in these days all the people of Israel
Must unite and rise to redeem themselves.
The song was composed by Menashe Ravina a Ukrainian Jew who made aliyah to Palestine (pre-State Israel) in 1924.  It is one of hundreds of folk tunes that were composed throughout the 20th century to express and embed Zionist ideology into Israeli culture.  The song is based on a biblical verse from Psalm 106 that is also part of traditional liturgy both in Birkat Hamazon (grace after meals) and the Hymn of Glory that Orthodox and some Conservative congregations sing at the end of Shabbat morning services.  Here’s that verse in Hebrew, transliteration and English translation: 
:Iœ,ŠK¦v§T›kŠF ‹gh½¦n§J³Ãh v·²u«v±h ,IÉrUc±D k‡K©n±Óh h½¦n
Mee y’maleil g’vurot Adonai, Yashmi’a kol t’hilato
Who can tell the mighty acts of Adonai?  Who can declare all God’s praise?
As a Labor Zionist, Ravina embraced the notion that it was up to human beings to save the Jewish people, not God.  For Ravina, saving the Jewish people meant building up the Jewish State. So Mi Yimalel is a celebration of the classical secular Zionist notion that the Jewish people, not God will be the ones to reclaim, resettle, and re-establish Jewish sovereignty in the land of Israel. 
At an earlier point in my life, I think I would have endorsed these words more strongly than I do today where they raise profound questions for me theologically and ideologically. I’m not  at all sure we Jews should or could go it alone, without God’s help in our individual lives and in our collective future.  I’m also not altogether comfortable thinking about Jewish history as simply a string of disasters that require salvation.  There’s much much more to celebrate than that.  But, in the meantime I still sing this song, joyfully at Hanukkah.  I sing it because of its history and also because I believe that as God’s partners, we are ultimately responsible for  here in America, in Israel and all other places where Jews dwell.  
The lyrics to the song are included below as are two youtube links to hear two very different renditions!
Chag Urim Sameach!! May the lights of Hanukkah bring you happiness during this festive time.
Mi Yimalel
?v®b§n°h h¦n i¨,Ut k¥t¨r§J±h ,IÉrUc±D k‡K©n±Óh h¦n
/oŠg¨v k¥tUD rUC°d©v oUe²h rIs kŠf‰C i¥v
!g©n§a
v®Z¨v i©n±z‹C o¥v¨v oh¦n²h‹C
/v¤sUpU ‹gh¦aUn hˆCF©n
k¥t¨ra±h o‹g kŠF Ub¥n²h‰cU
!k¥t²D°h±u oUe²h s¥j©t§,°h
Mee y’maleil g’vurot Yisrael, otan mee yimneh?
Hein b’chol dor yakum ha’gibor
Go-eil ha’am.
Sh’ma!
Ba’yamim ha’hem ba’zman ha’zeh.
Makabi moshiyah u’fodeh
U’v’yameinu kol am Yisrael
Yit’ached yakum v’yiga’el.
Who can retell the things that befell us? (heroic deeds of Israel)
Who can count them?
In every age, a hero or sage (arises)
Came to our aid (To redeem the people).
Listen!
In those days at this season
Judah the Maccabee saved us.
Now in these days all the people of Israel
Must unite and rise to redeem themselves.

3rd candle: What if the world were a Hanukiyah or maybe a salad?

December 13, 2009 /




The 8 blogs of Chanukah. Each night a new blog from the community of Congregation B’nai Israel.


Tonight, the third blog of Chanukah is brought to you by Andrea Rudolph.  Andrea is a member of B’nai Israel.  She is a regular at Friday night services, playing clarinet in the B’nai Israel band, and often playing solo instrument at other services.  Andrea is also a composer, as you’ll learn from her blog tonight.  Among her many projects and talents, Andrea is teaching a course at B’nai Israel, beginning January 4th, The Holiness of Wholeness: Exploring God and Ourselves, about the attributes of the soul.  She also co-leads Chantsformations: a Jewish mantra chanting and meditation hour each month at the Soma Center for Well-Being, with Rabbi Gurevitz.  Her husband, Mike, is the leader of the B’nai Israel band.  They have two children, Benjamin and Jacob.


When my boys were in elementary school, one of the highlights of December was their winter concert.  My younger son played trombone in the band and my older son played violin in the orchestra.  Even more than seeing my own children on stage, I loved hearing the fifth grade choir sing their hearts out.  I was taken by the vision of eighty – ten and eleven year olds inspiring peace and holiday cheer with their voices, choreography and spirit.  “Let there be peace on earth and let it begin with me”, the children crooned while images of people from around the world flashed on a screen behind them.  Tears always fall from my eyes when I see and hear children singing about peace.  Seeing them united in song and celebration gives me hope for our world and opens my heart. 
A few years ago, motivated by the vision of young people united by music, I wrote a Chanukah song called Nine Candles.  It started with this image of a Hanukiyah (the Chanukah menorah): 
What if the world was a Hanukiyah,
Red and green,
Blue and white?
What if each candle
Spread warmth and light,
Joy and peace,
Banished anger and spite?
What would the world be like if we saw ourselves linked together – distinct yet united with a common purpose to shed more light in the world?  There’s a human flaw of ego that believes that peace will come by convincing others to believe as we believe.  But that belief is based on the assumption that differences prevent us from achieving a greater purpose.   But there are many experiences that teach us otherwise.
Years ago, I worked with a woman who challenged my understanding of unity and the “melting pot” myth we hold so dear in our country.  Mary was a brilliant, energetic executive director of an agency that worked with refugees and immigrants.  She had a passion for justice that took her from Haiti to Macedonia to the State Capitol in the 1990’s.  When I first met Mary, I couldn’t quite figure out her ethnicity.  (Why we so often have a need to “figure someone out” is another conversation but in this case I learned a lesson which changed my perspective forever.)  After working with Mary for a few weeks, I found myself attending a meeting with her.  As we walked back to the office after the meeting, we explored the subject of immigrant integration and assimilation to American culture.  My initial belief (at that time) was that the more cultures interacted and even intermarried, the more likely it would be for peace to prevail on earth.  “Wouldn’t peace be more likely if the boundaries of separation between countries, cultures, people and religions blurred?”, I wondered out loud. 
Mary presented me with an image:  “Imagine you were making a beautiful salad.  You put the lettuce in a large bowl.  Then you add cucumbers and carrots, celery and tomatoes.  You mix in some red onion and croutons for more flavor, spice and crunch.  Then you make a nice dressing, pour it on top and toss…..Now imagine if I told you take that same salad and put it in a blender, what would your salad look like now? How would it taste?”  I remember stopping mid-stride on a Boston sidewalk to let it sink in.  Then she looked at me and said, “My mother is a white Irish American woman, my father was Filipino.  They met during the war years ago.  Each of those pieces of who I am makes up my own salad.  By diluting, denying or blending any culture for the sake of assimilation, we lose the rich, crispy, color and taste of that “salad”.  That’s not the kind of world I want to live in.”

Many years later, I can look back on that conversation and see how it has impacted my perspective on diversity and creating bridges of understanding.  I have learned that it is indeed the uniqueness of each person that inspires and connects us to the whole of humanity.  Our power to influence peace and change in the world is most effective when we both shine our own light and admire someone else’s.  Standing proudly next to someone else linked by the common goal of humanity  (just as the candles in the Hanukiyah stand next to one another in remembrance of the miracle of Chanukah), we can learn to live fully with joy, purpose and compassion.   Who determines joy, purpose and compassion?  It rests with each of us to discern which vegetable we are in that salad, or which color candle in that Hanukiyah.  
In the words of Martha Graham,
There is a vitality, a life-force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action and because there is only one of you in all of time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and be lost.
May you always stand ready and proud to shine your unique light into the world, adding to the beauty and magnificence of all creation.  Many blessings for a season filled with light, peace and compassion. 


Listen to Andrea’s song, ‘Nine Candles’ below:


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