There’s always been music in our spirituality
This week’s parsha, Beshalach, narrates the miraculous splitting of the sea and the sublime song of praise composed by Moshe and sung by all of Israel, including his sister Miriam and the women who joined her with music and dance.
This Shabbat is, therefore, known as Shabbat Shira, the Sabbath of Song, an occasion to reflect upon the central role of music and song in Jewish religious tradition.
Negina, Jewish melodies, and at times even secular music, live within me always — as I walk the streets of Jerusalem, as I mourn our current national sorrows, as I celebrate the release of our precious hostages, as I stand by the open graves of our heroes and heroines, and especially as I dance with the Torah on Simchat Torah — although those songs are now tempered by tears after the events of October 7, Simchat Torah 2023.
The origins of “music in my mind” trace back to my grandparents and to my great-grandmother, who sang Yiddish lullabies to me in my infancy, some of which I remember to this day.
But most of all, I credit my musical inclinations to my father, a popular baal tefillah and master of Chassidic songs and melodies. I would stand by his side when he led tefilot in shul, even as a very young child, and I accompanied him at the table as he sang the zemirot.
One of the strategies used by father to stimulate my interest in Jewish liturgical music was to take me with him to visit the diversity of synagogues that then dotted the map Boro Park, where I was raised in the 1940s and 1950s. They included Chassidic shtieblach, Yemenite batei knessiot, minyanim in the private homes of elderly sages, and large formal synagogues blessed with famous cantors and choirs.
One of those synagogues was Congregation Beth-el, later enlarged to Young Israel Beth-el. The spiritual leader there was Rabbi Israel Schorr, an outstanding scholar, teacher, and preacher. He was educated in pre-Holocaust Galicia and studied under the famed Rabbi Mayer Arik. Rabbi Schorr served the congregation for well over sixty years, before his demise in the year 2000.
The cantor there at that time was the world-renowned Chazzan Moshe Koussevitsky.
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My parents had a close connection to Rabbi Schorr, who officiated at their marriage. My mother attended Rabbi Schorr’s weekly classes regularly, whereas my father favored the chazzan and would take me with him especially on special occasions such as this week’s Shabbat Shira. What better opportunity to take one’s reluctant ten-year-old boy to synagogue than the Sabbath of Song graced by a world-class cantor!
I recall sitting in the crowded domed synagogue, impressed for a while by the indubitable talent of Moshe Koussevitsky. But I also recall my growing boredom as his rendition seemed to endure an eternity for this fidgety 10-year-old.
Then the rabbi mounted the pulpit. I was sure that we were in for a long sermon and that I could not possibly sit still for the next half hour or more. But I did not count on Rabbi Schorr’s wisdom, common sense, and brilliant sense of humor.
He began his sermon with the phrase in the weekly portion: “Az yashir Moshe,” which is usually translated, “Then Moshe sang,” but which literally means, “Then Moshe will sing,” in the future tense.
Our Sages comment: “Shar lo ne’emar, ela yashir (it does not read Moshe sang but rather will sing.” While the adult audience sat back waiting for the long sermon that would soon unfold, we 10-year-olds yawned and wished we could escape to the nearby playground.
But then Rabbi Schorr continued, quoting the commentary, “Az yashir Moshe, shar lo ne’emar” and proceeded in his heavily accented but sophisticated English to announce: “This brief passage can be rendered into simple English: ‘When Moshe sings, Shorr [shar] does not speak.’ I therefore heed the commentary, and when Moshe Koussevitsky speaks, I, Israel Schorr remain silent.”
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I and my peers breathed a sigh of relief. My father, whose custom it was never to speak in shul in words other than those in the prayer book, commented to me in Yiddish as we left the synagogue, “Der Rav hatt sechel! (This Rabbi has common sense!)”
In the many years since, I have come to appreciate the late rabbi’s deeper meaning. He conveyed to his constituency the lesson that there are times when musicality of prayer overrides verbal teachings of prayer, when an inspiring cantorial rendition surpasses a rabbinic lecture.
Thus, Moshe did not react to the moment of a miracle with a long speech. Rather, he chose poetry over prose and sang a song so impactful that later generations recite his words daily, to this day.
Sometime later, I married into a family whose ancestral heritage is of noted Chassidic music. My wife Chavi’s grandfather was the Modzitzer Rebbe, Rav Shaul Taub, the composer of hundreds of melodies.
Rav Shaul, in his posthumously published writing, raises a question about the culmination of the Song of the Sea’s narrative, a description of how Miriam led the women in singing the song’s refrain to music — timbrels and flutes and dance.
“Where did those musical instruments come from?” asked Rav Shaul.
He answered that wise Miriam was confident that as the Israelites left Egypt, there would be moments of threat and crisis. But our people would enjoy miraculous divine intervention that would allow us not only to triumph over threat and crisis, but to celebrate joyously in gratitude to the Almighty. She foresaw that those musical instruments would then come in handy.
And in a further comment, Rav Shaul quotes this passage in Psalms 106:
Vaya’ar batzar lahem b’shamo et rinatam. (He saw that they were in distress when He heard their song.)
Tears open the gates of Heaven. Song perhaps even more so. Happy Shabbat Shira!
Write: Columnist@TheJewishStar.com
