In this final week of the Omer, as we prepare to celebrate Shavuot together beginning on Sunday, May 16, we are honored to offer voices from the Wise community to reflect on Torah, prayer, and their relationship with the Divine.
Today is the 47th day of the Omer.
חַֽסְדֵ֣י יְ֭הוָה עוֹלָ֣ם אָשִׁ֑ירָה לְדֹ֥ר וָדֹ֓ר ׀ אוֹדִ֖יעַ אֱמוּנָתְךָ֣ בְּפִֽי׃
I will sing of God’s enduring goodness forever; in every generation I will praise your faithfulness with my lips.
Psalms 89:2
Our Tanach is a great tapestry laced with song. There are nine of them throughout our canon: the song of the Israelites in Egypt from Isaiah, The song at the red sea in Exodus, the song at the well in Numbers, Moses’ song at the end of his life. Joshua, Deborah, Hannah and David each sing songs. The Song of Solomon, Shir Hashirim, is an allegorical love song, and the Psalms continuously mention singing out joyously and using our voice to cry out to God. Music, or at least melody, is our primary mechanism for the interpretation of Torah, and the two cannot be separated.
As Jews, we develop intense emotional relationships to melodies, and they define us. Different moods, melodies, and modal scales encapsulate where we are in our day, our week, or our Jewish year. The tunes we hear at Rosh Hashanah are not the same ones we sing for Hanukkah; the melody we chant on Purim is not the one we hear on Passover.
God’s final request to Moses is to teach the Israelites a song: the Torah. God and Moses knew that for Torah to be renewed in every generation, it must affect the emotions of the Jewish People. Music can access the deepest parts of us, the heart and soul that we chant about in the V’ahavta. Melody preserves our history and constantly reharmonizes our tradition. Our ancestors sang, and we sing, too. The notation of our song is ever-changing, continuing the story of our people.
On the third movement manuscript of his A minor string quartet, Beethoven wrote the words “Neue Kraft fühlend,” “feeling new strength”. As we continue to write our own Torah, sing the songs we were taught, and sing melodies of our own, may we do so with new strength.
— Sara Anderson, 5th year cantorial student