To say that I was lost would have been an understatement. I wandered through the narrow alleys and winding streets of Jerusalem in search of the Belz Yeshiva, the school of the large Hassidic dynasty from the Ukraine, which was famous for its music. I was told that their tischen (Yiddish for “table”)—Friday night gatherings filled with music, Torah learning, and food—were beyond compare. I finally arrived at a building that could only be described as a full-scale model of what the Temple would have looked like, and I tried to find a way in. I followed the music down into the basement into a room larger than a football stadium with a massive table in the middle surrounded by bleachers.
Hundreds of Hassidim mingled all around the hall. It was 11:30 p.m., and I thought I had missed it. But suddenly the rebbe entered, and a mad rush up the bleachers ensued. There were more than 1,000 men crowded into the room, all wearing the exact same black robes. Even in my Shabbat white shirt and black pants, I very clearly stuck out as an outsider. But then it hit me. At first barely a whisper, then suddenly it was everywhere: a haunting melody I had never heard before, sung by 1,000 voices in unison. As the rebbe took his seat at the table, I found myself being carried away by the melody. I listened as the melody transitioned from section to section, each more complicated than the last, before cycling back on itself to the
beginning. And though I had never heard this tune before, I found myself being carried away and began to sing along. We were all singing just the melody line, but I could hear phantom harmonies reverberating around the room, and the sound felt like it had weight, hovering above and around us and lifting us up along with the notes.
Six months later and on the other side of the world, I found myself at Hava Nashira, a song-leading conference founded 40 years ago by prominent singer/songwriter Debbie Friedman, Cantor Jeff Klepper, and others, put on by the Reform movement every spring at a Jewish summer camp in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin. The five-day conference, which featured an open mic event that tended to last the whole night given the sheer number of people who signed up for four-minute slots to perform, was nearing its end. It was close to 3:00 a.m., and the number of people in the room was dwindling when I asked the emcee how much longer until my turn. It turned out I was the very last slot.
By 3:30 a.m., my turn had arrived, and I realized that, being last, with no one waiting to perform after me, I did not have to abide by the rules of the open mic, including sticking to the four-minute time limit. I made my way to the center of the room, turned my chair around to face the row behind me, and asked all those around me to
do the same, forming concentric circles in the center of the room. I shared the meaning of the piece I was about to sing from Psalm 59, how the words teach us the power of our voices coming together, and what it feels like to find your own voice and sing out. We sang the melody, lifting up as the refrain repeats the words, “Uzi eilecha azamerah” (“My own strength I will sing out”). There were only 30 people in the room when we began to play, but suddenly, as we repeated the phrase over and over, people appeared as if from thin air. I looked around and the room was full, and as voices and harmonies came together, I again felt the sounds become tangible, filling up every corner of the room.
Communal singing is a powerful tool at our disposal in the quest for meaning. Singing together allows us to be a part of something greater than ourselves, our voices blending together to form something beautiful that no single person could create on their own. You feel this power at a concert, standing shoulder to shoulder with hundreds of people you have never met, belting out the words to your favorite songs along with the band. Music and the experience of communal singing can turn strangers into family. In Jerusalem at the Belz Yeshiva, I was a total outsider feeling very lost and out of place, but suddenly the music and the way it was built by the insiders that filled the space pulled me along, so much so that I almost forgot I was
on the outside. And in Oconomowoc, the way I set up the space and set intention around the meaning of the melody and words allowed the group, who might otherwise have been immediately turned off by the complicated Hebrew and unfamiliar tune, to let go of their feelings of discomfort and allow themselves to be pulled along with the melody. The music we use when we gather together to pray can help break down barriers and create and foster a warm and welcoming space.
Three weeks ago on Shabbat, I had three strikingly different musical and communal singing experiences all in one Shabbat day in Jerusalem. It began on Friday late afternoon right before sunset, at the Kotel. As a quick aside I have to admit something: The kotel… does not usually do it for me. It is a holy site for Jews, and a powerful place to visit if it is your first time in Israel, and sure, I’ve had one or two meaningful personal prayer moments on my own there, but because men and women are separated, I’ve never really felt at home. In 2016, that changed when the Masorti movement was granted exclusive egalitarian access to the Robinson’s arch plaza just next to the main plaza. I was studying in Israel that year in Rabbinical school, and once a week we’d walk all the way from our yeshiva down to the kotel to hold a minyan there just to have an egalitarian
presence on the platform. It was never more than 10 or 15 people, but it was our space and that felt important.
As we were planning for the Israel trip, it became clear that we were going to have Shabbat dinner at the Aish HaTorah building right next to the Kotel and that the main option for Friday night davening would be the Kotel itself. I reached out to Rabbis Braver and Skolnik to talk about what we would do on Friday night, and we decided that we’d encourage people to join us at the Ezrat Yisrael Egalitarian plaza to pray together. I imagined we’d have a small group, but at least we’d be together.
To my surprise, over 100 people joined us that night, more than half of our mission group, from synagogues and prayer communities all across Columbus, to pray together. We sang, we danced, we were by far the largest group at the Kotel that Shabbat, and our Ruach filled the whole plaza. We held hands and brought in Shabbat together, and getting to do so with so many friends in that place was something I never could have imagined I would experience. It was really beautiful.
After Shabbat dinner, a few congregants asked if I wanted to join them and two of my Orthodox rabbinic colleagues on a walk to Mea
Shearim to go see some Tisches. As you now know, I had experienced this before. That year in Israel, I had made an intentional choice that I was going to place myself in spaces that potentially did not share my values in an attempt to learn and experience cultures and new-to-me spaces in my own religion and reflect to see if there was a way that I could bring those learnings back with me to my own communities.
I had done that, and I didn’t necessarily feel the need to go back, but it felt important to join this particular group of folks and be a part of the framing of that new experience, and maybe I could learn something else too. We wandered our way through the streets of Jerusalem, and it became clear that I was actually the only one of the group who had been to these Tisches in Jerusalem before! We got a little lost, but finally on a side street through an alley and into a strange hallway we found the tisch at the Karlin Yeshiva, the students of Rebbe Aharon of Karlin, originally founded in 1700s Lithuania. In the back of the yeshiva we found 50 charedim dressed in the traditional golden caftan and streimels, swaying and singing in a room that barely fit all of us. They surrounded a small table where the rebbe and some of the older chasidim sat, and they faced the rebbe as they sang and shuckled with great fervor. We were carried away by the singing and the energy, and even though we were not dressed the part, they grabbed our hands to sway along. Their
Hebrew is accented in a very different way from modern Hebrew and so it is difficult to understand, but the same phrase kept coming up in song after song,
ָיהּ- ֶאְכסוֹף נוַֹעם ַשָׁבּת ָהֵמְתֶאֶמת וִּמְתאֶַחֶדת ְבְסֻגָלֶת
Eventually I caught the phrase because suddenly they were singing a melody I knew! It is a newly famous (outside of the hasidic world) Hasidic Shabbat zemer that was written by their rebbe, Reb Aharon of Karlin in the 1700s. It turns out they had been singing melody after melody for these same words, and I only knew this one! The words mean “How I long forthe bliss of the Shabbat, united in secretwith Your own fervent wish.”
I tried to sing along for the parts I knew, but our group was getting a little antsy in there, so we left to find Yeshivat Toldos Aharon, one of the famous yeshivot that tourists often frequent. It was past 10:45pm at this point so we hoped perhaps it would have started. We walked into a massive room with bleachers all around, just as I described earlier, and hopped up on the nearest bleacher to watch. There were 1000 chasidim in the room, most schmoozing but a few were in it and focusing their shuckling and attention at the rabbi, who was cutting the largest challah we had ever seen. We watched for a bit, and took the long walking route back to our hotel. Reflecting on the experience, I tried to think about what I had learned. The main
lesson for me this time around was that sometimes, 50 people who really care and are totally into it is more powerful than 1000 people gathered together where only 50 people are into it. At the hotel we bade each “Good Shabbos” and went to sleep.
The next morning, Rabbi Braver, Rabbi Archie Ruberg, Eran Rosenberg and I made our way to Zion, my favorite Egalitarian Israeli synagogue in Jerusalem. As soon as we sat down we were welcomed by the gabbai in Hebrew and conversed with him a bit. We davened together in beautiful Israeli nusach, and were offered an Aliyah together to welcome these rabbis and teachers visiting from Columbus, OH. I felt so at home, and I know the other rabbis felt the same. And I’m sharing this with you because no one else was there to experience it. There was so much to see! So much to do! There were optional walking tours all around Jerusalem on Shabbat mornings.
But what I felt in that moment at a regular and real synagogue in Jerusalem was that I could just be totally myself. A proud Conservative Jew who believes in Egalitarian Prayer, in Egalitarian life, in the Zionist ideal and a Jewish homeland, and in Democracy and Western values. What I wanted to share with you is that our Judaism, what we are doing and building here in this place is real and true and beautiful and I am so proud of it. I believe this is the way.
It was so profound to have these experiences back to back and to be able to literally juxtapose them in real time.
We go through great lengths, often, to prove to others that we are who they think we are. And as I thought about my experiences, and the idea of feeling like an imposter or a stranger in one situation and yet so at home hours before and after, I felt like I understood some core interactions in this week’s parsha, Toldot, in a new way. As Esav and Jacob are growing up, we read,
ַוֶיֱּאַ֥הב ִיְצָ֛חק ֶאת־ֵעָ֖שׂו ִכּי־ַ֣צִיד ְבִּ֑פיו ְוִרְָב֖קה ֹאֶ֥הֶבת ֶֽאת־ַיֲעֹֽקב׃
“Isaac favored Esau because he fed his hunger for game and hunting; but Rebekah favored Jacob.
Esav notices that his father loves him for his hunting skill, and so he leans into it. He thinks that he needs to be what his father expects of him and tries to please him. He grows out his hair, and he ends up making costly mistakes because he is not actually sure of himself. In the Hebrew you might notice that his father loves him in the past tense, va’ye’ehav, just in the moment when he brings him game, while Rebekah’s love is in the present tense, “ohevet” – it lasts because it is true and deep.
And then Jacob dresses up in skins like his brother and pretends to be something he clearly is not. And yeah, he gets a blessing from his
father, but at what cost? By lying and not staying true to himself, he has to flee his home, his brother wants to kill him, and just like his father and grandfather, if you look further in the Torah you realize that he actually never speaks to his father again.
Being in Israel and experiencing these moments helped feel more sure of who I am and who we are. The tisch was a beautiful spectacle, something to observe and remember, but davening with my people, both at the kotel with 100 Ohioans and the next day at Zion singing with Jerusalemites, reminded me that this is real, that what we are doing here matters, and that I am so lucky to be a part of it. Thank you, and Shabbat Shalom
