From my earliest days I was awed by and enamored of synagogue ritual, inspired by the richly resonant voice of my childhood rabbi of blessed memory, the melodies of Torah and song and prayer, even the very shapes of the Hebrew letters themselves, dancing on the prayerbook page.
After bar mitzvah, though I had drifted away from synagogue life, whenever I would visit my maternal grandmother, she would invite me to shul with her. Grandma Peggy, z”l, had been the shul’s choir director long before I was born; her voice still came through so sweet and strong that being beside her davenning and singing became my soul's thread of Jewish connection for nearly three decades. Then when, in the mysterious manner of such matters, a circuitous spiraling of spiritual awakenings led me back to the traditions of my soul’s home, it was very much like to returning to one’s first love.
From Rabbi Art Green I first learned of Rebbe Nachman’s teaching of Ba’al haSadeh / the Master of the Field: how the essence of the art of prayer is somehow to make a sheleymut, a gestalt, a wholeness, of the myriad unique elements. Rebbe Nachman likens this process to walking through a field, picking beautiful flowers, and forming them into bouquets, where each letter of a bracha is a flower, every word a bouquet, each calling out in divine love, imploring “see how beautiful I am - let me stay with you!”. And yet, while moving forward, as inevitably we must, the key, says Nachman, is to integrate each flower, each bouquet - each moment - into the wholeness, so that at the end of your prayer, you are still standing, even so, in the beginning. To me this represents, as well, the essence of how to live one’s life, and how to sing the song of one’s soul - joining together each moment, each note, and each rest, in loving and joyous assembly.
The Psalmist exhorts: “Sing a New Song to (or of!) the One!”. How might this be understood? Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, in Kedushat Levi, reminds us that the gateway to renewal is to realize that the Holy One of Blessing instills new life into each of us, at every moment - with every breath. It has often been said that the most fundamental of all prayers is simply to take in a breath, and on exhaling, just to say “Thank You”. So if you consider the sound of out-breath as song, then our in-breath, which is none other than the divine out-breath, is God’s song itself: we, ourselves, are the new song, renewed in every moment!
And now, having begun to discover anew my own voice and to share it with others in song and prayer and drawing ever closer to our spiritual roots, I look back with so much gratitude: for our diverse and holy lineage; to all of my beloved teachers; to my dear chevre and colleagues in the ALEPH programs; and for all of the many malakhim / holy messenger angels who have guided, encouraged, and challenged me along the path to the holy ground upon which I now stand. And looking forward, I pray simply for the joy of being in service to the One:
Holy One of Blessing ... may my prayer be Your prayer, my voice be Your voice, and my life an instrument for making ever more manifest the Light of Your Love - the flame which burns and and is never consumed.
~ January 2012
After bar mitzvah, though I had drifted away from synagogue life, whenever I would visit my maternal grandmother, she would invite me to shul with her. Grandma Peggy, z”l, had been the shul’s choir director long before I was born; her voice still came through so sweet and strong that being beside her davenning and singing became my soul's thread of Jewish connection for nearly three decades. Then when, in the mysterious manner of such matters, a circuitous spiraling of spiritual awakenings led me back to the traditions of my soul’s home, it was very much like to returning to one’s first love.
From Rabbi Art Green I first learned of Rebbe Nachman’s teaching of Ba’al haSadeh / the Master of the Field: how the essence of the art of prayer is somehow to make a sheleymut, a gestalt, a wholeness, of the myriad unique elements. Rebbe Nachman likens this process to walking through a field, picking beautiful flowers, and forming them into bouquets, where each letter of a bracha is a flower, every word a bouquet, each calling out in divine love, imploring “see how beautiful I am - let me stay with you!”. And yet, while moving forward, as inevitably we must, the key, says Nachman, is to integrate each flower, each bouquet - each moment - into the wholeness, so that at the end of your prayer, you are still standing, even so, in the beginning. To me this represents, as well, the essence of how to live one’s life, and how to sing the song of one’s soul - joining together each moment, each note, and each rest, in loving and joyous assembly.
The Psalmist exhorts: “Sing a New Song to (or of!) the One!”. How might this be understood? Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berdichev, in Kedushat Levi, reminds us that the gateway to renewal is to realize that the Holy One of Blessing instills new life into each of us, at every moment - with every breath. It has often been said that the most fundamental of all prayers is simply to take in a breath, and on exhaling, just to say “Thank You”. So if you consider the sound of out-breath as song, then our in-breath, which is none other than the divine out-breath, is God’s song itself: we, ourselves, are the new song, renewed in every moment!
And now, having begun to discover anew my own voice and to share it with others in song and prayer and drawing ever closer to our spiritual roots, I look back with so much gratitude: for our diverse and holy lineage; to all of my beloved teachers; to my dear chevre and colleagues in the ALEPH programs; and for all of the many malakhim / holy messenger angels who have guided, encouraged, and challenged me along the path to the holy ground upon which I now stand. And looking forward, I pray simply for the joy of being in service to the One:
Holy One of Blessing ... may my prayer be Your prayer, my voice be Your voice, and my life an instrument for making ever more manifest the Light of Your Love - the flame which burns and and is never consumed.
~ January 2012