April 2005
“The Role of Music in Our Services”
When I look out into the congregation on a Friday night, I see Jews with a variety of motivations for coming to Shabbat services. Sometimes, they are present to say Kaddish, to find solace in the prayer services. Sometimes, they’ve come to celebrate a Bar or Bat Mitzvah or the birth of a baby, or an anniversary, to give thanks for their good fortune and blessings. Often, some will come during a period of crisis, an illness or accident in their family, to seek the security and reassurance that Jewish tradition can provide. Some come to let the tensions of the week dissolve in the quiet of Shabbat, while others of all ages come to be with friends and their wider Jewish community. Some attend simply because they’ve developed a healthy Shabbat habit. All of these people come to Shabbat services to be transformed, changed personally in some holy way.
How does it happen? Being with community, meditating, and reciting the ancient Hebrew prayers are part of it, certainly. But undeniably, music is one of the key elements that effects our transformation. Music changes us. One of my teachers, Cantor Benjie-Ellen Schiller of the Reform movement’s cantorial school, writes that music is considered sacred not on account of what it is, but on account of what it does. Instead of focusing on what musical style we like best, we should focus on how music affects us, and what tasks it performs.
She describes five tasks of holy music – what worship music does –each task conveniently begins with the letter “M.” The first “M” of holy music is “majestic,” and its task is to evoke within us a sense of awe and wonder at the universe, a sense of holy grandeur. The task of the second “M,” “meditative” music, is to lead us inward toward reflection and contemplative prayer. It helps us quiet our souls, and soothes us. A third task of Jewish sacred music is music of “meeting,” which brings us closer to our community, and creates a sense a personal and a spiritual connection to the others with whom we are praying. Often, this task is performed in congregational participatory singing. An important fourth “M” is music of “memory,” which creates continuity with our collective past, our history as Jews. And last is music of “momentum,” those melodies which keep the service moving from one section to the next.
Any successful worship service should touch us on a number of levels, and should include all of the five “M”s in some proportion. So, it is not what style of music we like most, but rather what tasks worship music performs for us, and how we want to be transformed, that we prayer leaders and participants should pay attention to most.
I see in this a very healthy challenge to us, as a community: Prayer music that is successful will unite us as a congregation, but we’re a diverse group, with diverse tastes! What evokes a holy transformation in one person at any given moment may not move another person. When we focus on musical style, we get bogged down on the wrong question. But we do function well as a community when we can appreciate how music evokes an authentic religious experience and performs its different tasks in others, as well as in ourselves.
Our exploration of how Jewish prayer and music affect us will continue and deepen in the months ahead. As we continue to experiment and explore Jewish prayer – in many ways, only one of which is through music – it is my hope that we’ll utilize a sophisticated vocabulary to describe our own experiences in prayer. I am grateful for the atmosphere of respect and understanding that has developed as we hear the religious experience of others regarding music, too. I look forward to our study and conversations, and I pray they will deepen as we grow as a community together.
Rabbi Andy Vogel Back |
