Honoring, Listening, & Deciding

Music is an important and ever-changing component of Jewish worship. The specific roles of music change over time and place. In Torah, the descriptions of worship in the wilderness are filled with details of the sacrifice but beyond shofar blast, worship does not seem to have been particularly musical. In contrast, the Psalmist describes a worship experience that must have been closer to a concert. Psalm 150 suggests that we praise God with shofar, harp, lyre, tambourine, strings, flute, & cymbal. If one holds that both Leviticus and Psalms were written once the Israelites were settled in the Land and worshiping at the Temple, once can imagine that these descriptions reflect the coexistence of two very different views of the role of music in worship.

In our own day, there are many soundtracks to accompany Jewish worship. In the worship of some of our more Orthodox brethren, you would hear a lot of unison singing and chanting but this would not be accompanied by instruments. Other services would involve more individual davening giving rise to a hum of prayer with a few tuneful moments. Classic Reform favored magisterial music, often presented by a choir backed by an organ as well as congregational hymns, again accompanied by organ. When some of us go off to Houston this month for the biennial meeting of the Union for Reform Judaism, I expect that we will experience quite a range of worship music --- everything from unaccompanied chant to full chorus supported by keyboard and electric guitar.

Liturgical music evolves as worship evolves. Within the Reform movement, worship has been evolving rapidly over the past generation. Many of us can remember the old Union Prayerbook with passages neatly labeled for the Rabbi, congregation, or choir. The 1970s brought us Gates of Prayer. The labels were replaced by fonts with conventional meanings. If it is in italics, we are all supposed to be reading…right? If the font is sans-serif, the piece is sung. The next few years will see the publication of Mishkan T'Filah, the new Reform prayerbook. Among its changes is a near total absence of these stage directions. Congregations will develop their own minhag, their own customary practice.

The evolution of Reform worship has led to an evolution in the use of music in that worship. There has been an increase in the use of traditional chant modes (like using the Torah chant mode for the v'havta paragraph after the Sh'ma.) There is more congregational singing of folk settings of traditional pieces of the liturgy (e.g. the v'shamru that we often sing) and less congregational singing of classic hymns (anyone remember "God is in His Holy Temple"?). Cantors in the Reform movement have an increasing role as prayer leaders alongside the Rabbi. These changes leave less liturgical space for extended pieces of composed synagogue music, especially when combined with a certain amount of pressure to keep services reasonably short. What is “The Current Style”? As Cantor Ellen Dreskin explained when she visited Temple Sinai last year, no one mode of music has supplanted all others. To her mind, the most successful liturgical experiences offer a range of music within a single service in the hope that every worshipper will be reached by something even if no one is moved by absolutely everything.

Worship at Temple Sinai is evolving, too. We can step back and understand this change as part of some gradual transformation in a broader Jewish community. However, on a more local and less theoretical level, we need to address the changes that are happening in our own practice. Over the next three years, music will change as our worship evolves — particularly as the new prayerbook is published. Here, I want to discuss three steps of music change:

Step 1: Honoring the quartet --- This year will be the last year that Mark Kagan and the other members of the quartet will be with us. They have provided beautiful and uplifting music for many years and we will find ways throughout this year to honor their contribution to the life of the Temple. You will want to keep an eye on the Shabbat worship schedule this year in the Sinai News and on the website. There may be weeks when the presence of the quartet gives you an extra motivation to come to services.

Step 2: Listening --- Starting this year and continuing next year, Rabbi Vogel will bring a variety of different cantors and other musicians to help lead us in worship. These are not auditions. They are an extended education for us --- an exposure to different relationships between music and worship, between music and the congregation. The specifics for this year are discussed by Cathy Cotton in her column. I hope you will be in the sanctuary to hear many of these new voices.

Step 3: Deciding --- Over the next year, we will be making decisions about the next stage in our musical history. There is considerable interest in the idea of bring a part-time, invested cantor to Temple Sinai (Rabbis are ordained. Cantors are invested.). We are exploring this idea and considering its ramifications. A strategic planning committee for music, chaired by Rochelle Seltzer and Robert Levenson will hold a series of meetings during the course of the year with the goal of presenting a plan to the Board and the congregation by late spring. I urge you to attend at least one of these meetings. I welcome your thoughts on each of these steps. Please feel free to contact me by phone or email (wolfe (at)search.bwh.harvard.edu).

Jeremy Wolfe

President