Is there a song that’s a favorite? That we could listen to a million times
without getting tired of it?
(What’s a song like that for you?)
For me, James Taylor’s Shower the People You Love with Love,
Neil Young’s Heart of Gold, Frankie Ruiz’s La Cura
Is it the melody of the song we love, the meaning of the
lyrics, a combination of both?
As a person who leads prayer services often, I find it
interesting which prayers draw the most participation. When do we hear all our voices ringing out
together the most? Shema and Ve’ahavta,
Alenu, BeRosh Hashanah Yikatevun on the High Holidays.
Familiar melodies, with meaningful and challenging
words. They may flow and offer ease of
participation to sing, but the messages each of these prayers communicates is
neither plain to the eye nor free of moral and religious dilemmas and
questions.
I think we return to favorite songs, prayers, to films,
books, and poems most often when they are
difficult, when they are challenging, we go back to them because they say
something we feel on the surface, or deep down after time and thought help us
to see why our minds and hearts connected to them.
This willingness, this motivation, to go back, to devote
ourselves to finding meaning is the key motivator as we read from parshat
Chayey Sarah this Shabbat, especially as Eliezer, the senior supervisor in
Abraham’s household, leads the mission east to find a wife for Isaac. The test he proposes to God that will
identify the right wife for his master’s son is this: The first who draws water both for all the
members of the caravan and for all 10 camels will be the one. It is a huge amount of water to draw by hand,
more than 250 gallons.
Why would Rebecca take such efforts on behalf of strangers,
on behalf of pack animals belonging to strangers?
The great Rashi observes simply that by drawing all the
water for men and animals she shows that she is by nature a person who acts
with loving-kindness and selflessness.
In our tradition, we also depend on the kindness and
selflessness of others to help us grow, spiritually and in character.
We’re part of a team, part of a whole, part of a family that
descends from the family of Noah after the flood. The material, the songs, books, poems, that
fill us with wonder, that make us smile, the prayers that we share and sing
together, these are points of common interest, and should be the beginning of
meaningful conversations for us.
The services we pray are meant to be the beginning of these
types of conversations, pushing us, leading us to opportunities to open up
about the ideas that do not always appear in songs on the radio. Here we create the safe place to explore the
questions that attract our attention whether because we are inspired or because
we feel distant, in disagreement, in doubt.
Our favorite songs, the ones that are significant, that tell
a story we remember and think about regularly, the prayers that we connect to
the most, are keys into our souls, into who we are, and who we want to be. They lead us to focus on what is most
important to us, a lesson our Rabbis taught in the Mishnah, 1,800 years ago.
“Anything upon which life depends has the value of your
entire self.”(Mishnah Arachin 8:2)
Shabbat Shalom.
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