Shabbat Shira - Shabbat of Song 2020/5780 - Sing it out!

The Torah explains Moses started singing and our ancestors joined in.  We don’t know if Moses is a tenor or a baritone. We don’t know if our ancestors harmonized, whether it was a hip hop sound or even barbershop.  All we know is their spirits overflow when the door of freedom opens and they sing.

So often I’ve heard people say, I don’t have much of a singing voice, or I can’t even carry a tune in a bucket.

Let’s keep in mind that, just as an example, we remember Leonard Cohen as a great singer songwriter as much as we reverence the great classical cantor Yossele Rosenblatt and others like him but of course Leonard Cohen, alav hashalom, did not have a voice like a Rosenblatt or a Koussevitzky.  He did have a heart, a spirit, a kavannah – intentionality and sense of art and purpose.

On this Shabbat Shira, it’s important for us to emphasize how our ancestors teach us God looks to the heart, rachmana liba ba’ey.  When we sing in shul, or anywhere for that matter, when we sing about what is meaningful and important to us, when we sing to advocate for causes of tzedek of righteousness, when we sing at both simchas and moments of loss, God is only listening to the character and intention of the heart, and everyone, whether you sound like Bob Dylan or Matisyahu, everyone gets the golden buzzer, everyone gets a standing ovation from heaven.

The Talmud tells the story of Rav Yehuda who was so great in his presence in the world that by removing his shoe he could cause rain to fall, whereas we cry out to the universe and the response is silence.  But the Rabbis comfort us in this passage saying, rachmana liba ba’ey, God seeks the heart, as it says in the Book Samuel, God is speaking to Samuel as he gets ready to identify who will be the next King of Israel, and God says there, “God does not see as a human being sees, people look at outward apperances, but God looks at the heart.”

And so today, on this special Shabbat of The song, and more generally a day of celebrating in song, I’m curious for us to explore which songs are most meaningful to us, which prayers that we sing, which songs from our lives are most meaningful to us and why?  What happens to us when we sing them?  

May God give us strength and open up our hearts to sing today and throughout the year in praise of the Holy One who created us with the breath and ability to make the world more beautiful with the music we create ourselves and share, that with our voices we may start the wave of tikkun that will repair the broken places in our hearts, the gaps between us, until we achieve the unity of fellowship and purpose that, with God’s help, can transform the raw and discordant melodies of polarization, violence, and injustice into what Martin Luther King Jr. called a beautiful symphony of brotherhood.