And Moses came and spoke all the words of this song into the ears of the people he and Hoshea the son of Nun.Â
Devarim 32:44
When we enter synagogues around the world in order to worship, we are often confronted with a lack of religious enthusiasm. In many synagogues, services are heavy and often a little depressing. It is not always the lack of concentration by the worshippers that makes synagogue services unattractive, but the absence of song and smiles. While prayer is indeed a serious undertaking, our sages teach that the opportunity to speak to the Lord of the Universe is a privilege that should bring us great joy. After all, the idea that human beings of flesh and blood can converse with their Maker has no logical basis. Who are we to speak to the King of Kings?
This is even more true when one contemplates the fact that human beings have the opportunity to praise God. As the great German poet, Johann Wolfgang Goethe, once said, “Wer einen lobt, stellt sich ihm gleich” (He who praises another places himself on the other’s level).[1] As Aristotle said, probably referring to Plato: “Everyone may criticize him, but who is permitted to praise him?”[2]
King Chizkiyahu’s Failure
Most interesting is the fact that one of the ways that we can identify the Mashiach is his capacity and willingness to sing. In the Talmud,[3] Bar Kappara states that God intended to appoint King Chizkiyahu as the Mashiach – the ultimate redeemer of humankind – but did not.
Chizkiyahu is known as one of the most righteous people in Jewish history. He introduced important religious reforms and was a man of outstanding devotion, committed to the highest level of morality. In fact, he was so successful in his attempt to improve Jewish education that there was “no boy or girl, no man or woman in the land who was not versed in the religious laws of tahara and tuma (ritual purity and impurity).”[4]
Still, King Chizkiyahu was not even able to teach his own son, the crown prince Menashe, fear of God. The latter was known for his wickedness, and commentators observe that this was because his righteous father did not know how to sing and therefore could not inspire him. We can be sure that Menashe had been given an excellent Jewish education, yet all his learning remained academic and frigid because the warmth of a song did not accompany it.
The sages tell us that King Chizkiyahu did not even sing after he experienced a great miracle that saved Israel from the hands of the wicked Assyrian king, Sancherib.[5]
Not being able to sing is considered by our sages as a serious weakness that prevents one from being the Mashiach. Indeed, we find that all of King Chizkiyahu’s efforts to encourage Jewish learning came to an end after he passed away. Jewish learning and Judaism have no future without a song and a smile.
However, the above needs some clarification. What is there in music that the spoken word lacks and that makes it so important to Jewish tradition?
Reason and Prophecy
It may be worthwhile to quote an extraordinary statement by the great rationalist thinker, Maimonides. Discussing human reason and prophecy, he writes:
I say that there is a limit to human reason, and as long as the soul resides within the body, it cannot grasp what is above nature, for nothing that is immersed in nature can see above it. Reason is limited to the sphere of nature and is unable to understand what is above its limits…. Know that there is a level of knowledge which is higher than all philosophy, namely prophecy. Prophecy is a different source and category of knowledge. Proof and examination are inapplicable to it. If prophecy is genuine then it cannot depend on the validation of reason…. Our faith is based on the principle that the words of Moshe are prophecy and therefore beyond the domain of speculation, validation, argument or proof. Reason is inherently unable to pass judgement in the area from which prophecy originates. It would be like trying to put all the water in the world into a little cup.[6]
Music raises the spoken word to a level that touches prophecy, giving it a taste of the world beyond. Just as there is no way to demonstrate the beauty of music to a deaf person, so there is no way to explain the difference between a spoken word and a sung one unless one sings. Song lifts human beings out of the mundane and gives them a feeling of the imponderable, which is the entrance to joy.
“Some people go on a hunger strike in the prison of their minds, starving for God.”[7] It is song that will free them.
Abraham Joshua Heschel once said that prayer is our answer to the inconceivable surprise of living. “To be able to pray is to know how to stand still and to dwell upon a word”[8] While this is true for a song of the individual, it becomes more apparent when a group of people joins in communal song.
When our sages inform us that no one can be the Mashiach unless he is able and willing to sing, it should be a message to all who want to be religious that song should be an important part of their prayers and lives. We are deeply indebted to Sephardic tradition, Chassidism and people like the late Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who put song in the center of modern Jewish life. It is time that rabbis of synagogues gave it their full attention, teaching their followers to surprise themselves at what their souls can achieve. Prayer in song makes this possible. As Karl Barth said: “Whether the angels play only Bach praising God, I am not quite sure; I am sure, however, that en famille they play Mozart.”[9]
Notes
[1] Quoted in Dimensions of Jewish Existence Today (Washington, B’nai B’rith Hillel Foundations, 1965), 66.
[2] Quoted in Ibid.
[3] Sanhedrin 94a.
[4] Ibid., 94b.
[5] Ibid., 94a.
[6] Itzhak Shailat ed., The Letters and Essays of Moses Maimonides, vol. 1, (Jerusalem: Shailat Publishing, 1995),678-679 [Hebrew].
[7] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Man Is Not Alone: A Philosophy of Religion (NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1951), 90.
[8] Abraham Joshua Heschel, Between God and Man, (New York: Free Press, 1959), 206
[9] Karl Barth, “A Letter of Thanks to Mozart,” from the Round Robin in the weekly supplement of the Luzerner Neuesten Nachrichten, Jan. 21, 1956. This is also quoted in “Selections From Barth’s Writings,” New York Times, Dec. 11, 1968.
