You turn my mourning into dancing so my soul might sing to You, and not be stilled. 

 Oh God, My God, forever I will thank You. 

 I cry to You to heal me, and You have answered all my prayers. 

                                                                                      --- Debbie Friedman (1951-2011)

Dear Friends,

On the occasion of Shloshim for Debbie Friedman, z"l, that falls today, we pay tribute to her singular contribution to the musical-spiritual lives of contemporary Jews by calling attention to our holdings on Jewish music, singing, and its relationship to the world of spirituality, prayer, and healing.

Music as an American Jewish cultural activity emerges even in our earliest documents. Almost a century ago, the 1916 Journal of Jewish Communal Service describes the Hebrew Educational Society of Brooklyn's "varied program," including a music department that ran an orchestra and served 213 pupils per week. In 1923, American Jewish Committee's directory of "Jews of Prominence in the United States" lists 105 musicians, composers, conductors, and teachers, including Irving Berlin, George Gershwin, Leo Ornstein, and Ernest Bloch.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the Journal of Jewish Communal Service ran a series of articles by Richard J. Neumann, the music consultant for B'nai B'rith, exploring the role of music in Jewish Community Centers, education, and programming. He writes of the now-defunct National Jewish Music Council, and argues that music education is an effective way "to reinforce the sense of national identity and feeling for our people's traditions," seeing music as a unique art, "through which we can reach people, young and old, on an entirely different level from any other human expression."

In Para-Chaplains and Jewish Elders (2006), Michele Voegel Rose describes how she uses music to reach the infirm and elderly in a nursing home in Chicago: "By triggering long-term memories, playing familiar Jewish mu­sic can transform the mental state of a person with Alzheimer's disease from uninvolved and unenthusiastic to a state of alert recognition and participation." She specifically mentions using works of Debbie Friedman including, "Mi Shebeirach (A Prayer/Song for Healing)" and "T'filat Haderech (A Prayer/Song for Our Joumey)." In Lilmod u'Lelamed: Elders as Learners and Teachers, Rabbi Dayle Friedman describes closing her learning sessions with Debbie Friedman's arrangement of Kaddish D'Rabbanan, "praying for peace and lovingkindness for those who study Torah, here and everywhere."  

In Toward a Jewish Theology of Creativity (1997), Elizabeth Bolton describes how the  Reconstructionist Rabbinical College choir members "create a nexus of connections that weave us all together in a manner that obviates 'objective' issues of technique and achievement."

Michele Prince, in Judaism, Health, and Healing: How a New Jewish Communal Field Took Root and Where it Might Grow (2009), discusses Debbie Friedman's influence on the place of healing in congregational life, especially through the popularity of her Misheberach prayer.  In Text, Teacher and Student: Enhancing Spiritual Development (2002), Jeffrey Schein describes how he uses Friedman's "You Shall Be a Blessing," in teaching about the children of Israel, and her Song of the Seato evoke and explore a spiritual experience. Jewish Outdoor Adventure Education: An Exemplar of Successful Experiential Jewish Education (2010) notes that the Adventure Rabbi program uses many Friedman melodies "because these are the tunes that participants are most familiar with and can typically remember, even after as much as a 15-year absence from Jewish worship." An article by Roni Handler and Lori Lefkowitz about revitalizing worship for women and girls in Contact's 2010 issue on new rituals describes how her Lechi Lach was written for a specific Simchat Bat (girl's naming ceremony).

In The American Synagogue--Recent Trends and Issues (2005), Jack Wertheimer notes that synagogues of all stripes (though Reform synagogues with the greatest numbers and success) are "experiment[ing] with music and dance as central features of the worship service."

Among the Jewish musical artists of the past are Penina Moise (1797-1880), a Charleston writer and educator who "delighted in writing sacred songs, poems, and recitations," including hymns that continued to be sang in her home Reform synagogue in Charleston years after her passing. Young artists continue to explore and celebrate Judaism through music. Zehava Ben Sings Um Kulthum: Dueling Nationalities and Appropriate Appropriations (2005) describes how a young Moroccan musician adapts the Um Kulthum musical tradition with the prayer that "my music, my singing, can bring real peace." New Jewish Music & Radical Jewish Culture (2010) explores the work of the radical Jewish musician Jewlia Eisenberg and her "Bowls Project," a song cycle and performance art installation based on inscriptions found on Babylonian Jewish incantation bowls from Late Antiquity. 

These items provide a glimpse into the Jewish musical traditional from which Debbie Friedman drew, and to which she contributed so much during her life.

May her memory be for a blessing,

Steven 

Prof. Steven M. Cohen
 Director, Berman Jewish Policy Archive @ NYU Wagner