Kesher Talk

Davening in El Salvador. I daven with somebody who participated in this rabbinical student trip to El Salvador. So I know what they sounded like, and why - in the midst of an article about an old-fashioned "solidarity with the Third World" social action project - Leonard Fein was moved to comment on the quality of the davening.

Prayer is in fact the constant rhythm of the group. It is distinguished by the competence the participants bring to it, by its assertiveness . . . and by new melodies and spontaneous harmonies that now and then transform the collection of individuals into a choir. The music they so expertly sing is post-Carlebach; they know the melodies that were new to me 10 and 15 years ago, but those are old and tired to their ears. Their unfamiliar music is altogether lovely ? and their praying to that music is very nearly interminable. We are awakened at 6:00 a.m., and morning prayers begin at 6:20 and do not end until an hour later. Then there are the afternoon prayers and then evening prayers, each again a musical experience, each also an opportunity for these rabbis-to-be to offer comment on the meaning of the prayer and its connection to the immediate purpose that has brought them to this dusty corner of this distant land.

. . . But Ciudad Romero provides only the setting and the subtext for our visit. Vastly more central, even urgent, is the cross-denominational interaction and, again and again, tefillot, prayer. In off times, too ? the breaks between lectures, the spare moments here and there ? there's singing, and the singing is almost invariably liturgical. For me, this is the sharpest evidence of generational change. In my younger days, when social justice advocates gathered, it was union songs we'd sing, and the songs of the Weavers, and always, of course, the songs of the Second Aliya and of Israel's early years.

Fein describes very well what this up and coming generation of liturgically competent Jews is bringing to the Jewish community: spirited a capella group davening that doesn't mumble tunelessly, carried by traditional nusach with surges of achingly beautiful melody that's more often in the nusach modes than Western keys. One of my personal goals is to help it spread.

posted by Judith @ 2/01/2004 02:18:00 PM