Why is it that we all need Shabbat?
All of us experience moments of fatigue, or even exhaustion, from all we seek to accomplish in the course of the week. Sometimes our to-do list seems incomprehensibly long. Our worry and concern for those we love weighs heavily upon our hearts, and we find ourselves saying, “It’s just a lot.”
So, the Holy One gives us a gift – Shabbat – sacred time to refresh and restore – to recharge and renew our inner strength and refill our souls.
When I feel my energy and zest for life running on low, there is something magical about music that fills me. On Friday nights, when I get in the car to come to worship, I always turn on some music. The music I hear is actually the vehicle that drives me to that place where I can re-center myself, breathe and feel the energy to move forward with a sense of calm and purpose.
As I walk into the quiet sanctuary, many times it feels daunting. It is a sacred privilege to lead worship, awesome and humbling. I feel an enormous sense of responsibility – will I be able to offer enough – to fill that space with the transformative energy we all need at the end of the week, to help us all regain that vital sense of inspiration and inner peace that we crave?
And then something happens when the instrumentalists begin to play and we join them with our voices. We create a synergy and as we blend our tones together, it seeps into our hearts. The myriad of pressures, worries, and stresses that we carry in our bodies begin to melt away.
We all need a vehicle to release the tension in our lives. Ours is a busy, nonstop, chaotic world, but if we open ourselves to the power of music, the pulse of rhythm, mimicking our heartbeat, and exquisite melodies that touch our souls; music can center us, quiet us, lift us and inspire us.
It’s not about the aesthetic quality of the voice – it’s not about being able to carry a tune – it’s about using your voice to join with others as one. When sound pours out from our bodies, we release the burdens of the week. And that music delivers us to a unique, holy, divine place – a place of calm and serenity, or excitement and joy, that words alone cannot.
We often begin our services with a wordless melody called a niggun. In Hasidic custom, the Rebbe would begin worship with this simple melody, repeating it over and over until the entire congregation was filled with song. It was the music, not the words, that would ignite the soul, that would create the passion and energy necessary to pray.
The Baal Shem Tov said the purpose of a niggun is to take us from where we are to where we want to be.
In this week’s Torah portion, Shemot we read about the enslavement of the Israelites in Egypt. In Hebrew, Egypt is called Mitzrayim – the narrow places. Sometimes by the end of the week, we too feel captured in the narrow places of our lives.
Music is our way out of our narrow places – it’s melody, harmony, and rhythm carry us to a new place, a place where we are free to be our best selves. It can be the vehicle we need to send our prayer aloft – to allow our yearnings and longings to lift us out of the narrow places that confine us. In Psalm 118:5, we read “Min HaMeitzar Karati Yah … from the narrow place I call to You, God who answered me and brought me to the wide expanse.”
A melody can take us from a narrow place of struggle to an expanse where we can reach ourselves, each other and the Holy One.
Shabbat Shalom,
Cantor Lori Brock
Join us for tonight’s Shabbat service at Temple Beth El’s Schaefer Family Campus or online on Virtual Beth El.