REFLECTIONS ON SONGS IN ISRAEL

 

 

By Shira from the Land of Israel:

 



Songs have always had a place of honor in our history and in our service of G-d. The Levites’ main job in the Tabernacle was to sing, to raise their voices in praise and song to the Lord. And when the Israelites are standing on the banks of the Red Sea, after witnessing the Splitting of the Sea, Miriam the Prophetess, Moses’ sister, picks up her drums and tambourines and leads the Israelites in a song of praise to G-d.

The Book of Psalms is full of instances where Israel sings out to G-d with thanks for His salvation, with hymns speaking of His glory. Song is the obvious, most appropriate response to the need to express our love for G-d and His ways. “I will sing unto the Lord as long as I live; I will sing praise to my G-d while I have my being.” (Psalms 104:33) And in Chronicles there is a wonderful verse which declares, “Sing to Him, sing praises to Him; Speak of all His wonders.” (16:9)


I guess it makes sense, in our wonderful, wacky, and often difficult but always incredible country, that our songs will reflect how our despair is eternally mixed with hope, our prayers touched with pain. One of my favorite Israeli songs is called “The Honey and the Sting.” It is a song asking G-d in His benevolence to watch over us, and speaks of how we are grateful for our lives, even as we realize that a Jew’s life is a life of both sweetness and bitterness, like the bee that provides honey and a sting. A song we dance to in my Israeli Dance class, simply called “Land”, plainly states, with no apologies, “This is the land I was born in and I now live in, and I will continue to settle the land, no matter what happens.” A song of the most simple, basic faith in our right to be here.

Whenever things get complicated in Israel, with its stormy politics, its shaky security, its isolation among the countries of the world, I always think of a certain song and I am comforted. “I don’t have another country” cannot be seen as anything but a love song. The singer maintains that deep in his heart, in the very veins of his being, he will stand by his land because “Here is my home.”

One of my favorite songs is “If Only.” Probably one of the most popular Israeli songs in the last decade, it is a song sung by a secular singer, but in my mind, one of the most spiritually uplifting songs written. Its lyrics sound like a prayer…

“If only we will see a reform in the world…
If only one day, we will sit peacefully in the shade of the palm tree…
If only we won’t feel pain and people will love their fellow man…
If only the gates of the Garden of Eden will open once again…
If only are days would be renewed as in ancient times…
If only the nations will no longer lift their swords against us…
If only.

Our songs sound like prayers and our prayers are full of songs. There is nothing more emotionally moving, than to sit in synagogue and join with my friends and neighbors in raising our voices in powerful song, singing a wonderfully familiar melody from our prayer book. As far as I’m concerned, the older the melody the better, the strong tradition of the tune sending satisfying chills of belonging through me.

Imagine: What does God think of our songs? Remember He created sound. Make a joyful sound unto Him! Celebrate God with a song from your heart to Him! Join your voice with the melody of heaven in the power of the song! Let everything that has breath Praise the Lord!!!!


Shalom!