Beyond the Music

What does it mean to know God? Can you Google it? I’m sure that it would be conveniently summarized before the first search result. Knowing God, at least the way I want to talk about it, is not about information. It’s not like passing a theology exam or sweeping the “God” category in Double Jeopardy. It is more like saying: Do you know my sister? Do you know my dad? Do you know my God – our God? That type of relational knowledge can’t be summarized, reported, or generated. It goes much deeper than that.

Rosh Hashanah is loud.1 The shofar is loud. Cantors are loud (sometimes).

I have been on many Jewish heritage trips in my life. Spain. Portugal. England.Germany. But I have never visited the places where my ancestors come from. My father, a devoted amateur genealogist, sat me down twenty years ago with a new technology called “Google Maps” and walked me through dozens of satellite pictures of the places on Long Island where his family lived as children: East Northport, Selden, Rockaway, Levittown.

There ain’t nothing like a good a-men.1 The word is a sign of life — a demonstration that people are united in heart and mind. Saying “amen” has almost magical powers. In traditional Judaism, its recitation in response to the leader fulfills the individual’s obligation to pray. Whether you know Hebrew or not, saying “amen” to a blessing counts as if you said that blessing yourself.

“It is so hard to find out the truth of anything by looking at the record of the past.

Self-Portrait with Bandaged Ear, Vincent van Gogh (1889) Long before Vincent van Gogh decided to give the most awkward gift in the history of Valentine’s Day, one third-century rabbi became so disturbed by music that he considered the very same act: Rav said:Theear that hears song should be uprooted! Rava said:Song in a house [means]destruction on the threshold, as it is stated: “Voices shall sing in the windows; desolation shall be in the doorposts; for its cedar work shall be uncovered”...

Photo by Filip Rankovic Grobgaard on Unsplash Over the years, I’ve developed a party trick of telling little-known stories of the origins of synagogue melodies I know, it’s not as thrilling as ventriloquism or doing handstands. It just goes to show you what kind of parties I usually attend. Nevertheless, this summer I had the opportunity to turn my causal interest into some actual scholarship. Published last week in Masorti Journal (Vol.

The Italian-Jewish composer Salamone Rossi (1570-1630) is widely regarded today as the grandfather of Jewish choral music. As a contemporary of Claudio Monteverdi at the Gonzaga court in Renaissance Mantua, Rossi was a prolific and successful artist with over three hundred compositions to his name. But one volume alone secured for him an honored place in the annals of Jewish music history.

Photo by Ian Schneider on Unsplash Long before it was the name of a computer programming tool, the word “maven” derived from the Hebrew מֵבִין (may-VEEN), meaning “one who understands.” It was often used laconic rabbis in the sententious phrase “hameivin yavin” — roughly — if you get it, you get it.” Over the centuries, the word maven passed into Yiddish to indicate a sort of folk expert — a reliable connoisseur who accumulated knowledge in a certain area.

Conspiracy theories are all the rage nowadays. The rise of extremist politics and online culture have encouraged more and more trafficking in this responsibility-jettisoning practice which allows us to spin tales about forces beyond our control. Such magical thinking is the tragically normal result of human pattern perception —”our brain’s tendency to connect the dots, even when those dots are unrelated. It’s an ancient survival tool which helped our ancestors avoid predators.