Jeffrey Summit:     (singing) There is no greater embodied unity than sharing sound and breath with other human beings. Singing together is a profoundly impactful unified experience that moves us towards an experience with holiness. (singing)

Deborah Waxman:     I'm Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and I'm so happy to welcome you to Hashivenu, a podcast about Jewish teachings on resilience. I'm also happy to welcome today my colleague, my friend, my teacher, Rabbi Jeff Summit. 

Deborah Waxman:     Jeff is the Neubauer Executive Director of Tufts Hillel, and he is also an ethnomusicologist and a research professor at the music department at Tufts. He is the author of several books and articles, and he's just a wonderful conversation partner, and so it won't be a surprise that I've asked him to talk about the role that music plays both in animating Jewish life and in helping us to cultivate resilience on an individual level and a communal level.

Deborah Waxman:     Welcome, Jeff.

Jeffrey Summit:     Deborah, thank you so much. It's really a pleasure to be here speaking together, so the first thing that I'd start off with is the lens through which I've been seeing my work recently when we talk about resilience. I think it's incredibly important that each one of us should have a story that we tell ourselves about our work.

Jeffrey Summit:     A lot of my work has recently been informed by the words, "Resistance of the Heart Against Business as Usual." The Bread and Puppet Theater put this on a poster, but I think this is what the Torah has been teaching for millennia when we talk about being commanded to love God with all our heart and with all our soul and with all our might. God is the awareness of the infinite in each of us. Believing in God is believing that our actions and our words matter and, through them, we have the opportunity to make holiness real in our world. 

Jeffrey Summit:     What could be more important, more revolutionary than resistance of the heart against business as usual in our country at this moment in time? I see music so much at the core of what we talk about when we talk about communal resistance. A lot of my work has been looking at the role and function of music in spiritual experience, and what could be more revolutionary than joining voice and breath with other human beings and making sound that expresses the essence of who we are spiritually at a time when so many voices are being quieted, so many voices are being pushed down.

Jeffrey Summit:     Music is a deep vessel, and it has the opportunity to include so many different signifiers and, when we sing Jewishly, we could not only draw from many different coded expressions of Jewish identity, drawing from Israeli music and Hasidic music and contemporary American music, we could blend languages, the languages that are key to our people, whether that's Yiddish or Ladino, English, Hebrew, and we build such multi-tiered expressions of identity in a world that wants to force us to be so singular in our expression. Music is in its essence about multivalent expression.

Deborah Waxman:     Wow, and, as you're talking, I'm thinking about this great gift my parents gave me of bringing me to synagogue a lot when I was a kid, and I know that that's not how everybody was raised, but I went to synagogue and we sang a lot in my synagogue. We had leaders, lay leaders from within the community who had been exposed to the havurah movement, who was very, very interested, folks who were very interested in livening the service with a lot of song, and so I really came to know myself through song, through music, through Jewish music even more than what I learned in choirs in school.

Deborah Waxman:     I didn't always know the meaning of the words, but, when I did, I knew that not only did I have the experience of singing along with other people, but the words I was singing were always in the "we." It was almost always the Jewish liturgy, not so much the Psalms, but Jewish liturgy is written in the collective, so, as you're talking about multiple identities and multivalences, I think, "Oh, that is actually, that's how I came to know myself from a very young age and how much it has shaped me into my adulthood."

Jeffrey Summit:     Right, and what I found, which has drawn me so much to my work in music, is when my research is connected to music, and my first book was about music and identity in Jewish worship, and the book I just finished this year is about the meaning and experience of chanting Torah, when I went to have conversations with Jews about music in our religious and spiritual life, first, we started to talk about music, but, within moments, people were talking about the values that were at the core of their Jewish identity, authenticity, history, connection to family, the importance of community, how we see ourselves in a much, much ... through a much larger lens than just our isolated experience. 

Jeffrey Summit:     Music is in people's spiritual lives and musical expression is about so much more than just the song or so much more than even the words of the song. It was fascinating when I was talking to people about the meaning and experience of chanting Torah, classically, when people have written about that, they say that the trop is there to help people tell a story and it's ... there's punctuation to the text and the person who leyning, who is chanting is primarily doing the service of conveying the words of the Holy One to the congregation, but when I asked people about why they chanted Torah, the answers were much more complicated than that. 

Jeffrey Summit:     Very few people who chanted Torah voluntarily in their congregations did so because they wanted to express the words of Torah to their congregation. They did so because that was the act that brought them in deepest proximity with Jewish tradition. To stand in front of the open parchment scroll of the Torah and be the person singing God's words gave access to the metacenter of Jewish experience in a way that very few other rituals did. When I asked people, "Would you do it if it was just read, you know, the, parashah…?," the vast majority of people said, "No way," like, "No way. The singing is what makes holy language into spiritual experience."

Deborah Waxman:     I have two questions for you. One is to think about ... I certainly think about Jewish ... primary Jewish expressions being so intellectual and so much in our head. I mean we're talking about something that is ... moves us beyond that even as we use intellectual skills, and then I think a lot about the people who can't sing or believe they can't sing. 

Deborah Waxman:     I mean, I have a card that hangs on my wall at home that says, "If you can walk, you can dance. If you can talk, you  can sing," but I know a lot of people who are very self-conscious about their voice, and maybe they'll join in in group songs, and maybe they won't, my father won't, because some stupid teacher told him when he was a little boy that, "You should listen and not sing," and then there are others who might sing together in the group song, but they wouldn't necessarily put themselves forward. They wouldn't necessarily avail themselves of ... or take the risk of tapping into the experience that you just talked about, so I'm wondering if you could reflect on both of those.

Jeffrey Summit:     Do we have about two hours? Let me just answer quickly. Number one, Deborah, we live in an American culture that is an overly professionalized culture, and so "America's Got Talen" is a good example. where to sing out there in front of people, so many people feel like they have to be a star, but many, many cultures around the world understand that it's everyone's responsibility to bring song to communal life.

Jeffrey Summit:     When I speak to people, it's like you just have to leave this idea that your voice is not good enough, that ... and it's very interesting because, for chanting Torah, chant is on a continuum between speech and song, and one of the powerful things about chant is that from ... the musical range is limited, the expression is very straightforward, and I found that many, many people who would be embarrassed to full-out sing in front of a congregation were very willing to chant because chant was more accessible.

Jeffrey Summit:     The thing about leyning, about reading Torah is if you get too performative, it's not acceptable because it's not about you. It's not supposed to be about you. It's supposed to be about the Torah, and so that should put people at ease at little bit about expression.

Jeffrey Summit:     There's another thing I would add, too, and that's, in ethnomusicology, we talk a lot about the importance of reception in musical presentation. The people who are knowledgeable, informed, attentive listeners are as much a part of a musical performance as the people who are producing the sound, who are "musicking", Christopher Small's terminology. 

Jeffrey Summit:     We should know this from our tradition. When our tradition says, "Shema," listen, there's a lot to be learned from that, and listening is a spiritual, musical experience. Not all engagement in music has to be performative. Some of it is really learning how to open your heart and open your mind and open your ears in a way where you are not just critically listening to what's happening like you would go to a theater performance or a concert, but, rather, you are becoming one with the performance through your engaged, active listening.

Deborah Waxman:     I'm so struck by something you said a few minutes ago about how in some cultures it is everyone's responsibility to bring song to community. I mean, that just moves me to tears, especially because I really believe that song, singing, joining our voices together, the way I said it recently while I was opening a convening of activists was that communal song amplifies our voices and elevates our spirit, and so that song is part of that which attaches us to the ultimate. It just feels so important to me, I think at all times, but, at this moment, I'm just really focused on that, and that is a collective ... because of the experience and it's a collective responsibility.

Jeffrey Summit:     Let me riff off of what you just said because I so agree with you. Our tradition, the way I understand it, teaches that God is one, and I don't think all that means is that we're a monotheistic rather than a polytheistic religion. When we say that holiness is about oneness, I think that is teaching it in a profound way that the things that bring us together where we find holiness, the things that send us into separate camps and Balkanize our experience are the antithesis of holiness. There is no greater embodied unity than sharing sound and breath with other human beings. Singing together is a profoundly impactful unified experience that moves us towards an experience with holiness. 

Deborah Waxman:     That's great. Do you have  practical advice? We can have a conversation about how important song is, and I know my wife has told me that she can measure my mental state, my emotional state by whether or not I'm singing around our house, and she knows that I'm sad or angry when I'm kind of quiet,  and she knows that I am content or curious when I'm singing to myself, and I'm not even aware of it. 

Deborah Waxman:     Obviously, you and I both have a natural affinity toward music and toward singing, but, practically, how could we bring this to life for people, especially for people who are not naturally drawn?

Jeffrey Summit:     I mean, Deborah, one thing that I'd say is it's incredibly important to open yourself up to many different kinds of musical expression. I think too many Jews limit themselves viscerally to what feels Jewish, what doesn't feel Jewish, and what I found from my research is that, within nanoseconds of walking into a synagogue people make decisions about, "Is this a place I'm at home? Is this a place I'm comfortable?" and the music is so coded for worshipers that we take a very quick read.

Jeffrey Summit:     I think that if we want to expand our spiritual connection to Judaism, we want to listen broadly to music that moves our heart and moves our soul. We don't have to always make it our own. Sometimes, it could just be inspirational for when we're walking around the house singing. 

Jeffrey Summit:     I recently learned a piece that I've been singing a lot with Jewish groups that's a hymn from the black tradition, and I just added some Hebrew to it because the words are taken from Hinei Mah Tov, even though I'm not sure if that was conscious to the folks who taught it to me, but the song goes "One more time, one more time, you allowed us to be together / behold how good and precious it is for us to be together" (singing), and, of course, I just add it when I sing it to a Jewish group, "Hinei mah tov u-mah na'im shevet achim gam yachad" (singing), and it just hit my heart.

Deborah Waxman:     Me, too. Jeff, it's just magnificent. It's just magnificent.

Jeffrey Summit:     That's not a Jewish song, but it's essentially a Jewish song.

Deborah Waxman:     Yeah. Right.

Jeffrey Summit:     Of course, historically, and generations of ethnomusicologists and musicologists and historians have shown how we in every culture at every time taken the music that has moved our soul and we just make it Jewish. 

Deborah Waxman:     Right. Right.

Jeffrey Summit:     One thing I do at ethnomusicology course at Tufts called "Music and Prayer in the Jewish Tradition", and I love to introduce my students to Lewandowski's Lecha Dodi sang by the Zamir Chorale. They have an amazing recording of it in The Majesty of Holiness, and-

Deborah Waxman:     If you know the Lecha Dodi, many people know that melody, right?

Jeffrey Summit:     They know the melody (singing). That is just one chorus of ... and Lewandowski, every single one of the nine verses are set in a different way, and when my students first hear it in a magnificent polyphonic choral presentation with an organ, their first response is, "Ah, that's Christian. That's Christian. That can't be Jewish," and I say, "Stop it. You know, like, stop it," and I literally turn off the lights in the classroom and I turn up the speakers really loud and I say, "Just take this in and see where it takes you," and it's a magnificent piece. 

Jeffrey Summit:     Is that how I worship in synagogue? No, it's not the kind of music that I'm drawn to sing in synagogue. Could my soul be elevated through that music? Absolutely. Absolutely, but the big obstacle to jump over is the presupposition and the prejudice that people will bring to certain coded forms of musical expression like an organ, like chorale singing, thinking that that could possibly be Jewish. 

Jeffrey Summit:     It's interesting to show people what Lewandowski was doing when he was writing the material and the ways that he was engaging Jews in an expression that was more modern and accessible to many Jews at that time, but I want people not only to understand the historical meaning of it, but be blown away and transformed and open enough to be changed by the sounds of what's deep Jewish spiritual expression.

Deborah Waxman:     I think that's probably a great place to end, because I think that that's one of the reasons why I am religious is ... I will hear people frequently say, "Oh, I'm not, I'm not religious. I'm spiritual," but I find both the teachings and the wisdom and the many expressions of religious life again and again brings, leads me to encounters where I am transformed. 

Deborah Waxman:     I feel like, in my efforts to discern why am I here on this earth, I feel convinced that one of the reasons why I am here, we are all here is to grow in wisdom, to learn to love each other, to help to repair brokenness and to grow in wisdom, so I am always looking for those things that open me to transformation, and sometimes that is joyful, like when you started to sing, and sometimes it's hard, and I want the rigor and the assurance that I'm going to be pushed again and again and again, so, but, yeah, but music is such a sweet, such a sustaining way, I think, for that encounter to happen, as is this conversation. It is so wonderful to talk with you. Thank you. Thank you. 

Deborah Waxman:     I want to thank my guest, Rabbi Jeff Summit, for our wonderful discussion on singing, on music, on transformation and for the gift of the song in the middle of it. We're going to load a lot of resources, including links to Jeff's books and some of his articles on our website, and we'll make certain to post some links to excellent music where you can be challenged and nourished. You can find those resources at hashivenu.fireside.fm and also on our websites, reconstructingjudaism.org and on ritualwell.org.

Deborah Waxman:     I am Rabbi Deborah Waxman, and you've been listening to Hashivenu, Jewish teachings on resilience. (singing)