Reclaiming the rhozhinke: music and the synagogue service

Judaism, Summer-Fall, 2003 by Joseph A. Levine

Once, in a troubled time for the Jewish people, Rabbi Israel of Retzin stood before God and said

       Master of the Universe!
       We do not know that place in the forest
       Where previous generations went to pray.
       And we cannot kindle the flame the same way they once did.
       Nor do we recall the prayer or the precise manner in which they
       recited it.
       And we have also forgotten the melody.
       We no longer hope to recapture the experience, it is too far
       gone.
       We know only one thing and it must suffice--That we are still
       able to tell the story." (2)

What was Rabbi Israel's point? Among other things, to affirm that his town of Retzin in East Prussia was definitely not

       that place in the forest where previous generations went to pray.

In fact, the "place" he alluded to was not to be found anywhere in Europe.

The legendary Jewish violinist Jascha Heifetz (1900-1987) had a favorite quip. Having grown up in Lithuania at the time of the Russian Revolution next door, he would ask,

       What do we call one Russian? -- (an anarchist).
       What do we call two Russians -- (a chess match).
       How about three Russians? -- (a revolution).
       If that's the case, what can we possibly call four Russians? --
       (the Budapest String Quartet!) (3)

Heifetz, who belonged to the intellectual (Litvish) (4) branch of East European Jewry, was not simply being facetious. He was teaching us something extraordinary, that often, what look like opposites are merely two sides of the same coin. In this case, they are chaos and order, revolution and the refinement of chamber music.

The point touches another pair of seeming opposites, the sacred song of church and synagogue in their earliest forms, which exhibit a strong similarity of style. The late Eric Werner, (5) professor of sacred music at Hebrew Union College, traced this similarity back to close initial contact between the two liturgical traditions, with influences flowing in both directions. The forms evolved by Byzantine Christian hymn writers like the converted Syrian-born Jew, Romanus, in the fifth century, greatly impressed the first synagogue poets (payy'tanim) (6) in Palestine over the next several hundred years. The manner in which payy'tanim elaborated on theological motifs in Romanus' Hymn upon the Second Coming of Christ offers a prime example. Its themes and wordings appear in an eighth-century High Holy Day prayer, Un'taneh Tokef ("We Recount the Awesome Holiness of this Day"), an early manuscript of which would be discovered in the Genizah of a Cairo synagogue eleven centuries later. (7) In the year 1200, Thomas of Celano wove the doomsday scenario of Un'taneh Tokef into his Dies Irae ("Day of Wrath"), sung as part of the Roman Catholic Requiem mass ever since. And, of course, the Hebrew vision of God seated firmly on the Judgement Throne, presiding over a Heavenly Tribunal that is about to seal the fate of every living being for the coming year, still serves as linchpin for the ritual of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. (8)

The question arises: what have American cantors done with this information concerning the antiquity--and ubiquity--of Jewish liturgy? Evidently, they have turned their backs on it, the argument going something like this. It's not the Middle Ages any-more; we're into Folk and Israeli; Yiddish and Chasidic; Shlomo Carlebach and Debbie Friedman; Summer Camp and Folk Rock; Jewish Renewal and Klezmer, anything but those dreary old prayer modes! (9) No wonder

In 1942 the Japanese consul in Lithuania, Tchiune Sugihara, (10) disobeyed his superiors' orders and issued transit visas that saved perhaps 10,000 Jews. Among those spared from almost certain death were the rabbinic faculty and students of the famed Yeshiva in Mir. As a consequence, Sugihara was dismissed from his job in disgrace, while those whom he had rescued spent the war in Shanghai, which had no immigration limit. Years later one of the survivors told a film crew (11) how he had been questioned by a Japanese Army officer, in civilian life a professor of Semitic languages who spoke Hebrew. The officer could see that these gentle folk presented no military threat, and wanted to know why his country's German allies hated the Jews so. "It's because we're from the Middle East," the survivor had told the Japanese officer, "and you know how Europeans resent all foreigners, especially from that part of the world."

The survivor was right. Events of the past century have forced us to know where our earliest generations went to pray: the Middle Eastern land of olive oil and honey that God promised Israel in Deuteronomy (8:8), erets zeit shemen ud'vash. Yet, in 1968, Article Twenty of the Palestine Liberation Organization's National Charter sought to convince the world that "Jewish claims of historical or religious ties to Palestine are incompatible with the facts of history." Luckily, we also know from simple observation (not to mention Sigmund Freud), (12) that a people's worst enemies are often its closest neighbors.