(no subject)

The Jewish Month of Elul is coming up in a couple of days. As the month before Tishre and the Jewish High Holidays of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, it's a month of spiritual rededication, a time for evaluating the past year and preparing for the confrontation with God that's looming. It's a time where I ask myself what I will be atoning for, what I've done wrong, what solutions I can offer. Going into Rosh Hashanah unprepared, walking essentially into a service geared toward inducing self-confrontation, acceptance of guilt, and the intention to repent, is a really emotionally exposing and difficult thing to do. If you give the time and energy to work up to it, it's a much productive and meaningful process.


As part of that process of preparation, I've put together this playlist of Rosh Hashanah-inspired music.

We begin with four versions of the same words.

First, Shuly Nathan's complete "Unetaneh Tokef". Let me explain Unetaneh Tokef to my readers, because it's got a great apocryphal story and it's an essential, central part of the Rosh Hashanah service, yet I don't think it's that well known outside of Jews.

The story goes that the evil Christian ruler of the the city of Mainz had ordered Rav Amnon to convert to Christianity, and Rav Amnon, to stall, had agreed to think about it for three days. After three days, he'd refused to show up at the ruler's request to provide an answer and the ruler had dragged him to his palace and removed his limbs one by one, as he again ordered him to convert.

The dying Rav Amnon was then carried to Rosh Hashanah services where he composed Unetaneh Tokef on the spot and then died. But wait, Ferret! Nobody there was allowed to write down his composition because it was a Holiday, so how do we still have it? Well, obviously the next day his friend Rav Kalonymos had a dream in which Rav Amnon dictated the prayer to him.

It's a pretty great story, right? Gruesome, inspirational, you name it.

Anyway, the prayer itself is one of the central moments of the Rosh Hashanah service because it distills a whole long pile of themes of the day into a single, gorgeous prayer. It positions the Jewish people as the creation and responsibility of God, places us beneath his awe inspiring might, and identifies us as a nation dependent on his kindness and mercy. And then in the most famous passage, it lays out the stakes: "On Rosh Hashanah it is written and on Yom Kippur it is sealed: Who will live and who will die." It goes on, laying out in grisly and gruesome detail how those who die will die, how those who suffer will suffer, how those who struggle will struggle. And then, miraculously, just when it appears that we are helpless before God's awesome power, we are given a recipe for salvation: "Through Repentance, Prayer, and Acts of Charity we can cause God to cancel his harsh decree." It's a really intense, amazing moment.

Next up, the Kronos Quartet and cantor Mikhail Alexandrovich do "K'vakarat", the second paragraph of the Unetaneh Tokef, in an arrangement by Argentine composer Osvaldo Golijov. It's the same verse we heard from Nathan accompanied by bold brass notes, but here it's accompanied by doubting, hesitating string riffs. In the verse, God is compared to a Shepherd tending his herd, making calm, calculated, rational decisions about what will be in store for mankind. And Golijov makes his singer sound uncertain about where that will shake out for us, whether rationality demands anything good for us at all.

Next, a favorite: Leonard Cohen's "Who By Fire", which translates parts of the third paragraph of the Unetaneh Tokef, the part with all the gruesome ways of dying, and then adds in new ways of dying, adds in new forms of suffering, and asks a strange and moving question:"And who may I say is calling?" I love it because it shows how much the words of this ancient prayer still mean, still convey our doubt about the uncertainty of the future.

And last an odd goodie: Shany Kedar translates "Who by Fire" into Hebrew, borrowing from the original words of the Unetaneh Tokef but translating Cohen's new additions into Hebrew as well. This cover is such a glorious mixture of new and old.


Ok, that's enough of Unetaneh Tokef. Let's move on to three versions of perhaps the most famous High Holdays song: "Avinu Malkenu". This is a dead simple lyric: "Our Father, our King, Show grace to us and answer us, though we lack good works. Perform charity and kindness for us, and save us."

I present the lyric in three versions: A chazzanos (traditional Ashkenazi prayer chant) version sung by Chazzan Sawel Kwarten, a jazz quartet version without lyrics (Uri Caine, Mark Feldman, Greg Cohen, and Joey Baron comprising the quartet), and a jam rock band version(Phish, of all things).



And let's close out the affair with an Israeli love ballad that takes its title from a Psalm that is especially recited during the High Holidays- Idan Raichel's "Mi'maamakim", which I know isn't really about Rosh Hashanah, yet still manages to get me in the spirit of the day.



Download the Playlist Here