Offered live on April 5, 2019, with beautiful piano accompaniment by Joyce Rosenzweig.

The text is adapted from liturgy, in a multi-part prayer that most commonly appears in Shabbat and festival mornings, at the end of a section called P'sukei D'zimrah (literally, "Verses of Song"). The words draw upon a wide variety of imagery to express profound, immeasurable gratitude. For the refrain, those familiar with the liturgy will note that I removed the gendered language for God, rendering the arrival moment in the prayer as "...we can never stop giving thanks and blessing..." or "...we cannot adequately thank or bless...", and then descends, or perhaps ascends, into wordlessness.

Translation:
Even if our mouths were full of song like the sea,
and our tongues like countless waves,
and our lips with praise as boundless as the sky,
and our eyes shining like the sun and the moon,
and our arms spread like eagles’ wings,
and our legs as fleet as gazelles,
we could never stop expressing our thanks and blessing.

Ilu Finu

ADAPTED FROM A FACEBOOK POST MADE ON MARCH 21, 2020:

Lyrics:
Bimkom rinah, sham t’hei t’filah.
Where there is song, let there be prayer.
Bimkom rinah, sham t’hei t’filah.
If you sing along, oh, God will be there.

Wherever you sing, there you will pray, 
even when you don’t know what to say. 
As long as the song comes from deep inside your heart, 
God knows, that’s the best place to start. 
Bimkom rinah…

If God is in the song, does He hide behind the notes, 
or is there something deeper that She wrote? 
Or maybe They sing, too, through the voice of me and you, 
helping us to sing what’s good and true. 
Bimkom rinah…

If you sing along, and sing strong, and we know we all belong, 
then maybe, just maybe, just maybe, just maybe, oh, God will be there.

--

Commentary:
The refrain is an interpretation of a phrase from the Babylonian Talmud, B’rachot 6a. The Aramaic reads:
בִּמְקוֹם רִנָּה שָׁם תְּהֵא תְּפִלָּה

The translation in the William Davidson edition of the Talmud on Sefaria offers: “In a place of song, there prayer should be” 

And here is the passage that leads up to that statement. “It was taught Abba Binyamin said: One’s prayer is only heard in a synagogue, as it is stated, ‘…to listen to the song and the prayer’ (I Kings 8:28). In a place of song, there prayer should be.” Rashi comments on the phrase, “in a place of song," suggesting it means, "in the synagogue where the community utters songs and praises in a pleasant tune.” 

Now, this translation and commentary present some ideas that I find highly problematic, especially given the impact that the pandemic had on the way communities and individuals pray. The idea that prayer can only be fully heard when it is uttered in a synagogue, or any particular physical structure, seems ridiculous. Abba Binyamin assumes that just because God listened to Solomon’s song and prayer when he was in the Temple (for that is the context of the I Kings reference), that the listening was contingent upon Solomon’s location (and Rashi seems to agree), but this is not how I read the verse. Rather, I tend to focus on the first part of I Kings 8:28, “You have turned toward the prayer of Your servant,” implying that God turns to listen to prayer and song of any who serve God (however you might understand what it means to serve God), wherever they might be. 

In Joey Weisenberg’s book, “The Torah of Music,” Joshua Schwartz translates the phrase, “Where there is song, there is prayer,” that is to say, whereEVER there is song, there is prayer. I find this much closer to the mark. The only problem I have in this translation is actually with the word “is”. The Aramaic verb is not in a simple present tense, but rather in what we might call the jussive mood, i.e., third person imperatival, often translated “let there be”. It is a mood with a tone of hope and demand that captures Judaism’s inherent cognitive dissonance between what is and what should be. With it we can say that, while not necessarily every song is a prayer, any song, with the right intention, CAN be prayer. And so, with that adjustment, we arrive to my translation, “Where there is song, let there be prayer.”

Those who have read this far might appreciate an additional note about the second verse. I once learned from the great theologian, Dr. Rachel Adler, that all of our ways of naming and describing God, including gender, are really metaphors, that no metaphor can adequately describe God for everybody all the time, and that one solution is to use as many metaphors as possible, selecting those that help us feel connected to the Divine at that moment. Accordingly, in the second verse of this song, I used all three third-person singular pronouns common in the English language. Please note that the order of the pronouns is not meant to imply any kind of hierarchy. In practice I would probably switch them around each time I sing the piece, and I would encourage others to do the same.

Bimkom Rinah

A rough recording of my original setting of Hebrew text from the first two verses of Psalm 146

Transliteration:
Hal'li nafshi et Adonai.
Ahal'lah Adonai b'chayai; 
azam'rah leilohai b'odi.

Translation:
Praise, O my soul, the ETERNAL.
I will praise the ETERNAL with my life;
I will sing to my God with my existence.

Hal'li

A rough recording of a tune I wrote for the first five verses of Psalm 95, intended to be used in Kabbalat Shabbat. I was inspired, in part, by the style of a melody for the first two verses of the same psalm that is found in the Abayudaya community of Jews in Uganda. I'm aware that there is a little bit of intermittent clicking noises, which I hope to fix the next time I record this (my guitar is also in desperate need of new strings).

Here is a translation of the text:
Come, let us sing joyously to the ETERNAL,
let us raise a shout out to the Rock of our salvation;
let us greet God with gratitude;
with songs let us shout out to God!
For a great God is the ETERNAL,
and a great ruler of all divine beings.
In Whose hand are the far reaches of the earth,
and the peaks of the mountains are God's.
God's is the sea, and God made it,
and the dry land God's hands did fashion.

L'chu N'ran'nah

An original setting of Psalm 121 in Hebrew, composed in honor of my grandfather, z"l.

Esa Einai

I wrote this for my 2nd graders in religious school when I was a student cantor in New Jersey. I was supplementing their lessons about the Hannukah menorah, and why it is important to put it where it can be seen by everyone. I ended up using it with K-2, as well as my youth choir (all of which worked very well)

Chorus:
We put the menorah in the window,
put it there for everyone to see.
We don't have to hide 
all the light we have inside,
so we put the menorah in the window.

Verse 1:
A long time ago, the Jews were not free,
to pray to God the way they wanted to,
but Judah Maccabee helped us all to see,
it's okay to be proud that you're a Jew.
So we...

CHORUS

Verse 2:
And even now we know that there are places
where people have to hide what they believe,
but if we make it known that they are not alone,
you'd be surprised how much we can achieve.
So we...

CHORUS

Verse 3:
Everybody's got a light inside them,
to make the world a better place to be,
but every now and then, it's good to have a friend
to help us find the light that's hard to see.
So we...

CHORUS (2X)

Put The Menorah In The Window

English text from Mishkan T'filah, adapted from Stephen Mitchell's poetic translation of Psalm 51

Create a Pure Heart within Me

The Hebrew refrain is from Psalms 3:5, and the English lyrics are inspired by verses from psalms 3 and 4

Lay Me Down in Peace

Psalm 137:5-6. This was the first Hebrew text I ever set to music, now going back several years. While the melody may not be as sophisticated as others I have written, I think it still manages to capture some of the meaning of the text.

Cantor Jacob Niemi

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