I first heard Seven Bridges Road by the Eagles today (may 10th 2014) and instantly thought, "I need to sing this." I thought it would make a catchy Adon Olam

Seven Bridges Road Adon Olam

Radical Arrangement

One Day

Recorded 2003 - many of our melodies may now be different.  Not completely in order.

Album

Kiddush

Wonderful recording of the Makelah 2017. Led by Josh Ehrlich. Recorded live in the B'amat by Radio Kol Ramah.

1. Bo’ee Kallah
2. L’chah Dodi Medley
3. Or Zarua
4. Sanctify
5. Ozi V’Zimrat Ya

Camp Ramah Berkshires Makelah - aired on 8/13/2017

Enough Of December- Brian Gelfand

Guitar improvisation on  "Foggy Mountain Special" with a backing track.

Foggy Mountain Special

שיר המסכתות "The Talmudic Tractates Song"

Ozi VeZimrat Yah (Shefa Gold): I’m recording and posting one Jewish prayer (almost) each weekday morning for the duration of this health crisis. (You can access all of them at.https://www.facebook.com/MusicalPrayerPandemicProject/, and now also at this Youtube playlist: https://bit.ly/PianoPrayerPandemicProjectPlaylist ) This seemed to be an appropriate prayer to record in honor of Juneteenth: words from the Song at the Red Sea, when enslaved people, now liberated, finally knew that their oppressors could no longer have power over them. “Yah -- my strength and my song -- has now become my salvation.” עָזִּי וְזִמְרָת יָהּ וַיְהִי לִי לִישׁוּעָה. The music is by Shefa Gold and has become ubiquitous in most non-Orthodox synagogues in recent years.

Ozi Vezimrat Yah

Al Naharot Bavel (Philip Hayes, 1786, and Don McLean, 1971)    I’m recording and posting one Jewish prayer (almost) each weekday morning for the duration of this health crisis.  (You can access all of them at.https://www.facebook.com/MusicalPrayerPandemicProject/ and at this Youtube playlist:  https://bit.ly/PianoPrayerPandemicProjectPlaylist )  Normally I record in only one take -- in this case that was not possible because it’s a 3-part round (bandlab.com makes recording this very easy).  As next week we approach Tisha B’Av, the fast day that commemorates the destruction of Jerusalem and the exile of the Jewish community (in 586 BCE to Babylonia, and in 70 CE to Rome and various places throughout the world), I am singing the opening verses of Psalm 137: עַל נַהֲרוֹת בָּבֶל שָׁם יָשַׁבְנוּ גַּם־בָּכִינוּ בְּזָכְרֵנוּ אֶת־צִיּוֹן: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat and wept as we remembered Zion.”  This canon (written to be sung in English, to a variation on the words above) was originally written as a 4-part canon by the English composer Philip Hayes in 1786.  It was popularized by Don McLean’s slightly different version in 1971. 

Here’s a troubling thought about this sad but comforting song.  The beginning of this psalm is mournful, but over the course of the psalm the exiles’ sadness becomes intertwined with intense  and ferocious anger.  First that anger is directed at the Babylonian oppressors of the Israelite exiles, who mock them by asking them to sing the songs of Zion on foreign land.  Eventually the anger is also directed at the entire Babylonian nation and all its people, including its infants and children.  The concluding verse of this psalm is one of the most horrifying verses in the book of Psalms - I will not quote it here but you can look it up - in which these exiles who have been sitting and crying for their lost homeland now thirstily and graphically call for brutal and vengeful violence against the Babylonian infants and children.  For me, these words are cautionary - reminding me how quickly sadness and pain can be twisted to justify violence against the innocent.  Violence against innocents is categorically inexcusable - and yet, otherwise sensitive people who are nursing a powerfully intense grievance can sometimes find a way to excuse it and even encourage it, and there is no society, culture or religion in the world that is immune to this tendency.  Who knows what the solution is to this age-old problem - though part of the solution, I think, lies with each individual’s ability to cultivate self-awareness.  It is up to us to each be aware of the point at which our sadness gives way to anger, and to make every personal effort to channel that anger into productive problem-solving.

Rob Scheinberg - Al Naharot Bavel (Psalm 137, Hayes)

 Leviticus 25:1–26:2 and  Leviticus 26:3–27:34

Kiddush

Rob Scheinberg

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