Singing with the Birds

Friday night, May 8, 2020

Congregation B’nai B’rith, Santa Barbara CA

            I have been trying to allow myself to identify the things that are hard for me, while at the same time acknowledging that I am immensely privileged. 

Millions of vulnerable human beings live in such cramped conditions that they simply do not have the luxury of social distancing.  Entire countries have only a handful of ventilators.  Millions of people at risk have no access to hand sanitizer.  Millions of people have no clean water with which to wash their hands. I have all of that and so much more.  My job.  My family.  My community.  My garden.  The bluffs and the beach.

            But I also have deep fear, sadness and grief.  I think we all do, and it must be OK to share our feelings, even if we also feel privileged and grateful.

            Let me talk tonight about a first world problem.

            I miss singing together.  I grew up singing at summer camps, in school choirs, and driving on long car rides with my family.  Singing together is the most powerful spiritual experience I know.  It was what I loved most when I was the rabbi at Hillel, singing with all those college students on Friday nights, and it is the essence of our communal worship here.  To be able to sing as loudly as I can, and to feel my own voice lost in the great sound of our collective voice.  That for me is the definition of transcendence.  In that moment of group singing, I become part of something much greater than myself.

            So while I am grateful for Zoom and the way it lets us see each other, and especially for the ability to hear Cantor Mark’s familiar, beautifully rich and comforting voice, I miss singing together.  I miss the kids singing in the small chapel at the top of their lungs on Wednesday and Thursday afternoon.  I miss singing the niggun together at the start of Torah Study on Saturday morning…even though it is sweet and kind of fun to sing, each of us on our own, and to watch everyone’s mouths moving and heads bobbing and swaying.  But I’m missing the sound vibrating through my body of our collective voice.  About a week ago I felt a huge wave of sadness wash over me, as I watched everyone on the screen and heard only myself.  That was such a lonely moment, and I thought I don’t know if I can sustain this for months and months and months.  If I can’t find people to sing with, I’ll go crazy!

            Then I went out to my backyard and sat quietly and listened to the birds, and slowly realized that I was surrounded by living, singing, praying voices.   Mockingbirds.  Finches.  Hummingbirds.  Crows. Blackbirds.  Sparrows.  I began to relax and I sang.  There was no other person there, but I was not alone. I had company.

            In his book The Spell of the Sensuous, David Abram explores our ancient, prehistoric human connectedness to the natural world.  A connectedness that we have lost.  Our earliest human language emerged out of the sounds in the world around us. 

One interesting example that Abram cites in his book is the language of the Koyukon Indians in northwest Alaska, an ancient, ancient still-living language which contains many words which imitate the songs of birds. 

            Like when we hear “chickadeedeedee”  we hear the chickadee telling us its name.  But the Koyukons hear much more in the language of the birds.  When the Koyukons hear the call of the hermit thrush calling in the forest at twilight, they hear the Koyukon words meaning: it is a fine evening.  Other times the thrush speaks the Koyukon phrase meaning “I sense the presence of a ghost.” 

            Once an old Koyukon woman came down to the shore of a lake and began to sing to a pair of loons.  After a little while the loons swam toward her until they rested about fifty yards away, on the water, and there they answered her, filling the air with eerie and wonderful voices.  When the observer spoke to her about it later, she said that loons will often answer songs this way.  Here is the song of the loons:   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qfAZYCTz9Zo.

  Those are the voices that sang back to the old Koyukon woman by the lake in Alaska.

            Our medieval Jewish philosophers thought that human beings were the only creatures who could think and use language.  But Jewish folklore and Jewish imagination throughout the centuries were much closer to the world view of the Koyukon Indians, who assume that all of nature is aware and that the sounds made by animals are at least as meaningful as those made by humans.  If we seek relief from our loneliness, and to feel ourselves surrounded by a community of song….we may need to turn away from our rationalist philosophers, and to relax into the world of Jewish imagination.

            We may need to learn like King Solomon to hear and to speak the language of the birds.

            Perek Shira, an ancient Jewish text of unknown origin sees the entire creation singing and praying.  Perek Shira asks about each creature, what does she sing?  What does the day sing?  What does the night sing?  What does the wind sing?  What does the ocean sing?  It turns out, that according to Perek Shira, each one of God’s creatures has a particular verse that it sings.  The sky sings “hashamayim m’saprim kvod el”. The heavens declare the glory of God”. And the ocean sings mikolot mayim rabbim, adirim mishberei yam. “Above the voice of many waters, the mighty breakers of the ocean…”. The sun sings arise and shine for your light has come!”  The rooster sings “how long will you sleep, lazy person!  When will you arise from your sleep? 

When the cat catches a mouse it sings “I have pursued my enemies and overtaken them!”  And the poor little mouse, according to Perek Shira sings “I admit that I deserve this!” 

The rivers, the mountains, the fig tree, the pomegranate, the palm tree, the olive tree, the dove, the vulture, the swallow, the crane, the swift, the stork, the petrel, the raven, the starling, the wild goose, the fly, the grasshopper, the whale, the sea monsters….each one of them sings to God a verse especially assigned to them from the scripture, and the frog…the greatest singer in the animal kingdom sings the verse we add,  just after the Shma Baruch shem kvod malchuto l’olam vaed.  Blessed is the glory of God’s kingdom forever and ever.  

            Listen to the frogs this evening, with the ears of your imagination, and listen to them singing.  Baruch shem kvod malchuto l’olam vaed.  We may be sheltering in place, but we are far from alone.

            I’d like to play for you a short selection from an album called Common Ground by the saxophonist Paul Winter in which he plays together with an eagle, a wolf and a whale.  “Trilogy” from Common Ground.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5qQCcWITUs.

 I first heard this when I was a student rabbi and it has haunted me ever since.  Now in my isolation, I am hearing it in a new way.

            It is becoming more and more clear, as the weeks of this pandemic roll by, what it means to be in a marathon. We grow weary.  We want it to be over.  We feel like crying.  We wonder how we can keep going, through July, through August, through September and October.  We hope that we will be able to come together in small groups this summer.  But it will be many months before we can pray and sing as a community again.  We are beginning to focus on Rosh HaShanah and Yom Kippur, and how to make our High Holy Days truly holy.  They will surely be Days of Awe.  But how will we come together?  How will we hear the choir?  How will we lift our voices to heaven, in song and prayer?

            We have never come this way before.  All we know is that we need to dig deeply, and tap into all of our reservoirs of life, of hope, of faith, of love, of joy, of song.  The reservoir of song is all around us.  At this moment, all over the world and in our backyards, the birds are singing, and inviting us to join them.

            Shabbat Shalom.