There is quite a bit that is unique about the Tefillot we say together on the Yamim Noraim. There is the sheer length, of course, as well as the complex poetry of the piyutim… but what is probably the most memorable is the music. At least it is to me.
Over 30 members of our Community have volunteered to serve our congregation this year as Baa'lei Tefilah, Tokeah and Keriyah and I'm honored to be among them. I only started davening on the Yamim Noraim a couple of years ago because, honestly, I was too intimidated to try. As a boy, I grew up listening to my father lead services on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur and, while he himself would admit that he does not possess a great singing voice, everyone always told me that my father's Davening was inspirational… because of his attention to the meaning of the Tefilot and his respect for the traditional Nusachot, the melodies or tunes of our High Holiday service. He Davened from the Amud and blew Shofar at our small Shul in Kansas City and, while he is retired from those roles these days, I'm happy to say that he has told me he is proud that I am following in his footsteps… and I try to emulate his example.
Most particularly, I want my Davening to sound like his; I want to sing the same tunes he did. These are the tunes which feel "right" to me… because they are the ones my father used. And he used them because they were the ones he heard in Shul as a child.
This year, those of us who are leading services were instructed to try to minimize the amount of singing, because of the risk of spreading the Coronavirus. Howie Mazin told us, "The more vocalization, the more aerosolization," so we would have to do less singing than most years and rely instead on "straight Nusach," that is, the traditional tunes a Chazzan uses to chant the Tefilot.
So these tunes, these Nusachot, which my father used and we, this year more than ever are using… where did they come from?
Because of the unusual nature of this year's situation, the OU provided a series of classes for those who were stepping up this year to lead services, many for the first time. Some of these were presented by Chazzan Yitzy Spinner (of the Great Neck Synagogue) and, just this past week, I was lucky enough to have a short one-on-one meeting with him via Zoom. I asked about using a particular tune for a certain piece of the Chazarat HaShatz and, in response, Chazzan Spinner shared some Cantorial and Liturgical history with me… and that conversation was the seed from which this short presentation grew.
You see, we have had the ability to record music for roughly two hundred years… back to 1820 or so. Before that, people wrote music down in musical notation and only those trained to do so could read and understand it. Prior to that, all we had was memory. Melodies were passed down, from teacher to student.
Many of the melodies we use on Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur are old… some are very old. For example, consider the Nusach for the Barchu of Ma'ariv on R"H and Y"K. We all know it and, when we hear it, we know it's official, the Yamim Noraim have begun. That tune drills into you… but how old is it? How many generations of Jews have sung along with it the way we do?
Well, we know, for certain, that this melody is more than 12 centuries old because it appears in the records of the Court of Emperor Charlemagne who ruled from 742-814. Charlamagne loved religious music and his court musician, Paulus Diaconus, recorded this melody using the notation of the day… this was before the notation we think of as sheet music was even invented.
Another interesting origin story is that of the "Great" Aleinu, the Nusach we use for the Aleinu in the Repetition of Musaf on RH and, more notably, YK. The text of this Tefilah dates back to the 3rd century CE (or, according to a Mesorah found in Kol Boh, it was written by Yeshoshua after the battle of Jericho.) In any case, the music used for this Aleinu was known during the third Crusade, led by Richard the Lionheart. The Crusaders marched through Europe, including the Rhineland, and the populations of the Jewish communities there were forced to convert to Christianity; anyone who refused was put to death. In the Sefer Emek Habacha, Yosef HaKoen quotes a letter sent to Rabbi Jacob of Orleans, the last of the Gaonim, who had studied under Rabbeinu Tam, the grandson of Rashi. In that letter, an eyewitness to the Crusades describes a mass murder in the town of Bloise, in northern France in the year 1171. As the Christians put fire to the town's Jewish population, the Christian knights listened to the dying Jews sing a "mysterious song"… which was the Aleinu, sung to our Yamim Noraim melody. The Crusaders were so impressed that they incorporated the melody into their own religion… where it can still be heard today, verifying the age of the melody. Parts of the Aleinu melody echo throughout our Tefillot, showing up in Kol Nidre, the beginning of the Chazarat HaShatz and elsewhere.
The origins of most of our Nusachot are not known that specifically, but we do know that many of them predate the 14th century. We know this thanks to the efforts of the Maharil (מורנו הרב יעקב לוי), Rabbi Yaakov ben Moshe Levi Moelin, who died in 1427, only 13 years before Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press.
My research on this subject led me to an article in YU's "Rosh Hashana to Go" from 12 years ago called "The Music of the Yamim Noraim," by Cantor Sherwood Goffin (A"H), who was then on faculty at YU's Belz School of Jewish Music and Cantor at the Lincoln Square Synagogue in NYC. According to that article, the Maharil was the most widely known Rabbinic figure in Europe, the first to bear the title of "Moreinu" and served as the Chief Rabbi of the Rhineland, the largest Jewish community in Medieval Europe, during the period following the Crusades. He was also known as a talented Chazzan.
Most relevant here, the Maharil spent years traveling from town to town, asking each community's Baalei Tefillah to sing for him. He collected and identified the "authentic" Nusachot for each community and then codified them as a collection of 52 "MiSinai" melodies, tunes which have survived in our tradition until modern times.
Why was this project so important? Remember, The Maharil lived before the printing press so, at that time, only a lucky few were able own hand-copied manuscripts to follow along with davening. For everyone else in a congregation, the key to davening was the melody. Common music enabled the congregants to participate and, because every town had different tunes–and even texts– if you traveled from one place to another, you would find unfamiliar tunes and texts and, most likely, not be able to participate.
For hundreds of years before the Maharil, and for hundreds of years after, this wasn't really a problem because most Jewish communities stayed intact and in one place. Yes, there was persecution but, when people moved, they often did so as a group and, wherever they eventually settled, they would settle together, relocating their entire community, along with its Tefillot and traditions. This was true for centuries, throughout the nine crusades from 1095-1272… but then, during the Maharil's lifetime, everything changed.
For seven years, between 1346 and 1353, between 75-200 million people died in the deadliest pandemic in human history, the Black Death, which decimated the communities of Africa, Europe and Asia. When it ended, the Jews who were left gathered together in the densest areas of Jewish survival, the cities of Shpeyer, Worms and Mainz, to lean on each other for support.
From the perspective of Tefilah and tradition, this had to have been the most confusing era in Jewish history. These people all wanted to pray together… but they had no prayerbook on which to rely and no common Nusachot, no melodies to unify them. Without some kind of solution, public prayer could have disappeared.
This was the situation which caused the Maharil to travel from community to community, gathering and codifying the most well know, oldest and most authentic melodies. He catalogued these melodies, motifs and musical phrases in his Sefer HaMaharil, dubbed them "MiSinai" and proclaimed that they should never be changed. His decisive action was so well received and effective that it is quoted by the Rama in Hilchos Yom HaKippurim (רמ"א תריט:א):
ואל ישנה אדם ממנהג העיר, אפילו בניגונים או בפיוטים שאומרים שם "One may not deviate from the customs of a city, even from its customary prayer-melodies."
The Maharil codified our Nusachot MiSinai, our Sinai Melodies, in response to a global pandemic which threatened the Jewish world's ability to gather together in prayer. And today, six hundred years later, we are still singing those tunes as we Daven in response to another pandemic. Once again, we are emerging from the aftermath of a plague, struggling as a community to reconnect with our Tefilot and Traditions.
I remember, back on Shabbos Mevorchim Nissan–six months ago!–stepping into my front yard on a Friday afternoon to sing Yedid Nefesh with my neighbors on Stelton Street and, in spirit, all throughout the Country Club and Teaneck beyond. I remember singing Lecha Dodi with my boys on our back deck and smiling as our neighbors came out to their deck to join us. I remember hearing the Nusach of a Shabbos Kedusah for the first time in months in Hezi Jessin's backyard. I remember finally hearing the Trop of Kriyas HaTorah… and now, finally, we are together again, in our Shul, singing our oldest and most sanctified Nusachot together as a Tzibbur.
The Nusach of our Tefilot impact us emotionally. In Cantor Goffin's words, "there are few melodies anywhere in the world that can compare with the lofty serenity and holiness of these sanctified, time-honored MiSinai themes. The soul of the Jew responds to them." In some ways, by "simplifying" our davening this year, we able to refocus on these central, musical ingredients.
Yes, we have added masks and removed handshakes from the experience but, like the Maharil and his generation, we have found ways to Daven together once again. We may not be singing the Maharil's Nusachot MiSinnai with quite the same volume as in years past, but we are still singing those tunes, the ones my father sings, and we have the Maharil to thank to preserving this piece of our Mesorah and enabling us, this year, to continue the tradition for our own children.
Thank you and Yasher Koach to everyone who volunteered to serve the Kehila this year, to the Ba'alei Tefilah, Keriyah and Tokea, to the Gabbaim, to the Back to Shul Committee, the Expansion Committee, the dozens of other committees and invisible volunteers who moved chairs and set up tents, to those who made plans, and raised and gave funds, to those I've managed to leave out and, of course, the the Board and to Rabbi Krohn. But most of all, Yasher Koach to you, to the Kehilla, for showing up, for making the Minyan. We're back… and it feels like it's going to be a great year. Shana Tova.