Judge Dennis Davis
Music of Passover

Judge Dennis Davis | Music of Passover | 04.21.22

Music and video played throughout the presentation.

- Well, to everybody. This lecture was in many ways to have been done before the Seders, but then I was going to travel and so we had to push it back. And ironically I wasn’t able to travel because I happened to have got COVID or they’ve extremely mildly and not people have emailed me, which thank you very much, but I’m absolutely fine. I just had a couple of days, amazing what the vaccines can do. So tonight my project is a kind of combined one. On the one hand I’d like very much to talk to you, share with you a number of the songs, which is what the topic is, about the Passover, about the Seder. And it does seem to me that is central to our objective.

But in order to do that, it is also useful perhaps to contextualize that which we sing, and what is it about this Seder, which essentially is explicate by the music which I’m going to present this evening. Now the remarkable thing about the Seder and about Pesach in general is just the universality of it in relation to the Jewish community. Many of us, including ourselves, have had the occasion of not being at home, being in other countries such as New York, USA, to be at Seder. And I’m sure many of you have had the same experiences we’ve had which is that whilst there are some songs that are sung differently, there are many that are exactly the same. You feel part of a community in a very wonderful way. Like you just sort of walked into a house that you would’ve known all your life even though you might have met many of these people for the first time. And so that’s the first part which is remarkable.

The second part, and I want to emphasize this off, is that the Seder actually is an extraordinary opportunity and Pesach as a whole to debate the question of freedom. It’s not just there for us to go through the rituals, and I want to get to that. It’s not for us just to kind of, as it were, be ground into the kind of intellectual dust by the restrictive claustrophobia of fundamentalist perspectives and religion. Seems to me that what we are really on about is significant debate, and that the Seder should be that. Indeed the Seder should be one of the great opportunities for us to engage with each other.

Unfortunately, if you take these lectures, I, literally like all my colleagues who give these lectures talking to our screens. It is possible that if we were lecturing live we’d be able to have a better engagement with you. But in the Seder, the idea is that everybody should participate and that discussion is the order of the day. Let me illustrate this to you by a obscure passage in the Haggadah, which maybe you allied over, maybe you spent a lot of time on, I don’t know. But it’s the passage dealing with the rabbis at Bnai Brak. It comes just after we’ve sung “Avadim Hayinu, "We Were Slaves in Egypt.”

And all of a sudden we’re told that these rabbis, Rabbi Elazar ben Azarya and whole bunch of them sat down in Bnei Brak, had this debate. And then finally their students said to them, “Rabbis, this is now the time for us to say "the morning prayers.” And what was this all about? And why do I raise this with you? Well I raise it with you for a very profound reason, which is that if you look at what the significance of this was about, there are many interpretations. The truth is that these were the greatest rabbis of their generation, except for one abstention, which was Rabbi Gamaliel who does appear later in the Seder. And the interesting thing is he had been temporarily deposed as the Rosh Yeshiva Yavneh, which was the great bastion of Jewish learning after the Roman occupation.

And question, was he’d been deposed ‘cause he was an authoritarian? And the other rabbis essentially decided that at least the way he humiliated his colleagues was such that he shouldn’t no longer occupy the position he did. So he wasn’t there. And these rabbis were debating something, which at the time seemed extraordinarily important to all of them, which was when do you end the Seder, in general and when do you stop eating?

Well, most agree that the eating must stop by midnight. The question was how long the Seder should go on for? How long can you carry on talking? And there were a number of rabbis in this group at Bnei Brak who felt extraordinarily strongly that it should end at midnight. But a minority of them thought that actually you could carry on into the morning. And the significance of the passage which we read, is that they engaged in such ferocious debate, intellectual engagement that those who kind of felt that the Seders should end at midnight forgot about the time until they were reminded by their students that it was time for Shacharit. Meaning that the minority by way of a debate, had essentially persuaded the majority of their point of view.

There was no violence in the issue, there was no assertion, no authoritarian, we’ve got to do it this way. They were all conscious of the fact that they did not want to split the rabbit any further having got rid of Rabbi Gamaliel even on a temporary basis. And the significance of it is this, that really what the Seder is about is that we sit down with different perspectives. We are all talking about the concept of freedom, but the concept of freedom has different connotations for all of us. I don’t need to make the obviously tried to proposition to you listening to this, how certainly my experience and I’m sure the experience of my fellow presenters over the period of lockdown, as we illustrated that the people have very different views, very different views about Israeli politics, very different views about democratic politics, about the future of democracy. And at the Seder we sit down and we respect each other.

We say, we don’t mind that you have a different view. We are not going to say, you can’t say what you say, we engage, and out of that process of engagement comes the reconciliation, which is apparent in this passage. It is a paradigmatic passage for how in fact our tradition is one of the liberation, not a search. And that’s what the Seder is about. So I’ve mentioned this to start with because what I wanted to emphasize for us all is, you make of the Seder what you want. In fact, you can sing the songs the way you want to. You can add issues into the Seder as you wish. This year, for example, at our Seder, we did not talk about four sons, we talked about four daughters. And we had a much more feminist perspective of the four daughters because it seemed to me at least, and seemed to me all my friends and family seemed to agree, this was a more appropriate for the occasion.

The Seder is what you make of it. But the design of the Seder and the nature of the Seder is a process as I want to indicate you of very great significance about deliberation. As I’ve indicated in the Bnei Brak passage insofar as the concepts of freedom in our different views are concerned. Now the Seder effectively is of course, literally translator as an order. There’s a structure, but that structure is designed to alert us to the contradictions, to the differences, the significance of the differences of the day and why each of these contradictions and differences points us in a direction, in a particular direction, which essentially then promote the kind of debate we’re talking about. And we start with the idea of, we actually sing the order of the Seder before we begin. And I chose tonight to give a short recording of Cantor Rachel Brook, who I have played before, is wonderful, who basically tells us the way her family starts the Seder with (indistinct).

And let’s just hear her in a very novel way, a very different way of doing this outside of the normal traditional manner of singing. Perhaps I can just say something else before we carry on. I wanted this as a first clip because it was so different. And what it does is it structures the order of the Seder. And in order to understand the order of the Seder, let me just make one other point, hopefully Lauren can fix our first clip for us. By referring to that order as it is enshrined within the Talmud, the Talmud in gives us the paradigmatic narrative for all Jewish narrative. It says you start with the disgrace and you end with the triumph. In other words, Judaism essentially begins with the idea that we do not hide away from reality.

So we commence with the Seder in reflecting on, as it were, that we were slaves in the land of Egypt. I’ll come back to a slight variation of the theme in the moment. Let me just finish this Lauren. And we end with the great deal of hope. And I’ve always thought it extraordinarily moving that that has always characterized the Seder throughout the institute of Jewish history. That people at Seder there they were facing death in a manner that is just impossible to contemplate. But they would’ve run a Seder and they would’ve said at the end, , next to Jerusalem. Jewish narrative starts with the reality, it always ends with the hope. And I want to illustrate you, that’s the structure of the Seder. It follows the Talmud and it’s important to understand that, that the structure is one which begins with as it were, a disturbing reality and ends with giving us hope that all finally will be well. Well hopefully we can all be well with Cantor Brook. Lauren, if you could play it.

• From our family to yours. We wish you a sweet Pesach. We hope that your table is full of good food, lots of love, whether in-person around your table or on a screen, and lots of good singing. And we want to get your Seder started off right. So every Seder begins with reciting the order of the Seder. And in our house we like to do it in an especially jazzy way. So feel free to use this at your table and have a beautiful holiday (foreign language).

♪ Kadesh we drink the first ♪ ♪ Kadesh we drink the first cup ♪ ♪ We washed our hands or hearts ♪ ♪ We washed our hands or hearts ♪ ♪ Karpas we dip the vegetables ♪ ♪ Karpas we dip the vegetables ♪ ♪ Break the Matzah ♪ ♪ Break the Matzah ♪ ♪ Maggid we tell the story ♪ ♪ Maggid we tell the story ♪ ♪ Rochtzah we wash our hands some more ♪ ♪ Rochtzah how we wash our hands some more ♪ ♪ Motzi Matzah bless the Matzah ♪ ♪ Motzi Matzah bless the Matzah ♪ ♪ Eat the bitter herbs Maror ♪ ♪ Eat the bitter herb Maror ♪ ♪ Korech a yummy sandwich that we eat ♪ ♪ Korech a yummy sandwich that we eat ♪ ♪ Shulchan Orech, oh, does the dinner sound so sweet ♪ ♪ Shulchan Orech, does the dinner sound so sweet ♪ ♪ Tzafun Afrikomen ♪ ♪ Barech we blessed after the meal ♪ ♪ Barech we blessed after the meal ♪ ♪ Hallel we offer praises ♪ ♪ Hallel we offer praises ♪ ♪ That’s how we finish our Haspiel ♪ ♪ That’s how we finish our Haspiel ♪

• That’s one way of doing it. That’s the Park Avenue synagogue and it’s wonderful, you know, choosing your own theme in your own way of doing the-

• From our family to yours.

• Sorry, Lauren, you can stop it.

• We wish you a sweet Pesach. Lauren. Okay. So that’s the start and that’s the order of the Seder. And if you follow that order, if you follow that order, that order starts as I say, right at the beginning and it takes us through the disgraces of issues I’ll just talk about shortly. And it ends with a great deal of hope at the end.

But of course with every festival you have to start after that with Kiddush. And I moved from, as it were, a jazzy version of Kadesh Urchatz to a traditional rendition of Kiddush, a magnificent one, which hopefully will bring back memories of Gatsu and hearing of the great Hazzan in your neighborhood sing Kiddush on the first day. But 'cause we have it at home, but certainly over the various festivals.

This is a recording of Richard Tucker who produced an entire CD on . But here he is singing the Kiddush in the traditional fashion. Lauren, let’s have it.

[Clip begins]

• [Richard] The aim of the Seder on the night of Passover, is to bring the events and miracles of the Exodus from Egypt into the present, so that each of the celebrants, old and young is made to feel as though he had personally come out of Egypt. The ceremonial part of the Seder commences with the chanting of the Kiddush, the sanctification of the wine.

[Clip ends]

• What a way to start a Pesach Seder. I mean what an extraordinary voice Richard Tucker singing Kiddush. We now move of course to Ma Nishtana, which is really the beginning of the whole business. And now whatever you’ve ever observed with Ma Nishtana, whether the fact that it’s not . I remember when I was a child, my grandfather’s said Kiddush we talk about me doing the . And there’s a difference between the Shaila and the Kosher. Conceptually you see, a Shaila is a simple informative question.

In other words, you just ask that the Kosher takes the form that deviates from the norm. It actually talks about the contrast, the seeming contradiction. In other words, it’s a much sharper quest. It’s a pedagogic instrument if you wish. It’s highlighting something. It’s saying not just asking a question, why do we eat hams or Matzah on every other day, but only Matzah on this particular day, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And so it’s an interesting as a pedagogic device, which the Haggadah employ us to elicit as it were, illusions to the contradictions which are being seen all over the table and why they are. a trial’s voice in the business.

So I’m moving from Richard Tucker here to a very sort of a different traditional version of Ma Nishtana. Please sing along in your homes. One can’t but help not do that. And here we go with Ma Nishtana, the third clip please. Okay, Lauren, we can switch that off. Lauren, thanks. So now the interesting thing happens, we start talking about “Avadim Hayinu, "We Were Slaves in the Land of Egypt,” but you’ll also notice that a little bit later when we start what’s called the Maggid, we go back far further talk about our ancestors doing idle worship. And the reason for that is this, that in the same part of the Talmud that I referred you to, , there’s a big debate between two rabbis Rob and Schnabel, and have this big debate about where do you start with this disgrace? And the one rabbi suggests that you start with the fact that we were slaves.

The other one goes back far further, almost the kind of history of the Jewish people long before slavery moving right through to the slavery in Egypt, a kind of much more as it were, wider lens of Jewish history. And there’s a reason for that. Because Ma Manish tells us, and this is relevant to the Ma Nishtana, Ma Manish tells us that there refers to two obligations that we have in the book of Shmot, Exodus, in relation to the Seder. The one telling us that we’ve all got to do the Seder even though we are old, even we’ve done Seders, even though we are brilliant, even though we nowt, we have to do the Seder. And then there’s the other instruction that we must tell our children. And it’s interesting that what effectively Ma Manish tells us is that the first version, that we were slaves in Egypt and God brought us forward to all of these miracles.

That’s the kind of pyrotechnics that brings our tovi’s attention. That’s central to the way in which we ons our kids. But our own examination of freedom must go back further to when we were idle worshipers and we need to examine our whole history. And what he’s saying therefore is there’s a children’s version of the Seder, and an adult version of the Seder and they mixed up together and we’ve got that compromise between the two rabbinical views because on the one end we are addressing our children and we need to tell them that which will capture their imagination about the tradition. But there’s a much more sophisticated process which is as it were, when we move from the time that we were idle worshipers.

And it’s really ironic, is it not? That we actually have conflated the two. And that’s so much of fundamental mentalist Judaism as compared to Mamoni. Quintessential rationalist actually has jettisoned the more sophisticated version in favor of just talking about miracles and nothing much more. And that’s really why we need to, as it were, develop our own themes through the Seder. Now of course coming as we move before we get to this issue of the idolatry, we also sing the Vehi Sheamda, the promise that sustained our father’s nest for not only one enemy has risen against us to destroy us, but in every generation they rise against us to destroy us, and God saves us.

There’s a reflection here of hope that whatever generation we’ve been in that kaleidoscope of Jewish history, somewhere along the line there will be hope and that hope will be vindicated, and therefore we sing the Vehi Sheamda. And I’ve got a slightly different version sung by Cantor Avram Fantuk, Argentinian Hashan. But let’s hear him and his rendition of the Vehi Sheamda. It’s a beautiful rendition, very different to the ones that I’ve heard in the past. But we now move on and I’m coming back to Richard Tucker, because we reach something at everybody sings at the Seder and we should all be singing in our homes now, as we get to this point.

Which is effectively the issue of when we sing Dayenu that would be being sufficient in a way although we sing it with great deal of gusto, it’s a reflection, is it not? On the traditional way in which not with standard extraordinary kind of arc of history over a long period of time. We are always, as it were, grumbling about where we are rather than holding onto the hope which the Seder directs us towards. And therefore reminds us that if any of these events had occurred on their own, that would’ve been sufficient. And that’s the significance of it.

So here is Richard Tucker, please sing along with him when he does Ueil Ueil.

[Clip begins]

• [Richard] At the conclusion of the four questions, all assembled at the festive table, to recite the history of the liberation of the Israelites from Egypt.

• Let’s hear this.

♪ Music plays ♪

[Clip ends]

• I want to just make one final observation before I get towards the end. And it’s this, I said to you earlier that the Seder is really about us. And even when we sing like these songs like Dayenu, we should be reflective of that. Because shortly thereafter we say the following, (foreign language). We say, in every generation that comes upon every man and woman, to actually think as if they themselves have left Egypt. It is the most fundamental passage for me of all of our prayers for the following reason, that it makes sense of them.

This is not some kind of historical narrative which we read as if we’re dusting off the pages of history or no more. This is not some conception of praying to an anthropomorphic conception of God so favored by fundamentalists. This is about an existential exploration of what does freedom mean for us. What does it mean that we, Jews, at this particular point as human beings, that we came out of Egypt, that we as essentially have got as a level of freedom? Or how much freedom have we got?

And to what extent don’t we have freedom. For all sorts of reasons, whether it is because we’re slaves of technology, of money or whatever it may be. And of course we should be thinking about the fact that in this generation there are many who are not free, such as all of those people in Ukraine suffering in the most extraordinary degree of inhumanity perpetuated by other humans. And it’s really vital that we understand that. If you understand that and understand that these festivals speak to us, then in fact you grasp what I think is the real spirit of the Seder.

I said to you that the Seder begins in disgrace, it explores Jewish history, whether the short version for the children or the longer version as I’ve indicated. It explores all of the trials and tribulations. But at the end of the day, whatever generation people were when they went round the Seder table and they sat there, it ended in hope. And how do we end in hope? We end in hope in two ways. We sing a whole lot of wonderful songs right at the end, which really, if you’ve had the fourth glass of wine, really makes everybody into I suppose, Pavarotti.

And the second thing it does, we teach, we sing, Had Gadya. And the most remarkable thing about Had Gadya, is it’s not just a ditty. Yes, it is true that on the face of it, it was the children’s nursery rhyme, which probably entered the Had Gadya from Germany in the late middle ages. There is , which is in the Maseke Biraacha at 10A, we read there are 10 strong things in the world. Rock is strong, but iron breaks it. Iron is strong, but fire melts it. Fire is strong, but war extinguishes it. Water is strong, but the clouds carry it. The clouds are strong, but the winds drive them. The wind is strong but mankind withstands it. Man is strong, but fear weakens them. Fear is strong, but wine removes it. Wine is strong, but sleep overcomes it. Sleep is strong, but death stands over it. What is stronger than death?

This is what it says, areas of generosity of Tzedakah. Tzedakah, areas of generosity. The Talmud says, “Delivers us from death.” And there’s no question that it could well be that this is the section of the Talmud which ultimately infused the Haggadah. But there’s something much more than that for me, is that Haggadah, we end the Seder with the idea that somewhere along the line, the Almighty God will just perhaps divine intervention of some kind or our intervention inspired by God better still, will ultimately prevail, and that the world will ultimately, as it were, be a better place. And that’s why if you look at it Haggadah, it ends with the Kadesh Manhou, it ends in hope.

The entire Seder starting with disgrace end in profound hope. But we say it with great joy because we always have that hope, and by goodness we need it now. And I’m going to just play for you a little melody, a little medley sung by Cantor Netanel Hershtik, the son of Naftali Hershtik, who’s a wonderful Hashan in his own right. And I hate to say it has got both an LLB and LLM degree, so he’s a lawyer. Oh that I wish that as a lawyer I could have half his talent as a singer. But we are going to end tonight with two wonderful renditions by Cantor Hershtik and the choir. It always amazes me that we end with… Oh, we got it, great.

♪ Music plays ♪

Thank you very much. Lauren, you can switch. Well that’s all folks. It’s a rousing way to end a lecture, thank you very much for attending. I wish you all and may we have a year of greater freedom and peace for all, whether it be in Israel, whether it be in Ukraine, whether it be anywhere else in the world. And goodnight.