Jewish Singer/Songwriters - The Jewish Roots Of Their Music

Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach

The rabbis enumerated ten songs at key moments in the life of the nation. There was the song of the Israelites in Egypt (see Is. 30:29), the song at the Red Sea (Ex. 15), the song at the well (Num. 21), and Ha’azinu,Moses’ song at the end of his life. Joshua sang a song (Josh. 10:12-13). So did Deborah (Jud. 5), Hannah (1 Sam. 2) and David (2 Sam. 22). There was the Song of Solomon, Shir ha-Shirim,about which Rabbi Akiva said, “All songs are holy but the Song of Songs is the holy of holies.” The tenth song has not yet been sung. It is the song of the Messiah ("Sing to Adonai a new song, for God has worked wonders," Ps. 98:1). (From commentary by Rabbi Jonathan Sacks)

Faith is more like music than science. Science analyses, music integrates. And as music connects note to note, so faith connects episode to episode, life to life, age to age in a timeless melody that breaks into time. God is the composer and librettist. We are each called on to be voices in the choir, singers of God’s song. Faith is the ability to hear the music beneath the noise.

So music is a signal of transcendence... The history of the Jewish spirit is written in its songs.

I once watched a teacher explaining to young children the difference between a physical possession and a spiritual one. He had them build a paper model of Jerusalem. Then (this was in the days of tape-recorders) he put on a tape with a song about Jerusalem that he taught to the class. At the end of the session he did something very dramatic. He tore up the model and shredded the tape. He asked the children, “Do we still have the model?” They replied, No. “Do we still have the song?” They replied, Yes.

We lose physical possessions, but not spiritual ones. We lost the physical Moses. But we still have the song. --Rabbi Jonathan Sacks

“All Along the Watchtower”

There must be some kind of way outta here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief

Business men, they drink my wine
Plowman dig my earth
None were level on the mind
Nobody up at his word
Hey, hey

No reason to get excited
The thief he kindly spoke
There are many here among us
Who feel that life is but a joke
But, uh, but you and I, we've been through that
And this is not our fate
So let us stop talkin' falsely now
The hour's getting late, hey

All along the watchtower
Princes kept the view
While all the women came and went
Barefoot servants, too
Outside in the cold distance
A wildcat did growl
Two riders were approaching
And the wind began to howl

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Dylan - 1967

“Highway 61 Revisited”

Oh, God said to Abraham, "Kill me a son"
Abe said, "Man, you must be puttin' me on"
God said, "No" Abe say, "What?"
God say, "You can do what you want, Abe, but
The next time you see me comin', you better run"
Well, Abe said, "Where d'you want this killin' done?"
God said, "Out on Highway 61"

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

Forever Young

WRITTEN BY: BOB DYLAN

May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May you grow up to be righteous
May you grow up to be true
May you always know the truth
And see the lights surrounding you
May you always be courageous
Stand upright and be strong
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

May your hands always be busy
May your feet always be swift
May you have a strong foundation
When the winds of changes shift
May your heart always be joyful
May your song always be sung
May you stay forever young
Forever young, forever young
May you stay forever young

“Neighborhood Bully”

Well, the neighborhood bully, he's just one man
His enemies say he's on their land
They got him outnumbered about a million to one
He got no place to escape to, no place to run
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully he just lives to survive
He's criticized and condemned for being alive
He's not supposed to fight back, he's supposed to have thick skin
He's supposed to lay down and die when his door is kicked in
He's the neighborhood bully.

The neighborhood bully been driven out of every land
He's wandered the earth an exiled man
Seen his family scattered, his people hounded and torn
He's always on trial for just being born
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he knocked out a lynch mob, he was criticized
Old women condemned him, said he should apologize
Then he destroyed a bomb factory, nobody was glad
The bombs were meant for him. He was supposed to feel bad
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, the chances are against it, and the odds are slim
That he'll live by the rules that the world makes for him
'Cause there's a noose at his neck and a gun at his back
And a license to kill him is given out to every maniac
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he got no allies to really speak of
What he gets he must pay for, he don't get it out of love
He buys obsolete weapons and he won't be denied
But no one sends flesh and blood to fight by his side
He's the neighborhood bully.

Well, he's surrounded by pacifists who all want peace
They pray for it nightly that the bloodshed must cease
Now, they wouldn't hurt a fly. To hurt one they would weep
They lay and they wait for this bully to fall asleep
He's the neighborhood bully.

Every empire that's enslaved him is gone
Egypt and Rome, even the great Babylon
He's made a garden of paradise in the desert sand
In bed with nobody, under no one's command
He's the neighborhood bully.

Now his holiest books have been trampled upon
No contract that he signed was worth that what it was written on
He took the crumbs of the world and he turned it into wealth
Took sickness and disease and he turned it into health
He's the neighborhood bully.

What's anybody indebted to him for?
Nothing, they say. He just likes to cause war
Pride and prejudice and superstition indeed
They wait for this bully like a dog waits for feed
He's the neighborhood bully.

What has he done to wear so many scars?
Does he change the course of rivers? Does he pollute the moon and stars?
Neighborhood bully, standing on the hill
Running out the clock, time standing still
Neighborhood bully.

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Bob Dylan

Bob Dylan – Blowin' In The Wind

How many roads must a man walk down
Before you call him a man ?
How many seas must a white dove sail
Before she sleeps in the sand ?
Yes, how many times must the cannon balls fly
Before they're forever banned ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, how many years can a mountain exist
Before it's washed to the sea ?
Yes, how many years can some people exist
Before they're allowed to be free ?
Yes, how many times can a man turn his head
Pretending he just doesn't see ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Yes, how many times must a man look up
Before he can see the sky ?
Yes, how many ears must one man have
Before he can hear people cry ?
Yes, how many deaths will it take till he knows
That too many people have died ?
The answer my friend is blowin' in the wind
The answer is blowin' in the wind.

Leonard Cohen's Temple of Song by Cantor Gideon Zelermyer

The Globe and Mail Saturday, November 19, 2016

Home was where Eliezer’s heart was pulled, and his Jewish home was always at Shaar Hashomayim. Since 1887, the rites of our synagogue have revolved around Cantor and male choir, following in the tradition of the great Choral Synagogues of Western Europe. Elaborate compositions and rich harmonies illuminate the prayers and their meaning. This musical tradition – especially when combined with the canonical robes, high ornate ceiling, rich dark wood and stained glass windows – clearly made an impression on young Leonard, as he said: “Even as a boy I loved their singing. It is what made compulsory synagogue attendance enjoyable.” When Leonard invited us to participate in You Want it Darker, he said that he was "looking for the sound of the Cantor and choir of his youth." In one of his last interviews, he shined an even brighter light on the reason for reaching out to us. "I've wanted to work with the Cantor and the choir for a long time. There are times when you want to show the flag, when you want to indicate that there is nourishment to be had from this culture."

Who By Fire

Leonard Cohen

And who by fire, who by water

Who in the sunshine, who in the night time

Who by high ordeal, who by common trial

Who in your merry merry month of may

Who by very slow decay

And who shall I say is calling?

And who in her lonely slip, who by barbiturate

Who in these realms of love, who by something blunt

Who by avalanche, who by powder

Who for his greed, who for his hunger

And who shall I say is calling?

And who by brave assent, who by accident

Who in solitude, who in this mirror

Who by his lady's command, who by his own hand

Who in mortal chains, who in power

And who shall I say is calling?

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

Who By Fire lyrics © Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC

Hallelujah - Leonard Cohen

Now, I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played, and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do you?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Your faith was strong but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty and the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne, and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah

Hallelujah

You say I took the name in vain
I don't even know the name
But if I did, well really, what's it to you?
There's a blaze of light in every word
It doesn't matter which you heard
The holy or the broken Hallelujah

Hallelujah

I did my best, it wasn't much
I couldn't feel, so I tried to touch
I've told the truth, I didn't come to fool you
And even though it all went wrong
I'll stand before the Lord of Song
With nothing on my tongue but Hallelujah

Hallelujah

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Leonard Cohen

How Leonard Cohen’s ‘Hallelujah’ Brilliantly Mingled Sex, Religion - Rolling Stone

For all of its elements, the most striking aspect of the original “Hallelujah” recording, beyond the lyrics, is Leonard Cohen’s own vocal performance. Such lines as “I don’t even know the name” or “I did my best; it wasn’t much” are delivered with a wry, weary humor, creating a real tension between the verses and the soaring, one-word chorus. Those who know the song only through the covers that followed, many of which don’t include this section, would be surprised by the additional complexities in the original. The singing creates the sense of struggle, conflict, and resignation that then pays off in the song’s climactic, closing lines.

“This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled,” Cohen has said, “but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess, and that’s what I mean by ‘Hallelujah.’ That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say, ‘Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.’…

“The only moment that you can live here comfortably in these absolutely irreconcilable conflicts is in this moment when you embrace it all and you say, ‘Look, I don’t understand a fucking thing at all – Hallelujah!’ That’s the only moment that we live here fully as human beings.”

My Friend Leonard Cohen: Darkness and Praise

By LEON WIESELTIER NOV. 14, 2016

“Dear Uncle Leonard,” the email from the boy began. “Did anything inspire you to create ‘Hallelujah’”? Later that same winter day the reply arrived: “I wanted to stand with those who clearly see G-d’s holy broken world for what it is, and still find the courage or the heart to praise it. You don’t always get what you want. You’re not always up for the challenge. But in this case — it was given to me. For which I am deeply grateful.”

“Silent Eyes”

Silent eyes
Watching
Jerusalem
Make her bed of stones

Silent eyes
No one will comfort her
Jerusalem
Weeps alone

She is sorrow
Sorrow
She burns like a flame
And she calls my name

Silent eyes
Burning
In the desert sun
Halfway to Jerusalem
And we shall all be called as witnesses
Each and every one
To stand before the eyes of god
And speak what was done

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Paul Simon

Sounds of Silence

Hello darkness, my old friend
I've come to talk with you again
Because a vision softly creeping
Left its seeds while I was sleeping
And the vision that was planted in my brain
Still remains
Within the sound of silence
In restless dreams I walked alone
Narrow streets of cobblestone
'Neath the halo of a street lamp
I turned my collar to the cold and damp
When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light
That split the night
And touched the sound of silence

And in the naked light I saw
Ten thousand people, maybe more
People talking without speaking
People hearing without listening
People writing songs that voices never share
And no one dare
Disturb the sound of silence

"Fools" said I, "You do not know
Silence like a cancer grows
Hear my words that I might teach you
Take my arms that I might reach you"
But my words like silent raindrops fell
And echoed
In the wells of silence

And the people bowed and prayed
To the neon god they made
And the sign flashed out its warning
In the words that it was forming
And the sign said, "The words of the prophets

Are written on the subway walls
And tenement halls"
And whisper'd in the sounds of silence

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Paul Simon

Singing from Difference: Jewish Singers-Songwriters in the 1960s and 1970s by

Jon Stratton

Paul Simon, whose voice and lyrical emphasis on individualism makes him the least characteristic of this group, has not been immune from paranoia. It is present in Simon and Garfunkel’s first hit—though admittedly buried deep in the lyrics’ subtext. “The Sound Of Silence” was a track on Wednesday Morning 3 A.M. (1964). The album was produced by Tom Wilson, who subse-quently produced Dylan’s “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965). Without telling Simon and Garfunkel, Wilson added electric guitar and drums to a single release of the track. This version reached the top of the Billboard charts. The lyrics are usually taken to be about alienation, the inability of people to communicate in the urban environment. While this is a good reading, what it misses is the level of paranoia which drives the experience of the lack of membership of community. The narrator addresses the people around him as “fools.” He tells them they don’t realize that silence grows like a cancer. He reaches out to them but they ignore him. Instead, they “bowed and prayed/ To the neon god they made” (1966). The reference here is to the Golden Calf, the false god built by the Israelites when Moses went to receive the Ten Commandments from God. Taking this reading further, this false god that leads the people astray, the people to whom the narrator is a stranger, can be understood as Hitler or any demagogue who threatens Jews. To the extent that the first person narrator can be argued to overlap with Simon, who composed the song, he is arguably Jewish. This false god is o􀁦fered here as a warning. It tells the people that the “words of the prophets are written on the subway walls/ And tenement halls.” Moses is the Jewish prophet. It would seem that his words prophesy what will happen if the strangers are not included in the community. In other words, dis-guised beneath a generalized reading related to alienation is a paranoid medi-tation driven by awareness of the Holocaust. The energy of the lyrics comes from Simon’s youthful Judaism.

From: Mazal Tov, Amigos! Jews and Popular Music in the Americas

I Think He’s Hiding - Randy Newman

If the Big Boy comes tomorrow
There'll be no more teardrops
There'll be no more sorrow
If the Big Boy comes tomorrow
Will he take you with Him?

Have you been good?
Have you been bad?
If you haven't lived the way you should
You'll wish you had

When the Big Boy brings his fiery furnace
Will He like what he sees
Or will he strike the fire and burn us?
Oh, He's so great
And He's so straight
And you know he's watching

Have you been good?
Have you been bad?
If you haven't lived the way you should
You'll wish you had

Come on, Big Boy
Come and save us

Come and look at what we've done
With what you gave us
Now I've heard it said
That our Big Boy's dead
But I think He's hiding
I think He's hiding
I think He's hiding

Source: LyricFind

Songwriters: Randy Newman

Rabbi A.J. Heschel, Man Is Not Alone (p. 151-153)

Does not history look like a stage for the dance of might and evil-with man’s wits too feeble to separate the two-and God either directing the play or indifferent to it? The major folly of this view seems to lie in its shifting the responsibility for man’s plight from man to God, in accussing the Invisible though iniquity is ours...We live in an age when most of us have ceased to be shocked by the increase in moral inhibitions. The decay of conscience fills the air with a pungent smell. Good and evil, which were once as distinguishable as day and night, have become a blurred mist. But that mist is man-made. God is not silent. He has been silenced...The will of God is to be here, manifest and near; but when the doors of this world are slammed on Him, His truth betrayed, His will defied, He withdraws, leaving man to himself. God did not depart of His own volition; He was expelled. God is in exile.