Making Music Meaningful

This essay originally appeared on the Times of Israel blog here.

Avi Procter produces YouTube videos about the gap year in Israel (“Israel Gap Year B’iyun Podcast”) in which he interviews relevant educators. He recently uploaded an episode with R. Dani Kunstler, a rebbe at Toras Shraga and a musician.

R. Kunstler seems a very impressive fellow but I would like to take issue with one of his positions. Much of the discussion revolves around a “music schmooze” that R. Kunstler gives at seminaries and yeshivot. R. Kunstler clearly favors students giving up on non-Jewish music altogether though he does not insist on it as an absolute requirement, He argues that music affects the soul and we should listen to Jewish tunes and be positively impacted by them.

The one counter argument R. Kunstler raises is that music is just entertainment and he responds by asserting, as above, that song affects the soul. I suggest a different challenge to his thesis – the value of a melody cannot be measured by whether or not it is Jewish. Many gentile songs have worthwhile lyrics that can positively influence us. Harry Chapin’s Cats in the Cradle powerfully conveys the theme of parental responsibility while Simon and Garfunkel’s I Am a Rock beautifully evokes the desire to hide from emotions. Here is a list of 40 such songs.

Simon and Garfunkel: I Am a Rock, A Most Peculiar Man, Richard Cory, Old Friends, The Boxer, Homeward Bound. Billy Joel: Angry Young Man, The Stranger, Lullaby, Leningrad, And So It Goes. Harry Chapin: Cats in the Cradle, Flowers Are Red, W.O.L.D., Dreams Go By. The Beatles: She’s Leaving Home, Eleanor Rigby, Yesterday, Let It Be. Elton John: Candle in the Wind, Your Song, Daniel. Bob Dylan: The Times They are a Changing, Blowin in the Wind, A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall. James Taylor: You Can Close Your Eyes, Fire and Rain, Shower the People. Don McLean: American Pie, Vincent. John Denver: Leaving on a Jet Plane. Kansas: Dust in the Wind. Leonard Cohen: Come Healing. Bette Milder: The Rose. Cat Stevens: Father and Son. Jim Croce: Operator. The Frey: How to Save a Life. Ben King: Stand by Me. Bill Withers: Lean on Me. Roberta Flack: Killing Me Softly with His Song.

I restricted the list to songs with a fairly distinct message, but we also might incorporate hauntingly beautiful melodies lacking clear meaning such as Simon and Garfunkel’s Scarborough Fair, Toto’s Africa, and Led Zeppelin’s Stairway to Heaven. The list also leaves out some magnificent classical music including Beethoven’s Ode to Joy. We could create a much longer list.

Conversely, the mere fact that an Orthodox Jew is singing about Judaism does not make the song worthwhile. Yoni Z.’s songs seem quite meaningless to me. Elaytzur’s Tamid Ohev Oti conveys a simplistic view of religious life which guarantees good results. A song called My Name is Rebbe Glanz includes the following lines: “Feeling down/don’t just run to therapy…feeling under pressure/And things are getting heavy/The only real solution/Is come and talk to rebbe.” This expression exaggerates the importance and abilities of a rebbe in dealing with personal issues. Rabbis do not have the answers to all dilemmas. Even citing pesukim is no guarantee; singing Zakhreni Na (Shoftim 16:28) at semahot associates vengeance with dancing and joy. Perhaps vengeance has a place in Judaism but connecting it to the happiness of a simha gives it far too much prominence and risks generating enthusiasm for violence.

In his commentary on Avot (1:16), Rambam complains about those who evaluate songs purely according to the language (i. e. Hebrew or Arabic) and not based on the content. “Speech is not forbidden or permitted, positive, negative or commanded, according to the language it is said in but rather based on the content.” We need to educate our students to make discerning judgments and we cannot escape that necessity by instructing them to only listen to Jewish music.

For more on the issue of making discriminating judgments, see my essay in Conversations 42 Fall2 2023   https://www.jewishideas.org/node/3151