Pray Like You Mean It, Class 6

What is connection between nature, music, and redemption?

“Guard Your Tongue” (acapella song)

“Yearn” (“Burn” parody)

“For freedom we yearn… so the Torah we may learn…”

Yehudah Maccabee (song)

“Oh, Yehudah Maccabee, how was I to see what you would mean to me?”

Light a Menorah (song)

A new, upbeat English Chanukah song!

“Og the Mighty Giant” (song)

“Og, the mighty giant, tall as he could be; held on tight to Noah’s Ark to survive the Floody sea.”

Shulchan Aruch (Code of Jewish Law) regarding music and singing (year round)

Why to be discerning with one’s musical choices, as articulated by musician and neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitin in This is Your Brain on Music, p. 242-243

“To a certain extent, we surrender to music when we listen to it–we allow ourselves to trust the composers and musicians with a part of our hearts and our spirits; we let the music take us somewhere outside of ourselves. Many of us feel that great music connects us to something larger than our own […]

Of Songs and Shepherds

Rabbi Nachman of Breslov writes that the origin of music is the earth. Each blade of grass, he writes, plays a particular note, and somehow, the shepherd, who dwells in the fields as his sheep graze, subconsciously absorbs these notes and plays a unique tune, based on the notes of the grass of the area […]

Something I made about a year ago, but still relevant today as ever…