The Day the Music Lived

    The day the music died - it may be a song you know from Rock'n'Roll days, but for a lot of us, the music died a year ago when Debbie Friedman, originator of contemporary Jewish music, passed away.  Saturday night, I listened to the forbidden sounds of Debbie Friedman and let my soul be rocketed upward. 
    You know Debbie Friedman's music, even if you don't think know you know it.  If you've ever been at services when we offered a "Mishebeirach for Healing" prayer, you sang Debbie's music.  If you ever attended our Shabbat Chanukah evening, you heard "Not By Might and Not By Power."  If you attended a bar or bat mitzvah at Temple or sang along to a modern Shehechiyanu,  you probably heard Debbie Friedman's compositions.  She influenced an entire generation of Jewish music and, I dare say, taught us rabbis some important lessons.
    Debbie died last year at the age of 59.  Saturday night, one year later, we marked her yahrtseit at Hebrew Union College on King David Street in Jerusalem with a Melaveh Malkah, a gathering to bid farewell to Shabbat entirely dedicated to Debbie Friedman's music.  Cantorial students and others formed a choir of voices, with guitars, drums, and piano, and the hundreds of people in attendance, of every age, but heavily weighted toward youth, all sang their hearts out.  The spirit in the synagogue was palpably inspiring and energetically uplifting.  There was laughter.  There were tears.  There were a few short reminiscences, including Debbie's own voice from a recorded interview.
    One of the MC's asked,"How many of you here can remember a special Debbie Friedman moment?"  I certainly could.  Debbie Friedman was from St. Paul, and it was at Mt. Zion Temple, where I was rabbi-ing, and in NoFTY, the Northern Federation of Temple Youth, that her star began to rise.  The Temple employed Debbie to help her get started after she returned from a long visit to Israel.  Her first album, the one that put her on the Reform Jewish charts, was partly recorded with the choir of the high school she had once attended.  Debbie sang  at my daughter Sasha's bat mitzvah 15 years ago.   For me, there were a lot of memories at that Melaveh Malkah: singing the music, sharing the yahrtseit with so many others, letting recollections flow. 
    Above all, there was the spirit of Jews united.  Her songs, largely settings of prayers, made us one as we reviewed through Debbie Friedman's music what we stand for, what we are all about.  And yet for some, her music is forbidden.  There are places where her inspiration cannot reach. 
    A few months ago, 9 "religious" Israeli soldiers walked out of an official army event because it included singing by some Israeli women.  As far as these soldiers are concerned, the voice of a woman is a forbidden temptation to lust.  They were booted out of the military school they were attending.  The Israeli in the street was infuriated at the 9, but Tsahal needs the participation of "religious"-oriented Jews.  It remains to be seen whether Tsahal can hold the line in the future.
    Of course, Debbie Friedman was a woman.  An entire segment of Israeli society will never listen to the exciting and very Jewish music that she wrote.  But wait, there's more.
    Last year, one person told a reporter, 'We're not even allowed to use any of Debbie Friedman's music in our congregation.  The rabbi forbids it because she's gay.'
    Yes, Debbie Friedman was gay, but for her, that was part of her private realm.  Her music, her life's work was not about gayness .  It was about inspiring Jews to love God and our tradition.
     Debbie herself said, "More than people need me to come out as a gay person, they need me to come out as a liturgist and a spiritualist. People are more uptight talking about God, more inhibited about God language and God concepts, than they are about sex.
    "That concerns me -- people's spiritual inhibitions. That is my agenda: that people's spiritual vocabulary is so limited, even as they're so spiritually hungry without knowing how to nourish themselves."
    Debbie Friedman was gay, but in respect to the musical inspiration she wanted to give - and did give to the Reform Movement, and through us to all Jewry -- being gay was irrelevant.  By force of her own talent, personality, and creativity, she did wonders.  Not only did she make it possible for contemporary rock and ballad music to become part of our liturgy, inspiring hundreds of other Jewish songwriters, but she filled gaps in our faith and practice.
    What Reform rabbi offered a prayer for healing until Debbie wrote her Mishebeirach?  She confronted the rabbis and taught us how to return a key spiritual dimension of caring to public Jewish worship.  When we read about the Israelites crossing the sea, we heard only Moses' song until Debbie noted that Miriam and all the women sang and danced, too, according to the Torah.  You should have seen them singing and dancing Saturday night when Miriam's Song was played.  It was Debbie, too, who helped finish off the service that was reserved for listeners only.  When Debbie sang and played her guitar, we all wanted to sing along, to clap, and to add our own fillips to the music. 
    So if we in the Reform Movement had said, "She's gay.  Her music is forbidden," how much poorer, how much less inspired, how much less committed we would all be as Jews.  Letting Debbie Friedman do her thing - and accepting and loving her as she gave us her gifts -- wrought the greatest change in Jewish worship music of the last 175 years.
    How great a change was it?  The Hebrew Union College School of Sacred Music in New York City, our school that trains cantors for the Movement and for all Jews, was recently renamed "The Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music" -- named after a woman.  Named after a gay woman.  Named not after a person who endowed it with cash, but after a gay woman who endowed her soul to God and the Jewish people and whose gift was ruach, soul-spirit.  We turn down such gifts at the peril of Jewish survival.  Accepting such gifts from any Jewish person - Ashkenazi, Sephardi, male, female, white, black, straight, gay - lifts us all towards the light of Judaism's greatest teachings.  
    Forbid me from having the inspiration of Debbie Friedman's music because she was a woman?  Or because she was gay?  Thank God, that's not Reform Judaism.
[Debbie Friedman's music:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dcBTze-T4o ]