by Rabbi Dr Harvey Belovski, Emeritus Rabbi, Golders Green Synagogue
Song – ‘shir’ (m.) or ‘shira’ (f.) in Hebrew – features throughout the Bible, often at times when our ancestors need to exhibit complete trust in God. When the people (or an exceptional individual) recognise God at a time of existential challenge, they spontaneously break out in song. Song synchronises every aspect of our being. It mirrors the reality gained at extraordinary moments that God’s influence extends to every dimension, integrating the physical and spiritual aspects of life.
Each year at Pesach, as we echo the first moments of Jewish national identity, there is a heightened sense of God’s involvement in the physical world and the destiny of the Jewish people. Interestingly, of the ten great Tanach songs of faith (Midrash Tanchuma, Beshalach 10), four are recited during Pesach. Three are well-known: the Song at the Sea (Shemot ch.15), King David’s Song of Salvation (II Shmuel ch.22), both read on the seventh day and King Solomon’s Song of Songs, usually read on Shabbat Chol HaMoed Pesach. The people sang each of these songs in response to an instant of enlightenment when they had seen God’s hand in the world – be it salvation at the Sea, King David’s deliverance from his enemies, or King Solomon’s inspired description of the turbulent relationship between God and his ‘lover’, Israel.
Yet the fourth song is harder to detect. It is referred to obliquely in a little-known prophetic verse: “You shall have a song as in the night when the festival is sanctified” (Yeshaya 30:29), which our midrash places first of its ten. This refers to the song the people are presumed to have sung as they celebrated the very first Pesach in Egypt. They sat by their blood-daubed doorposts, meagre possessions by their sides, waiting for the Angel of Death to pass through the land and for Pharaoh to urge them to leave. Some recreate this song with Hallel sung during Matzah-baking on Erev Pesach and we all recite the Hallel that bookends the Seder meal (which originally ended with the lamb of the offering). Each year, as our festival of national redemption commences, we sing a song that replicates the feelings and hopes of our forebears on the threshold of redemption. The Talmudic Sages attempted to capture the atmosphere and excitement at the ideal Seder as it was celebrated by generations of our ancestors visiting the Temple in Jerusalem.
In the course of discussion about whether the rooftops of the houses were sanctified (and therefore fit places to perform certain religious acts), Rav said in the name of Rebbi Chiya “an olive’s bulk of the meat of the Pesach offering and the Hallel break through the roof” (Talmud Pesachim 85b). Rebbi Chiya meant that the Hallel the people sang as they ate the Pesach offering was so inspirational that it seemed as though they were raising the roofs from their homes.
This is an archetype for every song at Pesach – an opportunity to come together to praise God as we relive the key moments in our long and glorious history.