Judge Dennis Davis
A Journey Through the Music and Meaning of the Kol Nidrei Service

Judge Dennis Davis - A Journey Through the Music and Meaning of the Kol Nidrei Service

- Fantastic, I just want to say to everybody, welcome back, . And may everybody and all your loved ones be inscribed in the book of life. So thank you, Dennis, to you and to your family too. Just want to thank you for all your amazing work you’ve done for us. And for being such a incredible, wonderful friend.

• Well, thank you very much. And I’m sorry that we haven’t been able to share time in New York. I’ve been stuck in Cape Town for almost two years. Anyway, well, good afternoon, evening, morning, whatever it is, to everybody. Today or this evening, let me tell you what I’m going to try to do. I initially had this ridiculous ambition to talk about cantorial music ‘cause I knew it. The history of it. And then move through to its importance and role in the Kol Nidre service. I decided I could never do that in an hour. So what I propose to do, other than make some passing references to the nature of hazzanut cantorial music, I have picked on some of the prayers of the evening service. I’ll explain them briefly. But most of the time, I hope that the music will in fact speak for itself. And that we’ll enjoy some of the various renditions that I’ve chosen for us to examine. In many ways, this particular talk I’m giving, I have to feel is in memory of my father, blessed memory, who inculcated in me a love of hazzanut.

And part of the reason for that was because we used to go on to, people from Cape Town might remember this, the Schoonder Street synagogue, round synagogue, which had as its cantor, the magnificent Simcha Koussevitsky, one of the four Koussevitsky brothers. Probably the best hazzan I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ve heard many. And I desperately looked to see whether there were any recordings of him for Kol Nidre. There aren’t, there are of course others. And perhaps at a later date, I might be able to do an entire lecture on cantorial music itself. But let me just briefly say that the high point of the hazzan, as we still note, probably came through the late 19th Century into the early 20th Century. Probably to the 1960s or '70s, when there were many, many great hazzanim. And indeed some of this was caused by the fact that there were some great composers. Of course, this all stretches back if we wanted to get history to the temple times. And in the extraordinary transformations of the way in which music features in the shul, and the combination as it were of both Ashkenazi and Sephardic influences.

But I can’t get there. What I’m going to simply do is to say in the 19th Century, which therefore was the foreground of the legacy which we’ve enjoyed, there were perhaps two really great composers, Salomon Sulzer and Louis Lewandowski. Sulzer was born in Austria and then his family moved there. He studied with several German, Austrian, and Swiss cantors. He then became a canton in his own hometown. He wrote a very important book called “Twenty Songs for the Israelite Divine Service.” That’s what it was called. It was published off his death, I might add. And he was also quite an important interpreter at the time of Schubert. He was appointed professor at the Imperial Conservatory of Music in Vienna, honoured by Emperor Franz Joseph as an knight to the order Franz Joseph I.

Inducted into the Accademia Nazionale di Santa Cecilia in Rome. And there are a number of his recordings, some of which interestingly enough are sung by the Vienna boys choir, including , and many others, all sung in Hebrew I might add. Louis Lewandowski was born in Poland. And his career began when he eventually got to Berlin as a singer in the synagogue. He then began to, in 1844, he was invited to organise a choir, also at Berlin Synagogue, therefore becoming the first synagogue choirmaster, anywhere perhaps. 20 years later, he’s appointed choirmaster in hazzan at the Neue Synagogue in Berlin, where he published two important books of music, , which are still used in many ways. And he really did compose some absolutely glorious music. If you listen to some of the compositions of the , he’s there.

Beautiful, beautiful renditions. But the one I wanted to just say something about and play for you, which does not come from the Kol Nidre service, but gives you a taste of I think the sophistication of Lewandowski is , which is what we sing every Friday night right at the end of the Kabbalat Shabbat service. We sing this, and many times, we sing the Lewandowski version. And what I thought I would do for you was to actually give you a recording of Azi Schwartz and Rebecca, my mind is blocked, I can’t remember now, singing . It’s just, I think it’s glorious. And just to get you into the mood, here it is. So Lauren, to whom I owe an enormous debt of gratitude for helping me with this, if you could have clip one.

• It just gives you a taste of Lewandowski and the sophistication of the composition. Absolutely magnificently sung by those two. I now turn to deal with some of the prayers that we will say on the Kol Nidre service. And of course we must start with Kol Nidre. It’s the most peculiar prayer when you think it through. Because outside of this extraordinary melody, a melody I might add, that of course has been captured in many ways. Of course, Bruch’s Kol Nidre with a cello and orchestra. There is Schoenberg who has a whole composition of Kol Nidre, which he actually designed for a shul, and which is well worth the discussion as is Bruch, but I can’t do that now. And I also invite you to just go and listen to the sixth movement of the 14th String Quartet of Beethoven, where extraordinarily you will see the theme of Kol Nidre appear. Not quite sure, I’ve never been able to discover why that Beethoven absorbed it or what basis, but it’s there. And of course it’s the melody which is so extraordinary, yet when you look at the text of Kol Nidre, and tomorrow night when you go to Shul, just read it. It’s like a legal text.

Effectively it’s an indemnity clause saying all the vows, and all the prohibitions, and everything that we saw, well, we should annul them as such. And we begin the service by saying . In fact, we start off as if it was a court. We say with the approval of God, and with the approval of the congregation, and the convocation of the court above, and the convocation of the court below. We actually now sanction the prayers with the transgressors, with the . And when you read that in conjunction with the Kol Nidre itself, in a sense, perhaps the most credible version of explanation is that it has its roots in the seventh and then essentially with the Visigoths, and later with the Spanish Inquisition. When we had the Jews that were the conversos or the disparaging word, the Marranos, the unseen, the convertees who had converted out of Judaism to Christianity out of pain of death. But they were really still Jews.

And even though they had converted, once a year, they came to the shul. And they said, “We want permission to pray with you. "We need permission to pray with you "because we’re still Jewish "notwithstanding that we’ve converted.” And the text is basically saying, we give you permission, we give you permission to pray with us. And the vows that you have made, and the prohibitions, and the oaths, and all of that, which you have sworn over the year shall be regarded as nullified because of your commitment to , or commitment to the congregation of Israel. It seems to me that that probably is the best explanation for this strange text, which nonetheless is absolutely central to our prayers and to the way in which we, as it were, define the whole of Yom Kippur. Because we start with Kol Nidre, it’s the most famous of all prayers. But I alert you to this text and to the paragraph before the for particularly that reason. I want to play for you, if I may, two recordings, I’ll do the one fully. It’s only five minutes.

But because of time, second clip, I’ll just do part of it. The first comes from Jan Peerce, who of course his name was Yehoshua Perelmuth. Young Peerce, as you know, was discovered quite young in life as a singer by the great who regarded him as his greatest tenor that he was searching for. And he did many, many recordings with NBC Symphony Orchestra under Toscanini’s baton. He also, during the course of the holy days, did act as a hazzan, and made a number of recordings of hazzanut. And here he is singing Kol Nidre in the traditional fashion.

• That is the Jan Peerce recording. It’s really a classic, I suppose, in its own way. I always remember, I went back to talk about, the hazzan from my childhood, Cantor Koussevitsky, that people always waited for the top C right at the end of last moment, it’s regarded as the highlight. And of course, the congregation now has become a court because that’s what the Kol Nidre, the and the Kol Nidre. And is only when we’ve accepted all within our community, when we’ve actually accepted those who , those who basically had perpetrated the crime of becoming Christian but gave us the explanation and we absorbed them into the community, only then can we confidently say . May it be forgiven for the entire congregation, the children of Israel, and for the strange who dwells amongst them.

For the sin before the entire nation to carelessness. That’s what we say after the Kol Nidre. So almost like a sentence, a confident prediction that by the end of the court proceedings, we will get a favourable verdict. I want now, if I may, just to share with you again somebody we’ve heard already, Azi Schwartz, from The Park, a synagogue in New York who I’d heard many times live together with Hazzan Helfgot. But here he is in shul, singing Kol Nidre. I’ll just play the first three minutes or so, just to give you a slightly different interpretation of Kol Nidre. So here is Cantor Azi Schwartz.

• A very different but beautiful rendition of Kol Nidre. I move on now just to one of the three piyyutim, the famous piyyutim. Which is translated as sort of Jewish liturgical poem. Which we do after we’ve done the Amidah, and we move into this, and I’m going to play you two different recordings of the famous , which clearly typifies so much of the prayer because it’s the idea that we say we’re just clay in the hands of the potter of God. And we seek as it were to suggest that in a sense we really don’t have much control over the broader issues of life. God determines much even though we have free will. We need to acknowledge something beyond us and we then remind God, this is the how the prayer goes, we remind God of the covenantal relationship we have between God and the Jewish people. And that’s what the entire piyyut is about. I’m going to first play you a very fine hazzan, Hazzan Motzen singing a more traditional version of it. And then, because I wanted to illustrate that hazzanim have moved away from the classical era to embrace a more Hasidic, more engaged form of singing, I’m going to also play for you thereafter Hazzan Neva from the Lincoln shul, who has a very different version of the same prayer. So let’s first listen to Hazzan Motzen.

• And so that’s Cantor Motzen’s version. Now let’s compare that, which is a fairly traditional one, to something where, as I say, hazzans, cantors now trying to respond perhaps to a different world from the high point of cantorial music. And here we have Hazzan Nema singing the same prayer in a very different fashion.

• Thanks, Lauren. So, that was an adaptation of really eccentric but most interesting hazzan from just post-second World War, Moishe Oysher. And they’ve adapted that in a wonderfully and modern way, and totally different of course to the other one that I played you, just to illustrate what hazzanim are doing these days. Although, whether they do it quite like that on the night, I do not know. I’d love to hear it. Now, I turn then to a very central prayer of the entire service of Yom Kippur. And let me try to explain. We say over and over again on Yom Kippur, starting on the Maariv service but carrying right through. But in Maariv, that’s why I’m putting it there. God, oh God, compassionate and gracious, slow to anger, abundant and kindness and truth, preserver of kindness for thousands of generations. Forgiver of inequity, willful sin and error, and to cleanses. Now the source of this is particularly interesting to me because it proves to me that Judaism is not about orthodoxy, it’s about orthopraxy. It’s not about just going through the rituals. It’s about what you actually do. What counts, as they say. And the reason I say that is because when Moses goes up to Sinai after the golden calf, for the second set of tablets, which by the way he writes, human being writes them.

Not the first, which are inscribed by . The Midrash tells us that God dresses up in a tallus and says to Maushe that when the Jewish people stray, as they will, then they must say these words. They must say these words because these are the qualities of God. Compassion, graciousness, slow to anger, abundant kindness. And therefore that has to be said, not just said, has to be done. And it basically, what this prayer is about is we can’t anthropomorphize about God. All these lectures that one gets all over the show about God’s sitting in the sky one way or the other, or some sort of anthropomorphic conception, we don’t know, and we have no idea. And what this prayer is about is what the Midrash tells us. God was instructing Maushe, of course I’m doing the same thing, but I mean, in essence what these words are about is we do not know what God is, but we have got the capacity to act in a divine way.

And the way we do that is in a sense, to act in a compassionate, slow to anger, with great kindness, with great forgiveness for others. And if we do that, we can expect others to do that for ourselves. And in a sense, that’s why it is the absolute central prayer. And it comes from that particular source, from the Midrash of the second, as it were, sent by Maushe to collect the tablets. And what I want to play for you is the recording. Odd enough, he was young Peerce’s brother-in-law, Richard Tucker. Of course, his real name was Rubin Ticker. We came across him in a lovely lecture by Patrick, who spoke about in which he sings. And of course, he sang over 700 performances at the Met. He was sort one of the legendary tenors after the Second World War. But he’d actually started life off as a hazzan, as a cantor in Brooklyn, before he was discovered as a tenor. And he continued as it were to sing cantorial music. Here he is with a rendition of . And he really, it seems to me, captures the intensity of these words and their implication. Richard Tucker, , listen to him now.

• So that’s Richard Tucker. And we come now to the last of the prayers that I want to talk about, which is of course, one can’t escape it either. Because in a way the entire service is shoehorned between Kol Nidre on the one hand and Avinu Malkeinu. “Our Father, Our King.” It’s in fact strange contradiction. Our father, which seems to be very personal and our king somewhat less personal. The source of Avinu Malkeinu comes from the Talmud in where apparently what had happened, well in fact, there’s a story told about the terrible drought that occurred in Israel at the time. And the great Rabbi Eliezer then pronounced a long prayer, over 20 verses of prayer, praying for rain. Nothing happened, no rain. But his student, Rabbi Akiva came forward, and he just pronounced two Avinu Malkeinu’s, in which he prayed to God, and rain came.

And it was said that the reason that the response was to Rabbi Akiva’s rather than Rabbi Eliezer, 'cause Rabbi Eliezer is a 20-odd lion’s, very strict kind of dogmatic approach to religion whereas Rabbi Akiva’s was generous and effectively did exactly that which I’ve referred to in the prayer, . God the compassionate and the kind. And the prayer then expanded over the years to become one of the central prayers of all of Jewish liturgy. And of course, it goes on for more than 40 verses. And at the end, we sing the last verse. Traditionally, Avinu Malkeinu , we sing it a number of times. Including right at the end of . But we also sing it on tomorrow night. So just to give you just the flavour of the traditional version, which we probably all sing, I’m just going to, this is Cantor Adler, but he doesn’t really sing it. It’s the whole congregation is singing. I’ll just give you a short clip. And then we have a very special last rendition of it.

• Lauren, we can stop there. And I’m going to play for you, to play out, can’t resist the Barbara Streisand version. Firstly, we haven’t had enough women singing tonight and that’s important. And secondly, this is absolutely gorgeous. Barbara Streisand singing Avinu Malkeinu, most beautiful rendition.

• It’s appropriate that we end with this 'cause she sings of course the earlier verse, , hear our voice. And the essence of Yom Kippur, if you think about it, is that we hear our inner voice, the , which we read about in . The small, small voice of conscience. Of our own, which then inspires us, as it were, to adhere to the divine attributes of compassion, justice, decency to all. And we end therefore thinking about that, and particularly thinking about the fact that we cannot start our prayer service without the court inviting into it everyone, including those who we might have regarded as sinners beforehand. It’s a remarkable affirmation of the idea of community. I wish you all . Let me see if there’re questions that I have to answer. And I’m happy to do that.

Q&A and Comments:

Sandy says there’s a wonderful short form on the history of Kol Nidre, which I haven’t seen. I’d love to see.

Hazzanim, I mentioned, Rosa, well, hazzan that I grew up with was Cantor Simcha Koussevitsky. His brother Moishe Koussevitsky is regarded perhaps as the greatest hazzan after the Second World War. Edward, some funny updated harmony in Tzadik Katamar. I still think it’s absolutely magnificent. Whatever funniness there is.

Peter says, extraordinary an oath is put to music. Yes indeed. The words and the music are so out of sync in Kol Nidre. I agree with you entirely.

Edward says, “Beethoven went to Vienna Synagogue "to have , probably heard Kol Nidre.” I haven’t heard that because I tried to research that. That may well be true. And Schubert and this also went there. It is true that definitely was a exponent of Schubert, that I do know.

The Beethoven work, Linda, is the 14th quartet, the sixth movement of the 14th string quartet.

Peter, the Kol Nidre is perhaps the evening of the beginning of our trial. Indeed, the synagogue does become a court as I indicated.

I don’t know whether the, I dunno what the blue book is, Nigram, sorry.

Thank you very much, Myrna.

Q: Arnold, of all the Jewish melodies, why Kol Nidre on Yom Kippur?

A: I’ve tried to explain that. I can’t explain the melody, it’s lost in the sands of time. But I think the text, I’ve tried to explain as best I can.

Geeta says in our synagogue Reform, the cellist begins with Bruch’s Kol Nidre. Followed by a mixed choir singing it. Thank you for your vote.

Yes, I haven’t forgotten about the women, which is why I certainly put Barbara Streisand. And in fact, opened up with a male and female as well.

Sam says I should hear the wonderful voice of Australian . I have heard him 'cause strange enough, he was in for a while in Cape Town.

Q: Rose asked a really good question and I’m delighted to answer. Did you ever hear the younger Cantor at the Green Seapoint?

A: He was my hazzan after Koussevitsky. He was an absolutely extraordinarily brilliant hazzan. And if you can get recordings of his, he used to say that a hazzan was not just mit voice but mit feeling. And he was right. When you heard him sing the , boy did he understand that. Thank you very much, Myrna.

Sandra, I’ve got a whole host of the, you said give me the names of the cantors and YouTube links. I can, but it’d probably be easier if I just hand them over to Lauren and she can give them to you 'cause there’re a whole bunch of them.

Thank you very much, Myrna. Thank you, Esther and Anita.

Sandy, there’s a story I heard either Tucker or Peerce later, a long time ago, was travelling towards together with for the Met. And since it was Shabbat, they stopped in a small-town winter shul. Since they didn’t know how to sing without projecting their voices, they were offered a job by the rabbi. Obviously knew the liturgy, but were dressed for travelling and looked like they needed work. They declined politely without embarrassing the Rabbi.

How wonderful. Thank you, Annidias, I think Barbara Streisand is wonderful myself. All the versions are magnificent.

Q: Sonya, you ask a good question. But do you resonate with traditional updated versions?

A: When I first heard the prayer sung to the shuls in America, I felt a closeness with all Jewish people. I think that’s true. And I think when one listens to the traditional , Claudette and I were in New York over the . Seems a world ago. And I remember going to a shul. We both went to the shul, and there were, a number of the melodies, we exactly extraordinary one large family as we were singing the same, I agree.

Samaran, thank you very much. And Rochelle. Who I did produce Barbara Streisand at the end. Thank you Patricia, and thank you Gerald. And Aluna, and a whole bunch of you, thank you very, very much.

Well, I can assure you that we will try to repeat some of this music later, but I hope that everybody has.

Yes, you write, Anomi, Peerce and Tucker are brother-in-laws, yeah. They didn’t get along either. That’s also true.

Somebody says, thank you so much from a hospital bed. Oh, I’m sorry you’re in hospital and I hope, I wish you , Penny. I hope you get better soon. And thanked for everybody else for the thing. And to everybody. Thank you, and-

• Thank you so much, Dennis. That was great.

• My pleasure. Take care everybody.

• Thank you. And thank you to all our participants. Have a good night.