YIZKOR - 7th DAY PESACH 5772

ANTIPHON AND MEMORY

For the 7th Day of Pesach, the Sages prescribed a beautiful Torah reading, including the Song at the Sea, as you have heard. Custom dictates that we chant the passage antiphonally, the usual Torah trope or cantillation interspersed with verses sung in a distinctive and joyful melody, leader and congregation singing back-and-forth, as Cantor Abramson demonstrated.

Antiphonal singing is a fancy term for “call and response.” The word comes from the Greek anti-, meaning, “opposite,” and -phon, meaning “voice.” Opposite voice. One voice, or one chorus of voices, mirroring another.

Apparently antiphonal singing was introduced into Christian worship by Ignatius of Antioch who died in the year 107 and who, in a vision, had seen angels singing in alternating choirs.

And the style is very much associated with Gregorian chant.

But much earlier, in the Biblical Psalms and other poems, we find that verses are usually comprised of a couplet of sentences that mirror each other. As in:

Mi Chamocha Ba’eilim Adonai /

Mi Kamocha Nedar Ba-Kodesh

Or,

Hodu Ladonai ki tov/

Ki L'Olam Chasdo

This “renders it probable that the antiphonal method was present in the services of the ancient Israelites" (Wikipedia, "Antiphon").

Today seems as fitting as any to reflect on the antiphonal method, on this notion of call-and-response, and not just in making music but in making this thing called life. As we come to this Yizkor moment, this time of remembrance, I think that the idea of Antiphon, of call-and-response, addresses the essence of the hour.

Part of the enduring anguish of a loved one’s death is the deafening silence that accompanies us from the grave through all the remaining days of our lives. We call out and there is no response. We call from the kitchen to the living room where he used to like to sit; we habitually reach for the phone…. Call and no response. Maybe we have even called out to God in our grief and have been met only with silence.

I think that is one reason we come to synagogue, especially for Yizkor, in hopes of receiving some kind of response to our call, even if that response is not our loved one’s voice but the voice of an old familiar prayer, or the voice of the person sitting by your side who shares the kinship of having buried loved ones. And maybe we also come here because in the safety of this sanctuary a loved one’s voice responds still; when we come to this quiet place and clear away the noise and the clutter, the appointments and errands, the day-to-day business and ongoing drama of our lives or our children’s lives, a distant signal comes through strong and clear. Her voice, his laugh, even the wordless response of a tender embrace enveloping us when we call.

It goes both ways, of course. Antiphon, call-and-response: we come here, also, to remember all the ways in which they call to us, to remind ourselves that the goodness and wisdom that they imparted while they yet lived still summons us, still calls out and our lives can be a response to their call.

Last week, Rabbi-Cantor Sklar and I visited the Early Childhood Center Seder which features a class play based on the Exodus, tables decorated with frogs, and all the important ritual foods of Passover like matzah, nut-free charoset and string cheese. Dan and I sang the four questions with a room full of four-year-olds and as they called out the familiar refrain, the funniest thing happened. I heard the voice of my grandmother Sally who taught me to chant the four questions when I was four. The children’s song was the call. Her voice was the response.

And in certain, very real ways that I never could have predicted as a child, my life is a response to her call, to the love of Judaism that she communicated to me when I was very young. Twelve years ago I would again respond to her call. Sally’s final wish, it turns out, was composed in her last will and testament. She had lived just a few months past my ordination and had attended my first high holiday services as a rabbi, dying just a few days before my installation as the Assistant Rabbi of Temple Beth-El in Providence, Rhode Island. A later addition to her will stipulated that I would officiate at her funeral.

Commenting on the antiphonal structure of Biblical verse, tractate Sanhedrin of the Babylonian Talmud quotes Rabbi Joshua ben Levi as saying: “Anyone who utters song in this world will merit to utter it in the world to come, as it is written [in the Book of Psalms], “Happy are those who dwell in [God’s] house; they will praise God ever after’(Ps. 84:5).”

The call of our loved ones echoes eternally. Our lives are a response to their words and their ways, their teachings and their principles. In this way do we and they sing an eternal, antiphonal song.

Some of the best contemporary examples of antiphonal singing are found in the beautiful niggunim, the wordless melodies, of the late Shlomo Carlebach, one of the great Jewish songwriters and composers of the 20th Century. We teach Carlebach melodies by singing a little phrase and then asking the congregation to respond. Cantor Abramson has taught us a number of Carlebach melodies over the years. Little by little, call-and-response, the congregation learns the entire niggun and then off we go.

The story is told that Rabbi Nehemia Polen who is a leading expert in Hasidism and Jewish thought went to a Harvard ethnomusicologist, asking him how it is that the Carlebach niggunim have such power. The expert concluded that he did not find anything special about them. At which point Rabbi Polen said, I think you don't understand...

“You see, every note in a Carlebach niggun looks at the note that came before it and says: ‘Thank you for being my teacher.’ And every note in a Carlebach niggun looks at the note that comes after it and says: ‘I give you permission to be even more beautiful than I am.’”

Ultimately that is what this call-and-response business is all about: understanding that our lives are suspended in this incredible web of interconnection, responding to the call of the ones who came before us and responsible to call unto the ones who will come after.

Amen