Jewish music! I so love the musical liturgy across the board that when Beth Emeth asked me what kind of fund I wanted to set up in honor of my retirement, I didn’t hesitate a moment. There is now the Rabbi Peter Grumbacher Music Fund that has brought singers and choirs and fantastic music  - traditional and contemporary – to highlight worship and special programs. 
   I grew up with the music of the German liberal synagogue. My home congregation had a wonderful cantor, and his sincerity and love of that tradition was conveyed in the passion of his voice. There was only one problem. Cantor Ehrenberg arrived in the late 1930s, a refugee from Hitler’s Germany. His first service was in 1939. The music he sang for Shabbat evening and morning was the same music he sang into the 1970s. If you became deaf after memorizing what you heard at his first services and sang them at his last, you really could have just hit the “repeat” button. But as we know, when you recognize and can sing the music of your shul that’s like eating comfort food. You feel good; you’re home. And that’s how I felt every time I came back to that synagogue.  
   But…and there was a big but…I vowed that wouldn’t be the case in whatever synagogue I served as a rabbi. That’s because I had the pleasure to hear it all, and I wanted my congregants to be able to hear it all: Sulzer and Lewandowski and 
Naumburg from nineteenth-century Germany to 
Craig Taubman and Jeff Klepper and Debbie Friedman from 20th and 21st centuries America. Of course the usual staple were the mi-Seenai tunes, those people are convinced were given by God and brought down by Moses from Sinai…Bar’chu, 
Sh’ma, and let’s not forget Adon Olam and Ein Keloheinu. But with the repertoire of the past almost two hundred years, not even those melodies would be heard week-after-week in a synagogue in which I would be its rabbi.    Cantors were rare in the old days, and the ones that served were usually trained by other cantors and not as they are today. That’s not to say they didn’t have magnificent voices, for in fact the voices of most of them were of a quality that is unmatched these past two centuries. But in Reform congregations in particular, except for the largest and richest and those not married to a thoroughly Protestant format, there were choirs singing on high, meant to be heard but not joined.      And their music was, in the words of many regardless of which branch of Judaism, extremely “goyish.” Of course they were; they were composed by Christians who invariably used the melodies of the church and just changed the lyrics to reflect Jewish themes. And, yes, they were in English. But as I wrote in one of my articles, just because it’s not in Hebrew doesn’t mean it must be stricken from use in synagogues. As a matter of fact, some of the songs going back in time before the likes of Taubman, Klepper and Friedman, before the melodies sung in Jewish camps were brought into the synagogue, were theologically more in tune with what most Jews believed than were – and are – liturgical pieces in Hebrew that are sung with little comprehension.  
    I want to conclude by playing two renditions of the same liturgical selection, namely S’eu Sh’arim, heard in many congregations before the Torah is removed from the Aron Hakodesh: “Lift up your heads, o ye gates, and be lifted up ye everlasting doors that the King of Glory may come in. Who is the King of Glory? The Lord of Hosts, He is the King of Glory.” 
    The first rendition comes from the prolific hand of Debbie Friedman and is found in one of her first albums. I have to tell you I love it. I have sung it myself numerous times, and had we been in the sanctuary last Shabbat morning instead of on 
Zoom, I would have sung it then as well.  
    But let me tell you the problem. She wrote it for use on the High Holydays. No, No, No, No, No…a thousand times NO. L’havdil! There must be a difference between what we hear on the sacred Days of Awe and what the congregation is able to sing on Shabbat. Note, I said, “hear” and “sing.” Some liturgical music is, in my not-so-humble opinion, meant to be heard, meant to be moving to the core; majestic, overwhelming. Some liturgical music is meant to be sung, folksy even, subtly bringing the congregation together through collective singing. 
    The second rendition was composed by Samuel 
Naumberg. We had our eight-person choir sing it once during the Holydays, namely the last time we faced the Ark before the conclusion of Yom Kippur. 
Truth be told, as I looked at the Aron hearing 
Naumberg’s rendition my heart skipped a beat. Now you might think it sounds familiar. Well, it’s not that you heard it in another context but what always came to my mind at least was Brunhilda singing it in a Wagnerian opera, horns and all. Now forget about the cherem – excommunication - in which we Jews put Hitler’s favorite composer. That type of melody was typical for synagogue music in those days, and it didn’t matter what the mood of the holiday, be it Yom Kippur or Purim (not that we hear liturgical music on Purim!).  
   So first is Debbie Friedman’s and then Samuel 
Naumberg’s.  
           (Play)    (Play)  
 
   There’s room for both, say I, as there is room in general for the traditional tunes sung in Beth El, those of Jewish summer camps, those of the la-lala variety, those of the mid-19th century, and, of course the full panoply of melodies that Moses himself hummed as he traversed the desert.