How to Praise What's Good & also Protest Evil?

When was the last time you sang an enthusiastic song with joy on full volume? I’m sure I’m not the only one among us who has found that difficult to do these past eleven months as we struggle with a brutal war that keeps claiming innocent lives, rupturing reality in Israel and Palestine with no end in sight, with grief and rage spilling into the streets and screens everywhere. 

How can we sing with joy when so many are suffering? 

The ancient Jewish response to this question - found in our tradition and in our prayer book is - we can try as best as possible, and yes we can still try to praise what IS positive, the mystery beyond the misery of here and now, we can and should - I know it’s tough -- to sing on to boost each other’s morale and signal our belief in better days. 

At some point in our history - possibly as response to the national calamity and traumas of the first destruction of the temple 2,600 years ago, the creators of the emerging cycle of Jewish prayers decided to collect a series of six popular psalms and designate them as the go-to unit of joy and praise for special days and festivals.  On our Below the Bible Belt Journey we just met the first of those psalms yesterday and will continue this series next week. 

This unit of psalms is known as The Hallel - because some of those psalms begin with the word Hallelujah - makes sense. 

The 19th Century German-Jewish scholar Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch wrote that “Hallel is the Jewish song of jubilation…To this day, it revives on each Festival season the memory of Divine redemption, and our confidence in future greatness” 

The sages who came up with the Hallel also gave this unit another curious name - The Egyptian Hallel.  Hallel Ha’Mitzri -- and this term already shows up in the rabbinic literature some 2,000 years ago. 

Why Egyptian? And what does this teach us about how we too can face the music of the moment when we are at war? 

It has to do with the content of some of these psalms and with when we do or don’t sing the entire collection.  

The full Hallel - The Egyptian - is traditionally inserted into the daily prayers on each new moon, the eight days of the holiday of Sukkot, the eight days of Hanukkah, the first day of Shavuot, and the first night and day of Passover. Since the early 1970’s it is also sung in many synagogues on Israel's Day of Indepence and Jerusalem Day- clearly not all Jews worldwide are on board with that one - and there's even a debate among religious Jews whether one does so with or without a blessing. That’s for another time. 

You probably know the Hallel from Passover Seder -- Hallel is one of the last stops of the night and in some homes and communities there’s an entire playlist of popular and familiar tunes that go with these ancient songs of praise. I know my family’s tunes by heart. Some make me smile. Some bring up tears. 

The very reason the Hallel is called Egyptian is because the Exodus from Egypt is mentioned prominently in the second of its sixth psalms and lends the entire series of songs the narrative of relief and redemption, the ongoing reminder that even the worse situation will eventually lead to salvation and that freedom and joy may always be around the corner. 

This Egyptian Playlist is the playlist of people who remember oppression and keep lifting each other up on our holy days - whether life is good or tough.  But wait a minute - why is the Egyptian Hallel not sung throughout the Passover holiday - all eight days? Shouldn’t that be the primetime season? 

Although the rabbis inserted the full Hallel into the Passover Seder they decided to only sing half of the Hallel during the rest of Passover -- because they felt that joy must be reduced or turned down when we consider the loss of lives to the Egyptians.  Yes, that’s a Talmudic opinion and that IS the custom for how we celebrate till today in synagogues during Passover week - half the Hallel, though few remember why. 

I definitely never knew why we sing the whole Hallel on Seder night but then skip through the psalms during the Passover week. But now I know and am so impressed with the wisdom of our tradition that calls on us to praise and celebrate our history and highest hopes -- but to never ever forget that there is a moral dimension to our lives, and that even our worst enemy is human, with sorrows and suffering that do not allow us to praise or to gloat. 

We’ve just begun the journey of atonement and reflection into the new year, and when we gather in a few weeks we will sing and pray, praise and repent, reflect and commit to do what we can to make our lives, this year, all things - much better. Incidentally - Hallel is NOT sung on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur because those sages who set it up wanted us to focus on our personal and public process of repentance - not so much to focus on the praise. 

So maybe we can take a cue from this tradition that reminds us we can sing with gusto and with passion, praise what is, and celebrate what’s good - but not without a pause, and not without acknowledging that we are not the only ones here, that there are multiple narratives at play, the victory along with the violent losses, and that any complex and painful fight will only end with everyone a winner -- all of us at peace, and every single one of us part of the healing. 

Aspirational? Perhaps. But that’s why we have poetry, and ritual, and this collection of praise psalms called The Egyptian - reminding us that at the depth of it there is no us or them, persecutor - persecuted. We are one human family, one ecosystem, the victims can become the victimizers, and even the worst war criminal was once an innocent child worthy of love.  With this - we enter the fifth Sabbath of Consolation, second week of Elul, and next week we continue to explore the psalms of Praise in our Hallel.  I hope some singing comes your ways, and with it, consolation, comfort, empathy - and joy. 

Thank you for joining me below the bible belt. 

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Let there be healing and hope for all of us. 

Shabbat Shalom.