What's the Song Your Soul Needs Now?

“By the Rivers of Babylon”.. Do you know this song? There are many versions and covers of this Psalm - some more joyful than others, and what’s amazing to me is that this biblical poem is familiar to so many people who often have no idea of its origins. What matters is that it is a helpful song that lifts up moods and has been doing it for many centuries.

Songs are the keepers of important messaging - hope and resilience, joy and courage. When the exiles from Jerusalem found themselves on the rivers of Babylon, 2,700 years ago, they began lamenting their diaspora reality, processing their trauma -- how can we sing God’s song on land that is not our own? But it was the songs that helped them heal. 

This past week on the Ninth of Av, many read these words of lament, sang these sad songs. Music helps us heal and process, reflect and rise.  “By the Rivers of Babylon” is just one of the playlist fave’s that reminds us how central the role of the Psalms is in the life of the Jewish nation. For centuries, all through to the final days of the temples’ destruction, the Levites would stand by the altar and sing aloud these words.  Songs were and are the somatic containers of our deepest aspirations. That too is why the mourning these days is so profound. 

And yet the song survives even when buildings do not. 

I am hearing this week the power of the psalms - as composed songs, enduring through generations, on the top of charts and alive in many cultures as holders of hope, sad or joyful, as prayer or dance. 

Earlier this week we focused on words from the Psalms that proclaim ‘I will build this world from love’ - ‘Olam Chesed Yibane’ - and how this has become a powerful modern chant for change. In the last two days we started looking at the psalms chosen as the key chapters into the Sabbath - sung each Friday as a way to move into the sacred essence of this day of rest. 

What is the song that you go to to feel ease or find some kind of optimism or relief? 

The Psalms remind us to make music a priority in our private and public lives - as much as possible during difficult or tough times. 

So on this Friday, leading into the first Sabbath of Consolation, Shabbat Nahamu, I wish us all some songs of comfort, and some way to lift up life and hope, from the rubble into a future of more joy and repair - song by song, psalm by psalm. 

Thank you for joining me below the bible belt.

May the soul songs we sing help us hope and heal.

Shabbat Shalom