With Every Breath We Sing our Soul

Ps. 150:6

I remember the first time I sang this sacred song, as an adult, with all my heart, attuned to the joys of harmony, along with everybody else inside that synagogue in Jerusalem. It felt like we were bells all ringing together.

This was one of the first times that I ventured out of the Orthodox synagogue of my upbringing, where singing happened often but also many mumblings of prayers often set the tone. I found the way to a Reform congregation in Jerusalem called Kol Ha’Neshamah - named for the first words of this last verse of the psalms - the words that are the prayer sung in every synagogue, and the particular tune that still concludes every Friday night service in this beloved synagogue:

כֹּ֣ל הַ֭נְּשָׁמָה תְּהַלֵּ֥ל יָ֗הּ הַֽלְלוּ־יָֽהּ׃

Let all that breathes praise Yah. Hallelujah.

Kol Ha’Neshama Te’halel Yah, Halleluyah.

Ps. 150:6

This last verse of the Psalms is known throughout the Jewish and the Christian world with endless musical versions. It is about the song that sings its praise through breath, and soul, and through the joy of singing - which is of course the art of breathing and being fully alive. 

It begins with the Hebrew words - Kol Ha’Neshama - every breath, or every soul. The Hebrew Neshama is sometimes read as ‘soul’ but can also be ‘Neshima’ -breath. It is of course connected.

It was there, at Kol Ha’Neshama, sometime in the late 1980’s,  that the song opened my heart, and where I started to explore my own religious journey and piece together the puzzle of identities that it was, and still is, on me to question and to nurture. My own soul song.  

One of the gifts I got from teachers and books and experiences during that time was this sacred singing -- with harmonies and beats and the vivid sense of singing as one - each and every one of us there, with our own problems and needs, on key or not - but one loud voice, together. It was a religious experience.

Little did I know then that what I was experiencing was exactly what the power of the Psalms had been for many, many generations. It’s what it was always about.

There is extensive scholarship that proves what is written and heard within the 150 poems we just read: They were often public songs, accompanied by many instruments, and often with a choir, meant to inspire awe, joy, reflection and connection. 

The psalms are still today part of the musical collection of the religious life of the West, and beyond. These psalms can still provide us with the words we need so badly as we seek out peace and justice, hope and healing, for our own lives and for so many others all over the globe.

Psalm 150 was meant as a grand finale, the greatest hallelujah of all.

It includes lyres, harps, shofars, trumpets, drums and dancing, lutes, pipes, and cymbals. 

But it ends with silence.

Just the human breath. Just the human song.  The song of breath, the song of soul.

My friend and teacher,Emma Shamba Ayalon, who created the beautiful set of cards based on the Psalms that I shared throughout this journey translated this last line: 

“All the soul and every breath

Praise Being!

HalleluYah!”

Norman Fischer’s Zen Psalm version is:

“Every breath is your praise.”

And thus, with that, we take a deep breath, and exhale, and with praise for every word and every song and every silence, we pause to thank the many poems of these psalms and end this book with Selah. 

She Who is Wisdom is waiting in the wings.

We’ll meet her tomorrow.

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