As many of you know, I’ve been working on an exciting new musical project called The Left Side: A musical journey through Mishkan T'filah. The Reform siddur that we’ve been using here at TBE for the past few years is designed in such a way that the right-hand page features our traditional liturgy while the left side has contemporary poetry meant to bring new meaning to the prayers. Music has the profound ability to reach the places within us where words fall short, and so for years synagogue musicians have written new music to try to evoke an emotional response to our traditional prayers. For this project, I am continuing that age-old tradition, but adding a new twist! By setting these contemporary English poems, not only will the music touch our hearts, but now the words TOO can deepen our connections to the liturgy.
This Friday night, March 8th, we will welcome Shabbat with some of these new ‘left side’ melodies. Come unwind from the work-week and join us as we sing through our TBE Shabbat Menucha (Shabbat rest) service. Rabbi Sisenwine will speak on the subject of reform in our prayer book in connection with the theme of this project. Services begin at 6:00 pm, and are open to the community. If you can't join us in person, we encourage you to connect with the TBE community through the wonders of technology and watch the live-stream.
A CALL TO ACTION!
This project is meant to engage the community and many of it’s melodies are written for the ‘congregational voice’. So, we will be holding an ‘open recording session’ on select dates in April to record a large group of people singing these melodies. If you enjoy singing and want to be involved in this creative project, please email me.
Looking forward to praying with you this Shabbat!