Eleven years ago, I watched my first virtual funeral service. While commonplace today, at that time it was extraordinary. The person being buried was Debbie Friedman, one of the most important Jewish figures of the past century, but not someone whose funeral would have been broadcast on local TV. I was teaching Sixth Grade at the Kadimah Hebrew Academy at the time, and I brought my class into the science classroom to view the service on a computer screen. The students I was working with at the time had no sense of the significance of the moment. Tears streamed down my face as our very own Rabbi Drorah Setel helped transport the casket. It was unfathomable that this small waif of a woman whose music had transformed liberal Jewish services could be gone. And, at only 59-years-old.
By taking 1960s folk tradition and bringing it into the Classic Reform synagogue, Debbie Friedman transformed the way we think about prayer. More than that, she invited us to sing alongside her. At a CAJE conference in the early 90s, I watched thousands of Jewish educators swaying to her music. They knew every single word of hits like L’chi Lach, Not by Might, Not by Power, and of course the Mi Shaberach we sing at almost every Friday night service. She was a rock star. As Eric Yoffie, the URJ president at the time of her death, said shortly afterward: “Twenty-five years ago, North American Jews had forgotten how to sing. Debbie reminded us how to sing, she taught us how to sing.”
Debbie Friedman’s official Yahrzeit is the 4th of Shevat, a date that fell this year on January 26. But her unofficial Yahrzeit is this Shabbat as we read from the Song of the Sea in Parashat Beshalach. Called Shabbat Shira, the Shabbat of Music, this is the week we reenact the celebration after the crossing of the sea. And, when we take out our timbrels and begin to dance, there is, of course, only one song we should be singing, Debbie Friedman’s “Miriam’s Song”: “And the women dancing with their timbrels…”
Shabbat Shalom,
Rabbi Alex
Last Updated on 02/01/2023 by wpadm