A job for which I am highly unqualified is music supervisor.
Music supervisors choose what songs will accompany a given scene in film or television. You have to know a wide array of musical styles and genres (I don’t), and be good at knowing just what song (and what part of that song) any moment calls for (I’m not).
What happens, whether on TV or in real life, when someone starts singing or playing music that you feel isn’t right for the moment? Do you go with it anyway, supporting them? Do you politely tap along and sway your head, maybe while your inside voice berates their choice? Do you sit in stony silence or go so far as to interrupt and correct them, perhaps shouting at your TV screen, offering a better selection?
Over the past weeks, as Israeli and Thai hostages have been released from Gaza in small groups, we might consider what music could accompany videos of their homecomings. We could also think about what music might overlay video of Gazans walking north, returning to their homes or whatever is left of them. There’s also been video of prisoners being greeted back in Gaza, prisoners Israel has released in exchange for the hostages, many of the prisoners being terrorists with Israeli civilians’ blood on their hands. What music would you play over these images?
The music we might select for any of these moments offers insight into how each of us views these events.
These images of people leaving a place they had not wanted to be reminds me of the Israelites leaving Egypt, which has been rendered so many times in film, midrash and imagination, poetry, music and song.
The Israelites, upon crossing the Sea of Reeds and seeing their pursuers drowned, burst into what’s known as “the Song at the Sea.” How exactly it was sung is a matter of Talmudic dispute.
According to Rabbi Akiva, Moses sings each phrase of the song, and the Israelites respond with the words, “I will sing to God.” According to Rabbi Eliezer, the son of Rabbi Yosi the Galilean, the Israelites repeat each phrase after Moses. Rabbi Nechemya suggests that Moses began, and then all the Israelites joined in and they all sang together.
Each of these suggests a different way to sing communally and respond to communal singing.
Rabbi Nechemya’s view is the simplest: We’re all feeling the same and, once someone starts us singing, we all feel good singing the same thing.
In Rabbi Eliezer’s approach, each phrase is sung by the leader, then repeated. There’s some pressure on everyone to repeat, and it’s a moment to educate people about the “right” words to sing at this moment.
Rabbi Akiva gives the most flexibility. The leader (in this case, Moses) will say what he will. And we don’t have to agree or echo it or feel what he’s feeling. Rather, every time the leader says something, we each say, “I will sing to God,” meaning, perhaps, “You sing to God in your way, with your words, and I’ll find my own way and my own words.”
There could even have been Israelites doing each of these different things — some singing with Moses, some repeating after him, and some just singing the refrain, “I’ll sing [my own song] to God.”
I appreciate that our tradition offers a range of approaches to how we may react to any given event—we may have one voice, we may need some prodding or education to be of one voice, or we may respond to a leader’s voice with our own varied voices.
May we be grateful for the freedom to choose our own songs. May we be open to learning someone else’s song. And may we treasure the moments we can sing with one voice.
