“Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezeritch spent a great deal of his time meditating around ponds in order to learn the songs of the frogs. Rabbi Pinchas of Koritz taught the languages of birds, animals and plants.”
In 1917 a scroll was found in a Jewish religious text repository in Cairo. It was the autobiography of Ovadia Ha-Ger, a Jewish convert who had set down the music for Wa-eda Ma, one of our oldest notated pieces of Synagogue music.
“Wa-eda ma Wa-eda ma adaber bashearim uma omar? Uma omar? Uma taan? Lamdeni.”
“I know what, yes I know what I shall say at the gates. What shall I say? What shall I say? What will you answer? Teach me.”
When I first heard this song at a Jewish wedding in Sonoma it reminded me of my sister. I am sure she did not know this song and could not have taught it to me when I was a child. To sing me to sleep my sister sang a song with very different intentions.
“Open up the second front, second front, second front, open up the second front and beat those Nazis down.”
Ovadia, who took his Judaism seriously, asked Maimonides if a convert would be allowed to refer to Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob as his fathers. Maimonides assured him that the convert who has attached himself to Israel is in every sense a descendent of Avraham, Yitzak, and Yaakov. To learn Judaism, to discover its sacred texts, its beautiful old songs, its rituals and practices, my sister and I would have had to approach it as if...
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