Our next guest blogger is Hazzan Marcia Lane, a cantor in New York and New Jersey who just spent several years as Kolbo (rabbi and cantor) in Tennesee. Continuing last night’s theme of about Kol Nidre, she speaks eloquently about the power of music. It is well worth it to click through to the link to hear Shlomo Carlebach’s song.

“It’s that time of year again. The old joke goes that the Yamim Nora’im — the Days of Awe — are always either early or late. They never come on time! Well, this year, as in most years, they feel awfully early to me. It’s not that I am unprepared for the davenning, because the music remains pretty much the same year to year. It’s that I’m unprepared for the climb up the staircase.

The Jewish year is a cycle of holidays that goes around and around in a circle, but each year we are different people by virtue of being one year older. Our goals get clearer or fuzzier. Our resolve to live a particular kind of life is stronger, or we perhaps can’t see our way. Things change. We change. This year’s Rosh Hashannah is not the same as last year’s. This year’s fast on Yom Kippur will be different from last year’s. We do not simply go in circles. The word teshuvah means turning around, or returning to our truest selves.

Rabbi Shlomo Carelbach, z’l, was more famous as a storyteller and a troubador than for sermons. He composed this chant, which seems to embody the process of teshuva.

 Return again. Return again. Return to the land of your soul.
Return to who you are. Return to what you are. Return to where you are
Born and reborn again.
Return again. Return again. Return to the land of your soul.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1Ahmh8Kt7qM

We aspire to ascend, step by step, through our lives. As the Kaddish for the High Holy Days says, “L’eilah ul’eilah,” higher and higher. For me, the question remains: How, exactly, do I return? And how do I know what would constitute the authentic, best ‘me’?

The music of the holidays is designed to help with that aspiration: it is, on the one hand, built of a series of motifs that are recognizable to every Jew. So the congregational moments are familiar and sing-able for all of us. But there are also moments of choral or cantorial music that strain to lift our thoughts and our prayers toward God.

“Ochilah l’Eyl, achaleh fanav, eshalah mimenu ma’aney lashon.”

I put my hope in God, I seek God’s presence, I ask for the gift of expression.”

These are the words of the cantor’s prayer that comes in the middle of the Musaf Amidah. At that moment the hazzan asks not for blessings of wealth or health or even wisdom. All we ask for is the ability to express the innermost thoughts and fears of the congregation. We pray for the ability to carry the congregation’s hopes higher toward the divine. Step by step, through the Musaf Amidah the hazzan travels upward, not in a direct line, but in a spiral. I’ve sung these notes before, but now I am a different person than I was last year. I’ve prayed these words before, but I am one year older, sadder, wiser, happier. The person I am this year says to You, as I said last year, “Shma koleynu!” Hear the collective voice of Your people who have come before You. Notice that we have changed, hopefully for the better. We have turned and returned to You. S’lach lanu, m’chal lanu, ka-peir lanu. Forgive us. Pardon us. Grant us atonement.