If I’m lucky, my soundtrack for the High Holy Days this year will be as sweet as apples dipped in honey. I can’t wait to hear the special trope reserved just for the Days of Awe. Have you heard it? High Holy Day trope soars in solemn modal splendor. It evokes a feeling of poignant antiquity, as if it were God’s musical accompaniment to the binding of Isaac on Mount Moriah.
Unlike the cantillations heard during a regular week and on Shabbat — melodies which are, sorry to say, dry as Melba toast — High Holy Day trope is pure musical magic.
I’m not surprised Jews developed special chants for this time of year. But I always wondered how this particular trope evolved over the centuries.
For that, and all queries cantorial, I looked to Cantor Rosalyn Barak of San Francisco’s Congregation Emanu-El. She’s one of the greatest singers I know, period. And she certainly knows her stuff when it comes to Jewish musical history.
Turns out the High Holy Day trope is one of several Ashkenazic systems, and the Ashkenazic is likewise one of many trope traditions. Syrian, Moroccan, Yemenite and Sephardic Jews from Spain, Turkey and Greece each have their own.
There’s even a trope of Italian origin chanted in one synagogue in Jerusalem, one in Istanbul, and nowhere else.
Each trope has its own unique melodies for Shabbat, the High Holy Days, the Haftorah and even for individual texts like Song of Songs, Lamentations and the Book of Esther.
Why sing at all? The cantor told me it’s simply to beautify the Torah. Reading it is a mitzvah. Singing it is like a mitzvah on Red Bull.
Many printed Torahs include the trope symbols — or te’amim — above and below the lettering. It’s a kind of squiggly musical notation that allows cantors such as Barak to chant the text.
“The most important thing about trope is it provides the syllabic stress of each word, and it phrases the sentence really beautifully,” she told me. “The Hebrew always makes sense.”
I had the privilege of chanting the High Holy Day trope once. My rabbi back in L.A. asked if I would take on one of the Torah passages read on Yom Kippur. I instantly said yes.
Then I instantly regretted it.
This meant, of course, I had to sing in front of an audience of around 600 people. Me, the guy with a singing voice that’s a cross between Marge Simpson and a whining 10-inch table saw. I worried I might end up resembling one of those jaw-dropping rejects from the “American Idol” tryouts.
Still, I had to do it. Practicing every day up to Yom Kippur, I found the melody so beautiful, spiraling up then held in suspension before descending again. There was no way I could pass on this.
On the big day, I nervously awaited being called to the bimah. Then, clutching the silver yad, I just ignored my butterflies and decided to go for it. I don’t remember which Torah portion I chanted, but I will never forget how it felt.
There’s a tidy prescription for living — now becoming a Hallmark card cliché — that one should dance like nobody’s watching, and sing like nobody’s listening.
That’s how it was for me, standing before the Torah, and singing it on the holiest day of the year.
Afterward I got many compliments, which was nice (and a bit shocking). But I was still too lost in that unchained melody to take it all in.
Cantor Barak knows how I felt. She gets to re-experience it year in and year out. The High Holy Day melodies, she says, “put you in a different plane as far as your spiritual consciousness. It should reach a special place in my soul.”
This New Year, as every year, I hope to be inscribed in the Book of Life. It’s always a bit of a crapshoot, and the older I get, the more I am truly grateful for another year of life.
Maybe that’s another reason why the High Holy Day trope is so beautiful. When feeling the rush of Rosh Hashanah, what else is there to do but, as the psalm says, “make a joyful noise before the Lord.”
Dan Pine can be reached at [email protected].