The melodies of the Days of Awe engulf me. Long before arriving to shul for formal prayers, I am preparing myself with the tunes and melodies, singing them to myself. Often I occupy myself with the fruitless exercise of imagining grafting melodies from songs I love onto snippets or sometimes whole prayers from the liturgy its fruitless because I am not leading the prayers. I just enjoy doing it for the sake of it.
Then there are those wordless niggunim, melodies that stir the heart and wash over you without one word uttered. They often capture an ebb and flow of the prayers, of the human condition, of life itself.
Sometimes the melodies highlight what is achingly sad, yet they also soothe, and often an ethereal dimension of prayer is revealed by them. That first collective and elevating ahh-ahh-ahh-ahh pre-cadence of the Days of Awe peels something away, and invites you into the intimacy and dialogues of this immersive season.
So many of these melodies that stay with us for a lifetime are simple melodies. Deceptively simple melodies. Because all you need is to hear them once more and they invade the soul.
The past couple of years I have been taken with Yonatan Razels Katonti, the number one single in Israeli music of 2014. I keep finding myself humming it to myself, especially at this time of year.
The lyrics are sourced in a Torah text from Genesis 32, when Jacob is preparing to meet his brother Esau, after an interlude of many years, and after parting on painful terms.
Jacob utters the word katonti . . . I am diminished, meaning unworthy, or humbled. He continues: I am unworthy of all the kindness and its truthful manifestation that You have granted me, that You have shown me. When I left home, I crossed the Jordan with only my staff, and now I have become two camps. Rescue me.
Musically, Razel brings to life these words and the emotions behind them in a devastatingly beautiful way. It captures the epic of lifes journey, of a certain resilience in the face of the fragility of life.
Yet I wonder why, of all times, why I keep thinking of this particular song now.
Jacob refers to his two camps, to the large family he has come to build.
Poised at Rosh Hashanah or Yom Kippur, we are at a divide. Like one of Jacobs camps but stretched behind us, with an empty camp unfolded before us; the unknown of what is yet to come.
In a sense, at this time, we experience this sentiment of Jacobs, of katonti, of feeling at once diminished, unworthy, and humbled. Trying to internalize gratitude for what weve been given thus far, while at the same time hovering between two camps: the known, and the unknown.
This epic song is more than just a gorgeous melody to put to an important Days of Awe poem or piece of liturgy. It is in and of itself the essence of the prayer in our hearts and on our lips at this time.
Katonti, I am diminished by all of the kindnesses and all of the truths . . .
Copyright © 2015 by the Intermountain Jewish News
