EIGHTH-DAY PASSOVER YIZKOR: Shirah Chadasha–New Songs
(presented by Rabbi Sacks on April 23, 2022)
We just chanted a selection from the Song of Songs. We read:
Arise my darling, my fair one, come away! For now the winter is past…the blossoms have appeared in the land, the song of the turtledove is heard in our land. Arise my darling, my fair one, come away![1]
What beautiful poetry.. We chant the Song of Songs on Passover because this holiday comes in spring, the season of new blossoms. We also associate spring with young lovers like those in the song, lovers who are full of hope, full of life, and full of possibility.
Our yearnings for hope, life, and possibility come alive on this holiday as we recall our liberation from slavery and look towards redemption. On Pesach, we connect with our longing to free ourselves and our world from oppression, from the narrow straits of Mitzrayim. At the seder, while a part of us marvels at the stories we have heard and told about the Elijah’s Cup, we yet yearn for the healing and repair that Elijah’s cup represents. A part of us feels–if only Elijah would in fact really appear, announcing the arrival of a world of beauty and peace, as gorgeous as the world of the Song of Songs….
Pesach delivers a message of hope. It reassures us that spring will return to the land. It suggests to us that, like our ancestors, we can walk through our own sea of troubles and emerge on the other side. On this holiday we imagine our ancestors–exhausted, beaten down slaves, standing on the shores of the Red Sea, fearing for their lives as the waters rise and Pharaoh’s soldiers pursue them. We imagine how in the face of their utter terror, the Israelites walked on dry land in the midst of the sea.” And then, how, safely on the other side–what did they do? They stopped. They paused. And then they sang and danced. They were free, safe, relieved beyond measure, beyond anything most of us could understand! They sang and danced! That was their story of crossing the sea. Dayeinu.
But stories take on new lives and meaning as they are told–as they speak to our needs and teach us; and at a very early point, many centuries ago, in our people’s telling of this story, something got added. The Psalms and our core prayers relate that the Israelites at the sea sang shirah chadashah, “a new song.” A new song.
Through the generations, in countless poems and prayers–this watershed moment in our people’s story is always described as a moment of something new–shirah chadashah. In fact, yesterday, we sang Yom L’yabashah, the glorious piyyut, liturgical poem, written by Yehuda HaLevi.[2] The refrain that we sang over and over was “shib-chu g’u-lim shirah chadashah,” “the newly redeemed praised the moment with a new song.” This shirah chadashah was a song never sung before. Our ancestors were transformed. For me, the idea of a new song is so compelling.
The way we tell the Passover story suggests that true redemption is about more than the lack of oppression, although that certainly is worthy of a song. True redemption yields a totally new song. So at the sea something completely new was introduced. And by adopting this shirah chadashah, this new song, our tradition tells us to look deeper into what it means to be saved, to be free.
Moreover, as they emerged from the sea, our Israelite ancestors learned not only how it felt to be saved and what it might mean to be free; they also learned what it means to be loved. And in our lives as individuals and as a people, anytime we learn those lessons–of survival, of freedom, of being loved, our song becomes a shirah chadashah, a “new song.” It is always changing, never static, always ‘new.’
On this holiday, we are meant to sing a shirah chadashah even as we tell our ancient story. Every year, as we celebrate Pesach, the world is different; every year, we are different. And so it is a mitzvah–the Haggadah calls it harei zeh meshubach, praiseworthy–to expand on our ancient story, to enrich it and to learn from it in new ways. Telling our old story in a new way each year is meant to wake us up–just as the natural world is waking up around us–to wake us up to take steps to create the world we dream of when we welcome Elijah to our seders. The story of Pesach continues to be created and will continue to be created as long as there are Jews to tell it.
The same holds true for the life story of a person. We know that a person’s biography has a beginning, a middle and an end. But the people who have been part of our lives, whom we remember now at Yizkor time, do not live only in the past; they continue on with us. Every time we remember them, we are different. Each time we remember a person and the events of their life, our understanding can shift, and we may see that person through a different lens. We can discover new dimensions which in effect, can actually enhance or transform their story as well as ours.
Our relationships with the people we remember continue to evolve. One of the gifts of memory, one of the gifts of being alive, is that we can still engage with those who have left this world. We can still feel nurtured or inspired by a loving parent or friend; we might even feel nurtured and inspired in new ways, ways we never experienced before. We can reconcile–forgive a departed spouse, sibling or parent. Our relationships can reach something like a tikkun, a repair, even now. We might become more accepting, maybe let go of a hurt or anger; give him another chance, appreciate her more than ever. That new perspective could move us to action–we might reconnect with a living family member or friend, for example. Or we might honor the dead in a new way, perhaps through an act of tzedakah which reflects the life of the person we recall, a mitzvah that we highlight in the Yizkor prayer itself.
The life stories we remember, like our people’s Exodus story, are eternal and constant. At the same time, these stories contain infinite possibilities as they unfold throughout time. Today, at the Yizkor moment of Passover, as we turn our thoughts to those who have departed from us. We might use the time to consider what has changed–mah nishtanah, what is different when I tell the story of the person I am recalling? What do I better understand–what has become more whole and more resolved, or–what has emerged that needs more work?
Separation and loss are a part of every life. In the Song of Songs, the lovers are mostly apart, painfully longing for one another. And yet, the book is suffused with joy and energy, it is a portrait of hope and faith. We read from near the end with its powerful message as one lover declares to the other:
Set me as a seal upon your heart… For love is strong as death. Many waters
cannot extinguish love. Rivers will not wash it away… [8:6-7]
So we sing. We sing because love is as strong as death, because many waters cannot extinguish love, and no river of tears can wash it away. In spite of pain, in spite of unrequited yearning, in spite of loss and separation, there is love.
Love is as strong as death because it remains with us forever, because forever it invites us to sing a shirah chadashah, a new song. We have the freedom to add new melodies, new harmonies, new embellishments, and new connections. We sing to imagine a world that is a lush, green, peaceful garden. We sing to imagine, someday, a world of love.
May we sing of our loved ones now at Yizkor, and sing of them throughout the years.
May our song, our shirah chadashah, help us to remember them more clearly, love them more dearly, and draw newer lessons for our lives today.
May our song help us to redeem the goodness of those we remember.
May our song move us to become less bitter and more loving.
May our song give us the strength to imagine the world of the Song of Songs, a world that is lush, green, peaceful, a world where all is love, all is song.
And may our song help us to make the world in which we live more like the world we imagine.
Amen.
[1] Songs of Songs 2:10-13.
[2] Yehuda HaLevi (c. 1075-1141) was a physician, poet, and philosopher. In fact, he is considered one of the greatest Hebrew poets of all time, and many of his poems, both religious and secular, are still celebrated, chanted and/or read today. His major philosophical work, Sefer Ha-Kuzari, is also still widely read and studied.