Beautiful, beautiful, holy, holy, holy

They say it’s sup­posed to sound the way that ancient music soun­ded but I doubt anyone back then sang as beau­ti­fully as Heather Lee.

Kim says that at one point during the Bagh­da­dian Yom Kippur ser­vice, singing to beseech God to open the Heav­ens, the wor­ship­pers look up to the heav­ens to see if God has opened the gates. Listen­ing tonight, I look up, and I’m sure I can see all the angels peer­ing down over the edges to find out where that beau­ti­ful music is coming from.

What voices! Rais­ing praise to the skies. They sang from the Temple Pro­ject and from the Dead Sea Scrolls com­mis­sion, and also some Sefardi songs from medi­eval times. Given that I’ve been hear­ing from Matt over the last few weeks, off chas­ing his ances­tral mer­maids down the coast of Galway, it was inter­est­ing to con­nect to my her­it­age again tonight.

And I want to thank Kim and Heather for choos­ing to do a lament tonight: I know you did it partly because it was Septem­ber 11 and partly for the Kat­rina vic­tims, but today was the con­sec­ra­tion of my grand­father’s grave, as he died a year ago today, so for me it was a lament for Sydney Levine.