Associations

[Alex Jacobowitz <Alex_Jacobowitz...>]

B"H Munich

With all this talk about different melodies, could we keep our eye on the
ball - MEANING?
Who gave us the right to "adapt" Adon Olam (or any part of the liturgy) to
any melody "we" see fit?

"Sure," as the Brighton Beach saying goes, "if you don't like the tune to
Adon Olam in one shul,
you can always go to another one."

But most Jews don't have that "luxury." Logic, in my limited understanding
of it,
would indicate that if the melody to Adon Olam is interchangable, than so
is the text, right?
And why not? Hey, if we want to set Adon Olam to Leonard Bernstein's
odd-meter tunes from
West Side Story, why should we let Adon Olam's monotonous rhyming structure
impede us?
Bernstein was Jewish, right? Therefore it's kosher.

And if we need to translate Adon Olam to English for the masses who don't
understand 
its simple Hebrew, then we can just set the English translation to the old
melody, right?
But wait a second - anyone remember what happened when McDonald's set
lyrics to
Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody #2? Anyone remember what happened when Bugs
Bunny
developed lyrics to the Barber of Seville? Or when Elmer Fudd sang the
Wedding March 
from Lohengrin? Tough to get that muck out of your head when you come back
to the real thing isn't it?

If you're bored with a melody - or if your community is bored with a melody
- think seriously
about refinding the spirit that is behind the text, and the kernel of the
religion. The fault
doesn't lie in the melody.

Sorry, ladies and gents, but real Judaism is not to be used like a
zip-disk.
Neither is its liturgy, and neither are its melodies. Engage in melodic
parody if you must, 
and Purim is great for that. But leave the tradition in at least as good a
shape as the way 
you found it, please. Hernando's Hideaway will perhaps become Hernando's
Ashrei one 
day, and Hernando's Ashram some other day. 

I know what you're thinking - Jewish communities differ, and so do their
melodies. 
Yes, true. But trying to mix-and-match melodies (niggunim) for the
communities of the future, 
just because its within our musicological capabilities to do so, could
easily destroy our ability
to trust the "kashrus" our musical faith. I received the so-called
itsy-bitsy spider tune from Aleinu 
in my local synagogue (Binghamton, New York), and its a minhag I trust.

The rabbi in B'nai Brak must also trust his "melodic mashgiach" if he uses
the tune
to Wagner's wedding march. But jettisoning melodic nusach - for any reason,
let alone
because the melody reminds us of "something else" - is rash beyond belief.

Alex Jacobowitz