The Mystery of Hebrew Kirtan

God spoke and the world came to be. God said, “Light,” and light was (Genesis 1:3). The word became the thing, and in Hebrew the word for “word” and the word for “thing” are the same: dvr. But not just any
word, God’s word; and not God’s written word, but God’s spoken word. Meaning? Meaning that all of creation is a manifestation of Divine Sound, the vibration of God’s spoken word.

That is what you are: the vibration of God calling your name, your essence into being. You are—the entire universe is—the breath of God shaped by vowel and consonant. When physicists tell us that the
universe rests on the vibration of cosmic stings, they are saying in their way what Judaism has said for thousands of years: the universe is the song of God; the strings are the strings of God’s lyre.

Torah tells us that all beings sing (Psalm 96:1; 98:4). Song is the way the living praise God, because song is the way God creates the living.

“I will sing and make melody to God,” (Psalm27:6)

Hebrew Kirtan is an invitation to sing to, with, and ultimately as God. This music and the experience of singing it offer you a direct encounter with God, the Source and Substance of all reality.

Kirtan is the Sanskrit word for ecstatic devotional singing using the repetition of a name or names of God. Like “om,” “mantra,” “karma,” and other Sanskrit words it has entered the English language without translation. In and of itself “kirtan” has no religious content. It is simply the ecstatic devotional singing of God’s name. When sung in Sanskrit using Hindu names for God, kirtan becomes Hindu Kirtan. When sung in Arabic using Moslem names for God, kirtan becomes Sufi Kirtan. When sung in Hebrew using Jewish names for God, kirtan becomes Jewish, Hebrew or Kabbalistic Kirtan. It is not the form that defines the Jewishness of Hebrew Kirtan, but the content.

Hebrew Kirtan is the call and response repetition of sacred Jewish text and Hebrew Names of God. These Names and short phrases are doorways through which you can encounter God. The sound of these Names and phrases, the vibrational quality they establish when chanted aloud, open the small self (mochin d’katnut) to the spacious self (mochin d’gadlut) and allow you to transcend the ego and experience the Divine.

While the musical form of Hebrew Kirtan borrows from the Bhakti Yoga tradition of India, the roots of Hebrew Kirtan go back to Torah: GOD PASSED BEFORE HIM [MOSES] AND HE [MOSES] PROCLAIMED: HASHEM, HASHEM, GOD, COMPASSIONATE AND GRACIOUS, SLOW TO ANGER, AND ABUNDANT IN
KINDNESS AND TRUTH; PRESERVER OF KINDNESS FOR THOUSANDS OF GENERATIONS, FORGIVER OF INIQUITY, WILLFUL SIN, AND ERROR, AND WHO CLEANSES… [Exodus
34:5-7].

As Moses experienced God’s presence he spontaneously and ecstatically called out Names of God and attributes of godliness. In so doing he left us a spiritual practice in reverse. Just as the ecstatic calling out of God’s Names was for Moses an affirmation of his encounter with God, so it can be for us a means for encountering God. We simply trace Moses’ experience back to the Source. And when we do we ourselves
becoming ever more compassionate, gracious, patient, kind, truthful, trustworthy and forgiving.

This is the by-product of any legitimate engagement with any authentic spiritual practice: you become, as the prophet Micah said, more just, more kind, and more humble (Micah 6:8). Of course there is only one way to test the truth of this claim, and that is to engage in the practice of Hebrew Kirtan. It is not enough to simply listen to this cd; you must chant along with it. Kirtan in any form is call and response. Let the caller set the tone and intention, evoking the proper physical vibration and spiritual resonance, and then respond as best you can.

The operative phrase here is “as best you can.” You don’t have to be a singer to sing. You only have to sing. The quality of your intension is key. WHEN YOU MAKE FOR ME AN ALTAR OF STONES DO NOT MAKE THEM HEWN.
[Exodus 20:23]

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The altar of God, the place you come to connect to that which is truest about you and the world, is to be built with unhewn stones. An unhewn stone is natural, raw, and hard to use. It is not fashioned into a
conventional shape. It is as God created it. Torah is saying that your worship of God must be unhewn, natural, raw and not neatly shaped, fashioned, and convenient. The unhewn stone conforms to nothing but
itself. It is what it is, and it is exactly what God wants as the building blocks of worship. Let your voice be unhewn, natural. Let the power of the chant catch you up into sounds themselves, and don’t worry about how you sound. Just sing, and find that God is singing with and through you.

The Power of the Name

The first act of Adam is to name the animals and birds that God had created (Genesis 2:19-20). Adam, literally earthling” from adamah, “earth,” is you. Male or female, adam is you (“Male and female He
created them, Genesis 1:27), and your task is to name. Naming something allows you to be intimate with it. When you meet a stranger you exchange names. It is a way of making the unknown known.

In Judaism it is thought that the name of a person reveals the essence of the person. To know someone’s name is to know his or her nature. This is why, when the nature of a person changes, when she or he reaches a new level of spiritual awareness, the Bible says they receive a new name: Abram becomes Abraham, Sarai becomes Sarah, and Jacob becomes Israel.

What is true of people is true of God as well. While the essence of God is unknowable, the qualities of God are knowable, and are often articulated in the various Names of God found in Jewish sacred text. The power of Hebrew Kirtan is that it uses these Names to invoke the attribute of God and to put the singer in direct relationship with it.

To understand how this works you have to go the second Genesis story of humanity’s creation. God formed adam (earthling, from adamah, earth) from the dust of the earth, and breathed into adam’s nostrils the
breath of life, and with that adam became conscious, (Genesis 2:7).

You are a blend of earth and breath, the temporal and the timeless. Your challenge is to use the one to reveal the other. The body shapes the breath to make sound and song. The physical carries the spiritual into the world that it might inform the world with godliness. You are given the gift of God’s breath that you might breathe into the world God’s blessing. You are the exhalation of God, and when you return the breath to God by singing the Names of God, you remember who you really
are: a precious manifestation of the One and Only.

“You shall love The One and Only with all your heart and all your breath,” (Deuteronomy 6:5)

When you love someone what do you do? You speak his or her name. And when you speak her name you do so with the intent to draw near to her, to become one physically, emotionally, intellectually, and spiritually. It is no different with God.

When you wish to draw close to God, you need to call God’s Name. And when you do so in love you follow that calling with words of praise and passion. This is Hebrew Kirtan: the wooing of God with words sung with great intensity and passion.

Hebrew Kirtan is a form of lovemaking. This is the source of its power, and is danger. Hebrew Kirtan is an ecstatic practice; it overwhelms the small self with desire for God. The repetitive nature of the chant calls forth a seductive swaying of the body, a softening of the ego, an opening of the self to the Self that is God. If you are willing to become a kabbalist, one who receives; if you are willing to receive the gift of God in, with, and as you, then you are ready for the magic of Hebrew Kirtan.

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