The Songs We Sing

It's part of our nature: we love songs. Songs reflect our moods, they create our moods. Songs express our thoughts, our feelings, our dreams and our ideals. Song brings us together in a way no other media can. Whether it's the combination of voice and instrument, whether it's the multi-form interplay - words and music - have you ever heard the music of a favorite song, without the words? If you don't start adding, immediately, the words, it sounds off. And even if it's in a different tempo or style, we fill in the blanks. And often the lyrics of a sensational, powerful song are just banal without the melody.And of course songs come in many different styles and genres: folk, jazz, pop, rock and roll, classic - you need a musicologist to list them all. There are protest songs, folk songs, ballads, love songs, patriotic songs, nonsense songs, and - again, you'd need an expert in music history, or theory, to tell you all the types. And even they'd probably leave some out.
You can tell a lot about a person by looking at his or her iTunes library. Even more by checking out the playlists - how they organize the songs in their lives, what type of music or singer they favor, etc. In fact, you could probably draw a pretty good picture of their personality simply by surveying their music.
The same can be said of a people, or a nation. So let's take a look at what Jews listen to - as Jews. We're not talking about Jewish versions of a Broadway play or whatever. What we're talking about are songs that, no matter the genre or style, when people hear them they say, "Oh, that's a Jewish song."
We can leave out cantorial music, because of course synagogue music is Jewish. No, we want to look at the "popular" stuff. They all have one thing in common: The content - verses from Torah, or Psalms, or some other Biblical (or even Rabbinic) text. Even the English songs, when not translations, are reworking of Biblical motifs.
So even when the melody, or tune, is contemporary, fits a "modern beat," the message is timeless. Jewish songs expresses the essential nature of the Jewish soul - a longing for G-d's Presence, a celebration of tradition (Shabbat, a wedding), expressions of Jewish identity (Am Yisrael Chai), a recasting of prayer as song, an informal approach to verses from Psalms and the Torah so that they become familiar, echo in the mind and flow from the tongue - even if we don't know Hebrew, these words become who we are, how we express ourselves.
And of course, the yearning for Moshiach.
Jews sing songs that no other nation sings, in a way no other nation sings.
Jewish songs - really Jewish songs - express not only the unquenchable desire for an encounter with G-d, they evoke, illustrate, and yes, anticipate how we will feel when the "whole world will be filled with knowledge of G-dliness."
So, sing! Sing a song to the King. Sing a new song. Sing a song of ascents!
And, to paraphrase, Sing Jewish.