A New Light: Or Chadash

02/02/2015 Alia Meira

Or Chadash al Tzion ta-ir, v’nizkeh chulanu m’hayra l’oro

Shine a New Light on Zion, and may all of us soon be worthy of enlightenment.

The mystics inserted this prayer for God to bring the Messiah, into our liturgy about creating Light. While I don’t pray for a Messiah that is a person that will save us, I do pray for the proliferation of Messianic Consciousness, which I understand as an awareness of the One Love that holds us all. Receiving God’s Light means becoming enlightened. With this practice, I call forth a new light and open to that radiance.

While I was creating this practice, my friend in Jerusalem, D’ror, passed from this world. He was such a great light, brimming with charm, creativity, playfulness and good humor. In his passing, I felt D’ror’s God-light spread out into our world. May we be worthy of this blessing of his radiance.

To hear the various parts of the chant, use the audio players. To download a part, right-click a note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

To download the PDF file for this chant, click A New Light PDF. For the musical notation, click A New Light Music.

Chants, Liturgy

Emerson ‘Modah Ani’

01/07/2015 Alia Meira

This ‘Modah Ani’ chant is based on Ralph Waldo Emerson’s English words:

For each new morning with its light
For rest and shelter of the night
For health and food
For love and friends
For everything Thy goodness sends!

Modah Ani L’fanecha.

Modah Ani (I gratefully acknowledge)
L’fanecha (You… or literally, To Your Face… and the word face in Hebrew is plural, so even more literally… Your Faces)

For Rabbi Shefa’s thoughts about gratefulness, see her teaching Gratefulness as the Foundation of Practice. For other Modah Ani chants, see the Flavors of Gratefulness page.

To hear the chant, use the audio player. To download the chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

Emerson Modah Ani Mix

To download a PDF file with musical notations for this chant, click Emerson ‘Modah Ani’ Music.

Chants, Psalms

Filling Up: Sova

11/18/2014 Alia Meira

Sova smachot et panecha

Filling up with the joys of Your Presence (Psalm 16:11)

This is a practice of deliberately filling ourselves up with joy, beauty, light, and vitality. We chant that word “sova” three times, and with each repetition, we open up a greater capacity for joy, cultivating and stimulating those inner receptors that can open to Divine Presence. Sometimes I do this practice with my eyes open, taking in the beauty of the things of this world, filling up with the magnificence of light, color, fragrance and the vast variety of God’s Creation.

This practice can also be done as a circle dance. Stand in a circle and then face a partner. Look into your partners’ eyes and allow God’s light to shine through them to you. Each person that you face in this dance shines a particular and unique refraction of that one light. Fill up with that light as you chant Sova, sova, sova smachot (2X). Then as you chant Sova smachot et panecha the first time, take hands with your partner and slowly change places. The second time, turn to face your new partner and take in their unique light.

To hear the various parts of the chant, use the audio players. To download a part, right-click a note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

< To download the PDF file for this chant, click Filling Up (Sova) PDF. For the musical notation, click Filling Up Music.

Chants, Psalms

The Song of the Loon: V’laila

08/20/2014 Alia Meira

V’laila kayom ya-ir kachashaycha ka-orah

Night shines like day, darkness is as light. (Psalm 139:12)

Perek Shira is an ancient midrashic text that assigns a verse to each creature and hears the particular call of each aspect of Creation praising its Creator in song. One day, after vacationing on a lake in upstate New York, my beloved students, Wendy and Susan called me to ask, “Does the loon have a song in Perek Shira?” When I said, “no,” they suggested a text. I went immediately to the internet to listen to a recording of the loon’s call. Wendy described that call as mournful yearning. Susan said that although that was true, the mournful, yearning call of the loon led her to joy. Not many birds sing in the dark, but loons call to each other all through the night. The loons teach us to know the radiance of night, and to let even our darkness shine.

To hear the chant, use the audio player. To download the chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

The Song of the Loon

To download the PDF file for this chant, click The Song of the Loon PDF.

Chants, Isaiah

Come for Water: Hoy!

06/23/2014 Alia Meira

Hoy! Kol Tzamay l’chu lamayim

All who are thirsty, come for water! (Isaiah 55:1)

Our spiritual challenge is to first acknowledge our thirst for Love, wisdom, comfort, nurturance and pleasure…. And then to “come for water.” Isaiah tells us that even if you feel that you have no money or worth… still you can come and buy this wine and this milk. The wine represents the power of transformation and the milk is that which nurtures our deepest yearnings. He warns us not to waste our life’s energy trying to buy something that in the end won’t nurture us. We chant these words to acknowledge our thirst and then to move us towards the true “water” which is as intoxicating as wine and as nurturing as breast-milk.

This chant is a two-part round. To hear the chant, use the audio player. To download the chant, right-click the note and save (or download) the linked MP3 file.

Come for Water

For the musical notation, see The Magic of Hebrew Chant, page 307.