Wednesday, August 1, 2007

Little Neshamela Lyrics

One of my favorite Jewish songs.

Come with me little Neshamela,
Let me hold you in my hand, & we'll fly away you and I together,
To a place down on the land.

Come with me little Neshamala,
Don't shy away, do as you're told,
There's a little child, waiting to be born today,
You're to be his spark, his soul.

Chorus: But Dear Malachel No I don't want to go,
There is so much pain & evil, upon the earth below,
Let me stay her up in heaven, were its safe & I'll be pure,
Please don't make me go away, can't you see I'm so afraid.

Come with me little Neshamela,
Its time you faced, your destiny,
As we fly beneath the clouds now, I will show you,
There so much you can be.

Chorus:
Yes Dear Malachel I can see kedush over there,
Look someone's learning Torah there's another deep inĂ¹
I will stay here if you answer me, so I need to know,
You must promise me dear friend, I to will be like them.

Come with me, little Neshamela,
Oh it's a task that I must do,
As I tap you on the lip you will forget me,
You're on your own, its up to you.

Come with me, little Neshamela,
Let me hold you in my hand, & we'll fly away you and I together,
To a place above the land.

Chorus:
But Dear Malachel No, I don't want to go,
I'm not ready to go with you, were you take me I don't know,
Let me stay right were I am, there's so much more I need to do,
Please don't make me go away, can't you see I'm so afraid.

Come with me, little Neshamela,
I've only come to take you home,
There is no need to fear your destination,
Earn the place right by the throne

A Place right by the throne

Aaron Razel's Where I played last Summer

Where I played last Summer
Words and melody by Aaron Razel

Verse 1:
"So where did you play last summer?"
The masses ask me.
"We saw you there with a guitar, on the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea.
How did you get in? How did you get out?"
How was I taken out, to be exact…
It's already winter and it still chokes me up.

I performed with a friend in a park where children will no longer play…
I performed on the grass, how the youth danced… today only winds frolic between the splinters…
We danced together with families around the Shabbat table, homes filled with love and light…
All of this didn't touch/move*1 the bulldozer.

I passed by an empty house, outside sat a woman full of tears that don't understand…
I looked inside and noticed that the people (who packed up their things) managed to write something on the walls before they left.
And no one will ever read what they wrote, because the house was turned into a pile of bones, into a pile of ruins*2.
The writing is on the wall.

Chorus:
So don't ask me where I played last summer
And what I did there on the beaches of the Mediterranean Sea
Between the Lamentations and the Psalms, songs of faith and trust
We sang over and over again until the last moment, the verse and the chorus…

They destroyed the verse/house – the chorus was left*3
Here the chorus crawls between the ruins of concrete
They destroyed the verse/house – the vision was left
They destroyed the walls, the air was left where the window once was, where the dream once was, you can still look out and dream.


Verse 2:
I passed by fences and blockades with my guitar, I said to them (the guards)
"I'm just smuggling in some happy sounds to people going through hard times."
And I played so much that I busted my strings and I don't have the strength, until today, to put new ones on…
And you can play, even when the strings get ripped, if you can rip people from their homes…
Our heart is still ripped to shreds.

I came to a group of teens, I brought them drums and sweets, it was late…
They didn't want anything, just sat around me but they weren't really there, trying hard not to look at tomorrow
Because their home was packed up and their parents had already left, so where does that put them in the world?
I returned to my wife, who was waiting in the car, and we drove to Shirat HaYam*4.

Chorus:
So if already you asked where I played last summer,
I was there on the beaches of the Meditarranean Sea
Between the lamentations and the Psalms, songs of faith and trust
We sang over and over again until the last moment, the verse and the chorus…

They destroyed the verse/house – the chorus was left*3
Here the chorus crawls between the ruins of concrete
They destroyed the verse/house – the vision was left
They destroyed the walls, the air was left where the window once was, where the dream once was, you can still look out and dream.

Verse 3:
But yesterday I saw how they're building a new park right next to my house, right in front of my eyes
And when I played a quiet song for the expellees the next day, they said "give us something upbeat, we wanna dance til the heavens!"
The simple faith that all comes from His hand, gives us the joy…
How can you be sad when you look and see how Jerusalem is growing and being built!


Translation notes:

*1 = didn't "reegesh" – didn't emotionally move – the bulldozer
*2 = here he quoted the Bible, using the words of the prophets to describe mass destruction
*3 = the word in Hebrew "bayit" means both home/house, as well as verse. He's punning that.
*4 = the name of one of the communities of Gush Katif. It means "the Song of the Sea" and is a reference to the Song the Jews sang after crossing the Red Sea

Aaron Razel's A New Path

A New Path


Verse 1:

The only thing I remember is that I found myself going down the steps of some alley in Tsfat.
A person invited me to stay at his house and I never thought that already the next day
I'd be hunched over a shtender learning gemara with Yehoshua trying to understand the pshat.
I open the door and in front of me stands the Rosh Yeshiva, what grace, what a glance

"I've always had a lot of love inside of me" I say

"but our generation could use a little reverence."
Instead of going to India I came here – I'm looking for refuge from my ego.
Here too you can walk around in a sharwal*1 and see how time passes so slowly.

Chorus:

I didn't know what is pulling me and where it all leads
I felt light, that something good is beginning, something out of the ordinary
Like a caterpillar getting its wings how can I explain the feeling?
Maybe this is what Rabbi Nachman meant when he said:

"When I walk down a new path that no man has ever walked down before
Even though it is an ancient path, it is completely new."

Verse 2:

Chavruta before netz, go to mikvah at Sanz after having coffee
Daven netz at Abuhav*2 a guy with a turban hands out cookies and tea
And from there between the alleys and the fog to the yeshiva, these are the paths of Nehardea*3
And oh how we sang 40 times "lernen Torah iz beser den Olam Haba
Olam Haba iz a gutter zach, lernen Torah iz der best zach…"

To learn Torah takes self-sacrifice, you have to make it penetrate into your heart
"Torah's like a woman," the Rabbi said "if you leave her for one day, she'll be offended for two."
This is the gym of the Jewish mind, we scream it at the top of our lungs
I suddenly remember university – once I forgot to whisper, what a glare I got from the librarians…

Chorus:

I didn't know what is pulling me and where it all leads
I felt light, that something good is beginning, something out of the ordinary
Like a caterpillar getting its wings how can I explain the feeling?
Maybe this is what Rabbi Nachman meant when he said:

"When I walk down a new path that no man has ever walked down before
Even though it is an ancient path, it is completely new."

Verse 3

In the afternoon they take me to an old house, Eliyahu is on the sofa
Holding a flute in his hand, he's not playing, playing music for him is like prophecy
No coercion, no decision, the key word here in Tsfat, please be acquainted with the word "flow."
But when it comes he throws you straight into the Chamber of Melody.

All of me is enchanted after years of courses and cafeterias
The culture of "another degree and another achievement" it made me almost hysterical
Eliyahu grabbed me in the yard just as he was tying his donkey to the entrance
"put aside everything you learned over there" he said "discover the wellspring that's within."

And what did I learn there? Always try to be happy
"from where will my help come?"*4 this is not a question, to be "nothing/from where"*5 is not a simple task*6
"There is no despair" yelled our Rabbi and I too into the canyon
And my own voice answered me and I understood to what extent I am not alone…

Translation notes:

*1 = yoga pants (in hebrew)
*2 = an ancient mystical (and beautiful) synagogue in Tsfat.
*3 = a reference to one of the 3 major yeshivot in Babylon. I also think the name means "the river of knowledge."
*4 = verse from Psalms
*5 = pun on the word "ayin" which can mean 2 things (when spelled with an alef) either 1. where or 2. nothingness.
*6 = this is the Baal Shem Tov's exegetic interpretation of this verse of Psalms.

Aaron Razel's Inner Light

Inner Light

A child who crawls
Like a youth that prays
Like me, yearns for closeness to G-d

A child who cries
Like a youth who waits
Like me, yearns for closeness to the Creator

He still isn't walking, still not speaking, tries to hold the key
That slips between his fingers that are wet with milk

The inner light in his eyes
All his life is ahead of him
He yearns for the candle that used to burn above his head*1.

A child who laughs
A youth who controls himself*2
I've caught the key – it slips away again.

The child sits up
The youth starts to calculate
And I've been yearning for the Teshuva of the heart for a long time

And like the child who tries to catch but doesn't succeed
Ratzo va'shav*3 – we come closer and we grow farther

To the inner and hidden light
Life between the forbidden and the permitted
I yearn for the simple and good laugh.

Now in my arms
A few more years on my shoulders
He sits calmly on my lap and smiles

He's living the now
I recognize my face in his
He lights the inner parts of my soul
With the light of his smiles

And like the child who's soothed by sitting on his father's lap
Our soul doesn't get soothed til we get there*4

The world's inner light
Life He gave to us all
The G-d who yearns for Man


Translation notes:

*1= reference to the Midrash about the life of a fetus. It is described as sitting inside the womb with an angel, learning Torah by the light of a candle over his head.

*2= "mit'apek"

*3= the Kabbalistic term for the tension within relationship with G-d. We cannot exist on the level of ecstatic bliss constantly (just as a person is not capable of running endlessly) yet we cannot be torpid either. There is the ecstatic state and then a necessary regression to "rest," to the mundane and then a return to the extraordinary.

*4= to heaven

Aaron Razel's Connected to You

Connected

I want to be connected
To be connected to you
I want to be connected to you HaShem
I want to be connected to you HaShem

As long as I'm alive and breathing.

Want to be connected to my home and my children
Want to be connected to the sound of my footsteps
Want to be connected to my prayers and tears and words
Want to be connected to my land

Connected to my soul that is part of you
Connected to my body that will yet return to the earth
Want to be connected to my heart that pumps joy inside of me
Endlessly beat after beat

I want to be connected
To be connected to you
I want to be connected to you HaShem
I want to be connected to you HaShem

As long as I'm alive and breathing.

Want to be connected to the piercing thorns
Just like I'm connected to the blossoming flowers
Want to be connected to the voices of my children that mix with
The flow of the chilly spring waters

Connected to every bite I take from the fruit that You give me
Want to be connected to every drop of water that I drink
Want to be connected to the man that's never heard of You
And to the man that prays to You and weeps and prays and weeps

Want to be connected when my little son calls me "father"
And when my mother asks me "where were you my son?"
Want to be connected to the moment that they destroyed Your house
And to the moment that you asked me "where are you?*1"
Where are you? Where are you?

Here I am*2, here I am, here I am Father, Here I am.


Want to be connected to you when I'm surrounded by a noisy crowd
When I'm standing and don't know why and where and when
Want to be connected to the man in the street who's asking
For a penny or two
But really what he's asking for is closeness
And you wanted him to specifically stop me here in this alley

Want to be connected to the window that was left open
To the brave man that was carried off by the wind
Connected to the tears that flowed from the eyes of my forefathers
And to the joy of the one who will follow after me

So don't cut me off*3
I want to be connected to You HaShem

And if You hug me
I want to stay connected to You

Want to be connected to You.


Translation notes:

*1 = he uses the word "ayeka" which is how G-d asked a hiding Adam where he is, in order to engage him in discussion about the fruit. Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Liadi also says that one must ask himself this question always. It is not a geographical question but a spiritual one. "Where are you at? On which rung on the ladder of spiritual growth?" Aaron is certainly using this context for the word.

*2 = he uses the word "Hineni" – the answer the Bible puts in the mouths of all of its heroes (Abraham, Isaac etc etc) when they accept the challenge before them.

*3 = he uses the word "tenatek" which means to cut off or if we put it differently - to disengage. This is a reference (response?) to the Hitnatkut/Disengagement of 2005.