Human, Why Do You Sleep?: Piyutim For A Sacred Season

As summer comes to an end, Jews around the world are preparing to enter our most sacred season. We must prepare, we must practice, we must hone our attention and our intention over the course of days and weeks. Don’t be afraid of repetition. We need the practice. Don’t be afraid of biting off more than you can chew. This season has room for all of our work. Don’t be afraid of getting it all right this year. The High Holy Days, the time in the Jewish calendar designated for introspection and atonement, comes around every year.

Paytanim, composers of sacred poetry, have been composing powerful verse for centuries, with the aim of helping Jews ground our prayers and action. These piyutim (liturgical poetry) have been adopted primarily by Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula, North Africa and the Middle East and have been set to music. These poems live in our mouths, are animated by the breath of the generations that have sung their yearning and conviction into the words.

Join Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg, together with professor and oud player Yaron Klein, for an exploration of the piyutim (liturgical poetry) of the most sacred of seasons of the Jewish calendar. We will make meaning from the poetry, learn the basics of the maqam (melodic structures) of the melodies and sing these sacred songs together as we enter this holy season.

Rabbi Arielle Lekach-Rosenberg is a White, queer person of Ashkenazi descent and serves as the lead rabbi of Shir Tikvah, a justice-seeking, song-filled congregation in South Minneapolis. Arielle and her partner, Noam, are grateful to be part of the South Minneapolis community. She was ordained by the Rabbinical School of Hebrew College in June 2017. She has worked as a community organizer, Jewish educator and accordion busker. She spent her final two years of rabbinical school training as a full-time rabbinic fellow at B’nai Jeshurun in New York City, developing innovative initiatives for people of all ages and backgrounds to deepen their relationship with prayer, music and spiritual practice. She is inspired by courageous acts of music making, prophetic activism and transformative moments in communal life.

Rabbi Arielle is a classically trained singer, an accordion aficionado, and a student and performer of piyutim. She is a student of master paytan, Roni Ish-Ran in Jerusalem. She is a former Rising Song Fellow and a Clergy Leadership Incubator Fellow. She performs, leads tefilah and teaches around the country, and treasures chances to cultivate songful spaces in the Twin Cities.

Bo’u Nashir means “Come, Let’s Sing!”

Bo’u Nashir is a new series of Jewish communal music experiences in the Twin Cities that connects our diverse community through song and story, roots into Jewish musical traditions from across the diaspora, and celebrates local contemporary Jewish music.

This Making Music Happen Community Grant Initiative is made possible by a generous grant from the Pertzik Fund for Arts and Culture at JCC Association of North America.

This project was made possible in part with the support of Rimon: The Minnesota Jewish Arts Council, an initiative of the Minneapolis Jewish Federation.