The Healing, Heartbreaking Power of Music

My father, Rabbi Ezekiel N. Musleah, Congregation Mikveh Israel, 1975. Courtesy of the Special Collections Research Center, Temple University Libraries. Philadelphia, PA.

Music has always been my umbilical cord to my father. He carried our ancestry in his voice.

My father made many "formal" recordings to preserve our musical tradition. I tried never to lose an opportunity to record him in informal settings, especially when he would teach me the Baghdadi-Indian liturgy and songs, and when he would share his stories.

When my family moved to the United States in the summer of 1964, my father became the rabbi of Congregation Mikveh Israel, Philadelphia's historic Sephardic synagogue which dates to 1740. Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur were imminent, and he had very little time to absorb the Spanish and Portuguese melodies. I remember him sitting with a clunky reel-to-reel tape recorder listening over and over to the voice of Reverend Leon Elmaleh, the hazzan emeritus. 

In the fifteen years we spent at Mikveh Israel, I came to love the elegant and glorious Spanish and Portuguese High Holiday nusah. Later, I learned many of the Baghdadi-Indian melodies for Selihot, Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which pierce my heart with their direct and pleading eloquence.

Today, whenever I cook for Rosh Hashanah, I take out my old-school CD player and listen to my father’s High Holiday recordings according to the Calcutta tradition. It's a heartbreaking and healing ritual of my own making. As I prepare the apple maraba (jam), and the rest of the special foods for our seder yehi ratzon, each one symbolizing a wish for the new year, the scent of cloves, cinnamon, cardamom, and rosewater embrace me along with his unwavering voice. Often, there's no escaping the tears.

This will be the sixth Rosh Hashanah without my father, yet in the recordings, he is as present as he was when he was alive. His voice is strong, emanating from his soul and creating healing energy. It comforts me even when it breaks me.

“Kiddush for Rosh Hashanah,” he announces, and chants the series of biblical verses in the mystical ritual that precedes the blessing over the wine.

"Tahel Shanah u-virkhoteha!" he concludes, the drama in his voice waking up my own soul like the sound of the shofar. Let the new year begin with all its blessings! 

I cannot replicate my father's voice, but I carry its blessings with me always.