“HAVA NAGILA: Have a HAPPY New Year”

September 9, 2010

Thu, September 9, 2010

(with gratitude for giving me the idea and Nathanson’s side of the story to Fran Manushkin for her book, Come, Let Us be Joyful! The Story of Hava Nagila, UAHC Press, 2000)

Most people don’t know the meaning of the words they are singing and dancing to when they join in a hora at a Bar Mitzvah or a Jewish wedding. You may never go to Israel, or walk into a temple on High Holy days, or study Torah, but it is pretty hard to celebrate, as a Jew, without Hava Nagila. No rabbi is needed to tell people to get to their feet, and no explanation is necessary.  People don’t even know how, where, or when they learned to dance the hora.  Even if you don’t dance, you know to stand in a circle and clap your hands, and be happy for the people in the center of the circle.  Hava Nagila connects us to all the joyous moments of our lives in a magical way. You might say that Hava Nagila is the Jewish national anthem.  But, what do we really know about this song other than its power to bring Jews and non-Jews to their feet?  Paul Harvey would say, “And now the rest of the story.”  Or as God might start, “in the beginning…”

You can say that the story of Hava Nagila is as old as the Jewish people.  Thousands of years ago, we lived in the land of Israel. We planted vineyards and grew wheat and barley.  We built a beautiful Temple in Jerusalem.  But, more than once, conquering armies carried us into exile, and destroyed our homes and our homeland.  For thousands of years the fertile land, given to us by God, turned into swamps without us, and the barren land became a lonely desert. Wherever we wandered, we built synagogues and celebrated our holidays and life cycles, the joys and the sorrows, in communities determined for the Jewish people to do more than survive, but to thrive.  And every single day, all over the world, Jews prayed to return to Zion.

Fran Manushkin, in her children’s book Let Us Be Joyful!: The Story of Hava Nagila, starts about a hundred years ago, over Shabbat dinners in Russia and Poland and elsewhere.  Jewish men and women decided it was time to return home to Israel.  Miraculously, they gathered up featherbeds, and candlesticks, and memories, and families, and took a long and difficult journey to the Holy Land, with nothing but a dream and their favorite melodies to keep up their spirits along the way.  One of those songs was a little tune from what is today the Ukraine —  a tune without words or a name, a niggun, sung by the Sadigorer Hasidim.

When the Jews arrived, Jerusalem and the other cities they settled in were dirty and dusty.  But they continued to sing the tune, as they struggled to settle the Jewish homeland.  Soon they became familiar with figs and farming, donkeys and camels.  One day, one of the settlers was humming the tune without words.  Wandering around Israel was a song collector.  His name was Professor A.Z. Idelsohn, a cantor who had begun his career in Tzarist Russia.  He was there to collect Jewish songs, so they would not be forgotten.  He’d record songs on his phonograph, with the goal of creating an authentically Israeli musical heritage.

A group of Jews got together to sing for the professor. Idelsohn heard lots of songs, but one melody seized hold of him and refused to let go.  He transcribed it, in 1915, while a bandmaster in the Ottoman army during WWI.   He taught it to the boys in his Jerusalem music class.
As the story goes, one short, sandy-haired boy of eleven, named Moshe Nathanson, raised his hand and said, “The tune sounds lonely, I think it wants words.”  As any good teacher would do, Idelsohn told the boys to put words to the song and he would choose the best words.  Moshe left his Jerusalem classroom and sang the song over and over again through the streets of Jerusalem.  Moshe sang solos in his shul choir at age five, standing on a chair.  By age eight, he was the acting cantor.  That night by a flickering lamplight, he wrote down his words, inspired by lines from the prayer service, Psalm 118:24, “Zeh hayom asah Adonai, nagilah v’nismicha bo.”  (“This is the day the Lord has made, let us be happy and rejoice in it.”)  He called his parents to share them. They were so proud of his happy song.  What Jewish parent wouldn’t have been proud?  The next day, Moshe sang the song to his classmates, and Professor Idelsohn made Moshe’s words the class song.

But, the song didn’t stop there.  Soon it sprouted up like sunflowers in the Negev desert as his classmates took the song home and families started singing it.  People sang the song clearing swamps and as they picked oranges on kibbutz.   No one knows how or why, but very soon no wedding was complete without a hora to Hava Nagila.  In 1918, it was chosen for a concert to celebrate the British defeat of the Turks.  In May 1948, when the new state of Israel was officially born, people sang Hava Nagila from Tzfat to Tel Aviv, Ein Gedi to Mount Carmel.

Moshe Nathanson, that 12-year-old boy, lived a life that paralleled his lyrics. After serving in the Turkish army he emigrated to Canada and then to NY.  He had a wife and three children.  For 46 years he was a cantor in a large synagogue in NY with Rabbi Mordecai Kaplan.  He is remembered to this day as a happy person.  Even when he got hit by a car and had a broken leg, he composed songs from his hospital bed on his mandolin.  There is much to substantiate this story, but Moshe’s teacher A.Z. Idelsohn, the famous musicologist, took credit for the words and that is what you will find in the Encyclopedia Judaica and on many online sources.  Moshe wrote the beginning of Birkat Hamazon– Grace after Meals, which everyone has always thought was another old, Jewish folk tune.  Moshe died at the age of 81, after a long, fulfilling life of Jewish music – cantoring, composing, creating, teaching, compiling and publishing.

Moshe’s words live on in a song that came to be known not just by Jews.  Hava Nagila was Harry Belafonte’s regular closing number and a best-selling America hit in the 1950’s.  In the 1980’s and 1990’s you could hear Hava Nagila at weddings in Macedonia where there were no Jews, and as a techno hit in European dance clubs.  There are jazz, punk rock, and reggae versions, testifying to the incredible power of this song.

Hava Nagila may be the world’s happiest song.  A.Z. Idelsohn is the one who preserved the melody and saved it for the Jewish people.  And I think I believe that Moshe Nathanson wrote the words. So, why am I telling you this story on Rosh Hashanah?  Because, I want you to have a HAPPY New Year.  Isn’t that what we wish for one another?  We may have many greetings in our New Year’s cards, but we all wish each other a HAPPY New Year.  In Hebrew, we actually wish someone L’Shanah Tovah, a GOOD new year. But, in English, we have settled on happiness as the primary wish.  I want you to be HAPPY this 5771.  But, what does that mean, “to be happy?”

Even as we ask God, “zochreinu l’chaim,” renew us for life, how we live the life we are given is what life is really about.  It is certain that we will all be touched by health problems this year, our own or someone we know or love.  The news will be filled with war and discord, fighting and feuding in governments, and among nations and rivals. Hate and prejudice, injustice and crime, tragedy and devastation, earthquakes and plagues, fires and floods, are all guaranteed.  We can be pretty sure that this year’s life will be just like last year’s: people who are loved will die and hearts will shatter with grief, and someone will let you down, or betray you, or hurt your feelings, or cheat or disappoint you.  Pain and heartache will abound and struggles will challenge who you are and how you cope.

In one year, the same family can share great Jewish joy and know even greater sorrow.   In one week, a grandchild was born, just before her grandfather died.  Life will be unfair and unhappy and people will be unkind and insensitive. I promise you that. That is life, L’chaim!; welcome to it.

So, how do we have the chutzpah to wish one another a HAPPY New Year?  Because, we are Jews. No matter what the hardship we have had to face, the pogroms and ghettoes and camps and deportations, … no matter how many years we were denied our homeland, no matter what challenges we face in Israel today, or in the world, we thank God we are still here and we rejoice in every moment of life — praying that from time to time amid the tzuris and dreck, the troubles and trash, that life can bring us joy. So how do we find the happiness Moshe wanted us to feel with his lyrics in the New Year?
One Jewish answer could be EAT, PRAY, LOVE.

Here are three more:

1. BE CONTENT WITH YOUR LOT – Moshe didn’t care or fight about authorship of Hava Nagila’s lyrics with his teacher.  Life is too short to worry about who gets the credit.  In the Power of Nice (a great little book) we read,  “Whether we acknowledge it or not, most of us keep a running tally of what we have and compare it to what other people we know have.   My sister has a new baby, but I have a more active social life. My best friend makes more money, but I have a more interesting job.  We keep running tallies and mostly feel fine, as long as things stay roughly equal.”The authors advise, “Why not TOSS OUT THE SCORECARD and just live our lives without it – without somehow believing that someone else’s success means our failure.  Whenever you feel as if you’ve lost out relative to someone else, give them more.  If you’re burning with envy over someone else’s promotion, send her flowers…Why?  you ask. When you start acting from a place of abundance, you’ll start to feel that sense of abundance.” (Power of Nice, p. 32)  In the words of Ben Zoma, in Pirke Avot 4:1: “Who is rich?  The one who is happy with his lot.”
2. DO FOR OTHERS:
   A University of Michigan study found that older Americans who provided support to others –either through volunteer work or simply by being a good friend or neighbor –had a 60% lower rate of premature death than their unhelpful peers.” (Thaler/Koval, The Power of Nice, p. 4)  The key to being happy is creating happiness for others.  As the song says, “Make someone happy, make just one someone happy, and you will be happy too.” 

   There is happiness in knowing that you made something possible for others. There are so many ways to give your blessings and talents for the greater good.  There are hundreds of lives that are changed and saved here at TBS, every year, because you have chosen to belong and support this community.  Every time we do for others, we end up doing for ourselves. Moshe Nathanson may not be remembered personally for his contribution to Jewish joy, but his legacy is being lived at every wedding and Bar Mitzvah and Jewish celebration or gathering.  His daughter finds happiness in sharing her father’s story.  He found happiness in sharing his gifts with others.  Find happiness in doing for others.

3. LIVE WITH A HAPPY HEART:
   Remember the song “Don’t worry, be happy?”  One thing I love about Israel is that I feel so relaxed and at home when I am there.   People don’t walk around waiting for a war to start, or focusing on the tragedies that have befallen them.  They may bitterly disagree all week politically, religiously, socially, and many may mourn painful losses, but all of that increases the feeling that life is so precious and every joy must be celebrated. Jews, Muslims, Christians, Bahai, and anyone else who finds themselves in family, community, friendship, over coffee or food, or at a Sabbath tables knows that sharing what you have happily is what life is all about.  People invite you to weddings and into their homes at a moment’s notice.  Sharing happy occasions, especially over food or dance or music, breaks down barriers better than any peace talks.

I read an article this summer about a Jewish woman living as the only Jew in an Arab town in Israel.  She couldn’t believe how welcome she felt.  Her neighbors’ greatest complaint was that she didn’t make enough time to sit and have coffee and share community with them.  She learned from her Arab neighbors that her western-style life created a situation where she was too busy to be happy with the simple things in each day.  How often are you too busy or stressed to allow yourself to be happy?  Living with a happy heart can come when you find opportunities to rejoice, and make time for simple pleasures.  No matter how awful my week is, I always feel fantastic after the Saturday Bar or Bat Mitzvah service.  Sharing memorable happiness and joy just feels so good.

Our capacity for finding glimmers of happiness in the face of tragedy is how we are able to survive. God created us with an immense capacity for happiness.  Want to have a productive and successful year?  Then, make 5771 a year to Laugh and Smile, in spite of all that wants to drag you to a pain and pity party.

“Each morning at the Electrical Products of India company, the employees gather together to laugh.  Managers at the company told employment consultant Michael Kerr that the daily yuk session has increased productivity, improved employee relationships, and reduced stress-related illness, including headache and colds.  (Power of Nice, p.32)

A Yale University School of Management study found that cheerfulness and warmth spread far more quickly throughout an office than irritability and depression. The best way to spread these good feelings? With a big toothy smile, the most contagious gesture of all.”  (Power of Nice, p. 35)

“If Mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”  But, then the corollary is that when Mama is happy the happiness spreads. Sisterhood is giving all of us honey for a sweet New Year.  What a generous gesture.  And Brotherhood will serve platters of apples and honey for our kids this afternoon to wish them a sweet new year. The chief ingredient to a sweet New Year is a cheerful attitude.  Let your cup overflow with the positives that a happy outlook can bring. Pessimists and skeptics beware: “Happy Hour” has turned into “Happy Days are Here Again!”  So, I am suggesting that Hava Nagila…”Let’s be happy” be the new mantra for this new year.

Life is a tune without words. Only we can write the words of our tune that make life worth living.  You are the composer of your happiness.  You are the author of your future.

Rosh Hashanah or Hava Nagila?  I’m going with the “happy” song for my New Year.

SO, WHEN ALL ELSE FAILS SING! and if you can, Dance!

Happy New Year!