Debbie Friedman

CHRIST IN WINTER: Reflections on Faith For the Years of Winter…

If you were asked to name a Jewish folk singer from Minnesota who changed the face of the musical landscape, you’d say Bob Dylan, and you’d be right. You would also be right if you said Debbie Friedman.

In response to the turmoil of the 1960s, worship, both Jewish and Christian, began to change to try to speak the language of a new time. When we started doing “contemporary” worship at The Wesley Foundation [Methodist Campus Ministry] at IL State U in 1967, we turned to the folk genre for our music. So did youth camps. All summer campers in the 1960s, Christian or secular or Jewish, sang many of the same songs, like “This Land Is Your Land,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Turn, Turn, Turn.” We probably even sang some of the same religious songs, like “Michael, Row the Boat Ashore.”

Debbie Friedman grew up in that milieu. She began to compose and sing at Jewish camps where she counseled as a teen, specifically the camp at Oconomowoc, WI. She wrote with those young people in mind, music they could sing around a camp fire, words that would reach their hopeful but uncertain lives. My friend Ben Friedman, no relation to Debbie, remembers singing those songs in youth camps in OH himself. Her first album, “Sing Unto God,” was released almost forty years ago, when she was only 20. She combined American folk music with traditional Jewish worship music in a blend of music and words that touches the soul. She composed almost the entire canon of contemporary Jewish worship music without being able to read or write musical notation.

Ben referenced her after my CIW on healing because of her “Mi Sh’beirakh,” her setting of the traditional prayer for healing. It is a beautiful piece, both in words and music. It reminds me of Natalie Sleeth’s “Hymn of Promise.” Debbie and Natalie both wrote out of their own struggles for spiritual healing in the midst of physical brokenness. Debbie wrote as a Jew and Natalie as a Christian, but any Jew or any Christian can sing either song and be blessed.

Debbie died January 9. She had struggled with MS for many years. She was a month short of 60.Yesterday the seven synagogues of Cleveland joined in a tribute to Debbie Friedman, the voice of contemporary Jewish worship music. I’m sure all the Reform and Conservative congregations in the country, and even some of the Orthodox, will honor her in some way. Hebrew Union College has already decided to name its School of Sacred Music for her. I know about the Cleveland tribute because I once helped do a wedding for Ben Friedman at one of those temples in Cleveland.

In Debbie’s words: “Remember, what emerges from our painful challenges will come our healing.”

Here is a link to “Mi Sh’beirakh.” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qXm3lX19nQg

Debbie Friedman’s music will be sung in Jewish worship for a long time. I hope it will be sung in Christian worship, too.

JRMcF

{I also write the fictional “Periwinkle Chronicles” blog. One needs a rather strange sense of humor to enjoy it, but occasionally it is slightly funny. It is at http://periwinklechronicles.blogspot.com/}

(If you would prefer to receive either “Christ In Winter” or “Periwinkle Chronicles” via email, just let me know at jmcfarland1721@charter.net, and I’ll put you on the email