All Breathing Life Adores Your Name

Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi
Michael L. Kagan, editor

The Master’s Voice
Michael L. Kagan

There is a wonderful function available on Skype that allows one party to a video-call see the computer screen of the other.  This is how Reb Zalman and I worked putting the final touches to the manuscript and finishing off the personal introduction notes to each poem. He dictated and I typed, and he would watch my screen while I sat in Jerusalem and he sat in Boulder.  And then during one working session I asked him to read one of the poems, or maybe he just started reading it spontaneously, I don’t remember, and the idea of including an audio dimension to the work was born.  It is one thing to read the words of these beautifully translated soul prayers it is another to hear Reb Zalman himself recite and sing them.

These recordings were not done in the studio under perfect conditions with sophisticated microphones and complicated mixers.  They were made over Skype using a Skype recorder and edited using a simple audio editor.  The intention is not to take away the centrality of the written word but rather to add the voice of the Master for the sake of posterity and inspiration.  So the recordings are as they are.  Two of them (Niggun of the Ba’al Shem Tov and Words of Reb Yosef Yitzhak to the Melody of Reb Mikheleh) were copied from a pre-existing disk – At the Rebbe’s Table Vol 2*.   Two more were taken from Your Glory Shines**, a collection of traditional and original songs designed to help in the process of T’shuva – encountering God in the mood of the High Holidays.  These two are: Ana B’Khoach sung to the arousing melody of the Rhizhiner Rebbe; and We are as Clay which includes a short introduction on how to face the Gates of Turning. 

Then there is the finale.  In the text we end, as on all occasions in Jewish prayer, with the Kaddish – the Sanctification of the Holy Name.  But I decided that I wanted to leave the reader/listener with something that I consider even greater – the sound of the Shofar – the holy ram’s horn.  But not just any Shofar and not just the traditional notes heard on Rosh Hashannah but something more, so much more – a primordial sound that reaches beyond the structure, beyond the self, beyond all else to the very gates, nay, the Throne itself.  Read the poem Abba, Abba, Have Pity then listen to the sounds that Reb Zalman, together with Paul Horn on the flute, manages to squeeze out of this morphogenetic instrument that resonates with the sound of the beginning and end of time***.

The Master’s Voice: Contents

1. Anim Zmirot
2. Adon Olam
3. Ana B’Khoach
4. Yedid Nefesh
5. Tishrey
6. Selichah
7. Abba, Abba
8. El Melekh Yoshev
9. We are as Clay
10. Niggun of the Ba’al Shem Tov
11. Prayer of a Monist
12. Words of Reb Yosef Yitzhak
13. Der Geyer – Lilith
14. Der Geyer – The Ballad
15. Der Geyer – Reb Shneur Zalman
16. Psalm 27
17. Psalm 91
18. Psalm 104
19. Psalm 139
20. Shofar and Horn

 

ISBN 978-1-935604-29-7. Paper $18.95. 212 pages
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