Shalom my friends, Eliana Light here. Welcome to the Light Lab Podcast! This is our place to play with prayer and hold the gems of our liturgy to the light and see what shines out. And today we're bringing a really great interview with a partner in that work. Musician, educator, playful pray-er extraordinaire, Billy Jonas. I brought in Billy to co-lead Sunday morning T'fillah prayer and liturgy experience for our Light Lab T'fillah Teacher Fellows. We had our retreat in June this summer, and Billy and I, we, I've learned from him in so many different contexts. And you'll hear how much of an impact Billy and Billy's music has had on me in my life, and I'm so grateful. But we'd never worked on building a prayer service or prayer gathering, like we did. And it was so incredible to work with him. Such an intentional prayer leader, we talked a lot about transitions, and we also got to experiment. There were some curtains involved. You'll get a little bit of that backstory in this interview, but that's really what we've been up to this summer has been the first ever Light Lab T'fillah Teachers Fellowship, I also was able to teach about T'fillah at Ramah Darom for their staff week, at the New CAJE Jewish education conference, and coming up later this summer at Let My People Sing, which is super exciting. And there will be more, more traveling, more tefillah-sophizing, so much more. But for now, I want to tell you about our amazing guest, Billy Jonas. Billy Jonas is bridging divides through rhythm and song to heal rifts within ourselves, our families, our communities and the world. Billy has captivated audiences worldwide since 1987, using voice, guitar and industrial repercussion instruments made from found objects. My favorite is this big I don't know if it's an oil drum. This big blue canister that rolls on wheels. We'll share some videos of course where you can see Billy in action. He tours with the Billy Jonas band and solo and works with the Muslim Christian Jewish super trio Abraham Kam. When home Billy is a member of the sacred music team at Congregation Beth HaTephila in Asheville, North Carolina. From the White House to the Middle East and beyond, each concert is a soul spelunking, heart healing, joy filled journey and it is my joy and honor to bring you my interview slash conversation with the one and only Billy Jonas.
Shalom, Billy, welcome to the Light Lab Podcast!
What a privilege. Thank you for inviting me.
Oh my gosh, it's so amazing to see your face and be here because we were just together a couple of days ago. Dear listeners, Billy and I led a Sunday morning Shacharit experience for the Light Lab T'fillah Teacher fellows and gosh, I had I was saying this before we started recording I had such a great time working with you. I feel like I learned so much and was challenged and all of these really productive and beautiful ways. And I love that we got a little time to debrief that experience for an audience and also get to ask you some questions about your journey.
I'm looking forward to it. You know for some of those people. It was way outside of their comfort zone and it was less Shacharit than it was Shock-arit. You were just shocked. But that's what we should call it you know, like Shock-arit service.
Just did you just come up with that?
Yes. Just now as you were talking.
Yes.
Shock-arit. And, and I totally enjoyed it. I got to try out ideas that I've been brewing on for a long time and refine ideas I tried at Hava Nashira, and at Song Leader Bootcamp and various places, try them in in new ways and I just felt great about it. Even the parts that were a little clunky and we'll talk about that because you got to have a flaw in your blankets so the soul can escape right? So we want to share the good and the the opportunities with our listeners.
Oh my gosh, a flaw in the blankets so the soul can escape. Where's that from?
Oh it's a Navajo saying, you know, you never want to wait, you're doing a weaving you don't want to complete completed completely, because then you lock whatever thoughts and intentions into there. And if there were any misguided thoughts or intentions, they have no way to get out. So it's a way of justifying imperfection and celebrating it and elevating it. And I love doing that. And I think you and I talked about that Passover Seder I did once where we just scripted the whole thing, and I was so proud of it. And then it couldn't breathe. It had room to just a little bit of, of wobble and places for people to ask questions that weren't scripted, you know, like, okay, ask a question it was. So we all have to find that balance, right. And so you don't want to make your whole blanket like, but you want to have some good to have opportunity.
So what that reminds me of, and I think this is kind of like what it was working together is everything that we said just kind of zipped and zagged and built on each other. Your friend of mine, Rabbi Joe Black, has this beautiful song Leave A Little Bit Undone.
Yes!
About the idea of right kind of leaving room for that on purpose. And understanding that nothing we do ever can really be complete, if that's the way that we that we set it up. So that's beautiful.
Yup! Yeah. Thank you for reminding me that. Absolutely. So Navajo wisdom, it's a Jewish wisdom. It's probably a everybody wisdom, but it comes in, in small sacred packages here and there that aren't always explicit or part of the regular consciousness. And you reminded me thing you said about the prayer book being a book of failures, because every attempt to describe the ineffable and words is doomed to failure or blessed to failure, however you want to say it. And so here we have this very incomplete attempt to express in the depths of our heart and the heights of our spiritual yearnings and everything. And it's inevitably going to fall short. And we have to find a way to celebrate that.
Amen. Yeah, I, I told you this, though, some of this is reiterating. So maybe I should stop saying I told you this, for the benefit of our listeners. But even just calling what we're doing a lab has helped me let go of some of that sense of control and perfectionism and to say, right in the lab, if you test the hypothesis, and the result is that the hypothesis has been proven incorrect, you have still succeeded.
Haha, that's right. I love that.
You have still succeeded. So I kind of want to take our listeners on a journey through what our goals were, because I wanted to start with the curtains. But- But first, I wanted to start with what were we attempting to do? And some of the more out of the box stuff that we tried where that impulse came from? Because I don't think it was, we're going to try something wacky just to be wacky.
No.
Oh, man. I really appreciate that.
Yeah, wacky just for wacky's sake. I mean, there's a place for that, but that was never part of it. So we but we were a little wacky in terms of what people might have expected normally. The curtains. Remember, Snidely Whiplash from what is the moose and squirrel cartoon?
Well, Dudley Do-Right of Rocky and Bullwinkle?
Yeah, Kim Bullwinkle, and Snidely Whiplash, it says gosh it was foiled again, or curitains, it's curtains for you. I was thinking about that with the curtains because it has nothing to do with our reasoning for the curtains. But every time we wrote curtains, or outline, I was thinking curtains, it's curtains. So the curtains were like veils, and the veils were opportunities to wipe away the impediments between us, and ourselves, our deep selves are our divine selves, and we all have armor, we all have scales in front of us, we all have sort of like things that are separating us from that divine nature. And so we manifested, we manifested a manifestation of that. And so at, at the, let me back up dear listeners, every service has an architecture. Newsflash, many of you know that. But some of you may have been like me, when I was first thinking deeply about services. And you may have been thinking, why does services feel like I'm on a train and we're just passing all these little towns you know, we go by the Barchu and we go by the Shema or we go by the V’ahavta, and we go by the Mi Chamocha and the Hashkiveinu, you know, and we go by - they just like flash by, and then we're at the end. And it's the oneg or whatever it's like. That's where we were headed. And I'm like, no, no, no, no. These are like acupuncture points. These are like sacred places. And if you invest in yourself in them, they take you on a transcendent journey. And so the architecture of the service, I've always assumed and embrace this idea that it is, it's an opportunity for a transcendent journey. And I wanted to make that explicit for our leaders, even if they never use a curtain to go through at each of the junctures in that architecture. So, so we set up a curtain for coming into the space, people walked in, and there was another curtain at the juncture between the beginning and the Barchu, and we're ready to pray now. This is our call to prayer, come through this veil, and all the participants stood up, walked in a big, like butterfly wing shape around behind this curtain and then emerged through it back into their seats. And then we had another one at the Amidah. Right? Adonai sefatai tiftach, where we're asking ourselves to be conduits, we're asking God to, to allow us to let go of all this armor, so that God can speak through us so that we are literally conduits to the Divine. And we came through the veil again, we we had everybody stand up, walk around and come through, then where did we do the next one? Do you remember?
At the end of the Amidah, so coming out of Oseh Shalom, and then we did another one, at the very end of the service. After Aleinu.
As we emerged back into our more mundane or less sacred time, selves. It's all one right? But sometimes we mark and more differently. Anyway, that's what we did. We came through the veils, and we came through these curtains and really literally had curtains. They were on movable rods and rods were curved. So we could stand there, hold them up, and the tops of them were, you know, 10 feet in the air. And it was beautiful. Just watching people come through them.
These perfect sticks. Because listeners, when Billy started talking about the curtains, I, I did not know what what that meant. And I was excited. And you were almost it's so funny at every step. You were like, and if it's too out there, like just let me know, we don't have to do it. And it's like, no, I want to do it. I'm so excited to see what this is. So these gauzy curtains that were on these giant sticks, made it very easy to pick up and put down. They were very gauzy, invited people through them. And part of our goal, I think one of our many goals, or at least one of my many goals was to give the fellows an experience of T'fillah that is incredibly intentional, because one of the things we talk about is choice. That all along the journey from the Siddur becoming what it is to the way that we use it is a choice. People decided which lines from Tanakh to use in their prayer, people decided which pieces of liturgy were going to be in the morning, in the afternoon. And in the evening, people decided the architecture of the service based on human needs, right, there's a difference between what we need in the morning and what we need in the afternoon, and what we need in the evening. And there's all of this wisdom in there. And somebody prayed all of those prayers for the first time as a response to the universe. And people decided to bow, and to take three steps back and three steps forward. And when you are leading or creating a T'fillah experience, you are also making a whole number of choices. And we attempted to make choices that would help us not just say a thing, but to embody it and to feel it and to do it, knowing that the liturgy is a vessel for our prayer, but it is not the prayer itself. And so the curtains to me, were a way of concretizing a feeling of transition. By using our bodies and physically transitioning through something. And I, I was thinking of this when we did our debrief that you know, my friend, friend of the pod, poet Alexander Nemser, says that poetry is an attempt to put into words that which can never be put into words. And that ritual is like physical poetry, if that makes sense. I think Casper Ter Kuile in The Power of Ritual, either him or someone he quotes says that the point of a ritual is to take you from one state to a different state, not like North Carolina and Georgia, a state that you crossed this evening, but one one way of being to another way of being. And that we could just say out loud. All right, we're transitioning now between between communal prayer and personal prayer.
Yeah.
But then like, what is the whole thing for?
That's like having a Disney movie where you say, when you do it, like it's Bertold Brecht, and you say, And now, the hero will die. And then 20 minutes later, you know, like, let's not give it all away. And let's, let's let there be some mystery, recovery and some participation, creative pursuit, participation by those saying, what are they doing? What are they building in there? And then why did we just do that? I think it becomes co creative, then.
It does become co creative. And something that I'm that I've been rolling around in my head is, how much of it should we leave mysterious and how much of it is it to say, as we go through these curtains, let's feel a sense of transition, because it was very interesting to hear from the participants, the fellows, what they thought the curtains were for. And one of my kind of phrases that I say a lot in teaching is making the implicit explicit that we can think, Oh, the Ahavah Rabah about unconditional love. But it's one, it's a different thing to say, as we're leading a T'fillah, can you invite a feeling of unconditional love into your heart. Because then that just makes it more likely, it makes it more likely that a participant will actually do the thing that the T'fillah is inviting us to do? Because we don't we often don't see it as active. So yeah, I'm wondering about that balance between between mystery and invitation.
You know, in songwriting, we talk about showing versus telling, which is the same thing. And you can have a song this is I feel so sad today. I hope I feel glad tomorrow. And, or you can have as song, a lyric that says, flies in the kitchen, I can see 'em buzzing. And I ain't done nothing since I woke up today. How the heck can a person wake up in the morning, come home in the evening and have nothing to say, you know, make me an angel that flash Montgomery, talk about showing. Like, are you in that kitchen with the flies buzzing? Aha. Right there? And can you feel the hair stand up on your arms, as you have that realization of your resonance, maybe with some portion of that picture or not, you know. And so that's the magic that a songwriter is hoping their song will will create to show someone a mirror, that's, that's showing them a larger reflection of themselves than a normal mirror like a deep, deep, mythic reflection. And so same thing with what we're doing. We're inviting people to have an embodied experience, to not to say, Oh, and this is the perfect transition, like what's happening? The hair standing up on my arms. This is beautiful. Feel that on my skin. Oh, right. It's time for that part. Where was I before you know it just to go through all that the process of discovery, then it makes it there's, as opposed to being told what to do. And you reminded me of something really important, which is humor and jokes. The joke, a joke works, some jokes work, many work, when there is a blip in your consciousness. And one person says one thing, and you suddenly get that it means something else. And then air comes in, and you burst out with this eruption, ha ha ha, and you show your teeth, which is a sign of aggression, right? And you laugh. And, and, and you're playing with that edge, that limbic place of like, Am I safe? Because suddenly, your understanding has shifted, and it doesn't feel quite as safe. But you're held in this space with other people all having this experience or, you know, wherever you're listening, so you're playing with the edge of, I think I'm safe here. Whoa, whole new understanding. It's that same thing and that's actually peripherally why I like to use humor so much in, in songwriting, and in in my iyunim, and even in my kavannot, because they open people up, and they've they create that vibration inside where you're going between I thought I knew where we're going, Oh, we're going someplace else. You know, that's only slightly related, but that that opportunity for shifting realms. That's what it's about. Yeah, showing versus telling, shifting realms new understandings, flipping your cognitive scripts so that you open to something new.
Yes, I love thinking about about the use of humor in that way, because another way of saying that, I think is that laughter is the release of tension, right that you create a joke is creating a tension. And then it resolves in a different way than you expected it to resolve. And that kind of the laughter releases that tension that has built up. And we talked about this a lot in the planning that what we're asking people to do in T'fillah is actually incredibly vulnerable. And to do that, you need to feel like you're in, like, isn't it All State? You're in good hands? Right? You want to feel like you're in good hands. And laughter and that release of tension is, it's a softening mechanism, right? It's in the in the way that we might invite people into a deep breath, perhaps, laughter or playfulness does the same thing. Because I find that a lot. I don't think I'm actually very funny. In my everyday life, like, I wouldn't consider myself a comedian at all. But there's a lot of laughter in T'fillah that I lead, and I love that just creating, creating that release of tension that allows people Ah, right, to relax into it a little more and to feel like it's not, it's not so serious.
I think sometimes people laugh in your presence, because they're having so many aha moments, one tumbling over each other. You know, when you were talking about, we, we eat our ideas, we you know, we burn our ideas, we we were our ideas, you know, just talking about the manifestation in ritual of ideas. And you could see that there was a ripple through the room. Oh, and they're just sort of getting it in grokking it in a whole new way. And there was laughter and giggling and and that was delightful to witness. Yeah.
Yeah, cuz cuz saying something like, and we light our ideas on fire is an absurd thing to say on its face. But I, to give a little context. I said this once the Talmud Torah, the Hebrew School at Beth El, where I am a couple, a couple of times in the month, they always start Sunday morning with Havdalah, and I was talking with the kids about what Havdalah is attempting to do, or I will talk about ritual moving us from one state to another state, we could just say, Shabbat is over, we're, we're going to miss it. We hope it's a great week, and then I'll go home. But it's not enough to do that. Right? We, we don't just talk about our ideas, we drink our ideas, and we eat our ideas, and we smell our ideas, we move our ideas, I like we wear our ideas. I haven't even said that and we let our ideas on fire. And that's right ritual is an attempt to concretize the ineffable, to help us move from one from one state to another state.
As you said to concretize the transitions.
And transitions are a big deal. And I don't, I don't think I have had met a practitioner who cared as much about transitions in T'fillah, as I did until I started working with you. Because like you made it very clear that you know, we were going to plan and write out every transition between Tefillot, is taking them on a journey and that it was not just going to be, you know, prayer, prayer, prayer prayer, that is the stuff in between that carries us through. And that is so important to me. And it makes intentional T'fillah more of a time commitment to plan. I mean, we worked on this a very long time. We had many meetings, some in person and some over Zoom. And I know like when I talk when I'm working with congregations and clergy, and I asked them how they plan for Friday night, right? And the cantor puts the songs they're going to do, and the rabbi puts where they're going to put a sermon, or a kavanah, an intention. And sometimes they're connected, but often they're not. And that's part of why it often feels like a stop stop stop. And again, I don't I don't blame them for this. I think clergy have a lot of different jobs. And when there are people in the hospital to visit and meetings to run, and sermons to write it's and you know, Bar mitzvah kids to teach. It's hard to find the time to do that intentionally because I don't know if I could lead a service every week that I had to meet five hours and work five hours on. But in the opportunities to do it, that's where so much of the magic happens I think.
I agree. And part of it is the template that we use, I feel that's super important. And so if there's clergy listening, going, Yeah, you hippies, we, we don't have time for that. It's exactly that list that, that Eliana, just the litany of of our responsibilities, we got time, just to go through it and make sure that it all makes sense. We haven't missed anything. But to actually, you know, it's a lot. So the template that I'm talking about, is, here's a prayer, here's a transition, here's a prayer, there's a transition. So it's just having the awareness that there has to be a way to get from one to the other. And to make it intentional, because you can do have it there and not have to be intentional about it. But to have that awareness and have that template, and then take a little time. So if you're listening, and you have not enough time, remember, Eliana and I have never built a service before. So it took us a while to build rapport about that. But you folks out there listening, many of you do have rapport with your co leaders, or you're just doing it on your own. So it's just up to you. So it won't take you five hours theoretically, or at least not after the first time. But then the second value of the transition is that it takes the clunkiness out of the ritual and clunkiness, to me is speed bumps. It's it's the places where people are taken out of the moment and into thinking about the texts they didn't answer that day and stuff like that. And when there's a flow with transitions that have integrity, we have more opportunity to stay present. That's my feeling. There's a danger to get too scripted, as I talked about when we first started. So you just got to find that balance so that it breeds. And part of that balance, is just having the awareness and allowing spontaneous things to come in. For instance, we had crafted every transition, and an each thing that we were going to do because we had very limited time. And then I said to people, all right, we're going to do an inventory, which was supposed to only be like a one minute thing and inventory of what you're feeling. And it ended up being a 10 minute thing. Because I realized, Oh, this is a time, a sensory inventory, where we can expand out to seven levels that kind of a metta meditation, metta metta, where you're, you know, first your inventory, how you're feeling, then how does it feel between you and the person next to you? Then the third level, how does it feel out to the perimeter of the room? Fourth, how does it feel outside to the perimeters of this neighborhood? Five, out to the perimeter of the city? Six out to the perimeter of the buyer region? Seven, out to the perimeter of the whole universe, and then coming back home and tapping. And when we got to level number six, the whole by region, I took people on a little journey up the mountain from the Piedmont to the mountains of North Carolina. And I said and you're passing a sign, and that sign tells you this is a town called Old Fort, it's right at the foot of the mountain. And if you have a roll of masking tape, you can change the Oh fort to an A. And then you can keep going on your journey. And, you know, that's all it took for people to understand. This, this ritual is gonna breathe. So.
Can I tell you that when you said when you did that during during the actual service, and I don't think you clarified the oh and for it because you said and you can change the Oh to an A and I thought, Olfort? Alfort?
Oh, no.
I got it. I got it once people started laughing. But it took me a moment. Al? What's what's so funny about Alfort? But it was so brilliant. And it's what people needed. And and the fellows connected it to an exercise that we did an experience we did the day before over Shabbat where we did a blessing scavenger hunt and invited people to go even just around the perimeter of the synagogue, and notice the diversity and the beauty in the nature that we are a part of and that surrounds us. And so taking people on that journey in our consciousness, I think was very important, right? There are plenty of places where we didn't end up doing the thing that we said we were going to do, but I only feel comfortable improvising if I have a good plan. Yeah, once I have a good plan, I feel way more comfortable. You got to have a script to go off script. And I wanted to share also what you said about the the kind of template, that a transition can be very short.
Oh yeah.
You know, this is something that comes up in the work a lot and the fellows who are all teachers of T'fillah we're talking about it too. We might use a transition to dig very deeply into a particular T'fillah and explore it and invite ourselves into it. it. And then the next time we come across that T'fillah, we can do a little, boop, a little touch just a little sprinkling. It doesn't have to be a whole thing it can be, let us open up to love. Can you open your heart to a feeling of unconditional love? As we sing Ahavah Rabah on page 74. Or even more a little 10 words, yeah,
Or even a little, like you said five words, seven words, just something that in that establishes a little Kavannah about it. And sometimes for me a transition for those of you who are transition phobic or like you guys are crazy, we don't have time for transitions between everything! It's just an intentionality about it, as opposed to just clunky changing your Capo on the guitar, it's like, speak singing, Sprechstimme, like you were just doing, that's a beautiful transition, or even just -
Is that the German word?
Sprechstimme It's a term for music. So a lot of composers in the early part of the 20th century, I don't know a lot, would write music that was sort of spoken and sung and talked and spoken, and they go back and forth. And then they would talk, and then. So when you start singing and talking like that, I love it. And it keeps us in a sacred space. And it it does something to our nervous systems and to our brainwaves that, you know, just like Alzheimer patients that respond to singing, I think we all have that capacity to, to, to respond to the sung version of something in a in a different way that takes us out of our normal, mundane, mundane way of responding. And so the transitions, even if it's just a silence, or a breath, it's as long as it's intentional. It just takes away from that stumbling from one thing to the next as if they're unrelated.
Yeah, and the train thing makes a lot of sense to me. I mean, the first service I ever went to that used instruments, because where I grew up, we didn't use musical instruments on Shabbat. This was in high school, I'll have to ask my mom where it was because it meant it - It wasn't like an Elks Lodge or a Mason Lodge. And it was a bunch of us in these, you know, hard plastic chairs in this guy at the front of the room with a guitar. And it was prayer, stop, fumble, figure out prayer, p rayer, and it just felt so disconnected to me.
Yeah.
And so of course, in my kind of black and white thinking of adolescence, I thought, all services with instruments are bad, right? Instead of realizing as I get older, that the music and the instruments are a tool, it's all tools, and you can use a tool for good and you can use a tool for bad. You can use a hammer to put a nail in a wall or you can hit somebody on the head with it. Like it's not, it's not necessarily about the tool. It's it's about how it's being used. And that speak-singing in a lot of ways does the same thing. As if I was noodling and speaking over the music. It's holding, it's holding that container, and allowing it to be in the same part of the brain or in the same family. I don't remember who it was that said, that for them, the difficulty in T'fillah was the switch between right brain and left brain,. That there would be a song and music and this kind of emotionality and, you know, feeling of spirit and play and imagination, and then the rabbi's kavanah and the calling of pages kind of shifts them out of that mindset. And then oh, I have to get back into the flow. But like, I was just there now I'm not.
Yeah, I completely identify with that. And that what a balancing act, it's not like there's one way to do it, or that there's like, you can just learn and then bam, you're done. It's constantly toggling back and forth this oscillation within oneself and within the community, seeing what the community needs. So I was listening on my way here, I was listening to the radio to Christian radio, I really enjoy listening to Christian radio because there's so much resonance within the songs with with Jewish thought, and I'm and I'm always like hearing how it's shifted and how it's re configured and re articulated. And also just as a musician, the production values are super high. You can like we'll be driving down the road, my wife and she'll go will turn to a station within two seconds, we know no matter what they're saying, we know it's Christian radio because of the sound of it. And so I'm always listening, wow, listen to how clear that is. And listen how that and quite often it's what's the word neutered because it's so clean, I feel like it's taking the texture. And so when you talk about this isolation between right and left brain, that is a narrow bridge, to walk down. To keep both of them in balance or to allow oneself to be leaning more into one than the other for the bulk of the service, so that it becomes a magical journey, if the whole thing is a right brain journey, it's like doing math. So dare I say, we're trying to lean lean to the left, and, and keep some, some vestiges of right in there so that by the end of the thing, we might remember what happened, and have some consideration for. Disturb us, Adonai and we say during our liturgy in Mishkan T'fillah in the Reform, so that so that we won't get too complacent and too, so our prayer won't be neutered, and have always texture gone, has to constantly consider and reconsider, and yet stay in that mythic, beautiful, expanded place that ends up feeling triumphant and transcendent.
It's important, what you're bringing up about balance, I think that came up in our reflection with the fellows a lot about how Jewish sacred heritage in general and T'fillah in particular, we think, is teaching us how to hold two truths at once, often. Right, the truth that the world is a place of sadness and brokenness, and grief, and needs fixing. And the the hand that says the world is a beautiful place full of wonder and amazement. And, and the idea of, of a Gesher tzar meod of a narrow bridge between right brain and left brain, I love because I also don't want a service that is devoid of any thinking, right? How do we how do we engage the brain because one of the points I think, of kavanot, or of using kavanot, what we're kind of colloquially, calling like a little intention before a T'fillah is giving people more tidbits, more context. Something interesting about the prayer may be what a particular word means the etymology, the root of a word. Who wrote it? Where did it come from? What are some Midrashim some commentaries on it? Not all of that at once, but just like one of those things, it can be a key that unlocks a different part of the T'fillah for us that we had never seen before. And and and so you're right, that it's not just about staying fully in a left brain place. It's about how do we bring in these pieces of knowledge in ways that are additive, and helpful on the journey because there are ways to do it that might just make people feel bad about not knowing enough, which the fact that our liturgy is in Hebrew, is already barrier enough. And already people might come in feeling like they don't know enough or don't have enough. So I always feel like my goal is to make it more accessible and open. And part of that is sharing these tidbits of wisdom in ways that are that are additive and meant to be empowering instead of the opposite.
What's interesting to me that you reminded me of the last two Biennials, URJ Biennials ago, I went to a session that was called Classical Reform Worship. You know, Classical Reform. It was sort of very classical music oriented. And the compositions were and it was from that European tradition. And people in the room was packed. By the way, there was probably 100 200 people in a very small space for Classical Reform. And it to me, I felt like it was at a funeral. It was just so staid and so somber. And it's everything I was running from when I decided I didn't want to be Jewish anymore in my mid 20s. But there was a change after that, and I decided I did want to be Jewish, but I was I needed to get please keep that austerity and that total, whatever it was away from me, and these people were loving it. And I had to really learn to honor that like wow, they are being fed by this. And this is their, their place of comfort, their place of nurture. And to the reason I'm saying all this, you're talking about that balance point between the left and the right. And it really depends on your community. And it depends on where the what's going on in the community, maybe it's a time for just somberness. And, and where you're at all that kind of mixed together, and then maybe what the agenda is the larger sort of recall that across time, the diachronic, I call it the, the diachronic agenda, like long term as opposed to the syncronic in this moment agenda. Maybe that's necessary, there's a more left brain service. And so I'm always trying to get services to lean to the right, meaning to lean more into the realm of the creative and the mythic, and the expansive. And, and keeping a finger on the left brain and the logic and the, the, the academic or whatever, and the definitions of things. And but with a little more weight to that exploratory out of time, right brain thing. So to your point of the balance between right and left, I want to tell you about an adventure I had at the two Biennials ago, I went into this session, and it was called Classical Reform Worship. And this was old school Reform stuff from like, before 1940.
Wait, no, sorry to interrupt you, Billy. But I think you're right. I just Googled it. I was trying to, I think I was using it wrong. I think the left brain is the analytical one. And the right brain is the non analytical one. I know now I'm confused.
Left brain -
We can leave this, we can leave this in. It's the messiness. Yeah?
So what we need to do at some point during this podcast is just edit in someone ongoing, not left brain, right brain, just you have the visuals, then he means right brain, something like that. I don't remember.
Well, the article I'm reading now, and I think of this too, right, it's saying, let's quote, health psychologists, Grace Tworek, PsyD., when she says, oftentimes we think of right brain thinkers being the more creative types more artistic, your free spirited, left brain thinkers are considered more rigid, logical and detail oriented. But that's not really accurate when we break down the science. Because like a lot of binaries, it doesn't actually hold up. But like a lot of binaries, especially Jewish binaries, or Jewish, like the rabbis love to put things into categories, right? These are the four types of learners. These are the four types of children at the Passover Seder. But we put those into binary specifically. So we can see all of those types reflected in us because it's never actually truly one or the other. So. So I think we could leave this in. Because when I think of a Classical Reform service, or a service with perhaps like, an organ, and acquire, it's tapping into it can tap into a sense of grandeur and transcendence. And praying through the ears, through listening as a mode, which sometimes I think that we've really liked, the pendulum has swung completely the other way, in that we think that singing is the only mode of prayer. And when we're asked to listen as a posture of prayer, we don't know what to do. That might be a different conversation. But in terms of thinking about, like, when that's appropriate. I feel you know, as much as I think young people is joyous and shouldn't be a somber, as we often see it as, I'll take a gorgeous choir on Yom Kippur, you know, I'll take an organ on Yom Kippur, there's times and space for that. But in in general, because it's not just about the somberness. It's about like the uptightness. I could even see it in your body when you were talking about it. Right? Kind of got rigid. Yeah. In your body. And they were and I started thinking, yeah, they were rigid. We're standing or sitting at pews. Right. I've been using the De-Protestant-ization. And I don't know if I came up with it, but I realized I've said it on the pod a couple of times, that what we're doing kind of by bringing back the the ecstatic element and the movement elements, and the even like, crying out and shouting and singing, wailing and taking up space and moving around the room and not just sitting in our pews. Right. This is the De-Protestant-ization of American Judaism. I think it's part of that. I think it's important. Right, why did those people choose to have that be their music? And have that be what their buildings look like? Because assimilation was seen as the gateway to safety.
Yeah.
And it isn't really. So we might as well pray in ways that feel moving and meaningful.
And I hear in my mind's eye, I see people out there maybe being fearful about the idea of people wailing in the middle of the surface service. And I would feel uncomfortable with that in most contexts, because it's so out of character for what we have in services. And that's interesting, that maybe is not your standard service , it's so important, I believe, to recognize there are different kinds of contexts for services, not services. There's services with three people where you can really relate to each other. There's a service with the entire membership of the congregation where you're there, that's a Kol Haolam Kulo, that you're trying to reach across the aisle and not make anybody to angry and, and sort of keep keep the community together. And then there's the service where you're trying to push every button possible, because it's trying to wake people up out of complacency. So, see how it really depends, doesn't it?
It really does. Well, you saying the word services over and over again, what came to my mind was the question, what are we in service of? And that perhaps an answer to that question might help us create a particular gathering experience for particular context. Because you're right, wailing might not, it feels like ooh, like, like, we can't do that here. On the other hand, if we're using our sacred traditions blueprint for how do we experience and process grief, I was talking with my friends yesterday about how we think Judaism does grief really well, in a way that non Jewish friends who have lost a loved one, someone was saying, yeah, and, and they just went back to normal. There wasn't a memorial, they didn't have loved ones around. They just kept doing things, as opposed to our tradition, which gives space to grieve. But you're right, in terms of context, like the Tisha B'av service is not the same as any other service, because it's the architecture of it is designed to give us space for grief.
Yeah.
It's very particular.
And even without getting that specific about like holiday, like Yom Kippur, Tisha B'av, every Shacharit, or every Mincha, or every Ma’ariv service might be different in terms of what's being called for, what's the intention there? Well, it can go it can resonate in all those ways.
It really can. I want to take a step back. We could talk about this service and T'fillah in general for a long time, and I have a feeling this isn't going to be our last conversation about it, which I'm excited about. But you you said you dropped a little, you dropped a little hint when you said when I decided not to be Jewish anymore in my 20s. And I just kind of want to go back to the seesaw of that decision.
Yeah.
What did T'fillah mean in your life? What was your relationship to T'fillah? To God? To Judaism growing up, and how did the see see and when did it saw back over?
How did the see ses and how did it saw back over? So the see so the blind man, and he took out his hammer and saw. I went to summer camp when I was eight, it was a YMCA camp. And we had Chapel. It was nondenominational Chapel on Sundays. And that was the first time in my life that I felt like the benediction of a bird song, and the the rustle of the leaves as a kind of a prayer. I remember sitting there, there was a moment of silence at eight years old. And they were very explicit. They said, take a moment to just listen to what's going on around you. The trees and the birds and I just sat there. And it felt like a massage, a sonic massage, and then went, there is something special here. Even though I was a little resistant, I always had this chip on my shoulder, said these grownups are trying to pull one over on me. They're trying to tell me it's one way and I I think they're messing with me. But in that moment, went oh. I got this little download of like the holiness of creation. And so I put a pin in that moment without knowing it, just like, I'm gonna hold on to that. I didn't say that, it just happened. And so I'm also at that summer camp, it's called Camp Martin Johnson up in Irons, Michigan, the little Manistee forest, big bass lake and little bass lake, just around the corner from the Takus Tavern, it may still be there. And we sat around a campfire with a counselor playing a guitar, and another one, doing a rhythm on a bucket and somebody playing a harmonica. And they sang this cool new song, he was called Blownin In the Wind. And I remember looking around at all these faces around me that were glowing in the fire light and you couldn't see their bodies, you could just see their faces and bodies were in shadow. And I thought this is how it's been, for thousands of years, people gathering around a fire and singing together and telling stories. I said this is really timeless. This is amazing. And it's another epiphany moment. And so I had these experiences of the sacred of spirituality at a young age eight, nine years old. Third thing that happened there was the counselors. These were serious hippies. I mean, it was 1972. When I 72, 73, I was eight. And the counselors were in their 20s. And they were talking about meditation. And I was sort of suspect like, What are you talking about? He said, Man, you got to you just sort of empty your mind, man and you. You just breathe deep and you focus on one thing. And this it just trips you out man the way it it opens. I nodded very skeptically. But I didn't forget. And I wanted to know, because they seem to have. They seemed like they were being honest. So those three things, my Chapel experience, my camper experience, and that my counselors who I looked up to tremendously, who are talking about meditation and other realms, invisible realms, that were being tangible. And then I would go to synagogue and I would hear Cantor Abraham Lubin singing, and it was so gorgeous. But I didn't, I wasn't getting the prayers didn't make sense to me. They're, they're very repetitive, seemed like we said one prayer, and we may be changed one word, and suddenly, it's called a different prayer. And then there's a third prayer that is exactly the same except one word, like, what's going on? I didn't get it. I got into the music, but didn't do that. And, and there was an austerity. This is the 70s, in a Conservative shul. And it was dark and austere. And there was right ways and wrong ways. And I was bored. And then I got to college. I mean, I was Bar mitzvah, and I went to Hebrew High School, you know, once a week Hebrew High School through high school, trying to stay connected and just wasn't, I wasn't feeling it. I was getting it in my mind. But I was like, there's got to be something to feel here. This, something's missing. And I went and tried it out at college. And it felt kind of insular. I felt like this is not what it's about. This is not this felt like circling the wagons, what's going on? I don't know, it didn't feel right. I went to the Kosher Co Op over at Oberlin College, and I don't want to diss it for anybody who is really into that. But it was not my place. Like theoretically, this is my people. And I was I needed to be over in their food co ops, where they were throwing forks into the ceiling and having three hour policy meetings about whether butter was on snacking, you know, things like that. So somehow that felt I could feel that it was visceral. And I left college and I was in a lot of turmoil. I was in spiritual crisis a lot. And so I you know, it'd be calling out to God and whatever way seemed right, I was learning about meditation and learning about chanting and Buddhist meditation, I was going to Native American sweat lodges, I was looking for anything that I could feel, that would give me a felt sense of this otherness, this connectedness to, to the universe. I went to a New Age Christian Church called Jubilee, and it was very ecumenical. They would have rabbis and Buddhist priests and stuff coming in. And it was, it was spiritual smorgasbord, and nothing was solid. And so finally, and here's the point of my story. You know, I basically left Judaism. It just wasn't working for me and I tried all these things. Finally, I said, you know what? I need a template. To come back to our template idea, I need a calendar that's got clear delineations of something once a year that I do and something once every quarter that I do, and every week that I do, and every day that I do, I want it all these sort of that sort of hierarchy, that taxonomy of prayer and connection, and I'm just going to make my own religion. I'm going to make my own calendar and my own religion. And I said, I want to be connected to the earth, I want to be connected to my body, I want to be connected to people, that's my, that's gonna be what my religion is about the Earth, my body, that people. Maybe there's something else out there. But I know there is something else out there. But I'm going to find it through the these things. Because that's too that's too airy fairy for me to just pray to that. I need to be connected. And so I divided the year into cross quarters, I said, I'll do something on the solstice isn't on the equinoxes that feels connected to my Native American interests, Native American spirituality interest, and to all kinds of other peoples of the earth, pagan practices. And I opened up my normal calendar, and I wrote in on the Falls Equinox, fast and sweat into a sweat lodge to rid myself of the summer excesses. And there was Yom Kippur, like, a couple days later. And well, that's interesting. And then I flipped forward to the next cross quarter, which was the winter solstice, I said, I'm going to do a return of a light ritual, and do something with fire coming into the darkest narrowest Mitzrayim of the year and then preparing to emerge from that. And I wrote in this ritual of fire, which I'm going, oh, there's Hanukkah, right near, like, a week away, cool. And then I flipped to the next crossborder, which was the spring Solstice, Spring Equinox. And I said, I'm going to do a regreening of the oh, there's Passover. And right at that moment, I went, Oh, somebody thought of this already. You know, I must have skipped the day of Hebrew school when they talked about it if they talked about it. And I hadn't read or their Arthur Waskow's book, you know, so I wasn't really in touch with the idea that this is very intentional. And I'm so glad that I blundered into it. You know, I was embarrassed in that moment, like I was all by myself, but I was like, hope nobody saw me doing this. Like, does everybody know this already? Because whoa, it kind of like plopped me on the head. And in that moment, I went, look at that! The Jewish template, the Jewish matrix, is a Earth-centered, season-centered, pagan-grounded matrix. I can do that. I was born Jewish. I've got ancestors back to the Maharal of Prague who are Jewish. I know my, my, the the old folks in my family. My, my Oma was born in, Asbach, Germany in 1905. And, you know, when I was born, her mother was holding the her mother was born in like 1860. And so I have this visceral connection back to the Old World and the melodies they sing. I'll never forget my Oh, my singing German melodies at the Passover Seder thinks she heard as a child, which inevitably, had been around forever before that. I said, I've got all that in my DNA, and in my ears. I'll be Jewish, and I'll dress it up. So everything you and I are talking about is my process of uncovering and recovering. Recovering both and like getting it back from the austerity that was piled on it, but also recovering it with new trappings, to have it be meaningful and, and feel it in my body. That was a long version of my journey back to Judaism story, but that's it. That's the story.
And it's a beautiful, beautiful story. And pieces I bet that will resonate with a lot of folks. I mean, when you asked, like, was I absent at Hebrew school, the day that they taught this? I'm not sure that it's ever seen in that holistic way. I think more now, certainly, that that people are recognizing the inherent Earth, nature and, you know, land-based matrix I liked your use of the word matrix. I'm thinking about our friend Cantor Josh Ehrlich, who said to me once he said, I'm working on a theory that Judaism is just a Book Club and a time management system.
Haha, I remember is that yeah.
It's a good one, but but it's right. It's like here to help us manage our time if we see it in a holistic way. So often I'm thinking also now, you talked about being on the train and it's like prayer, prayer, prayer prayer. And we're not necessarily looking at the journey and the connection between all of them. I think the same could be said about the calendar and the holidays. Holiday holiday holiday.
Yeah.
What is the arc of the year? What is it taking us through? Right there's the kind of mythic imagination peak history of our people bit and there's the living in harmony with the earth bit and there's the kind of cosmic personal bit and the community bit and they're all kind of layered on top of each other. I like the idea of this, of this matric matrix, is that the is the is matrix a plural word or not plural word? I was like matric is that the singular of matrix?
Matri.
Matri. And how works for me? I'd love to hear also how Judaism then found its way into your music. And and where that came in as part of your kind of journey as a musician and songwriter and performer.
Yeah, well, it was slow. But my my buddy Randy, Rabbi Fleischer, he's known as Rabbi Randy Fleisher. He's in St. Louis with Susan Tavi at CRC Central Reformed Congregation. And he and I were camp counselors what long before he was a rabbi at Camp Thunderbird up in Bemidji, Minnesota. And he really dug what I, the music I did when I was a counselor there. I was already a musician at that point. And my nickname at camp was Bongo. And he coined that phrase, and his nickname at camp was Dylan because he loved Bob Dylan. And when you say and kind of like Bob Dylan. Anyway, at one, I'd come out within my first album, and he says, Billy, you know, your music is really Jewish, right? And I said, No, he says, Everything you see is through a very Jewish lens, you just can't get away from it. And it's manifested in your songs. And it took me years to really see know what he meant. He was looking at it at that point, because he had started rabbinical school. And he was examining things deeply, which I hadn't examined those things deeply yet. But specifically, besides the fact that I have, probably I can say I have a Jewish soul, and everything that comes out of me comes from and through that. Specifically in the 90s, I was needed to make some extra money. And I went to the, the synagogue in Asheville, Beth HaT'fillah, for services, and the rabbi said, Hey, do you want to do services with us once a month or so? And I went, and you pay people for this? He goes yeah, that was the very mundane mercenary kind of intro to it. But I didn't, I wasn't invested in it in a big way with my composing. It was just my body was there. And I was enjoying singing with people and being part of the community. And then he said, here's a song, it needs a new accompaniment. And suddenly I was composing. And it was, it was Adonai Sefatai Tiftach, I think, open up my lips and my mouth, it was something in that realm. And I created a new accompaniment, and then it had meaning for me. And that was the first step. And then trying to make a short story really long here. I wrote this song called Variations on a Theme, because I was grappling with the situation in Israel Palestine, which was the Arab Israeli conflict. And I had this thought, at the time, I thought it was very original, and maybe it was, that no one is more right than the other. That there's a kind of a balancing going on here. And when they do this, and we do this, it's just variations on the same theme. And I played it for the rabbi and he, he said, I see where you're coming from, I think you did a pretty good job with that wasn't necessarily his opinion, but he agreed. And then some people got way out of whack about it. Like how can you? I mean, you can imagine creating a sense of equality about it. Are you out of your mind, Billy? No, I didn't think I was I thought I was really on the right track. And it got very contentious. And the rabbi said, Billy, why don't you go over to the West Bank, and spend some time there and see how it is. Oh my God, my rabbi is sending me to the what? It just blew my mind that he would actually suggest that. This was the late 90s. I just didn't know there was these trips you could do I don't know if they existed then they might have where you were, they would, you know, Birthright Unplugged didn't exist back then. And all of planting brigades in in Nablus with Jewish folks that didn't exist. Anyway, I kept that in my mind for 10 years. And then I did, I went in 2009. And I confirmed what I thought, that it's just people. It's just people here and just people there. No one is crazier than the others. And I forgive me if I've angered any listeners, but my feeling is it's just people. Everybody's crazy. Everybody's beautiful. It's it's full spectrum, no matter what people. And certainly, we can talk a lot about that. And so I came back with this renewed sort of vision of what Judaism needed to be. And then I started to write songs from that renewed vision that this is a looking for a sense of equanimity, about how one approaches all prayer in the world, and all peoples and everything was coming through that filter. So I go to the service, and I'd be really dissatisfied, which is an essential ingredient for me to be dissatisfied, because then there's a catalyst to do something about it. And I hear these prayers, and I started writing them and then simultaneously I went to Hava Nashira, because I was making music for my temple and I wanted to learn about the whole tribe of folks doing that. And I met Craig Taubman and Debbie Friedman and Denny Mustang and shira Klein and Rick wrecked all at the first one. Ellen Allard and Ellen Dreskin. And forgive me if I forget any of them. And Jeff Klepper, I mean, they're all they're just hanging out in the room playing and I, and they, they liked what I did. And they they said, keep going, and Debbie Friedman came to a concert I did in New York, I'm like, this is like the matriarch of this trip. She's like, coming and she's holding in Holland through the Okay, so there's this embrace going on. And then Hava Nashira, asked me to come be a teacher the same year that Ric comm asked me to come be a teacher. And basically, it was doors opening. It didn't I didn't pursue it. And I just I remember thinking in that moment, these doors are opening. What would happen if I walk through them? And that was, it was just doors opening walking through? If you need to edit this down, you can just go straight to that. Doors opening? Walking through? Okay, yeah, I'd say the evolution in a nutshell, take this part out if if it doesn't serve, going to my synagogue and Asheville. Them, encouraging me to go to Hava Nashira. And then 10 years later, because of those experiences, and writing music through those lens, the lenses that I'd polished, how Hava Nashira and Songleader Bootcamp the same year invited me to teach and then it grew from there. Going through the doors when the doors opened.
I'm resonating so much with your story, and I'm so grateful for it. Because my first Hava Nashira was 2013. I'm thinking about it a lot like the 10 year anniversary of my first Hava Nashira. And you were on faculty that year, I believe. And I, No offense, Fred, but I didn't know who you are at the time. I grew up in a Conservative Synagogue, I didn't know a lot of Jewish I didn't know who Dan Nichols was, until 2013. Like I didn't know of a lot of the G'dolim, the great ones of this craft because it wasn't like I was writing Jewish songs. But I wasn't a Song Leader. And I didn't even know that really was a job that you could have. But one of the reasons that that first Hava was so meaningful was because of your music and your leadership and sessions that I took with you that I will never forget.
Really.
Really I remember sitting in oh gosh, I can't remember the name of the building, but it's the round one that always smelled funny with the carpet. And you leading us in these tones and moving the chords up and down with your hands and it reminded me of those iMax movies where they show like the whales in the water and there's always that kind of ethereal Ooooh, right with the whales. And I was like we're making the whale music right here, all of us together. And we did hollow bamboo and we did a tango, but it must have been at one of the faculty shares. Where you did one. I bet it was. And I felt immediately, because I was going through my own tumultuous, tumultuous God journey, which we haven't even touched on the God stuff. We're definitely going to have to have you back, Billy, my goodness. When I was, I think he's just
You just coined a new phrase! Tummult-Jewish!
How was - Tummult-Jewish?
It was a very tumultuous time. It was it was time. That's right.
Oh, that's true that, that maybe sounds better. But I heard your music. And I thought, I think that's the closest to my theology that I've ever heard another person articulate. And it was, so it was so meaningful, then. And every time coming back to those songs in the ones that you've written since resonate with me in a way that I feel like you were taking it seriously and playfully, whereas often God is just God's a word on the page that we say, and an idea we have in our head about the world that we were promised, that doesn't exist. And you got, you got to it in such a deep and a deep and playful way. I was like, This is it. I have a, I have a place here, I have a journey that I can go on. And it's kind of the same, like, you know, 10 years. After that, you know, now I am on faculty with you at these places. And it's just like, I feel like I'm about to cry, like the, the idea that we're part of this field that is lifting people up, and that we get to be colleagues with the people that inspired us in the first place. I'm just in awe and immense gratitude. Like, I get to exist, not only do I get to exist on the planet, at the same time as you, Billy, but we found each other's orbit somehow. And the like, that had an infinitesimally small chance of happening. And yet it did. And I'm really grateful for that.
Me too. I didn't realize that was such a part of your journey. That's cool. Happy to have been part of the foundation. So yeah.
I'm so grateful. Now, I am going to have to have you on another time to talk about God. But I, I would love to close. First, I'd love to play us out on one of your songs, we can play a recording at the end, and maybe one that's feeling particularly resonant with you from this conversation, if you wanted to maybe introduce it and give it some context.
The first one that comes to mind is a song called My Life So Far, and it's on a CD called Life So Far. And it's a 12 minute song, 15 If you play the outro. So you may not want to do that one, or you might but it talks about a lot of what I've described talks about my summer camp adventure, my first really transcendent spiritual ritual, which was in college where we were we had a full moon ritual, and we made it all up and you couldn't see the moon. Have you heard the song before? And anyway, we couldn't see the moon and -
I have, it's, it's beautiful journey.
And then, so yeah, so I mean, that'd be interesting. Otherwise God is In would be the way to go out. Because that's there's theology, even though it's a little dated. Now, there's stuff that doesn't belong in there anymore. I need to update that. Or the song One, One is good, or the song To Be One, which came in a dream, which is my chatima. Or my V’ahavta, that'll be a good one to go around just because it's insane.
Ooh. It's a masterpiece, and I hope our listeners no matter which song we decide to play at the end, will find Billy's music because it's, you have written some of my favorite songs that have ever been written just like period. It's it's really you're you're so masterful and deft and smart and silly and heart-opening and all of these these beautiful in all of these beautiful ways. So, listeners we hope you know we'll we'll link to all of it in the show notes, but please find Billy's music. Just to close, Billy. I'm wondering if you had a blessing for us and our listeners. Is there a blessing you could bless us with?
Yeah, count your blessings. Count your toys. Moment of silence. Moment of noise.
Amen. Thank you so much for joining us today Billy, what an absolute joy.
My privilege. Thank you. Thanks for being my teacher. This is good. More to come. I hope. And pray.
Yes, please. And thank you so much for listening. You can check out our show notes at lightlab.co And also sign up at lightlab.co to receive our newsletter. We're hoping to have one out with every episode with some more behind the scenes, what we're up to, some more T'fillah Goodness. Christy Dodge edits our episodes, thank you Christy. Our show notes are put together by Yaffa Englander, thank you Yaffa! And our Wisdom Weaver Rachel Kaplan who has recently over the summer joined the team, has been working on copy and notes and getting things out perhaps Podcast Producer might say we can say produced by our Wisdom Weaver, Rachel Kaplan. Check us out on all the socials at the light dot lab and we hope to be with you again very soon. We're going to exit this interview with Billy's V’ahavta, and I encourage you if you're in a place where you can stop and put in headphones and close your eyes that you do so. We'll see you soon.
