Letters to the editor

Prayer shared through song
I thank Adam Reinherz for his thoughtful account of the interfaith, multi-choir concert,“Psalm Enchanted Evening,” held at Pittsburgh’s Saint Paul Cathedral on Monday, June 8 (“‘Psalm Enchanted Evening’: Interfaith voices join in song at Cantors Assembly gathering,” online June 11; this issue, Page 1).

I have always felt at home in St. Paul Cathedral. I have attended holiday services there and been stirred by the liturgy and homilies. I have been there for both funerals and ordinations and, thereby, have known pathos and ethos in equal measure. I have even had the proud privilege of preaching from the cathedral pulpit. But, after a near psalter’s range of emotion in that sacred space, as I sat in St. Paul’s pews that night, for the first time, I kvelled.

To be sure, I was proud that choirs from two of the three congregations I serve were part of the program. And I was grateful that so many congregants, colleagues and friends from across the community were there. But those truths were not what made my heart most glad. The reason I kvelled was a private realization that, although the communal program contained no formal prayer, the occasion was prayerful, nevertheless.

Jewish tradition offers a delightful insight based on gematria, the ancient practice of assigning numerical values to Hebrew letters. Gematria teaches that the Hebrew words for prayer (tefillah) and song (shirah) share the same numerical sum. It happens to be 515, but the number is beside the point; it isn’t about the math. No. Our tradition’s insight is that prayer and song share the same value in our spiritual life, for both sincere prayer and pure song arise from the depths of the human soul.

And so it was that evening.

Jews and Christians gathered not to engage in comparative theology, nor to blur the distinctions between our faith traditions, but to appreciate poetry sacred to us all.

Thus, as a diverse collection of choirs lifted ancient psalms heavenward through song, one sensed that all who were in that cathedral that night were doing much more than simply appreciating a joyful sound. We were sharing sincere prayer in pure song.

And this rabbi kvelled.

Rabbi Aaron Bisno
Pittsburgh

Shabbat’s celestial connection
I write to question Tim Miller’s quoting Nahum Sarna regarding marking the Sabbath (“Gleanings from Shabbat,” June 12). I have run up against this wall a couple of times, and I can’t get over it or under it: If there is no connection between the Sabbath and the “movement of celestial bodies,” why do we bother with candle lighting times? And why do we consider evening the controlling moment of beginning and ending our days? We know it’s evening because we watch the celestial bodies appear and disappear from our sight, and we know these activities change depending on what time of year it is and where we are located geographically on our good Earth.

Reading Miller’s otherwise wonderful essay sent me back to Sarna and scripture, reading highlighted and underlined portions of text, studying it all yet again, and coming up again with the same question: What am I missing that will make this statement true: “ . . . the Israelite week has no such linkage and is entirely independent of the movement of celestial bodies”?

I continue to be hopeful for an explanation that will get me over the wall.

Shanda Buterbaugh
Cherry Tree, Pennsylvania