Kehilla music at mass in Australia

Hello from Sydney, Australia (from where we have just sent you our Vatican ambassador). Since our “Light of Torah” group’s visit to your community at Rabbi Kook Street last May, a small group of our musicians have been learning to sing the sung parts of the mass in Hebrew, with the help of your community’s song book.

I am pleased to say that we were able to sing most of them in a the celebration of mass held last weekend. The mass was part of a “Light of Torah” gathering of about 30 people, held in the chapel of the diocesan offices of Broken Bay Diocese (in Sydney’s northern suburbs).

We held a short practice with our little ‘congregation’ beforehand and everyone sang with gusto and a beautiful sense of prayer and joy pervaded the mass. I was really delighted.

We also included a few other Hebrew songs, including Benny and Magali’s “Ahava Rabbah” (see here) and also “Ozi Ve Zimrat Yah” which we learnt at the Kol HaNeshama synagogue in Jerusalem.

Among the prayers of intercession, we prayed for your community and for all our friends and contacts in the Holy Land by name.

On the back page of our song leaflet, we explain why we are doing this:

Why Pray/Sing in Hebrew?

Our desire to sing and pray in Hebrew has arisen from experiences of prayer and worship in Israel, in Jewish synagogues and among Hebrew-speaking Catholics.

Praying the Mass in any language is special. It reminds us that the Word of the Lord has gone out from Jerusalem (Isa. 2:3) and found a home among the nations of the earth.

And if Latin and Greek form part of our church’s heritage, then surely Hebrew finds a place too!

Hebrew is the original language of our earliest scriptures. It is the language of the Jewish people, and therefore of Jesus, Mary and the apostles. Over the centuries the Jewish people have adopted many languages in the vernacular according to their geographical/cultural situation (Jesus is thought to have spoken Aramaic), however Hebrew has always been the language of the synagogue, of Jewish prayer and Torah study, even when it ceased to be spoken in everyday life.

Classical Hebrew is the only ancient language to have been successfully revived as a modern language. A miracle in itself! Modern Hebrew is today one of two official languages of the state of Israel (the other being Arabic).

It is the language spoken in daily life and used in worship by Hebrew-speaking Catholic communities in Israel in whose Masses some of us have shared. While numerically small, they represent a new experience for the church: Catholics fully integrated in both the life of the Catholic Church and the life of Jewish Israeli society!

For a number of us here, singing in Hebrew is a reminder of special times in Israel.

Vatican II issued a call to embrace the Jewish roots of our Church and to live in a new era of reconciliation with the Jewish people. Music is yet another way to respond to that vision. May these soul-stirring melodies enrich our spirituality, connect us with special people and places, and remind us of the depths of our faith tradition.”

Thank you so much for your inspiration (and website!), and we continue to pray foryou all...

Peace and blessings,

Teresa