Seder Ho’avodah (Ishay Ribo)

September 14, 2021

Today’s song choice is the emotional, uplifting lead song from the 2019 blockbuster Elul album by Israeli superstar Ishay Ribo called אלול תשע”ט / Elul 5779. Seder Ho’avodah is a haunting ballad for the Day of Atonement; a poignant poem describing the sacred service of the Kohen Gadol who performs his Yom Kippur Avodah with both purity and piety, as the rest of the nation reacts and responds to the utterance of Hashem’s ineffable Name.

A song of such caliber deserves a different kind of introduction, which is why I am proud to present you with an article found in this week’s The Voice of Lakewood (pg. 199) that was brought to my attention last night by my youngest brother Eli. The excellent essay was written by Yitti Berkovic and says it all. So without further ado… Yitti, take it away.

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For a little while there, I was worried that my son was losing his hearing.
Every time I called his name or asked for help or tried to remind him not to leave his hat on the dining room table, he didn’t respond. It wasn’t just that he didn’t answer right away. It was that even while I looked him straight in the eyes, he stared blankly at me, registering no acknowledgement that he had heard me.

He’s a good kid, Baruch Hashem, so I didn’t think he was intentionally ignoring me.
But I really started to panic when I asked him if he wanted skirt steak for supper, and he didn’t react. (He’s a teenage boy! He should have a Pavlovian response to the word “steak”!) I called out in alarm, “Tzvi, is there something wrong with your ears?” but he didn’t even blink.
It was time for an intervention.

Flabbergasted, I walked up to him, put my hands on his shoulders, and spoke slowly enough so he could read my lips. “What is wrong with your ears!?” I shouted. Finally, his eyes showed me that he’d heard me. Sheepishly, he pointed deep into his ear canal, and I noticed a small black circle.
Ah. An earbud.
I’d forgotten that he’d won an MP3 player in camp. So he wasn’t losing his hearing – he’s just been listening to music and tuning us all out!

At first, I was relieved. But then I was annoyed. I’m not sure why it bothered me so much. He’s a teenager. Teenagers have been blasting music and tuning out their families for generations. Don’t tell my kids, but as a teenager I had a boombox in my room which I was known to keep on the highest volume, and when I wasn’t in my room, I had my trusty Walkman blaring in my ears.
But at least my parents could see my Walkman. At least they could know I had chosen to tune out the world around me. Tzvi’s decision was almost invisible, and he walked around like he was in a weird trance. And I was not okay with it.

I didn’t want to take the joy of music away from him, so I offered him a compromise: “How about you put your music on loudspeaker so all of us can listen?”
He laughed out loud. “You’re not going to like my music, Ma. It’s not your style.”
I tried not to be insulted. Honestly, I didn’t know I had a style. My style for the last two decades has been Uncle Moishy and Marvelous Midos Machine on repeat. But I was determined to burst my son’s self-imposed bubble. “You pick the songs. Let me listen. If I don’t like the music, I’ll let you go back to your MP3.”

He shrugged and brought out a wireless speaker, pressed a few buttons, gave me one last chance to change my mind, and hit Play with a raised eyebrow.
If he was hoping I would hate his music and send him back into isolation, he made a big mistake when he chose his first song.

He opted to play Ishay Ribo’s “Seder Ho’avodah,” an acoustic-style song in Modern Hebrew describing the Kohen Gadol’s preparation for davening on Yom Kippur.
Judging by the first few notes, I did not expect to enjoy it. I had almost no previous exposure to Israeli music, my Hebrew is limited to the “Ivris” I learned in high school, and the song lacked the bombast I associate with most contemporary Jewish music.
But I was blown away.

As the song filled my kitchen, I sat still, silent, as I strained to make out each word.
Wow.
The poetry.
The lyricism.
The ache and the hurt, the wistfulness and the worry, the eruption of joy and gratitude. Every note contained an emotion that told the story of our ancestors’ Yom Kippur, a day of awe that looked very different from ours.

With haunting simplicity, Ribo describes the Kohen Gadol taking his walk into the Kodesh Hakedoshim on Yom Kippur to complete the avodah on Klal Yisroel’s behalf.
He took me along on each exalted step into the Beis Hamikdash, into the Holy of Holies, into the spot closest to Hakadosh Baruch Hu. I felt the weight on the Kohen Gadol’s shoulders – the burden, the responsibility, the fear, and the hope – as he pleaded with Hashem to forgive His children.

To Tzvi’s shock, I asked him to play the song over and over and over again. I ran to print out the lyrics in Hebrew and English and say, imbibing the emotions as I took in each word and each note. For the first time in my life, the exalted scene that we had learned about in elementary school came alive to me, and I realized we had lost something tremendous.

Maybe it’s because this has been an especially hard year for Klal Yisroel. Maybe it’s because music touches our neshamos in ways we cannot understand. Whatever the reason, I longed for the Kohen Gadol whom I had never before felt we were missing. I wished for a man whose tefillos can heal the fractures and the fissures, the hurts and the divides, the individual heartache and the communal heartache.
Then, as the music reached it’s joyous crescendo, I cried when Ribo described the Kohen Gadol’s relief “ki nislach l’chol adas Yisroel” – that Klal Yisroel had obtained forgiveness.

I think Tzvi was a little horrified by how much I enjoyed his music. (Things have a way of losing their cool factor when your not-so-cool mother thinks they are the greatest she has ever heard.) But the song was transformational for me, and I recommend that you listen to it (or to Simcha Leiner’s equally glorious version) as Yom Kippur approaches.

I know that for a lot of us, the avodah we say on Yom Kippur can feel arcane, distant, and unrelatable, words that we say but to which we don’t fully connect. But now, when I say the words of “Mareh Kohen,” I can picture the countenance of the Kohen Gadol: radiant with relief, jubilant that Klal Yisroel has been sealed in the Book of Life, beaming with the light only closeness with Hakadosh Baruch Hu can bring.

May we be zocheh to see the song come alive before our eyes this Yom Kippur. May we join in with the voices singing “Ashrei ha’am sheHashem Elokav,” euphoric because we are forgiven, united, and ready to follow our Kohen Gadol home.

Gmar chasimah tovah!
(Used with permission from The Voice of Lakewood, Issue 712, Sept. 10, 2021)

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