Her own journey of spirit
By Ann Coppel
Debbie believed that singing was life giving. She loved people singing with her, participating. Singing is how I first met Debbie in the early 1970s — she was at a NoFTY summer conclave in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin as our songleader. We learned the three-part harmonies for all the songs from her first album, Sing Unto God (which hadn’t yet been released), Being someone who loves to sing, I was transfixed by the music and transformed by the experience of singing the music with Debbie.
This music — her music — reached down into my soul and grabbed me. Or maybe now, upon reflection, her music and her soul opened my heart. I’ve always said, “that was my first real spiritual experience.”
I’ll never forget my first of many conversations with Debbie. She came up to me after one of our song sessions at that conclave and said, “I love watching you sing.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because you have such a beautiful smile on your face,” she replied.
That was the beginning of my nearly 40-year friendship with Debbie Friedman.
Like many of my NoFTY compatriots, I knew Debbie before she became famous in the Jewish world. Not only was Debbie my songleader, she was a good friend.
In 1976, I had the pleasure of working creatively with Debbie on her third album, Ani Ma-amin, playing my flute and providing the cover photography. I took a lot of trips between Madison and Chicago in those early years, and had an incredible amount of fun and laughter.
Debbie may not have realized the impact she had on my life. I remember showing her some of my photography from that period — mostly nature and scenics — which she liked, but her question to me was, “where are the people?”
As was the standard with Debbie, she would always get me to think, to be more introspective. I took her question seriously and started to shift my focus. I began to connect with people and their stories and a whole world of documentary storytelling opened up to me.
Debbie was always connecting with people, always listening, always interested in creating a safe space for people to be comfortable with themselves individually and in the context of community. Whether it was a joyful or serene melody, the poetry or wordplay of her lyrics, or her sense of humor (often irreverent), Debbie had the gift of connecting with each soul.
Many people have written eloquently over the past weeks about Debbie’s contributions. You only have to look back at all the hundreds of musical compositions, 22 albums, scores of concerts and services and lifecycle events to know the tip of the iceberg. I believe the reverberations of her contributions will be felt forever.
I am just so grateful that I persevered in producing A Journey of Spirit, a documentary film about Debbie. And although there were many challenging moments during the seven years it took me to make the movie, in the end Debbie was so pleased with the story I told. I’ll never forget when she said to me, “Can’t you make this film and have it not be about me?”
I know many thousands are mourning her loss, but I’ve lost one of my best friends. She would be so humbled and honored by the outpouring of heartfelt expression happening around the world in reaction to her untimely death. And I also know she’d be telling all of us to use the gifts we’ve been given to partake in tikkun olam, in repairing the brokenness in the world. Debbie lived her life knowing that she was an instrument of God. We are the beneficiaries of her gift.
Thank you Debbie. I promise to keep singing….
Seattle filmmaker Ann Coppel is the creator of A Journey of Spirit (www.ajourneyofspirit.com), which followed Debbie Friedman over the course of three years.
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Dearest Debbie
Your incredible and amazing musical gift to the world fills us all with awe — music overflowing with inspiration, purpose, depth, spirit, spirituality, passion, and life. We just love love love to sing your songs!
You pushed yourself to give. You wanted us to feel through your music and the liturgical words peace, assurance, faith, hope, enthusiasm, optimism, fun, self worth, involvement, and acceptance. You composed your wonders tirelessly with vision and with strength. You did so until you couldn’t any more and the illness that had affected you for so many years overcame you. Your sweet guitar draping your coffin caused us to cry.
In our grief we want to listen to you singing Mi Shebeirach — bringing healing and renewal. But you’re not here to sing it to us any more.
Debbie, you were so much a blessing.
You are painfully missed; your precious gift is eternal.
“Arise, Arise Devorah, Arise, Arise and Sing a Song.”
Oh Debbie! You so did!
Ted Bernstein is a retired educator and music teacher who led songs at Jewish summer camps around the country and created an anthology of religious school music, a large part of which is the music of Debbie Friedman. He lives in North Bend.
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Immortal Songs
By Jeffrey L. Weinthal
Today the voice is silenced
Tomorrow the silence will be sung all over the world
The voice spoke for our generation
And every generation to come
What was said was not only said to us
It was said for us
From the quietest whisper to the roar of a mighty stream
The voice touched us
SHE touched us
Through her we were led to the gates of prayer
She opened a window letting us see the power of belief
The power of love
God’s love
With each single note of music played
Each single word sung
She touched the lives of millions
The voice of all generations both now and yet to come
Her songs brought love many
Love served up like a majestic banquet
A banquet of souls
Souls that we have willingly brought before God
She was a visionary
Her voice an ocean of heavenly love
Even though she has left this earth she will never be gone
Her voice
Just one voice
Brought hope to the hopeless
Brought comfort to the sick and dying
Brought tears of joy to celebrations
Touched the hearts of the world
She is not truly dead
She will live on in songs
Immortal songs
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Sweet singer of Israel
By Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell
The Tanach calls David, the pre-eminent poet of his time, “the sweet singer of Israel.” The sweet singer of Israel of our time, Debbie Friedman, has died.
Debbie began composing in her teens, setting prayers to music, giving wings to ancient words and empowering every one who wished to join her reaching toward God, and toward one another. For nearly half a century, Debbie’s music, always grounded in Jewish texts and contexts, opened new pathways of prayer, celebration, and being in the world. Her first album, Sing Unto God, set the theme for her life’s work. She helped us see that singing to God might begin in the synagogue, but that our songs truly soar wherever — and whenever — we gather together. And when we sing together, we remind ourselves and one another that God is with us, even when we are faced with and distracted by our own pain, anger, or our sense of distance from ourselves, from one another, and from God.
Debbie was an engaging and often electric performer. For many who attended her numerous performances over the years, in synagogues, Jewish community centers, at Carnegie Hall, or in open spaces at summer camps and Jewish retreats across America and Canada, Debbie’s clear voice embraced us as the words of both tradition and innovation entered our hearts and our souls. With songs including, “Lechi Lach,” “Miriam’s Song,” and “Deborah the Prophet,” she crafted musical Midrash, inviting us to discover anew the characters and the stories of the Tanach. She welcomed us into expanded appreciation and celebration of Shabbat and the holidays of the Jewish year, giving us a powerful Hanukkah anthem, “Not by Might, Not by Power,” and an extraordinary Passover cycle that includes “Light these Lights” and “The Journey Song.” She transformed the liturgy, illuminating and reclaiming prayers we had overlooked or neglected; her Mi Shebeirach rekindled a tradition of communal prayer for healing and encouraged other composers to follow her lead, creating musical settings of words that offer strength and encouragement to all struggling with illness, and all who care for them.
As I reflect on 30-plus years of friendship and our work together, crafting new ritual opportunities through the Los Angeles Jewish Feminist Center and Ma’yan, and bringing together members of the Reform movement, I realize that I am one of many, many souls who were blessed to call Debbie “friend.” Wherever she went, she made deep connections, for she, perhaps like King David, looked beyond the masks we wear, and saw directly into people’s hearts. Many of her songs were written in response to the journeys, and questions, of an individual, or a community, she encountered along the way.
Debbie Friedman’s legacy includes many blessings: her deep belief in the transformative power of music and prayer, her understanding that communities can be the locus for true healing, her gift for humor that lightens even the heaviest load. We are in her debt whenever we see God “all around us,” when we link arms to bless our teachers and students with “Kaddish deRabban,” when we sing out Shabbat on the waves of her Havdalah, when we take leave of one another with “Tefillat HaDerech.” Sweet singer of Israel, you have been our blessing.
Rabbi Sue Levi Elwell is founding Director of the Los Angeles Jewish Feminist Center and a worship specialist for the Union for Reform Judaism. She lives in Philadelphia.
Add your voice and send in a tribute to Debbie. E-mail and we’ll post it online with the tributes you see here. If you would like to make a donation in her name, you may do so online at www.debbiefriedman.com or send it to: Renewal of Spirit Foundation, c/o Selwyn Gerber, CPA, Gerber & Co., 1880 Century Park East, Suite 200, Los Angeles, CA 90067-1600.