Kirtan Rabbi’ Brings Indian Chants, Drumming

Maayan Jaffe Staff Reporter

OCTOBER 26, 2007

When the lights dim at the Owings Mills Jewish Community Center on Saturday night, Nov. 10, the chanting will begin. The drums will beat. Voices will vibrate.

From 7:30 to 9:30 p.m., the JCC’s Adult Life department presents “Kirtan Rabbi: Mystical Hebrew Chant.” The evening, according to adult life coordinator Miriam Abramovich, “from start to finish is going to be really exciting.”

The “Kirtan Rabbi” is Rabbi Andrew Hahn of New York City. Joined by drum circle facilitator Shoshana Jedwab, the two will unleash the life force through a participatory song session of Hebrew call-and-response chanting. (No knowledge of Hebrew is necessary.)

“People should come with an openness to let go a little, participate and enter into something a little different than usual,” said Rabbi Hahn, who will encourage people to chant, hum and meditate along with him — and wear comfortable clothes.

In synagogues, Jews sing a prayer through and then move on to the next. Kirtan chanting depends on continual repetition of a “simple, beautiful Hebrew phrase to enter a different consciousness and state of mind,” he said. Chants can go on for as little as two minutes or as many as 20, the participants determining each chant’s length.

Before each chant, the rabbi offers what he calls an orientation, a teaching to set the mood and intention for the upcoming chant. Upon completion, there is a short meditation or silence.Folks generally sit on yoga mats or pillows.

Though the system is Eastern in nature, Rabbi Hahn said the intent is not to “be Indian,” or even to bring the two cultures together. He said he wants Jews to find commonality and spirituality in their own religion.

With a rabbinical degree from Hebrew Union College and a doctorate in Jewish thought from the Jewish Theological Seminary, Rabbi Hahn said the “rabbi” part of “Kirtan Rabbi” is equally as important as the “Kirtan.” What he said he is trying to do is use an Indian method in a Jewish way, to reach people who might otherwise feel spiritually empty or at least need something to complement their traditional religious experiences.

“Most of us have grown up with a Judaism that got pretty dry, and that is why so many people went off to be ‘Hin-Jews’ or ‘Bu-Jews.’ They weren’t finding the energy they were seeking in Judaism,” he said.

Rabbi Hahn said spirituality is not enough without religion, and he doesn’t think mixing a cocktail of spiritual practices will offer the same fulfillment as finding spirituality in religion, which offers a history and community.”Religion with no spirituality will die,” he said. “Spirituality without religion is a kind of narcissism.”

At his sessions, he said he hopes people will have “a direct yet intellectually and emotionally informed experience of God, whatever God means to them, and to have that connection to the Divine in a context where they also feel connected to the community of participants around
them.”

Ms. Abramovich said she expects as many as 50 people to attend the “Kirtan Rabbi” event, which costs $8 for JCC members and $12 for non-members (drink and dessert included).

She said the night fits into the center’s spirituality and wellness program, and she said she is confident that “if you are looking for a new way to explore a connection with God and spirituality, or even just interested in Hebrew and niggunim (wordless Chasidic melodies),” the
“Kirtan Rabbi” will be able to help.

“He is really interested in breaking down the formalities of prayer and connecting to God,” said Ms. Abramovich.

What Is Kirtan?

Kirtan is a form of chant developed in India to heighten participation, communal feeling and ecstatic communion with the Divine, according to Rabbi Andrew Hahn. Its unique call-and-response formula takes away the notion of singer and audience, but rather is wholly participatory.

A Festival of Eastern Chant:
Blessings and Namaste to Rebbe Andrew Hahn, who chants Jewish Prayers in an Indian form and does Hasidic Tai Chi

Maariv — February 17, 2008

The combination of music and religious ritual is well known: church choirs, stirring Gospel singers in black congregations, Sufi music, the earth-shaking song of the Tibetan monks, the almost intoxicating song of mystical unification which bursts forth from the temples of the Sikhs, and the holy drums in Afro-Caribbean rituals. The place of music within Judaism is also not absent, and there is space in it for cantors, niggunim and chants. And if it is possible to take what’s good from all worlds — well, why not? Meet Rabbi Andrew Hahn, known simply as Reb Drew, a New York rabbi who does kirtan.

Kirtan (or: Bhajan) is a meditative form of chant and an important part of the way of Bhakti, religious unification in the Indian tradition. Whoever has been present at a ceremony like this – even if the Indian culture is completely strange and foreign to her – is not able to resist the power of the tones of the harmonium, the tablas, and the continual collective chant, which one hears as if one were always there and could never cease. The basic structure of the kirtan is, “I sing—you answer”: The main chanter sings a line, and the “choir” answers.

Reb Drew, scion of Pittsburgh, began to play and sing at a young age and even took part, in childhood, as a singer in the city’s opera. On his website, he tells that standing on the stage as a child was a welcome sign to his place in the future as a musician (and since he is also a rabbi) before a congregation. He turned to guitar, was a member of rock bands, studied music academically – and, in parallel, turned to rabbinic studies. Something moved within him when he took part in the Sanskrit kirtans, for example, of Krishna Das. Under the influence of yogic kirtans, the young (sic!) Rabbi began to learn to play the harmonium – which he plays as an atmospheric drone which seeps in the background into the hearts of the listeners. Additionally, he plays guitar [occasionally] in the course of a kirtan.

His motto, “First we sing, then we believe,” is taken from the sayings of Abraham Joshua Heschel, who was a Jewish theologian, poet, philosopher and friend of Martin Luther King. Heschel believed that God is revealed in what we do together. The aspiration of Reb Drew, if there is one, is to establish a Jewish kirtan: to find a way by which it is possible for the participants to release themselves into the the group voice, and to find a place in which leader and congregation “disappear one into the other, and don’t know any more who is who, such that the only listeners are perhaps God and the angels.”

Reb Drew believes that Hebrew Kirtan works wonderfully. He claims that researchers have shown that the Hebrew language belongs to a group known as the “vibrational languages.” In the singing of kirtan, one does not sing one song and pass on to the next one, since it’s all about meditative chant. This is one of the challenges with which the rabbi wrestles, since [this approach] is strange to Jewish custom [perhaps]. Indeed, the event itself and the immediate spiritual connection which it creates in its course, he explains, are much more important than the language in which one sings. Both singers and non-singers are invited to his kirtans, Jews and non-Jews — anyone who wants to connect with God, together, by way of voice.

Here one can hear the piyyut Yah Ribon Olam by Rabbi Israel Najara in a tune adapted from the ashram of Sai Baba, or Lecha Dodi, Eit dodim kalah and “Love your neighbor” with an Indian flavor.

Kirtan is not all. Reb Drew borrows from the cultures of Asia also with tai chi, and on his site, he combines the Star of David with the yin-yang sign. He also teaches tai chi, and in his musical gatherings sometimes even combines Eastern meditation. His tai chi is joined to hasidic concepts, and in his movement lessons it is possible to find Jewish concepts like, “resurrection of the dead,” kavannah exercises, and “[transparent] self-abnegation.”

For anyone who intends to go to a kirtan in New York, it is recommended to bring a pillow, except for those who want to sit in a chair which will be provided. Sometimes it is nice to have a blanket around one, and also to bring a bottle of water.