A few months ago, I started building the thesis that we can view the cultural and economic renaissance in Israel through the lens of the Torah’s last mitzvah, writing a Sefer Torah. I began with riseup, an Israeli startup enabling financial empowerment.
Today I want to start talking about the cultural manifestation of this mitzvah —specifically in music—given HaMizrachi Magazine’s new + awesome cover story.
Recently I went to an Akiva concert. Akiva is part of an up-and-coming class of Israeli singer-songwriters fusing Torah with the modern world. Some wear kippahs, some don’t. Some let their tzitzit fly, others don’t. They attract an audience from across the religious spectrum, from ultra-orthodox to secular.
In one song, Akiva sings about Abraham's journey forth from his birthplace to the land that God will show him. Listening his performance in Jerusalem recently (video here - ignore my terrible voice) was surreal, to be completing the journey, in the Land of Israel.
This 2020 piece by Natan Oliff captures some of singer-songwriter Hanan Ben Ari’s thought, another pop star fusing Torah with modern topics, in Hebrew, in Israel.
With Hebrew the lingua franca in Israel, the Torah is expressed not only in the hallowed walls of the Beit Midrash, but on the streets of Tel Aviv. Torah is embedded in the very arrangements of letters. True, the influences of language are subtle, but it’s there.
In the States, I think that many people and institutions try to divorce Torah from the mundane or secular. This bifurcation is sometimes helpful (we need to maintain the right priorities), but also harmful. The fusion of Torah and modern culture is beautiful and powerful, and without it we lose a lot.
I understand the hesitation to engage in modernity. Jews are often skeptical of change for good reason, due to various fears, including of assimilation. But there is a risk in barring the possibility of beauty or truth beyond strictly Jewish sources.
The reason I chose a yeshiva spearheaded by a Rabbinic figure with a PhD in English Literature was because that I believe that God is the source of all beauty and truth in the world. In other words, for me Torah ideas can be excavated from the modern world—books, podcasts, music—and also expressed in it.
As Michael Eisenberg is fond of saying, the Abarbanel brought his hatred for the monarchy after the Spanish Inquisition to his commentary on the Torah. And the Ibn Ezra’s poverty influenced his exegesis. After all, we humans cannot separate our learning from our lived experience.
Michael brings his unique economic / innovation / technology lens to the text. I'm not sure what mine is yet. As of now, I guess it’s a combination of literature, philosophy, psychology, entrepreneurship, human behavior, and Other Stuff. The important thing—in fulfilling the last commandment of the Torah, to write a sefer Torah—is not to describe the lens but to have one and use it. By infusing the Torah with our lived experience, we enrich the text and make it more relatable for others, thus giving them creative license to do the same.
This is the modern power of Akiva, Hanan Ben Ari, and so many other singers at the heart of this renaissance in Jewish music happening in Israel.
It is said that this mitzvah—writing a Sefer Torah—is one of the preparatory steps leading to the conclusion of the exile and the coming of the Mashiach. How cool.