Shiru l’Adonai Hero: Debbie Friedman Debbie Friedman changed American Jewish music forever. When talking about her life Debbie says, “I didn’t get into Jewish music. It got into me.” She explains, “The prayer has spoken to me, and I just sing back with my friends.”
A Career Debbie’s music has been influenced by sources as different as Judy Collins and the late Qwaali singer Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan. Debbie has created a library of music that is everywhere: the melody for havdalah, Mi Sheberakh, “The AlefBet Song”, and more music that you probably know. Debbie says, “What I do is respond to text. A rabbi friend of mine calls my music musical midrash.” She says, “In the text that I’m working on at the moment, one particular phrase goes over and over in my head. I write about what comes to my mind in relationship to these words, lyrically and musically.” When she writes Hebrew texts into music the language practically writes itself, she says. “Hebrew has its own internal, passionate music.”
The Early Years Debbie was born in Utica, N.Y. Her bubbe (grandmother) and zadie (grandfather) lived upstairs. When she was five years old her father decided to move the family to St. Paul, Minnesota. She first picked up a guitar at the age of sixteen, inspired by Barbara Gutkin, one of her fellow counselors at Herzl Camp in Wisconsin. At home she continued to teach herself how to play, mostly by listening to Peter, Paul and Mary records.
Debbie has written hundreds of songs, recorded some twenty albums and sung with thousands and thousands of people, including four concerts at Carnegie Hall. Her music is sung all over the world. She is also on the faculty of the Hebrew Union College–Jewish Institute of Religion, where she helps to train rabbis and cantors.
In 1968 she became a song leader for her synagogue’s youth group. She attended a songleading workshop at the UAHC Kutz Camp Institute in Warwick, N.Y. Her first song was a setting of the V’Ahavta that begins with the phrase "And thou shalt love the Lord your God…". “I taught it to a group of kids who were doing a creative service with James Taylor, Joan Baez and Judy Collins music. Not only did they sing the V’Ahavta; they stood arm in arm. They were moved; they were crying.”
A Lifetime of Work Debbie Friedman’s work is a product of her passion for “bringing people together” and the power of community united in song. “My objective is to involve people in the experience,” she says. “I try to make prayer user-friendly. Because the music is in a familiar style, people are able to make the connection between the music and the text. The real power is in the poetry of the liturgy, how moving and stirring it can be, connecting us to our deepest and most precious ideas, hopes and fears.” Debbie lives — and her songs spread — the value of shiru l’Adonai.
In 1972 Debbie recorded her first album, Sing unto God, a compilation of songs from the Shabbat service featuring a high school choir. “I had planned to make a demo tape, but when I found out it would cost only $500 more to make a thousand LPs, I thought, why not? They sold like hotcakes at camp. That’s how it started. It was a fluke.” 79
