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Hallel: The Ladder Of Song
Contributed by Noraa Kaplan

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On the shore of the Red Sea, as the waters calmed and the gravity of what they had just witnessed sunk in, B’ney Yisra’el “had faith in Hashem and their servant Moshe. Then Moshe and B’ney Yisra’el sang.” (Exodus 14:31-15:1) For the Israelites, song was the ultimate expression of their faith. Music has always been central to Jewish religious practice. It’s rare to hear liturgy spoken in synagogues—every prayer has a tune, every verse of the Tanach has its trope. But all too often, these melodies become mere background noise. We either focus only on the words, or sing the familiar ditties mindlessly and without inspiration. 

To counter this, Chassidic Jews introduced a new type of song to the Jewish world: the nigun. Instead of setting prayers and passages from the Torah to music, nigunim are melodies with no words at all. Chassidim say these wordless songs allow the soul to communicate with the divine in a language beyond what words are capable of expressing. In the words of the Chassidic master, the Piazetsner Rebbe, “Sometimes, a person must build ladders to climb to the heavens. A nigun is one of these ladders, specifically when we sing after the joy of a mitzvah, with a heart broken open.” The Hebrew word for ladder, סולם, sulam, also means ‘musical scale.’ Its gematria is 136, the same as קול, kol, the Hebrew word for voice and להאמין, le-he’emin, ‘to believe’ or ‘to have faith.’ When we lift our voices in song, we also lift up our spirits to the divine expanse above us. Reb Nachman of Breslov said, “even one who doesn’t know how to play music can sing to the best of their ability and bring themself back to life through a nigun, for the ‘lift’ of a nigun cannot be measured.” 

In their song at the Red Sea, our ancestors made a promise: ashira, “I will sing.” We traditionally fulfill that promise at this point in the seder by reciting Hallel, a set of psalms to praise Hashem upon special occasions. Unlike most psalms, the songs of Hallel are anonymous. The Talmud tells us that Hallel was composed spontaneously by B’ney Yisra’el at the Sea for the Jewish people to recite in every time of trouble and after every redemption. The proof for this is that the same phrase is used in both the Song of the Sea and Hallel: “The Eternal is my strength and my song, she has become my deliverance.” (Exodus 15:2 ; Psalm 118:14) The Hebrew word zimrat (‘my song’) comes from the same root as zamar, which means to prune or pare away. Our song can pare away the kelipot, the hard shells which surround our souls. 

This verse from the Song of the Sea and from Hallel shows up one more time in the Tanach. The prophet Isaiah prophesized that when the World to Come arrives, we will say, “I give thanks to You, Hashem, for You comfort me. I am confident and unafraid, for the Eternal is my strength and my song, and she has become my deliverance.” (Isaiah 12:1-2) Why is this verse written down three separate times? In the Song of the Sea, it reveals our people’s past. It’s included in Hallel so we can bring it with us into the present, whenever we need it. And when we are redeemed in the World to Come, when we hurl our chains into the ocean and burn the prisons down, we will sing this ancient refrain, making it new again, and then sing a new song. In this way, we add our voices to an eternal chorus. With the Eternal as our song, we can pare away the shells of our hardened hearts. So let’s rise, beloveds, for “blossoms are seen on earth, and the time of singing has begun.” (Song of Songs 2:12)
haggadah Section: Hallel
Source: Min Ha-Meitzar: An Abolitionist Haggadah from the Narrow Place by Noraa Kaplan

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