[ music ] good morning and welcome to mosaic, i am rabbi eric weiss, honored to be your host this morning. music is something the faith communities used throughout the entire country and in fact the world to bring to life to some form of articulation things that seem ultimately wordless when we can't by ourselves, the universe and our relationship with the transcendent and one another. this morning we would like to invite you into a wonderful conversation with kanter sharon bernstein, so to jump into this wonderful conversation thank you so much for being with us. >> thank you for having me. it's a joy to be here. >> let's just jump in and ask

you something basic, what is a cancer and how do you trained to be one, how did you become a kanter, some basic inks for folks to understand -- basic things for folks to understand. >> kanter is the english word which means to sing or chant. the hebrew word is house on and there are other words but basically there are several aspects to the origin of it. the prayers in judaism are always sung. so the candor is someone who has an expertise in that. somebody who has been trained and in the different types of jewish muprayers and torah and text. so there are a lot of aspects to it. the origins of it are the

seeing of the prayers but it has expanded into many areas. >> so kanter is related to the english word canticles in christian tradition. it is something that is sung ? >> yes. >> how did you become a kanter? >> i kind of fell into it. i started doing it right out of college, i had been involved in hall all and i met a rabbi from arizona state university and they were needing a kanter for high holy days so i started doing that. then i got some year-round part- time jobs and eventually i went to cantrell school. >> and where did you go to cantrell school? where are those in the united states? >>e several, there are several different ones. they have ones that are affiliated with different movements. the one i went to is jewish theological seminary of new

york and that is in new york. the program also has a year in israel. there is also hebrew union college which is affiliated with the reform movement. there is also orthodox and renewal. i am not sure if there is a specific program for reconstructionist cantors or not. >> i think what people don't realize is that cantors are the equivalent of rabbis. in fact you are ordained and you function as clergy. >> yes. i would not presume to say i am the equivalent of a rabbi. >> [ laughter ] in jewish life we can say so. >> i wouldn't say it but, [ laughter ] >> from your experience can you talk a little bit about the ways in which you understand the power of music to articulate a deeper yearning and in best of all worlds, theology, faith traditions, trying to focus in for folks to feel that they have a place in the world

and move in the world in ways that are nourishing and comforting? >> yes. i guess i would say that i am extremely text oriented. i think that judaism is extremely text oriented. pretty much everything we do is in some ways based on text. what music does for me is it helps to find a connection, a conduit, a deeper exploration of things. it is sometimes, i call it musical midrash, midrash is c as giving storytelli additional dimension to it. rta we have multiple melodies for it, different melodies can give

a different meaning to the text, can give a different experience of the text. it provides all kinds of different avenues and ways of getting in there and of touching people and helping people to find ways that are important for them to understand things. >> and so in that way do you see music, even though you've got a lyric attached to it, whether it is in english or hebrew or yiddish or any of the other jewish traditional language, -- languages, the music itself invokes things that are beyond the music is saying? >> i would say it expands the meeting. it doesn't give it another meeting, -- meaning, i think it just allows folks to find additional meaning. >> we are going to take quic break. is there something we can go out within a quick way as we go

to our first break? >> i was thinking as we were talking about this that the different melodies can sometimes give different meanings so this is an ethiopian one that a friend wrote . >> and this friend is part of the shabbat friday evening liturgy. [ music ] [ singing in yiddish ]

[ music ] good morning and welcome back to mosaic, i am rabbi eric weiss and we are in the middle of a conversation about music and the jewish community with kanter sharon bernstein. welcome back can't or bernstein. >> thank you. >> some of the things that i no you do, is pay attention to the music that comes out of different jewish communities. i wonder if you could talk a little bit about the ways in which you utilize yiddish and other examples of melodies like the way you sung the ethiopian version of some of the liturgy as we were leaving the last segment. shall we jump in with yiddish ?

>> we can. i have at least -- as a yiddish singer, so i fell in love in college with yiddish songs. and the it is language. so i started delving into it and finding songs wherever i could and singing them and performing them. and eventually when i went to jerusalem for can toil school, a friend invited me to do workshops, he had a place called -- which is kind of a combination of library of yiddish books, and also this cultural programming. so he asked me to do a monthly workshop on yiddish songs.

so i would go to the library to archives every month and do a search for yiddish songs on a different theme. and do some of those songs that i found, my favorite ones are the songs that i found as part of a workshop and it eventually became a yiddish piano bar where i would just hang out at the piano with my book, it just kept growing. so at this point i had like 400 yiddish songs in there. and i would just play and sing while there was candlelight and people were drinking vodka and eating herring and dark bread. >> that's wonderful. i think some people may no, yiddish is a language that is generally a combination of german and hebrew, written originally and hebrew characters but also in german. it comes out of the jewish experience in eastern europe. it was really a language that people spoke day today.

so people would have yiddish as their first language and that was the language of conversation and a songwriting and of argument and love. so it wasn't necessarily, would you say today even now it is not necessarily continued -- considered to be a sacred language as sometimes hebrew is? >> no not at all. it was the vernacular language for those who didn't speak hebrew, it was used for living, for everything. >> was it kind of a jewish lingua franca that no matter where you are at least in europe if you spoke yiddish you could communicate? >> i think to some degree. but not necessarily. i think there were places certainly where yiddish was not widely spoken. for instance italy. although i think there are places in italy where yiddish was spoken.

i think it really depends on where you were. >> so what about yiddish and the yiddish song attracts you? if we think of the music that is attached to words that reveals something about the spirit and soul, what is it about yiddish song and melody that attracts you. i do? --? >> the stories for me are amazing, i look like -- i feel like i am looking into another world or getting postcards from the past. like is reflective of so many different experiences. i tend to specialize in lesser- known or unknown yiddish songs, i have had maybe five seconds of fame for singing yiddish songs

that i'm not going to do here. but you just really get such a wide range of experiences because it was spoken in so many different places. and so many different kinds of places. different countries and big cities and little towns, that you just get such a wide variety, people who are religious and also people who are completely not religious, that you really get a variety. and musically, when you say yiddish song, you are actually almost, not completely, but it's almost like you are saying english song. it really depends on the country and the place that it can be almost any kind of melody. >> in a moment i no we are -- i know we are going to go out with a snippet of yiddish song but are there contemporary yiddish songwriters today ? >> yes. there are, that's a great question.

there are and i am not remembering everybody who is doing it right now, my favorite and one of my muses was who passed away a few years ago. and i met her and she usually wrote her own music but she had one of her poems that she had not found a tune she liked and she was opening it up to people to write melodies and the melody i wrote was the one she ended up using for her song. >> oh, beautiful. can we ask you to treat us to a little bit of that ? >> yes. and it just talks about light [ ddish ]ss.

[ cell phone rings ]

>> yeah, i'm watching it too. i see them every day. >> the curtains, they're always drawn in this place. >> i know. >> that guy, it seems like he's in charge of them. i don't know, i don't feel very good about this. >> we have to report this. >> yes, absolutely.

[ music ] good morning and welcome back to mosaic, i am rabbi eric weiss and honored to be your host, we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation with cantor sharon bernstein about music and the use of music in jewish life in general. i no that one of the areas that you actually explore and have contributed to -- i know that one of the areas that you actually explore and have contributed to is the way music helps us heal. as ceo of the jewish healing center i have a full appreciation of the different ways we understand the word heal but you focus particularly on the way music can heal people, an illness, in greece, at the end of life, or just in a more general -- in grief, at

the end of life or just in a more general way. so what brings you to this cd and book and how will you bring it to folks? >> it came out of my congregational work. there was a congregant diagnosed with cancer who was going to go into key the -- chemo and i came up with the idea, i'm not sure how, of making it a journey for her. so for each of her chemo treatments i picked a different prayer or text that either specifically talked about healing or felt ththe that might be helpful to her in her process. i recorded it, sometimes i

wrote music for it. and wrote some explorations, and exercises that they could do to help explore the text of it. i sent it the day before each chemo treatment as a little gift package. >> what is the meaning of on the wings of rafael? >> it is said that we have four angels that surround us as we go to bed at night. we invoke them. and on the right is gabrielle, no, on the right is mikhail, ga strength of god, before us is the light of god in behind us is rafael who is the healing of god. -- and behind us is rafael who is the healing of god.

i was coming up with this title for a year, i had about 300 possible names and as i was cooking one day i finally came to the end of it. for me it means being enveloped and surrounded and cared for and embraced. one of the prayers, the evening prayer that we recite before going to bed at night, it is often translated spread over us the shelter of peace but i don't want to use the word spread it because particularly with cancer the word spread can have difficult connotations. so i came up with unfurl. so unfurl over us a shelter of peace. for me those wings, i imagined rafael having these wings not on top of us but over us, to hold us and care for us and help keep us safe area and nurtured. >> if anybody would like to

have the book and the cd, how do they actually purchase it? >> the best thing to do is to go to my website which is sharon bernstein.com and click on the tab that says under the wings of rafael and they can find different places to get it. there are copies at my synagogue and also copies that can be bought online. the book and cd can be purchased separately and the tracks can be downloaded. >> a wonderful. as we go to our next break is there something from that cd, from the book, that you might sing to us as we leave this segment? >> i think i will sing -- the prayer that we recite at the end , a silent standing prayer and it means keep my lips from speaking badly.

[ singing in yiddish ]

[ music ]

good morning and welcome back to mosaic, we are in the middle of a wonderful conversation about the use of music in the jewish community with cantor sharon bernstein, welcome back cantor bernstein. >> thank you rabbi weiss. >> we been talking up about the ways in which music comes out of a general tradition and also how a community influences music or region and i wonder you could talk a little about music in a contemporary way and how even for example a congregation in san francisco has influenced you and influenced the development of music for the broader community? >> in terms of music and contemporary music and judaism, i think sometimes we tend to think of this as a modern

phenomenon of having more pop or rock music and a synagogue. but the research, not just the research, but what has happened in jewish communities throughout the world is that the jews tend to be part of the local non-jewish music scene. so you will end up having music that sounds a lot like the music of the surrounding culture. jewish music in morocco has a lot of similarities to moroccan music. italian music in the synagogue can beke opera. so what we have happening today is people have a musical vocabulary kerama --, we talk

about it being a universal language and we have a vocabulary, a language we grow up with. so sometimes we listen to things and we have a sense of where it's going to go. or if we are learning a new tune, there is a predictability, because of things that we've listened to that we are used to. so that can be powerful when used in the synagogue. it helps people connect in additional ways. so sometimes it is the older, what we call traditional tunes, that sometimes are even decades- old, we're not talking hundreds of years old usually, but sometimes that is what helps people connect. and sometimes it is music that sounds like what people listen to on the radio or maybe more like on their device. so i believe in using a wide mixture of things.

i believe in using traditional music and modern music and just finding all kinds of different points for connection and reaching meaning. >> believe it or not, in a moment we will have to say goodbye. i am wondering if there is just an example that might come out of your congregation that we can say goodbye to folks with, any particular context. >> i would say for me, being at this congregation one of the things is that i've developed a subspecialty in rainbow songs. and i have learned many of the ones out there. i haven't learned all of them. so maybe we close with over the rainbow. >> wonderful. >> [ singing ] somewhere over the rainbow, way up high, there's a land that i've heard of once in a lullaby.

somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue. and the dreams that do you dare to dream really do come true. someday i'll wish upon a star and wake up where the clouds --

juliette goodrich, kpix five news. live from the cbs bay area studios, this is kpix 5 news. >> the remnants of hurricane florence causing even more deaths, and the relentless downpours show no sign of stopping. good morning, let's get right to hurricane check ins. >> the storm watch shows you can see parts of north carolina have been swamped with several feet of water. kpix 5 radar sows extreme weather activity is moving at a e . snail's pace so some areas have already gotten almost 3 feet of rain. and three more deaths have been reported, bringing the total number 214. almost 1 million homes and businesses have no power, courtney is a basque he is in north carolina. >> we been under -- >> reporter: