This Shabbat is called Shabbat Shirah, the Shabbat of Song, in honor of the song sung by Moses and all of Israel after crossing the Red Sea and seeing the Egyptians drown. This marks the final stage of leaving Egypt and the culmination of generations of slavery and oppression.[1] We are taught that the revelation of God at the sea was so great that what the simplest handmaiden witnessed was greater than even the revelations of Ezekiel the prophet in his vision of the Divine Chariot (Ma’aseh Merkavah), one of the deepest secrets of the Jewish mystical tradition.[2] The revelation the people experienced was transformed into spontaneous joy and song. Thus, song becomes the vehicle or chariot of sublime spiritual experience. The Song at the Sea is included in our prayers every morning.
The Structure of the Sefirot
Let us take a deeper look at song as discussed in Kabbalah and Chasidut. To do so we begin with a discussion of the ten sefirot and then how they relate to song. According to the Arizal, the sefirot in the World of Rectification, our present reality, are structurally depicted along three vertical axes: two exterior axes and one interior, unifying, one. The two exterior axes are seemingly opposites, while the central axis synthesizes the two. Although the ten sefirot can be divided according to a number of different schemes, perhaps the most natural division, especially when the soul’s ten powers are being discussed, is into three main groupings, each in the shape of a triangle:
crown (keter), wisdom (chochmah), and understanding (binah)—the soul’s intellectual powers.
loving-kindness (chesed), might (gevurah), and beauty (tiferet)—the soul’s emotional powers.
victory (netzach), acknowledgment (hod), and foundation (yesod)—the soul’s behavioral, or instinctual powers.
At the end of the middle axis, we find kingdom (malchut), the final sefirah receiving the energy of all the sefirot above it.[3]
This arrangement of the sefirot is not merely a visual representation of rectification; rather, the three columns and all that they symbolize are the driving forces motivating reality to strive to reach its ultimate purpose of rectification (tikkun). In fact, the three axes plus the fact that the sefirot are on a triangular lattice and form three triangles is connected to the meaning of the number three, which is rectification (tikkun) and permanence (kiyum).[4] In Hebrew, the word for “permanence” (קִיּוּם) contains the same letters as the word for “line” (קַוִּים), and the two middle letters of the word “rectification” (תִּקּוּן) can be read as “line” (קַו). This single “line” alluded to by the word “rectification” is the middle axis of the sefirot, the one that integrates opposites thus creating unity and harmony.
Connections Between the Sefirot and Song
Having described the structure in which the sefirot are arranged, let us now connect these ideas to song. The Zohar describes the sefirot using a somewhat cryptic division into four progressing levels of song: “A simple song, a double song, a triple song, and a quadruple song.”[5] What the Zohar means is that the ten sefirot can be arranged in the form of a triangle with four lines, with 1, 2, 3, and 4 sefirot in each line:
| simple song | crown | |||||||
| double song | wisdom | understanding | ||||||
| triple Song | loving-kindness | might | beauty | |||||
| quadruple song | victory | acknowledgment | foundation | kingdom | ||||
These four levels of song interestingly correspond to the four singers of Perek Shira discussed here. The simple song is considered the song of God, the double song relates to the song of man, the triple song corresponds to the song of the angels, and the quadruple song to the song of creation.[6],[7]
This structure of the ten sefirot being referred to as four levels of song further strengthens the concept that song lies at the essence of the Divine creative process, in as much as the ten sefirot are essentially connected with the Ten Utterances—the ten times the Torah account of creation writes, “God said”—through which God spoke or rather sang the world into existence.
Ten Archetypal Songs
Furthermore, the Ten Utterances of creation and the ten sefirot are essentially connected to the tradition that there are ten archetypal songs sung throughout history.[8] The Song at the Sea in this week’s parashah of Beshalach is one of the ten songs. These songs stand out among all the other countless songs in Jewish tradition in that each one was written in a state of Divine inspiration or prophesy and came at a climactic moment of transition, transformation or revelation for an individual or all the people. They reflect some, or all of the following attributes: a high level of awareness of God’s Providence, a sense of mission and purpose, and a sense of completion and wholeness. It is like those rare and unique moments in life when everything seems to fall into place, when everything feels perfect, just as it should be. A moment when everything about life makes sense and we feel an immediate urge to thank and praise God.
These songs accompany history from Adam, the first human, to the Mashiach, who will lead Israel and all the world to the consummate and final redemption. Nine of these archetypal songs appear in the Tanach while the tenth song will only be revealed at the time of redemption. These songs are sung by both men and women, kings and judges, individuals and the entire people. Let us now explore further these four levels of song discussed above.[9]
Four Levels of Song
The Simple Song: According to Kabbalah and Chasidut, all songs emanate from the sefirah of crown. More specifically, from the loving-kindness (chasadim) of Atik Yomin, the higher part of the crown whose inner experience is super-conscious pleasure. This level of the crown infuses and sustains all the lower sefirot. This explains the great pleasure that music and song arouse in the soul. This level of Divine pleasure in the crown is referred to as the simple song.
The Double Song: When Atik garbs and expresses itself in the intellectual sefirot—wisdom and understanding—it is called a double song. Here, pleasure manifests as flashes of insight in the sefirah of wisdom and the intellectual pleasure of taking the initial spark of inspiration and developing it through understanding. Wisdom and understanding are also known as the father and mother principles and in the Zohar they are described as “two companions that never part.”[10]
The Triple Song: Relates to pleasure as experienced in the emotions—the three sefirot of loving-kindness, might, and beauty. The inner dimension of loving-kindness is love and caring, thus pleasure in loving-kindness arouses the will to give generously to others. Fear or awe is the inner dimension of might and relates to the emotional fear that one’s love may be too indiscriminate. This type of fear arouses compassion, the inner experience of beauty, which serves as a composite between love and fear, the energies in loving-kindness and might. Love arouses great pleasure in the soul and culminates in these three sefirot working together. Music and song intensely affect emotions, moving the heart to experience feelings deeply.
The Quadruple Song: The final aspect of these four levels of song is associated with the pleasure of self-expression, either through speech or through action. The Quadruple song relates to the four last sefirot that constitute our instinctive or behavioristic faculties of the soul. When the pleasure from the crown enters these sefirot, it manifests as freedom of expression, bringing in its wake strong feelings of liberation.
Music and song have the unique ability to express the deepest levels of soul – from the emotions to the intellect, from the conscious to the subconscious, and ultimately to the highest levels of super-consciousness rooted in the crown, the source of all music.
[1]. Exodus 15:1-19.
[2]. Mechilta 15:2.
[4]. Sod HaShem LiYerei’av, Klalut Seder Hahishtalshut, pp. 77-82.
[5]. Zohar 3:219b and Introduction to Tikkunei Zohar 3a.
[6]. See Wonders issues 171-173.
[7]. See Music: The Quill of the Soul, p.106.
[8]. The ten songs are enumerated by Targum Yonaton as a commentary on the first verse of the Song of Songs, composed be King Solomon.
[9]. See Musicf: The Quill of the Soul, pp. 108-110.
[10]. Zohar 3:4a.
