Hebrew Chanting Circle — One Sunday morning a month (time varies, see calendar), led by David Goldstein

Hebrew chanting is a form of meditation that opens the doors of the heart. No prior knowledge of singing or chanting, or fluency with Hebrew, is necessary. David leads with texts from Isaiah, Psalms, and Torah, combined with simple, repetitive melodies, to dive deeply into an intention. Drumming and the East Indian shruti box help to heighten the experience.

David Goldstein is a composer of sacred music, and a graduate of Shefa Gold’s Kol Zimra Chant Leadership Program. Contact him at dpgold@yahoo.com

Some of our participants wrote about the chant group in the November/December 2010 issue of Doorways:

From Elaine Blevins:

When I first began attending David Goldstein’s chant circle a year and a half ago, I really had no idea what a rich journey I was beginning. I had some meditation in my previous experience, but not much chant at all, and certainly none in Hebrew. What I found in the first chant circles, and continue to find now, is that when we chant Hebrew phrases, a different aspect of the prayer or the section of scripture opens up for me into new understanding and new layers of meaning.

The chant circle typically begins with a niggun, and continues with the exploration of several chants which follow a thematic arc related to the season, recent holidays, or a particular spiritual focus. I have experienced myself becoming increasingly open to the prayer, and I have watched incredulously as wounded places of my heart get healed, and the stronger parts of me become centered and resolved, in the context of the safe space we all share in creating.

In the Gates of Prayer siddur, we were reminded that prayer cannot bring water to parched fields, but that it can water an arid soul, and I have experienced that feeling of renewal again and again through the joyful work of participating in David Goldstein’s chant circle.

From M.F.:

I was raised to be an atheist — a Jewish atheist, but an atheist nonetheless. At first, I accepted the dogma unthinkingly, as most children do. Eventually, life opened other doors in my mind and soul, but atheism’s tenets have remained the default belief, abandoned only during periods when persuasive spiritual influences dominated, or events convincingly pointed toward the possibility of a transcendent dimension, or more often, during fleeting moments of grace. Although I have made progress in liberating myself from the grip of a belief system that is for me deeply unsatisfying, impoverished, and no longer convincing, it is an ongoing struggle not to engage that inner debate.

When I enter the gentle, sacred space of David Goldstein’s chant circle, I am freed from tedious intellectual rumination. Instead, I contemplate, meditate on, and inhabit with my voice, aspects of divine presence, the reality that my deepest longing has sought for years. There is no automatic firing of the synapses of programmed intellectual resistance. There is only intention and desire: to enter into and hold spiritual truths and longings embodied in our liturgy, transported by a spiritual chariot of melodies. “Happy are they that dwell in Thy house, they are ever praising Thee.” “Oh Creator, the soul that you have planted in me is pure.” Wrapped in the tallit of our voices, then in the silence of our breath, I rest, albeit briefly, in God’s peace.