Mi shebeirach avoteinu
M’kor hab’racha l’imoteinu
May the source of strength,
Who blessed the ones before us
Help us find the courage to make our lives a blessing,
And let us say, Amen.
So goes the first verse of “Mi shebeirach,” a song written and composed by Debbie Friedman (with Drorah Setel) and released in 1989.
Based on Jewish liturgical texts as the song of blessing and also of healing, Friedman’s modernized version has become a staple at synagogue services. It also has been heard at diverse other religious and spiritual gatherings.
Friedman (1951-2011) had begun writing music in the 1970s and won over new audiences by blending Hebrew and English lyrics into many of her songs while also using gender-neutral language and fostering gender inclusiveness. Bringing Hebrew and non-Hebrew speakers to sing along and introducing a guitar as accompaniment helped fill synagogues and temples with younger congregants.
On Sunday, June 30, the Laguna Woods Performing Arts Center will resound with Friedman’s music during this year’s Fran Baum Memorial Concert.
Burt Baum, along with his children, Paul and Julie, once again sponsors the concert in memory of his late wife of 55 years, who died in 2021. It is also a fundraiser for the Reform Temple of Laguna Woods, the Baum family’s gift to Burt and Fran’s temple.
Last year, Baum underwrote the concert “Music from the Ukraine to Broadway, Kletzmer to Jazz,” also in honor of his wife.
“When my wife died, I read books by Joan Didion (“The Year of Magical Thinking”), Elizabeth Kübler-Ross (“On Death and Dying”) and David Kessler (“Finding Meaning: The Sixth Stage of Grief”) and learned that if you want to memorialize someone, if you look for some meaning in their death, you will be more comfortable. That means stretching out to other people and finding ways to help other people,” Baum said. “My wife was very active. She loved music and singing, she liked to dance, enjoyed being a clown and cheering people up, volunteering.”
A 2015 orchestral arrangement by Israeli composer/musician Or Oren forms the concert’s core. Oren went through 240 of Friedman’s compositions, chose 14 of her most well-known songs and created a full orchestra arrangement.
“When I was introduced to the music in 2014, I got my hands on an anthology (“Sing Onto God”) of all the melodies (Friedman) had written and all her recordings that had not been published,” Oren said. “I went over the book and found the melodies to make the arrangement.”
Oren did not make any changes to Friedman’s songs, he said, but arranged them into melodies that naturally follow each other.
“I was really touched by Debbie’s music since she never got a thorough musical education,” he said. “Her music came strictly from the heart.”
Cheryl Friedman, Debbie Friedman’s sister and a Laguna Woods resident, will take part in the concert by narrating a series of video clips about her sister.
“There was nothing like her before,” she said. “A guitar at services? Unheard of!”
Early on in life, she said, the Friedmans adhered to Conservative Judaism but switched to Reform services in the 1950s.
“The Reform Movement was young then and about social action,” Cheryl Friedman said. “Debbie grew with it. She used old prayers and Hebrew and combined English and Hebrew in her liturgy, making people understand it.
“She made Judaism accessible and made music more accessible minus a lot of technical flourishes.”
Debbie Friedman also translated texts to make them equally inclusive for women and men.
“We have to reframe things that women’s voices are heard,” Debbie Friedman says in a video clip, while admitting to taking some poetic license at times to achieve her objectives. For example, the line “the spirit of all men shall live in peace” became “the spirit of all people …”
At the PAC, Friedman’s music will be performed by the 25-strong South Coast Chamber Orchestra, part of the South Coast Symphony, together with the Reform Temple choir, led by Temple Music Director Juanita Tsu.
Barry Silverman conducts the South Coast Chamber Orchestra.
“This will be the first time the orchestra performs Debbie Friedman’s music,” Silverman said. “She took traditional music and modernized it, made it more enjoyable by creating more listenable harmonies.”
The South Coast Symphony had not previously played religious music, Silverman said, but had done a concert of women in music.
Calling itself “the unstuffy symphony,” the SCS is a resident Orange County orchestra that has ventured into diverse musical territory, from classical to Broadway and pops and, as a recent Community Concert performance in the Village suggested, points in between.
Chairing the program and in charge of all its aspects is Reform Temple board member Stuart Hack. He noted that at the beginning of Friedman’s career, traditional rabbis and cantors considered her a threat.
“Change to the liturgical music would be a threat to the religion, they claimed,” Hack said. “However, the real threat at the time was that people were not coming through the doors – all religions faced that threat.
“Better we should let people in to all of the music, get people to come to services and give grandchildren stronger ties to their religion.”
A Jewish publication, The Forward, had dubbed Friedman “The Joan Baez of Jewish Song,” and the description seems appropriate.
Perhaps Friedman summed up her contribution best when she said in a video clip: “I love the tradition and the poetry of the text, and I love to play with the text. I feel so lucky that I can write stuff that helps people.”
The Fran Baum Memorial Concert is Sunday, June 30, at 2 p.m. in the Performing Arts Center.
Tickets are $38 for balcony seating, $75 for orchestra. The orchestra tickets include a reception with hors d’oeuvres, cheese and wine after the concert. Tickets are available online at tickets.lagunawoodsvillage.com or the PAC box office; call 949-597-4288 for details.
For more information, call Stuart Hack at 949-212-7028.
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