THE flattest, most banal words can be saved - transfigured, even
- by fine music. That much has been known since the Elizabethans
sang "fa-la-la". But it does not work the other way around, as was
perfectly demonstrated by last Tuesday's Soul Music (Radio
4), which featured the all-too-familiar setting by Sebastian Temple
of the text "Make me a channel of your peace."
That the words are not by St Francis - the prayer appeared
anonymously in a French publication of 1912, and was promoted by
the Vatican during the Great War - is beside the point. They have
the poise, balance, and ritualistic quality that make for a good
religious text, and undoubtedly speak profoundly to people. We
heard from the parents of a child victim of the 1993 Warrington
bombing, and from a former alcoholic about the effect the text has
had on them.
By contrast, the tune can drive the most pious into the hands of
the demon drink. The man responsible, Simon Temple, was a South
African "yogi" and Roman Catholic convert, interested in a wide
variety of religions, but at this time wanting to reconnect with
the Judaism of his youth.
In his "setting" of the words, the lines break over the musical
cadences like waves over a feeble levy, while the monotonous
rhythmic and harmonic patterns sound trivial in comparison with the
rhetorical patterning of the text.
As if to prove the point, Soul Music presented us with
a host of different versions, from the breezy and congregational to
one by Sinead O'Connor; but none could turn this dull ditty into
the iconic anthem it aspires to be. It made me long to hear Cliff
Richard and his Lord's Prayer set to "Auld Lang Syne" - a
confection that sounds like the work of the most sophisticated
troubadour by comparison.
Consolation can be found in many forms, not just the quiet and
reflective. In The Story of the Talmud (Radio 4, Wednesday
of last week), David Weiss Halivni recalled how that great book of
Jewish law and commentary provided him with solace during the dark
days of the Holocaust. And yet this is a noisy book, a book about
argument, analysis, and never-ending enquiry.
Visit the Mir Yeshiva, in Jerusalem, as the programme did, and
you understand what this means. It is a place not of quiet
contemplation, but of heated debate. As the presenter, Rabbi
Naftali Brawer, explained, this is the sound of Judaism, a religion
that is learned through the ear as much as through the eye. And the
learning process is never-ending: we met Jonathan, who has spent
every day for the past 11 years reading and discussing the Talmud,
a process that another witness described as not just thinking about
God, but thinking with God.
As an introduction to this vast and vastly important work,
Brawer's programmes are invaluable. This is a text that, if one
were to read a page a day, would take you seven years. And yet I
was left wondering where the debate stood over the Talmud's
origins, and could not help feeling a little doubtful about the
claims for the Talmud's place in Jewish literacy. Some of that
scepticism so treasured in Talmudic discourse might have been
usefully deployed here.