Prayer Spirituality — Moshe Hammer

Connections. Family. Friends. Community. We all form part of a whole. Some connections are irreplaceable: mothers hold their babies with care and wonder; the luckiest lovers embrace with life-giving, sometimes life-changing, passion. Friends listen to friends in need. Many give time to strangers who reach out in loneliness, need, or grief.

Through sound, we find infinite ways to touch people: parents cooing, children laughing, birds – or choirs – singing. Through the spoken word, we are comforted, educated, amused. Rabbi Dolgin’s stories become ours to share and contemplate. Once organized, sound becomes music. Whether it’s a tropical forest come alive or Cantor Osborne’s compositions. In English, in Hebrew, or on the strings of a violin, music touches us all.

In Temple on Yom Kippur, making music with Cantor Charles Osborne, Ross Inglis, Mark Camilleri, and the choir moves me to a place beyond words, where I am joined with my Jewish forebears, my children, and theirs, my friends of all faiths — and to the uniting power of creativity.         

It’s through music that creative connections are forged, and, if made early, form a life-long foundation sustaining the child’s human spirit. Connection through music is the secret tool of The Hammer Band – where we touch children’s lives with the discipline of practice and the joy of performance. With music, our kids are spiritually connected to life-giving creativity.