El V'Adon - Old Hymns in Hebrew

This is one of the only items that I will ever upload to my website without giving it a positive review.

El V’Adon (lit. “Lord and God”) was produced by HaChotam – The Seal, an Israeli reformed, pre-millennial, creationist publication run by fine Jewish believers in Israel. The literature they put out for the Israeli believing community in Hebrew, and their magazines for children, youth and adults, are trust-worthy. They’ve also produced music CDs for children and youth and a large internet portal for believers.

However, El V’Adon, their latest (so far) production has been a disappointment to me. But before I criticise, I’ll start with the good.

El V’Adon is a good quality production. The singers on it are all Israeli believers. The songs are all in Hebrew. The musicians are highly professional, in fact, some are among the most professional in Israel, and El V’Adon uses real instruments, not just synths. The songs they chose are the old hymns – their translated Hebrew version. These old hymns were the main songbook for Israeli believers when the Messianic believing community in Israel was small (in fact, it was known at the time as “The New Songbook”...). The older generation knows these hymns, and believers who grew up in the summer camps in Israel in the 70s (and maybe 80s) would know them too.

Since then, the Israeli believing community has “moved on” and most congregations don’t sing the hymns anymore. A few congregations do, like Beit-Hasda (Bethesda) in Haifa, the congregation I belonged to for some 12-13 years, and some others, but that’s it. Naturally, some people feel a loss, having to sing some very shallow songs in poor Hebrew, and probably due to that there’s a small move back to the older hymns (and older things) again. Some hymns are being re-introduced in small doses.

Here comes HaChotam, The Seal publication; as I said, an excellent publication. They want to introduce the older, deeper and more solid hymns to the young generation primarily, and not just make a nostalgic CD for the older generation. In order to attract the younger generation, they naturally chose the type of music youngsters are accustomed to listen to: Rock music. In this case, a lot of it is Hard Rock music.

We must remember that when the (now) conservative brethren movement started, they had opposition from conservatives for not only singing from the recognised Psaltery. They even used ‘modern’ tunes of the day and gave them spiritual words – many of the tunes sound like 1920s style waltzes and sound outdated to today’s musical taste. Even before the brethren movement, not everyone liked Luther and others’ use of the pop tunes of his day for gospel songs: “How can you use tunes sung by drunkards in the pubs for the glory of God?!”. Yet, today these hymns are considered conservative. So I always like to bear that in mind, that maybe I’m just too much of a conservative? Today’s new wine quickly becomes tomorrow’s old wine. The Lord Himself warned against preferring the old wine (of the un-Biblical traditions in His case) when something new and good is coming in.

But in this case, I think HaChotam went too far with the music they chose. It not only sounds just like the world’s music, it sounds worse, I’m sorry to say. It’s plain Hard Rock! There’s an overuse of the drums and the electric guitar, to the point of being a distasteful noise and clammer. My wife was so disgusted she begged me to turn it off. It shook us!

About the singing:

1. Most singers slide up or down to the note instead of hitting it,
2. Some singers sound as though they can’t be bothered to sing. Instead of singing with all their gusto to the Lord, they sound like they haven’t had their morning coffee …
3. Some of the singing, especially by the women, reminds a lot of the sensual singing you hear on the radio.

This style of singing is in perfect keeping with what the youngsters (your youngsters?) are anyway accustomed to listen to on their iPods. I repeat though, not all the singers on the CD sing that way. Some sing quite nicely.

===

So why am I putting it on my website after all?

• First, it’s all Hebrew, and I find that very authentic. In fact, they were so unmindful of “the foreign market” that they didn’t even supply a transliteration inside to follow along with, or any information in English. That’s refreshing.
• Second, it might kindle a love for Israel among the young (and worldly?) believers abroad, seeing their young brethren in Judea can beat them at their own game of playing the sheep in wolves’ clothing… we must keep in mind this is a new generation and we can’t shut them off.

  But lastly, and most importantly,

• My hope is that HaChotam won’t only succeed in their mission to get the youngsters to love the deeper hymns of olde, but that it will result in the young generation’s “moving on” to a more God-honouring way of singing and playing these hymns.

To balance all that I’ve said about the style of music, I must also add that some of the songs don’t have Hard Rock elements in them at all and are quite listenable as they are.

The hymns played on El V’Adon are (in Hebrew, of course):

1. How Great Thou Art
2. On a Hill Far Away
3. Wonderful Grace of Jesus
4. Nearer, My God, to Thee
5. When Peace Like a River
6. Great is Thy Faithfulness
7. Blessed Assurance
8. Jesus Keep Me Near the Cross
9. Oh the Deep, Deep Love of Jesus
10. Come Thou Fount
11. What a Friend We Have in Jesus
12. I Need Thee Every Hour
13. Amazing Grace

Approx. 57.7 minutes.