When Will It Be Better? (Column 681)

Lately the hit “Even Better” (aka: “Always Loves Me”) has flooded the media in all its forms. I’ve just been informed it even won Galgalatz’s weekly chart. I assume you’ve all encountered the lively intellectual-philosophical discourse the song has sparked. Who hasn’t weighed in—rabbis and thinkers through columnists and journalists. Since I’m not on social media, I assume that everything I have seen on the matter (and I’ve seen quite a bit) is only the tip of the iceberg. People have also asked for my opinion about the song and even more about the conversation surrounding it.

As it happens, even before I’d heard about the song, a few weeks ago I was sent a piece by R. Eldar Goldring (may he be blessed), from the yeshiva in Gush Etzion, who created an answer song in the spirit of my approach, generated by AI under his guidance. I must say the text is a bit mechanical and grandiose (AI, after all), but in my opinion the result isn’t bad at all. Though, with all my many shortcomings I’m no expert, it seems to me just by common sense that it’s a bit hard to dance to rap—and on that note (as it says there, there):

It’s so hard to write tears

Hard to bear the silence

It’s so hard to sing tears

And who will grant us comfort.

So each of you is welcome to offer, as consolation, a more rhythmic melody.

Here and here, for example, you can find examples of substantive, learned discussion of the song’s content. Personally, I find it a bit embarrassing that the subject of discussion is a dance track for Galgalatz parties. By contrast, see below the intellectual exchange between two Torah luminaries before whom the sun itself is but a candle at noon:

And of course there’s also a news report about this very profound discourse in a special bulletin on B’Chadrei Chareidim. The public mustn’t miss the latest updates in theology and halakha, and how to repair what that vile singer distorted when he dared to disagree with the Chafetz Chaim—whose every word, as if seated in the Chamber of Hewn Stone, came straight from the Divine. Take note of the genius of fixing everything by changing a single word. “How lovely on the mountains are the feet of the herald, a voice that brings tidings and says.”

I confess, to my shame, that I wrote in that thread that I intended to write a column relating to the song and the discussion about it, but now I feel that would be truly embarrassing. We’re dealing with a text at kindergarten level, befitting Breslov and its rabbis and Galgalatz (sometimes I get the impression that everything there and there is like that), but it’s very catchy and quite charming. There’s nothing wrong with partygoers jumping to this song. It’s certainly no worse than frenzied, “exalted-devotion” dancing with closed eyes to “My God, my God, why have You forsaken me” during the Simchat Torah hakafot.

Who even thinks about the words while singing?! Do you really think the dancers at Galgalatz are pondering theology as they play the song or dance to it? I could understand if such criticism were directed at those who go to hear the inane Breslov lectures in which these infantile messages are delivered (I think there are thousands of fools like that—“my father chastised you with whips”). There is indeed much room to discuss that. How did we come to be such a “generation of knowledge,” and how is this infantilism perceived as Judaism in our wretched times.

And behold—in this very case someone came along and repaired this infantile text by setting it to a lively, pleasant tune, so that now the text has at least some value. Not theological, God forbid, but what’s wrong with light, pleasant entertainment?! It’s vastly more valuable than the original as delivered in a lecture—most of which is nothing but bittul Torah and preoccupation with nonsense. What’s wrong with that? This is what they’re boiling over about? For my part, I’d suggest taking all the “ideological writings” of these folks and setting them to music. Instead of pamphlets, hand out cassettes at intersections, and suddenly everything will look better and better (as it is said: “Therefore it shall be said today: On the mountain of the Lord it shall be seen”). So precisely here, when the great repair has begun (a booklet unto itself), people choose to discuss the song’s theological and ideological layer? Diggers… And I say this as an indefatigable digger myself. But I’m a stickler for the rules: “When do we dig, and when do we not dig.”

In short, I feel embarrassed to contribute my part to the detached discourse surrounding the song. I’m sure you all know what I think of its content—to the extent one should think about the content of a song or of a typical Breslov lecture (songs—sometimes yes; those lectures—never). So I hope you’ll forgive me for not fulfilling your request and not adding my share to this deep theological-intellectual discussion. I’ll allow myself to hum the song for my own enjoyment, for the elevation and rectification of the souls of all Breslov Hasidim wherever they are, and of their “toite Rebbe” (if he only dreamed of the collection of distortions that would issue from his spiritual loins), while ignoring its content entirely. After all, that’s what you all do with almost every other song.

Admit it: even with songs by Alterman or Natan Yonatan, most of you usually ignore the text. I, by the way, generally do not. Poet-songs, by virtue of being such, are in my view one notch higher. It’s simply a completely different kind of enjoyment. Incidentally, I once heard on the radio that this is a uniquely Israeli phenomenon, since abroad people don’t set poems to music.

I have nothing left but to conclude with a succinct paragraph by Avraham Elitzur (and thanks to Hayuta Deutsch for the pointer):

Someone wrote to me here that “Always Loves Me” is a nice song but contradicts most of Jewish thought through the generations, and I’m here to report that out of a historical catastrophe I’ve just listened, for the first time in my life, to the entire Galgalatz weekly chart, and I’m pretty sure the other 19 songs there are not exactly quotations from the Guide of the Perplexed either.

“And the words of the wise are gracious.”

So when will it be better—indeed, even better? When they stop drilling into our brains…