Come and Sing: Lewandowski’s Psalm 92 

Last week I wrote about one of our Lewandowski masterpieces, Tavo Lefanecha, and the High Holidays approaching. Today I want to invite you to something simpler and equally beautiful: our Friday night services, where another jewel from Lewandowski’s pen is part of it. 

Psalm 92 is part of Kabbalat Shabbat, the service of receiving the Sabbath. Lewandowski’s setting captures something essential about what this moment is meant to be: a turning toward rest, gratitude, and renewal. 

The beauty of this setting lies in its clarity. There is nothing fussy about it, nothing that demands attention away from the prayer itself. It simply does what liturgical music should do: it carries the words, it opens the heart, and it gathers the community into a shared moment, that brings back memories from the Synagogue I grew up with in Colombia, the Montefiore Synagogue, with the same German/Austrian origin as Belsize and many, many of Lewandowski and Sulzer’s compositions. 

But this September, there is an added reason to be with us. Rosh Hashanah falls on a Friday night this year, on the 11th of September. This means Psalm 92 will frame our entrance into the High Holidays. The Sabbath blessing and the New Year will converge. The music that sustains us each week will carry us into this significant day. 

You do not need to be familiar with Lewandowski to appreciate what happens when a skilled composer meets a sacred text and serves both with integrity. You simply need to come and listen. Better still, come and sing along as Mr Hahn did back in my Synagogue harmonising with the Cantor. 

Our Friday night services begin at 6.45 pm. Rosh Hashanah begins on Friday, 11th September as well. Be transported as many of us by this moment. Experience the beauty of what Belsize holds.