Who Shall Not Be Moved? I, We, and the Tree Planted by the Water

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There are really three songs known as "I [or We] Shall Not be Moved," from the same root: a Gospel and then blues song; a Labor song; and a Civil Rights song.

According to music historians, the Gospel song is based on Jeremiah 17:8,

"...He shall be like a tree planted by waters..."

וְהָיָ֞ה כְּעֵ֣ץ ׀ שָׁת֣וּל עַל־מַ֗יִם וְעַל־יוּבַל -- Jer 17:8 (full passage below)

Similar imagery appears in Psalm 1: "He is like a tree planted beside streams of water, which yields its fruit in season, whose foliage never fades, and whatever it produces thrives."

וְֽהָיָ֗ה כְּעֵץ֮ שָׁת֪וּל עַֽל־פַּלְגֵ֫י מָ֥יִם אֲשֶׁ֤ר פִּרְי֨וֹ ׀ יִתֵּ֬ן בְּעִתּ֗וֹ וְעָלֵ֥הוּ לֹֽא־יִבּ֑וֹל וְכֹ֖ל אֲשֶׁר־יַעֲשֶׂ֣ה יַצְלִֽיחַ׃

Earliest sheet music and recordings are from the late 1920s. An old version began:

"Like a tree planted by the water, my Savior planted meAll my fruit shall be in season, I shall live eternallyThough the tempest rage around me, thru the storm, my Lord I seePointing upward to that heaven, where my family waits for me..."

1929 recordings include Blind Roosevelt Graves' "on my way to heaven..." and "going to see my mother..." and Charles Patton's "on my way to glory..." as well as lines like "oh, brother, I shall not..."

Other older lyrics: "glory hallelujah..." and "anchored in the spirit....." and some explicitly Jesus-centered verses

Mississippi John Hurt's popular 1960s version had "On my way to heaven...," "Oh, preacher...," and "Sanctified and holy..."

Johnny Cash used "On this rock of ages" (see also Million Dollar Quartet, 1956)

Memphis Southern Male Chorus sticks with the chorus really focusing on the tree, although the preacher out front is adding words about being anchored in Jesus.

(2) Union/Racial Justice Song. Joe Glazer (Labor's Troubadour) dates the song's plural version to a 1931 West Virginia coal miner's strike. Labor lyrics included "the union is behind us" and "we're not afraid of gun thugs."

Woody Guthrie (Bound for Glory) wrote about using the song to help prevent 1941 lynching of Japanese Americans. Pete Seeger sang a labor version, adding other verses over the decades, including lines like "Black and White together..." and, much later, "gay and straight..." (Glazer; Seeger; recent elementary school performance, with hand gestures).

(3) Civil rights versions. Included circumstance-specific verses, like "all the state troupers..." and "Tell Governor Wallace..." Some additions, like "Black and White together...," are less specific and longer-lasting but were originally added in response to specific situations. The Freedom Singers opened their medley at the 1963 March on Washington with the song. Mavis Staples recorded an adapted version in her 2007 album of movement songs.

(4) Hybrids: Minneapolis-based Sounds of Blackness (since 1969), includes hip hop additions in 2015 version. Rhiannon Giddens and Franceso Turrisi just released a version with "I" lyrics, heaven (but no God or Jesus) and justice verses.

Here's one version of Civil Rights lyrics:

Mavis Staples begins with a story of standing against police; it morphs into song at 1:19

Actual song starts at 0:28 --

Please note: Kadushin uses masculine language for God and, as we were once taught, "he" and "man" for persons of any gender and humankind. No attempt is made here to adapt this or the fusty Bible translations; these seem of a piece with the overall style...and leaving the text as is serves as a reminder of what was normal in mid-20th Century discourse (whether we experienced it first-hand or not).

Rabbinic worship endows the individual with a larger self....When saying these berakot, the individual feels himself to be a representative of man. More technically and more accurately, by being expressed through the concept of man the individual's self-awareness is now conceptualized, with the result that the individual retains awareness of his self-identity while feeling himself to be associated with unspecified others. (p.7)

To the individual who is about to recite the berakah, the bread represents a manifestation of God's love both for mankind in general and for himself in particular. Having naturally his own need in mind, he regards himself as a recipient of God's bounty and an object of God's love; nevertheless, he thanks God for His bounty to all mankind -- "Who bringest forth bread from the earth." When the individual recites the berakah, therefore, he does so as a member of society. This is the view taken by R. Levi in a reason he gives for reciting a berakah of this type. Upon reciting the berakah, says R. Levi, the individual is permitted to have, as a member of society, what up to that moment had belonged solely to God. Before the berakah, "the erath is the Lord's and the fullness thereof" (Ps. 24:1), but after the berakah "the earth hath He given to the children of men" (Ps. 115:16) [emphasis in the original]. (p.66)

...the sheer knowledge of a common need of man is now the occasion for an individual's petition and he regards the common need as his need. Once more the awareness of the self is an awareness of the larger self. (p.108)

Bittahon [is] a term which connotes reliance on God for welfare and security. (p.116)

Bittahon is, indeed an abiding consciousness, but it will not become a crystallized experience without an occasion of some sort. That occasion, however, need be no more than a reminder and the occasion for the First Berakah [of the Amidah], we shall see, is precisely of this character. (p.117)

In sum, the larger self is, essentially, the individual's awareness of a bond, a relationship, between himself and others....

In halakic discussions of the Exodus from Egypt and the giving of the Torah, or of the promised events of the future, past and future are never to the slightest degree obliterated. Haggadah, too, holds fast to categories of time. When, however, the larger self is called into p lay in berakot, in acts of worship, these events of the past and the promised events of the future lose their orientation in time, and they are apprehended, instead, as manifestations of God's love in the present. (p.171)

[In worship a Jew] possesses a larger self, "a wider consciousness." That enlargement of the self is possible psychologically because the self is less an entity than a continuous process making for an entity; the self can be enlarged because it is not static. (p.279)

-- from Worship and Ethics: A Study in Rabbinic Judaism. Max Kadushin. (NY: Bloch Publishing Company, 1963)

Jeremiah 16:19 - 17:14 is the haftarah reading, in both Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions, for Behukotai (Lev 26:3-27:34) and for the double-portion Behar-Behukotai (including Lev 25:1-26:2). This makes it the last prophetic reading associated with the book of Leviticus.

Shabbat Behar-Behukotai was May 8, 2021.

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This note is among handwritten comments of Max Ticktin, z"l, on Jer 17:5-8

“A song of…[??]”?? שכר ועונש ???? retribution? punishment? payback?

Norman Shore confirmed that my rendering of the Hebrew “שכר ועונש” was correctly spelled and can be transliterated “sachar va’onesh” and translated as "reward and punishment.“

That led to the following 2018 footnote:

“A Song of Reward and Punishment”? Didn’t Leonard Cohen write that? Maybe Sarah Rindner’s recent piece on “The Lehrhaus” [recent in May 2018, that is] — which links Leonard Cohen and this week’s Torah portion — put the idea in my mind. But I can somehow hear him singing it, even though I’m pretty sure there’s no such song in his opus. In any case, establishing that the words on the page say something like, “A Song of Reward and Punishment,” is only prelude to understanding the passage from Jeremiah and its context…*

*A few days later, I posted the words below as part of a continuing response to the passage and in memory of both Leonard Cohen and Max Ticktin. Embedding did not work smoothly, so try this link: A Song of Reward and Punishment (with links to a few Leonard Cohen pieces). See also: Notes on Jeremiah: Max Ticktin's Scribbles (includes long story about Max's notes)

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Addendum: "Elohei Oz" -- "God of my Strength" -- based on Jeremiah 17:14

(A1) Piyutim, pieces of religious poetry, are often set to music and used in various parts of the liturgy. This piece has been identified as a piyut and also as a "pizmon," a similar genre but not commonly included in the liturgy. (More below on origins).

Translation here is by Rahel Musleah, from a seven-generation Jewish Calcutta family. It appears on her website. Click through for more on this piece and links to explore Jewish India. Her performance of "Elohei Oz" is also shared below.

Note from Jonathan E Cohen, introducing his rendition:

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