Lyrics exerpt from Ad Matai

Ad Matai – Adonai Ad Matai

Ad Matai

All around me seeing

chaos everywhere

touching deep inside me a pain I can’t bear

Smoke fills up the windows,

Walls fill up in flames.

I don’t have strength to call out your name.

Ad Matai – Adonai Ad Matai

Ad Matai – Adonai Ad Matai

Ad Matai – Adonai Ad Matai

Ad Matai

Destroyed our Sanctuary, banished once again.

This song has two meanings for me. The words and the idea for it came when I was in the old city of Jerusalem from the beginning of the month of Av (Rosh Chodesh Av) until the 9th of Av (Tisha B’Av), the summer of 2001.

We were fasting, walking the streets in the old city and the enormity of what the destruction of the Jewish Temple must have been like struck me. I asked a Rabbi what words would best exemplify this feeling and he suggested the words “Ad Matai”.

Until when.

To me that meant: Until when will we have to wait to have God’s presence manifest here on Earth.

When all people truly do love each other and hatred and separation will be a thing of the past.

That September, we watched over and over the images that conveyed the symbol of American economic power fall. Decimated by hatred, anger and separation.

That day, I spoke to a local Rabbi in Toronto and he suggested that in some ways, this was similar to the destruction of the Holy Temple, roughly 2000 years ago. Now, there are so many ways that it is not the same.

The Jews who were not killed were exiled with the understanding that they could never return to the place they believed was given to them by God. They were scattered and had no central place for the three pilgrimage festivals (Succoth, Shavuoth and Passover).

Nonetheless, the image of this wholesale destruction, inspired this song. Combining the visual horror with my imagination of what the Destruction of the Temple must have been like....  Ken