Niplah Nah, an Original Chant

New Composition for a segment of the Takhnun Jewish liturgy.

Niplah Nah B’yad Adonai | Let us fall into the hand of Adonai

Ki Rabim Rakhmav | Because infinite are his mercies / wombs

-From II Samuel 24: 14, :שמואל ב כד יד

The verse opens the Takhnun liturgy, a prostration and atonement practice done during the Days of Awe, and by some, every morning. The melody appeared to me on Yom Kippur 5781 / September 2021.

What is it like to let go into the nondual, complete unreservedness into the mystery that is beyond the sense of self? In one’s brokeness, in one’s elation, to completely take refuge in a greater space / womb. This piece, part of the Yamim Nora’im and Yom Kippur liturgy, is an invitation to close the gap between our psychological-existential suffering, and our awareness. Grief, in many forms, is held in trauma cycles that have never been exposed or seen by our own awareness. Takhnun, and all prayer really, invite a kind of shamanic possession, to become completely taken up by this entity of suffering, so it is completely embodied - so the grief loops can find full incarnation and expression. Grief wants to be felt, expressed, and seen. Doing so before the Nondual, personified as a Redeemer, facilities that, and reveals there is always a greater awareness, a greater womb, a greater mercy.