Shoftim / Isaiah

I wanted to go to the hospital today, to play some music to patients before Shabbat, but I didn't plan my time well and figured out that I won't have time to do so and come back in time to prepare for Shabbat. I'm reading a lot of professional materials recently in my field, and I give it top priority at the moment, and this may be the reason. But I did have a few chances to play music to patients recently, and it is always sweet. People's reactions are so nice. In one of the wards, two young Arab nurses, a man and a woman, stopped everything and asked to film me on their smartphones. Of course, I said no. I hate to be photographed or filmed. So they recorded anyway, just without me in the frame, which was OK with me. The male nurse followed me from room to room with wide opened eyes and a big smile on his face. It made me feel like this was not a waste of my time, like people were enjoying it and appreciating it.
One day I got to the hospital exactly as the doctors were changing shifts. They were going from room to room and the head doctor was briefing the new shift about each of the patients. I was always one room behind them, playing to patients they had already reviewed. Then, as I was leaving one of the rooms, the head doctor approached me in front of the whole group of doctors, and told me that he liked this and that he thought it was a good idea, but that I should also play music that is suitable to "other" cultures (he meant Arabs). I play music that I know - mostly Israeli and American songs, some religious Jewish songs as well, but I'm not familiar with Arab music. There are many Arab patients in the hospital, and I usually play to them melodies without words, like the 'The Lonely Shepherd', and they love it. I had tried to listen to Arab songs, so that I could play their music for them, but I do not have the 'ears' for such music. Arab music is so hard for me to understand and grasp, so even when I'm trying to listen to it, I cannot reproduce it. The scales are so different than the ones I'm used to thinking of as understandable music, they have many half tones and quarters of tones, and it is something that I have no idea how to play - not even how to hum... In addition, the songs are normally very, very long, and I can't recognize the musical themes in them, it sounds almost random. What can I do? I'm giving up. I'll play the Lonely Shepherd and they'll have to be happy with it. Usually they are. Before I play, I always ask: 'Can I play something for you?' One Arab man was almost offended, and said that they are not goats, and therefore there is no reason to play to them with a recorder... OK, whatever... But most of them are very receptive and grateful.
Another subgroup at the hospital is Haredi people who want to hear Yiddish songs, Hasidic songs, etc. I'm clueless when it comes to such songs. I'm trying to listen to Hasidic music, but again - this is not my type of music. When I just moved to my new neighborhood, I teamed up with two more musicians to play at the hospital (I wrote about it a few months ago). But after an amazing first time with them and a couple more lukewarm ones in which they played mostly Hasidic music that I am not familiar with, I decided to leave them, and go solo. They were sorry that it happened, and urged me to stay, but I didn't find meaning in doing this with them. Two weeks ago I went to the hospital on a Friday to play at the hospice - the last stop for patients who suffer from cancer. A few minutes later came a group of Haredi musicians and played. I joined them and we played amazingly well together. It was so much fun, really. There was a guitarist, a drummer, a clarinet player (I don't like when they have clarinets - you cannot hear the recorder when they play!), and a singer. It was beautiful. I'll try to join them again next week. They were familiar with the kind of music I know, so there was no problem in this respect.
This week, one evening in the middle of the week, I went to play to one particular patient at the hospice - Ariella, a woman who is probably around 60 or 70 years old. The reason why I go specifically to her, is that on the last times that I went to the hospice to play, she was the one most responsive, and kept asking me for more and more songs, doing movements of a conductor with her hand as I was playing. So I went there this week. The nurse told me that Ariella had been asleep all day, and they couldn't wake her up no matter what. The nurses tried, her husband tried, they tried with different ways, but she didn't wake up. She just warned me so I would not be upset or disappointed. But I went into that patient's room and started playing. She woke up. She looked at me and recognized me, which made me happy, but she looked awful. She is SO thin, she looks more like a skeleton than anything else. Her facial bones stick out, her teeth stick out, her lips are fallen down, her skin is so tight around her face that you feel like you look at a skull. She looked really bad, but when the music started, she lifted her hand and again played the conductor and then with her blurry speech she said that it was wonderful. She kept asking me for more and more songs. I played some Beatles, some Simon and Garfunkel, some Back, some Israeli songs, some Jewish songs. She gave me her hand to shake. I took it. It was warm, and well taken care of - nice nails painted red. I thought of the differences - here is an older dying lady, all skin and bones, and her hands are so warm and nice looking, whereas me - without any good excuse - My hands are cold or just not warm most of the time, and never, not even once, do I paint my nails. Not planning to, either. It's so not me! I did manage to stop biting at my nails recently, and I even had long nails for a period of few weeks, until I've had enough of it, it's so uncomfortable!  I felt appreciation of her, for taking care of herself even in her last days of life, even when the rest of her body looks terribly sick.
I want this idea - of people playing and/or singing to sick patients at hospitals - to become a world-wide thing. My dream is that in every country, people who can play an instrument will go and give some good time to patients. This is why I write about it. I want this to become a model for others to emulate in their own countries. We can definitely make this world a better place when doing this - and we don't have to be professional musicians for it. I'm not, and neither are any of the other volunteers. We're all amateur people who want to bring a bit more joy to a corner of the world in which people suffer.
I'm not in the mood of writing so much recently, so I'll just end this with a verse from the Prophet Portion that we read this Shabbat in synagogues (Isaiah 51: 1-3):

"“Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness
    and who seek the Lord:
Look to the rock from which you were cut
    and to the quarry from which you were hewn;
2 look to Abraham, your father,
    and to Sarah, who gave you birth.
When I called him he was only one man,
    and I blessed him and made him many.
3 The Lord will surely comfort Zion
    and will look with compassion on all her ruins;
he will make her deserts like Eden,
    her wastelands like the garden of the Lord.
Joy and gladness will be found in her,    thanksgiving and the sound of singing."


Shabbat Shalom,
R.