Gratitude for the Music That Remains
By Rabbi Asher Knight
There is a story, perhaps more parable than history, about Itzhak Perlman performing a violin concerto when one of his strings breaks. The sound is small and sharp, a crack from an instrument built to sing. The orchestra stops. Perlman sits for a moment, then raises his bow and signals the conductor. Three strings will have to carry what four were meant to hold.
He begins again. His left hand searches the remaining strings for notes that used to live elsewhere. Passages change as he reaches them. The audience hears the concerto and the work of remaking it at the same time.
When the music ends, the audience rises. The story credits Perlman with an observation about the artist’ s task: to discover how much music can still be made from what remains.
November comes with its yearly call for gratitude. We count our blessings, write them down and say them aloud. In a generous year, the list comes easily. In a harder one, loss fills the page.
Jewish tradition calls gratitude hakarat hatov, recognizing the good. Recognition is quieter than celebration. It is the way we know a familiar face in a crowd. Something comes into focus and, once seen, becomes difficult to overlook.
Pain focuses the eye, too. It draws our attention toward the missing string. The chair of someone we love is empty. The phone has stopped ringing. The future we rehearsed will never be performed. Those who love us may reach for gratitude too soon. Think of everything you still have, they say. The sentence arrives before we are ready. Grief hears something else: Please stop crying, or at least lower your voice.
Grief has a right to its full volume. Over time, hakarat hatov allows the eye to widen. The missing string remains in view. So do the three beneath the musician’ s fingers, the strings through which life can still sound.
Gratitude in a hard season may arrive without warmth or eloquence. It may be the friend who keeps calling after many others have stopped, the neighbor who leaves food by the door, the person who remembers the difficult date and sends a message that says only,“ I’ m thinking of you.”
These gestures do something immediate. They carry us into the next measure of life. The violinist can continue because the moment rests on years of practice. Scales repeated thousands of times. An ear trained to hear where a phrase might go. Fingers that know the instrument well enough to find a path unavailable a moment earlier.
Anyone reading these words has accumulated years of practice too. Years of waking and beginning again. Of losing our place and finding it. Of making dinner when the news is terrible. Of carrying groceries while carrying sorrow. Of learning when to lead and when to let another
Ben Geller performs Max Bruch’ s“ Kol Nidrei” on viola during Temple Beth El’ s Kol Nidrei service.
person take the melody.
We have practiced the difficult art of living for as long as we have been alive. We draw on that practice when a string breaks and falls silent. Years of living teach us how to continue. Jewish blessings train us to notice what is helping us continue. One steadies the hand. The other opens the ear.
Jewish tradition places blessings throughout ordinary time. We say them over bread, wine, waking and the arrival of a season. Each one brings something familiar back into view. The bread had a history before it reached us. The morning was never guaranteed. The person beside us will not always be
The Charlotte Jewish News- November 2026- Page 31
there.
These two kinds of practice meet in Modim, the prayer of thanksgiving in the Amidah. As we begin, we bow. The body joins the words in a slight lowering.
The first words are plural:
מוֹדִִים אֲֲנַחְְנוּ לָָךְ Modim anachnu lach.
We give thanks to You. The prayer continues:
עַַלָ חַַיֵּּינוּ הַַמְּּסוּרִִ ים בְְּיָדֶֶךָ וְְעַַלָ נִשְׁׁמוֹתׁינוּ הַַפְּּקוּדִוֹת לָָךְ וְְעַַלָ נִסֶּּיךָ שֶׁׁבְּּכָָלָ יוֹם עִִמָּּנוּ וְְעַַלָ נִפְְלְְאֲוֹתֶיךָ וְְטוֹבוֹתֶיךָ שֶׁׁבְּּכָָלָ עֵֵת עֶֶרֶֶ ב וָָב ֹקֶרִ וְְצָָהֳֳרָָ יִם
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For our lives held in Your hand, for our souls entrusted to Your care, for the miracles that accompany us each day, and for Your wonders and goodness at every hour, evening, morning and noon.
The prayer names our lives as held and entrusted. Its words travel through the hours: evening, morning and noon. We say them in the middle of unfinished life, with questions unanswered and strings broken and missing.
Our years of living help the fingers find the next note. Our years of blessing help the ear recognize the music still there to see the strings that are still possible to play. Some days we bring four strings. Some days three. Sometimes another person carries the melody until we find our entrance again.
The hands remember how to live. The mouth remembers the words of thanks. The bow rises. Three strings begin. And may we, with the pain and grief still raw and real, say this year:
בְָּרִוּךְ אַַתָָּהַ הַ ׳, הַַטּוֹב שִֵׁמְךָ וּלְְךָ נָאֶֶהַ לְְהַוֹדִוֹת
Blessed are You, Adonai, whose name is Goodness, and to whom it is fitting to give thanks.
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November 19 | 6 PM Sam Lerner Center for Cultural Arts
Come celebrate a new chapter in how Jewish Charlotte connects with Israel!
Join us for the official launch of the Israel Center, bringing together more ways to experience Israel’ s people, culture, language, and history.
Enjoy Israeli food and music, followed by award-winning journalist and author Matti Friedman taking us beyond the headlines and into the stories of everyday Israelis.
ISRAEL CENTER
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