Music can be an outlet for processing personal, emotional experiences and trauma.
Rabbi Ilan Glazer, a member of Beth Am Synagogue in Baltimore, took his and his wife’s own significant loss and has been turning it into music for the past two years. Now, on Sunday, Jan. 21, Glazer will debut his first album, “Gam Ki Elech: Turning Our Sorrows Into Song,” with a special concert at the synagogue.
Over the course of 13 songs in the album, Glazer takes melodies he conceived while grieving the loss of his son, Shemaryah, and sets them to lyrics sourced from classical Jewish psalms. While writing the album was a deeply personal experience, Glazer wants to put his work out there to help those in the Jewish community who have suffered similar losses.
“My son, Shemaryah, is still here with me. He’s here in this music,” Glazer said. “I still get to be his dad, even though I don’t get to raise him in the way I wanted. When we sing together, we remember him.”
Glazer has been a Jewish musician for several years, having played drums on other musicians’ albums, but he had not released an album of his own before he started working on “Gam Ki Elech.” When his wife, Sherri Vishner Glazer, began undergoing in vitro fertilization treatment, Glazer started composing melodies inspired by his wife’s fertility journey and their soon-to-be-born son.
“We were using a book from a mikvah in Boston that has different verses that they recommend people ruminate on for different parts of the fertility journey. For each of those verses, a melody came,” he recalled.
However, Shemaryah’s brain was not developing properly while he was in the womb. The couple had to make the incredibly difficult decision to terminate the pregnancy at 26 weeks for medical reasons.
Music ended up becoming a part of their healing process. Glazer noted that he feels that the melodies he has composed were sent to him by God and by Shemaryah, so putting them into full songs has been especially meaningful.
“I feel like they’re not my melodies, they’re Shemaryah’s melodies,” Glazer said. “But they’re not all sad memories. Some of them come from a place of joy and yearning and wanting to bring our son into our home. Some of them are quite upbeat and very happy about being pregnant and bringing life into the world. … These melodies come from our journey, and I feel that Shemaryah brought this music into our lives.”
Rabbi Ilan and Sherri Glazer also launched a private Facebook group, “Our Love Continues: Support for Jewish Parents After the Loss of a Child” to connect with others in their community who had undergone or were experiencing the same losses they went through. The nearly 250 members of the group discuss their experiences with one another, and Glazer feels that it has opened the doors for more conversation about how the Jewish community handles fertility loss.
Glazer noted that he has trouble picking a favorite song off of “Gam Ki Elech,” but the title track is especially significant to him.
“Two days before Shemaryah’s life ended, we were visiting my younger brother in Aspen Hill, and I was walking to the synagogue on Shabbat to attend a bar mitzvah. The melody [of “Gam Ki Elech”] jumped into my head,” he said. “It felt like a gift from God, saying to me, ‘I know this next year is going to be awful. But please remember that I’m going to be here with you, too.’”
The album release concert is set to coincide with the date of Shemaryah’s second yahrzeit, a difficult time that he and his wife wanted to spend with their congregational community at Beth Am.
“The community was there for us when Shemaryah died. The community showed up with more food than we could possibly imagine, to feed our cats and sit Shiva with us.” Glazer said. “It made sense for us to be in the community that we wish had raised Shemaryah.”
Tickets to the concert can be purchased here.
