About the Musical Reb Drew

Rabbi Andrew Hahn – “Reb Drew” – has been involved in music and song his entire life. His family was very musical and loved to sing together – so much so that friends jokingly called them the “Hahn-Trap” family. To this day, Reb Drew enjoys singing Hebrew niggunim (wordless melodies), zemirot (songs) and rounds with the next generation, his nieces and nephews. As much as he loves facilitating public kirtans and synagogue prayer with music, his favorite venue remains, and will always remain, the Shabbat table.

Starting at an early age, Reb Drew learned to play piano. He sang and acted in many school productions in his native Pittsburgh. Soon, he was recruited by his grade school music teacher to be a child singer for the Pittsburgh Opera. He worked in roles for Carmen and as a street urchin in Tosca. Backstage during the curtain bows of Tosca, young Andrew asked the man playing Mario Cavaradossi how it felt to go out there all alone and take a bow. The next thing he knew, the future Reb Drew was whisked away to find himself before the cheering audience holding hands with the male lead. Needless to say the crowd's hearts melted as they saw the little boy with the star. For Reb Drew, this initiated many future evenings in front of audiences.

Like many of his generation, Reb Drew was soon drawn to the guitar. He played in rock bands with friends and eventually studied classical guitar for many years. He began college as a classical guitarist at the music conservatory at Carnegie-Mellon University. His teacher there was the famed Brazilian child prodigy, Carlos Barbosa-Lima. When Carlos left CMU, Reb Drew (who had never lived outside of Pittsburgh) traveled to Montevideo to study with the fabled Uruguayan maestro, Abel Carlevaro. Eventually, Reb Drew decided not to continue as a professional musician; his love of literature, philosophy and, eventually, religion propelled him in a new direction. He maintained his interest in music throughout his years of academic and rabbinic study and ultimately began to attend Sanskrit kirtans led by Krishna Das, Wah!, Deval Premal and Miten, among others.

Under the influence of these kirtan yogis, Reb Drew turned back to the keyboard of his youth and learned to play harmonium.

He uses the harmonium primarily to provide deep background sound – a moving drone which, when played with gentle shading, is barely noticeable as instrumental accompaniment. Occasionally, Reb Drew will also play guitar during a kirtan. He has developed his kirtan practice to include mystical background for Jewish prayer services and, especially, for the High Holy Days.

Since becoming a rabbi, Reb Drew has taken Abraham Joshua Heschel's saying as his professional motto: First we sing, then we believe! He believes that God is discovered in what we do together – and, often, especially in what we do together to sound the inner landscape musically. No longer an opera singer (his voice changed to normal, if pleasant-enough listening after adolescence), Reb Drew eschews singing as performance. Instead it is more about chant, an internal intonation directed outwards. His main goal in facilitating Hebrew Kirtan is to find ways to get the participants to let go and release themselves into the Group Voice. Leader and “audience” disappear into one another, no longer knowing who is who, so that the only listener are perhaps the angels on high and, so to speak, God Godself.

The effect is a group meditation which you have to experience to believe.

Or...sing to believe.