If We Loved Like That: Singing a Better World into Existence with Elana Arian
Elana Arian’s album arrives at a moment when many Jews are asking big questions about identity, survival, and joy. Arian doesn’t offer simple answers—she offers music that holds those questions. If We Loved Like That, Arian’s fifth album, is a sacred container, echoing the radical nuance that Jewish tradition demands. The album inspires the personal, spiritual, and liturgical all at once.
When asked how being a queer Jewish artist shaped the project, Arian said:
“It can sometimes feel impossible, frivolous somehow, to allow myself to sink into moments of joy while simultaneously witnessing the cruelty and suffering in our world… I want this music to give people permission to hold it all, the bitter and the sweet, the awe and the pain and everything in between.”
The desire to hold multiple complex truths at once molds If We Loved Like That in sound and virtue. The melodies are more than foundational settings of biblical texts. The familiar liturgy shines through, more like scaffolding than centerpiece. Snippets of Torah and prayer open the door, but Arian walks us through the complexity of language with something more expansive: musical musings that stretch across Hebrew, English, and wordless melody, often letting a simple na na na carry as much emotional weight as the text itself
“If We Loved Like That,” the striking title track on the album, builds on the verse v’ahavta l’rei’acha kamocha—love your neighbor as yourself. It’s a commandment many of us know by heart, but Arian doesn’t just recite it. She dreams into it. The song imagines a world shaped by an active and insistent kind of love. It’s wishful thinking, yes, but it’s also completely grounded. You can feel the music trying to convince you that this world is not only possible, but necessary.
Arian draws on classic Jewish and Middle Eastern instrumentation, not as nostalgic flourish, but as spiritual grounding.
The breathy ney (or a modern flute counterpart) lends a kind of holy ache to the melodies, while darbuka and riq percussion keep the music rooted, earthy, and embodied. These aren’t abstract prayers; they’re felt experiences. The songs move.
What makes the album especially powerful is how clearly it speaks to people who might feel at the margins of Jewish life, and those who have complicated relationships with tradition, community, or even belief. Arian is speaking to them directly:
“I would love it if this album could be an invitation to Jewish joy… No matter how disconnected we may feel from Jewish life, it is an outright miracle that we are here.”
“Even in the dark reality of being a Jew in today's world, there is joy and celebration in our very existence—against all odds.”
This invitation to joy pulses through every track. This is not preservation music. It is resurrection music. Not because it denies the pain of the present, but because it insists on joy anyway. It insists on dancing in the street, even while holding the grief.
