Fresh commentary coming at you as we bring in a sweet sweet new year.
Shana Tovah everyone–a sweet new year to you all!
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Blessed are you, YHWH, our God, King of existence, King of all Earth, who sanctifies Israel and the Day of Remembrance.
The central blessing of Rosh Hashana brings into focus one of the holiday’s central contradictions. We stress God’s universal sovereignty by doubling the reference to God’s kingship, and by moving from the regular, abstract King of existence to the specific, more tangible King of all Earth. Yet, at the same time we recall our specific relationship with God.
This contradiction is not limited to that one blessing. The entire holiday presents the tension. Tomorrow, the day the God created the world (or humanity) is the same day that so many of us go to synagogue and proudly identify as Jews. The other special prayers of the day continue the same theme. The prayer of remembrance recalls that God knows all, and never forgets anything. We declare that all actions and thoughts, of all people, of all existence, are recorded for God and are present continually to God, and yet we in the same prayer ask God to remember specific events, specific actions, and most importantly, the specific covenant that binds us, the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, to God.
Beyond the liturgy, the center of the entire service, the shofar, exposes all of the facets of the contradiction. The simple horn’s blast recalls so many different images. It is the shofar that awakens us, as God’s original call awakened Adam and Eve in Eden, and it is the shofar that calls all of existence to judgement. It is the shofar’s sound that makes us dream of the great horn that will once again be blown for all humanity when we reach the Messianic age. However, it is this same shofar that recalls Isaac – bound and prepared for sacrifice, and it is the same shofar whose bellow brought our people to attention at Sinai.
Tonight, as we, and all of the Children of he who struggled with God and Humanity, gather to crown God as King, let us continue the struggle. While we wrestle with understanding creation, the creator, and all creatures, let us continue to wrestle with who we are as Jews. What does our heritage, our covenant, our mission mean? How can we be different when God is equally the king of all people? What value can this gift have when people across the world continue to suffer? When even the existence of the angels can not be justified, how do we make meaning of our own being?
Let these questions and more be in our hearts, let us all be inscribed in the books of life, happiness, mitzvoth and Torah, and let this be the year when the Great Shofar will be heard, and God’s name in all its glory and majesty be known throughout the world.
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The Washington Post printed the transcript of the speech given by Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad at his news conference following his speech to the UN General Assembly.
Contained in it is this little vignette about Israel The “Zionist Entity”:
So how can the followers of Moses possibly destroy the homes of people over their heads in their homeland to take, and to kill, actually, an infant that is feeding in the arms of a mother?
These Zionists, I want to tell you, are not Jews. That’s the biggest deception we’ve ever faced.
Zionists are Zionists, period. They are not Jews, they are not Christians, and they are not Muslims. They are a power group, a power party. And we oppose oppression and the aggression that any party that seeks pure power, raw power goes after.
Ahmadinejad is sick of being called anti-Semitic:
“There were those who had accused me of being a murderer and anti-Semitic, but I’m not an anti-Semite.â€
“We love everyone in the world – Jews, Christians, Muslims, non-Muslims, non-Jews, non-Christians.”
One, perhaps positive, outcome of statements like this is that calling the blurring of “Zionist” and “Jew” the “biggest deception…ever faced” is — assuming these statements ever make it to the official Iranian News Agency — Jews in Iran (and by extension Venezuela) may find it a bit easier to live and worship freely. By wholly divorcing the word “Zionist” from “Jew” the racist element of anti-Zionist speech is somewhat abated.
Statements such as “Jews are respected” — if they get reported throughout the Arabic speaking media — now shed a new light on the entire anti-Zionism movement. Divorcing anti-Zionist rhetoric from anti-Semitic rhetoric, for instance, will mean the Aryan Nations forum may have less entrants into its “brother in Islam” category. As it is now, many white supremacist organizations consider mujahideen their “brothers”, if they have distinct enemies — one fights a genocial war, the other ideological — perhaps this will translate into the dissolution of some of the more diabolical partnerships in the anti-Semitic world.
Then again, on the other hand…there’s this.
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Shame, shame, shame!
OK, now don’t get me wrong. I think it’s incredibly important to make sure that gays and lesbians are brought into traditionally observant life, and that people not be allowed to hide their prejudices behind the misapplication/misinterpretation of halacha. But, let’s face it, while the first is an important struggle, it pales in comparison to making sure that people have enough to eat, are able to pay their rent, and can afford to take care of themselves and their loved ones when ill.
So while I am a Keshet rabbi, I can’t help but be completely appalled at the fact that – well, where do I even start?
Man should know that it is a part of the divine worship that man should remember states of distress at a time when he prospers. This purpose is frequently affirmed in the Torah: And you shall remember that you were a servant, and so on (Devarim 5:15; 16:12). For there was a fear of the moral qualities that are generally acquired by all those who are brought up in prosperity – I mean conceit, vanity, and neglect of the correct opinions: When you have eaten your fill, and have built fine houses to live in, and your herds and flocks have multiplied, and your silver and gold have increased, and everything you own has prospered, beware lest your heart grow haughty and you forget the Lord your God Who took you out of the land of Egypt… and you say to yourselves, “My own power and the might of my own hand have won this wealth for me” (Devarim 8:12-17). And it says: So Yeshurun grew fat and kicked – you grew fat and gross and coarse – he forsook the God who made him and spurned the Rock of his support (Devarim 32:15). It is because of this apprehension that the commandment has been given to carry out a reading every year before Him, may He be exalted, and in the presence of His Indwelling, on the occasion of the first fruits. (RaMBaM, Guide of the Perplexed III:59, following Pines translation)
1. I found out in the Forward – which is an ongoing problem for Rabbinical Assembly members, as this is far from the first time we hear nothing about a tshuvah until the Forward reports on the vote- that the Committee on Jewish Law and Standards had just considered Rabbi Jill Jacobs’ tshuvah calling on Jewish business owners to pay their workers a living wage and hire union employees when possible
2. That they had voted, and it didn’t even collect the six votes necessary for a minority opinion and that, in fact, it received only three votes.
Three votes. Three votes.
Is this a joke? What, wasn’t there ample precedent in the Torah and Talmud? Rabbis, I direct your attention to the upcoming Yamim Noraim, high holidays, to the prayers we recite during these days, not to mention a particular haftarah from Isaiah, to the Labor day weekend Torah reading which just passed. If the Tanach does not contain sufficient reminders of our duties to the poor, perhaps we can take a review of Tractate Bava Metzia in the talmud – there’s interesting stuff in both the Bavli and Yerushalmi versions. We also have modern support, from no less than the late gadol Rabbi Feinstein. I’m sure with a bit of effort we could dig out a few more references, since this is just off the top of my head.
I quote from the Forward article,
As American Jews have ascended the ranks to employers from employees, memories of earlier Jewish labor activism have faded into the background. Concerns by some members of the law committee that Jacobs’s pro-labor paper would create an undue hardship on Jewish business owners seem to reflect what some observers describe as the growing gap between American Jews and the union movement. Jacobs, a labor activist who is the education director of the left-wing group Jewish Funds for Justice, rebuffed the argument made by some on the law committee that paying workers a living wage could put Jewish-owned companies out of business. “We ask people to do all sorts of things that put them at an economic disadvantage,†Jacobs said. “That’s because we believe in Jewish law and we don’t believe that making money is the highest Jewish law,†she added.”
Yes, that’s right, her tshuvah received three votes because we thought there was a chance it might cut into someone’s profits. Now, I started off by saying that this was a fight to pick with the Conservative movement, but the truth is, if this was just a movement thing, I could live with it. If it was really just the Conservative movement, there would be hope that we could be shamed into doing the right thing by the Reform, the Orthodox, the chilonim (seculars). But really, it’s not the case. This is not, unfortunately, a movement problem. It is, in fact, a Jewish problem. There have been no shortage of articles over the past few years dealing with this issue – the fact is that Jewish organizations are not living up to Jewish law. Jewish law requires us to treat our employees with fairness, and more than fairness. But Jewish organizations are not doing this. It’s not like it’s just bigotry, this is not a Jewish/ non-Jewish thing either. Jewish employees of Jewish institutions are also being underpaid, not receiving benefits, and so on.
A few years ago Jewish institutions in the Washington D.C. area got involved in the fight -against- the living wage in Montgomery County Maryland. The Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington helped to defeat a Montgomery County, Maryland living wage bill, citing concerns that paying workers the proposed living wage of $10.44 an hour or $9 with benefits would cost Jewish organizations up to $1 million and force the cancellation of some programs. Other Jewish groups and a coalition of local rabbis, supported the bill and sponsored a series of community forums to discuss the proposal. It took Abe Pollin, the majority owner of the Washington Wizards basketball team to move things along by promising to make up the diffierence in what the Jewish organizations had to pay, if necessary). In the end, two Jewish council members cast the deciding votes in defeating the proposed legislation.
During the same time, the Jewish Community Council of Greater Washington led opposition to a resolution in support of living wage laws adopted by the Jewish Council for
Public Affairs in February 2000 (How was the legislation finally passed? The bill finally passed exempts nonprofit organizations and businesses that receive certain tax credits or economic development aid – in other words , the Jewish institutions that had been fighting it).
When I wrote, with Rabbi Joshua Ginsberg, the Ethical Smachot letter now featured as part of Jews United for Justice‘s Ethical Smachot campaign to ask Washington D.C. community clergy to sign on to support their congregations’ and communities’ seeking more ethical ways to have their bnai mitzvah, weddings and other festive events, so as to support Jewish law’s requirements of our treatment towards others, it didn’t occur to me that this could be controversial in any way. Oh, granted, it was difficult to get Reform rabbis to sign on, because I talked about kashrut (as one’s community defines it), and it talked about living wage and mediation, but it didn’t call on anyone to do anything but ask some questions about what it means to have a Jewish event, a simchat mitzvah, rather than, as Maimonides terms it, a simchat creiso (a celebration of the belly).
And in truth, many, many rabbis have signed on, from all different movements. But a simchah cannot be the only time we consider these questions. If it is controversial for the CJLS to pass a tshuvah that merely reiterates and strengthens those laws which the Torah and the sages tell us, over and over, are the very basis for Judaism’s relationship with God, when we pass before the throne on Rosh Hashanah as a nation, we will be judged – and found wanting.
I encourage you all to sign on to the Ethical Smachot letter, but more so, I encourage you, strongly, to take it to the streets; not passing the tshuvah, fighting living wage ordinances: this is so not okay. Call your rabbis – more importantly, because rabbis often don’t have the power to change things like this within a shul, call everyone on the board of your shul and make sure they know you care if your janitors and secretaries and the waiters and cooks for your caterers aren’t receiving a living wage. Take it to your community businesses.
And for God’s sake, literally, if you’re Conservative, call your rabbi and tell them you’ve heard about Rabbi Jacobs’ tshuvah, that you care about this issue, that it’s a violation of Jewish law to underpay your workers, and that you think it is imperative that we speak forcefully for halachah: we must tell the members of our community that it matters what we do in our businesses, in our lives, and at every moment of the day : not just when we eat, not just when it’s shabbat, not just once a month after one’s menstrual cycle is over, not just once a year at the High Holidays; all of those things, but not only then, not only them.
Utefila, uteshuvah utzedakah – they are what annul the evil decree. What is tefila, prayer, without the intent to do justly? what is teshuvah, repentance, if we do not fix our businesses so that they will produce justice by their examples? tzedakah: it is justice, nothing less, that we are required to do.
Crossposted to Kol Ra’ash Gadol
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I received many notes today wishing me the coming of a sweet new year–I wish Congress had sent the same.
Rather, it was an atrocious day today on the Hill, as The House voted in support of a federal voter ID bill, H.R. 4844, also known by the PR spin as the “Federal Election Integrity Act of 2006,” and the Senate has moved to build a 700-mile fence along the border between the United States and Mexico.
Why am I not surprised that only 25% of the US population approves of Congress?
I can’t tell you how bad both of these bills are, so let me start first with the twisted attempt at easing the American publics fears of voter fraud, which is really more myth than reality, by instilling the idea that we need to police people at the polls to have integrity in our elections. As the Republican Congress tries to win over voters in pre-election season by being “tough on immigration” through legislation they deem will help prevent undocumented immigrants from casting ballots H.R. 4844 will more likely block eligible citizens from voting.
This actually goes against the grain of many good election reforms that have been won lately on the state level on voter ID, including both Missouri state court Judge Richard Callahan who ruled that the state’s newly-enacted voter identification statute violated the state constitution and enjoined its implementation, recognizing that “the elderly, the poor, the under-educated and those otherwise disadvantaged would confront great, if not insurmountable costs and bureaucratic obstacles in obtaining the documents required to vote.” While Georgia also passed voter ID laws, this is also being challenged in the courts, as judges and advocates alike are aware of the far greater realities in everyday Americans being barred from the ballot box by these measures. The legislation around voter ID all leads up to enactment of the REAL ID legislation by states in 2008.
And the list goes on and on of point after point which demonstrates how the requirement of a state ID is truly a bad idea, an issuing of a modern day poll tax that will inevitably harbor more harm than good to the state of our democracy today.
So what about the border? Well, I think Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada said it best in the article, “We can build the tallest fence in the world and it won’t fix our broken immigration system.” To do that, he said, “we need the kind of comprehensive reform that the Senate passed earlier this year.” And truth remains that until the US takes a good look in the mirror at its international economic and political policies, the waves of people who are forced to migrate due to harsh economic conditions brought on by policies we advocate, including free trade globalization, means this issue isn’t going anywhere.
This is a sad day indeed for a Congress and a nation that believes that safety comes in narrowness, in raising walls on borders, in further policing, in ID cards that will bar potentially millions of eligible voters from the ballot box–looks like this year (not really unlike any other year, but still) Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur should be in the streets.
crossposted to jspot
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Hallelujah and PTL! The media is excited about Christian hipsters for a change. It seems that Jim and Tammy Faye Baker’s son Jay has hit the Williamsburg hipster scene. Why? Because he loves to tell the story.
As a proud South Carolinian who grew up across Lake Wylie from Jim and Tammy Faye’s house, hanging out with kids who wore Heritage USA tee-shirts, I am thrilled to see a Baker in the news again for doing something other than kicking it in the Castro. Go Jay go! Good luck with the religious press who can’t stand innovators, and the mainstream media who think you’re weird. And oh yeah, get used to being called a hipster. Sigh.
New York‘s interview with Jay Baker is here. He actually sounds like a nice guy.
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As a proud student at the Jewish Theological Seminary, I have always been a little bit disappointed at the fact that we don’t have awesome JTS gear that I could proudly keep in the bottom of my dresser, never to be worn. Why, oh why, is there no JTS clothing?
And then I found this:
JTS is the latest innovation in Christian apparel. With designs specifically tailored to the uniqueness of today’s Christian community, JTS seeks to provide a faith-based clothing line that appeals to both Christian and non-Christian alike. The company is engaged in the production of all apparel essentials and accessories; however, t-shirts represent the major share of the company’s production. We are dedicated to providing the highest quality apparel meeting the needs of today’s fashion conscious Christian.
If this is what I gotta do for a for some JTS gear, then John 3:16 it is, I guess.
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Alan Dershowitz has a new book out. It’s called Preemption: A Knife That Cuts Both Ways.
Louise Christian (whose bio cites that fact that she’s sued the IDF) doesn’t like Dershowitz very much, and she uses her review of his book to say so… over and over. She says he’s a shoddy lawyer, and is “horrified” by the fact that he’d even entertain the validity of pre-emptive force. It seems that the Guardian was just looking for someone to slam Dershowitz.
Today on Slate.com, Dershowitz clarifies his point of view, slams the Guardian reviewer for apparently not reading the book, and points out that the publication’s anti-Israel stance is what’s really behind the negative review of his work. He writes:
Liberalism and Zionism are not considered mutually exclusive in America. In fact, they are complementary. The prevailing view at the Guardian is to the contrary.
Amen, right?
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Yeah, I know it’s a big picture, but it oughta get your attention.
If you’re in NYC for Yom Kippur, and interested in a ritual experience unlike any other, you’re invited to join Storahtelling at the Union Square Ballroom for “A Wake Up Call for the Soul”.
I’m personally excited for the Kol Nidre, which will include an exploration of the 1927 film, “The Jazz Singer”. As I just learned about this movie, the first words ever uttered in a “talkie”, if you will, were the words of the Kol Nidre, so it should be interesting to see how this is blended into the ritual.
After that, it’s a daylong mixture of ritual, theatre, music, comtemplation, text study and more, closing with a break-fast and cash bar at the Ballroom itself. While I would openly admit that I have an extreme pro-Storahtelling bias, my first real experience with them was during Yom Kippur last year, and the impact of it has not left me a year later. I encourage and welcome any and all of you to join us.
For more information, you can go here
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LA Times reports on Elfriede Lina Rinkel, age 83, a former dog handler at the Ravensbruck slave labor camp for women between 1944 and 1945. Shortly aftershe married Fred William Rinkel, a German Jewish refugee from the war, and relocated to the States, particularly San Francisco.
And never told her husband about it.
Now, I’m in an interfaith/interacial marriage, and yeahm there’s some things we keep from one another. But I kind of doubt this would be one of them.
Apparently, the Justice Department agrees. Especially Agency Director Eli Rosenbaum, who said “her presence in the United States nevertheless was an affront to surviving Holocaust victims who have made new homes in this country.”
Alison Dixon, her attorney, counters, “”She was trying to atone for actions in the past… she married a Jewish man, and she gave to Jewish charities.”
I can’t call it. As the High Holy Days approach and we’re all sort of tested for the merits of our character, how do we judge such a situation? What kind of punishment do you mete? Should there even be punishment, given the bulk of her life spent with her Juden love?
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Can we disinherit him? According to JTA’s breaking news, “U.S. Sen. George Allen (R-Va.) acknowledged he has Jewish roots.
‘I embrace and take great pride in every aspect of my diverse heritage, including my Lumbroso family line’s Jewish heritage, which I learned about from a recent magazine article and my mother confirmed,’ Allen said in a statement on his Web site.
He added, ‘I was raised as a Christian and my mother was raised as a Christian.’â€
Well. At least the last statement appears to be true.
JTA continues:
His supporters booed the reporter, Peggy Fox of WUSA-TV, and he said he was “glad†they had done so. He accused Fox of “casting aspersions†and said he upheld freedom of religion.
Right. Proud of his heritage. Well, George, we’re “proud ” of you too.
Macaca.
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The brilliant French graphic novelist Joann Sfar has released a second Jewish-oriented book, “Klezmer: Book 1: Tales of the Wild East”. (You may remember his “The Rabbi’s Cat,” about the feline companion to a North African Rabbi of a hundred years ago, a tribute to the Sephardic side of Sfar’s family.)
It’s the sort of imaginative, post-vernacular hash of early 20th century eastern europe that owes as much to graphic novel serials like “bone” as to actual Jewish history or humor. But, unlike, say, the trite, hobbit-like hash inflicted upon users by Jonathan Foer in “Everything is Illuminated,” Sfar has both storytelling and Jewish chops with which to work. And, given the medium, everything is illuminated.
You can read more about it on the KlezmerShack: www.klezmershack.com
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Watch Senator George Allen (R, Virginia) flip out when a reporter asks him about his Jewish roots.
Seriously, click on the video in the article.
UPDATE: Commentators on the left and the right agree that Allen’s response was inappropriate and angry. Marc Fisher, writting in the Washington Post blog, puts it best:
Clearly, this is a touchy topic for Allen, who greeted Channel 9 reporter Peggy Fox with utter contempt and derision after she asked him to clarify his mother’s background during the debate before the Fairfax Chamber of Commerce. Fox was going after a perfectly legitimate piece of information; especially in this time of politicians touting their religious bona fides…. [The reporter] certainly got the senator riled up. His reaction was so bizarrely out of tune with the rest of the debate that listeners almost had to conclude that he was hiding something.…Is any of this anything more than a matter of curiosity, another typical tale of reinvention in a nation of immigrants starting new lives in the New World? Well, that depends on what Allen knew and when he knew it, and whether he at any point decided that pursuing a political career in Virginia might be hindered by public attention to his Jewish roots. At the moment, there’s no evidence of any cover-up on Allen’s part–except for his hostile and juvenile response when the question was asked at the debate.
If that moment turns out to be the opening by which we learn that Allen has not been aboveboard about his background, then Fox’s question will have been no stretch at all, but a valuable window onto this very complicated senator.
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Last week I posted here about my brush with antisemitism in Greece. Since then, my personal site has gotten some interesting comments from non-Jewish Greeks. I’m sharing part of the debate here:
From “Vasilios”
It is not anti semitism so much , it is maybe however that jews tried to undermind our government someway some years back..so that maybe the reason..Greece is a country of history and tradition. these things are important to 90 % if not all of greek people.Not to mention our close relation to palestine and syria..there a number of factors that play a role(in relation i do not mean politicallly i mean bloodline..oh did i forgot to mention lebenon…..hmmmmm maybe that alone might make most people dislike jews..do you think that a jew can go anywhere in the world he chooses and be liked ..if i go somewhere and someone doesnt like me cause of my nationality must i go back to my country and cry about it make a fuss…..Greeks were massacared by the turks for 400 years nobody bringsd it up in the usa…in world war we beat the italians and held hitler for 30 days when the us and allied troops couldnt hold them for a week..my relatives from the 1900’s died so that your people could be free and take a country that doesnt belong to them And cause more problems …..so if you are disliked a little deal with it like other people of different races deal for different reasons.
From “Tramountanas”
Fortunately, not all greek people or people of Greek or whatever descent have similar views to Vasilios and if that is the prevalent attitude then another Vasili I once met who changed his name to Lucky for another reason is lucky in deed to be away from it.
Vasili, I hardly think Lilit is making a fuss about it and sure there have been all sort of persecutions of different races and religions throughout history and the world would be a far better place if people were able to appraise oneanother for who they are as a person without bias.
It is unfortunate in deed Lilit that there can be problems for Jewish people in travelling, but no doubt you will remember well the good things about your travels.
I only recently found out of my own Greek/mixed heritage, an ancestor doing a name change along the way and also feel I might as well change my name to Lucky for not having an attitude passed along to me.
Travel well.
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In New York, we are spoiled Jewishly. I’ll admit it. Every holiday brings a multitude of events; I plan to hit three or four different shuls on Simchas Torah, and to do that, I only need to travel 16 blocks. I’m on the coordinating committee of one great independent minyan, attend another, occasionally attend services at a haymish nearby synagogue, and could go to any additional number of tiny, medium, or gigantic minyanim, shuls, synagogues, or temples of Reconstructionist, Unaffiliated, Reform, Orthodox, Conservative, or Secular Humanist varieties, or even shabbas meals at the Workmen’s Circle.
This is of course true of Jewish culture as well. I remember the days when Jewsapalooza was 12 nights long at the Knitting Factory. On any given weekend, you could spy any number of incredible Jewish acts/acts that happen to be Jewish doing their thing in clubs and venues across the city. Whether Rav Shmuel or Jenn Lindsay are hitting the Side Walk Café, or John Zorn and Marc Ribot are tearing down Tonic, the Klezmatics are playing Town Hall, or Jeff Perlman and Romashka are downtown; Vanessa Hidary (or this writer) spitting rhymes at the Nuyorican Poets Café, Y-Love is freestyling in multiple languages, or Chana Rothman is invading the Lion’s Den; whether Joshua Nelson is doing some Kosher gospel, So Called is blending Klezmer and Hip Hop, or Hasidic New Wave and Yakar Rhythms are rocking out, or Daphna Mor joining Raquy and the Cavemen for some serious sounds, Lewis Black headlining at Caroline’s, Neshama Carlebach bringing great niggunim to life, or Yossi Piamenta is opening for Leo Nocentelli at BB King’s… okay, you get the idea. Many of the artists listed, as well as tons of other amazing Jewish talent you know and you don’t know yet, either hang their hat here, or pay tribute several times a year. On a given weekend, it’s not hard to find Jewish artists doing their thing.
Starting from this premise, putting together (by my count of the website, which doesn’t the Balkan Beat Box/Sway Machinery show I will be reviewing shortly) a whopping 29 events and a two day conference in a week that included September 11th and Selichot seems incredibly ambitious at best, and came off as just too much. With enough talent jammed into a week that could’ve been spread out to give Marcheshvan its own month long festival, Oyhoo was a great collection of events in too small a time. The breadth and depth of talent was remarkable but the frantic schedule made it simply impossible to get to most of the week. More »
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The Oyhoo festival is up and done. Success?
I only made it to two and a half shows of the whole thing, and the range of successes vs. failures is striking.
There’s a mystical principle I picked up from Yaakov Sack in Jerusalem sometime ago: the less expensive a version of something is, the better the quality. It’s as true about lovers as it is about vegetables.
Jake Marmer’s Mimaamikim event was super fun, Bowery Poetry club stuffed to the gills with the beautiful souled, my experience is very spoiled by how much I love(d) just seeing certain people, certainly, but I was really impressed at how big a setup Basya Schecter got together for what was ostensibly “just a side project.”
I got there too late to catch much more than that.
On the other hand, I didn’t get there late enough for Thursday night’s show at Irving Plaza– the music was all great and fine, though the musicians were certainly trying hard not to be de-inspired by the surprisingly low turnout, despite big name bands (at least as far as Jewish youth culture goes) and performers like Blue Fringe, Y-love (hardest working guy of the festival week) and Moshav.
To blame for this low turnout is certainly the initially high ticket prices, justifiable theoretically had the event gone on on a weekend, or were there not a bigger show happening for free on sunday. The ticket prices dropped from 54 dollars to eighteen, rather too late for the teeming masses of NYC Jewish high schoolers to notice.
Which is chaval, a pity, because it was some good performances. I missed R Shmuel’s breakout-at-Irving-Plaza, because who gets out to a club before eight o’clock? Michelle Citrin was sweet, mellower than anyone to follow, and I wonder how appreciated she was in the context.
REALLY small crowd, more than two thirds of whom were comped. Y-love tore it up as best as he could, but it was hard for him to be as enthusiastic as he had been the night before by Hip Hop Sulha, the best performance of his career he says. Jew Reggae veteran Benny Bwoy came on stage with Y-love, backed on by real authentic carribean black gentiles for a solid five or ten minutes of explosive dancehall frenzy. Blue Fringe played funly too, one of the musicians from the band expressing a certain surrender to doing the random-different-bands showcase that hardly make sense together, as they don’t have a new album coming out or anything: “but still any of our bands could have filled up the venue on our own, why throw us all together, and ask so much for it?”
The why is that it’s expensive to ship out Moshav from L.A., presumeably an easy sell, but again: 54 dollars is alot of money for a high school senior to lay out, especially when the show is being hyped as almost sold out, who want to drive in from Jersey or Long Island for a show that might not be get-inable?
Moshav is hot off their new album, sony production quality at full blast, and the simultaneously widest and deepest single i’ve heard in along time. I really hope it gets on the radio, though I wonder how receptive American radio is to the word “salaam” being chanted, no matter how rocking it sounds. It was really nice to see them, but their set was cut short, only half an hour. WTF?
Contrast this to sunday’s Jewsapalooza in Riverside Park, a free show, with cheap drinks, wine and beer, two of either free with the simple signing up for a credit card. Big Family Crowd, surrendering as the sun gets low to leftish Israeli expatriots and Jam Band devoted Yeshiva kids, as Pharoah Daughter gently and danceably leads us out of the enthusiastic calm of David Broza into the looser and wonderfully weirder than ever Yossi Piamenta, finally backed up by a band willing to explore with him. And the Jam Joy energy was not dispersed, instead rallied up into anarchic and concious yet dirty and unifying Dag Nachash, blowing our legs into hip-hop madness, bridging Tel Aviv with Jerusalem, and accomplishing, shockingly to me, the rare unification of Jews with Israelis, of relgious with secular, and it’s OK to sing about Hashish smoking around straight religious families uninterrupted, as long as you do it in Hebrew, apparently, much to my pride.
So what’s the Oyhoo festival trying to do, I wonder? Just showcase already living cultures? Ok, cool, that’s appreciated, though little sense of anything unifying the different Oyhoo related events did I feel, often even within the same event. Just what is Jewish culture trying to do for itself?
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