Growing up in the Carolinas, I was lucky to hear plenty of Black gospel sounds. There were songs played at family picnics in the park near my house (Freedom Park in Charlotte, North Carolina), church organ grooves on Sunday morning on WPEG FM 98, and the occasional opportunity to go with my family to visit a Black church for an event or concert. I always wanted to sing along. Driving around town with my daughter this evening, this tune came…
My friend and colleague Rabbi Steve Greenberg taught me a bit of Torah about ger and ger toshav in the late 1990s. Just as we are instructed to embrace the ger, the convert among us, and avoid shaming the ger in any way, we are also taught to embrace the ger toshav those who “dwell with us.” In particular, Steve used the example of Uriah the Hittite as someone who stood in solidarity with our people. He felt that much…
Last year, Daniel Brenner had a dream. As he slept, he heard the Klezmorim’s album Streets of Gold, the 1978 classic that helped launch an American klezmer revival. The next day Brenner went to his local YMCA and put on the album to pump him up while he exercised. “People were streaming by me, coming out of Zumba class,” he said, “and the thought that came to me was: it is time for Klezmer Aerobics.” So Brenner, a rabbi and…
In Jewish life, where a typical birthday wish is “Ad meah v’esrim” – “May you live to 120!” it is a little early for me to have a mid-life crisis. So I’m not sure what to call my artistic project, 80s Klezmer Aerobics. It is part storytelling/part dance performance/part aerobics class/part Jewish wedding/part theater show/and one hundred percent joy. Here are some classic Klezmer Aerobics moments:
I visited the Rolings Kosher Bakery in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania on a rugelach run. Managed to take this photo of the back wall of the bakery while the clerk was making change. A visual slice of a bubbe-run business. The rugelach, by the way, were absolutely perfect. Delicious and moist – you could taste the love.
The Battle Within: What a Story of Twins Tells Us About the Human Psyche Delivered November 21, 2015 Simone and Martin Lipman Scholar in Residence Chapel Hill, North Carolina Eighteen years ago my wife was pregnant and she was feeling a lot of kicking so we went to the hospital for an ultrasound. We did not want to know the gender of our expected child and we told this to our physician. But our physician’s mind lacked stickiness, because when…
The video above is a little tune from my band Midnight Nosh about the holiday season. It reflects, in some way, my childhood desire as a Jewish boy growing up in the Bible Belt to celebrate Christmas – and the unavoidable comparison of two winter holidays that have very little to do with each other (historically speaking.) On a more serious note, the Xmas season always brings with it questions from neighbors and friends about what Jewish people…
https://vimeo.com/145748861 Every once and a while a group of wildly talented musicians will travel back in time and grasp a very old poem and an old tune and spin them into the current moment with a magical new spirit. This song is one of those once and a whiles. Bazaar Ensemble are L.A. based folks who are adding some full throttle soul to a tune that I, admittedly, associate with both a choice Eric B. & Rakim sample and the…
The folks over at Ask Big Questions asked me to write something about Jewish ritual – and ritual in general. I start off with a reflection from the summers of my high school years…you can check it out here.