Get into the Hanukkah Mood With the Maccabeats

It's almost Hanukkah.  For your listening pleasure, there's nothing to get you in the mood like the Maccabeats "Candlelight."  Enjoy!

A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff

With her band Girls in Trouble, fiddler and singer/songwriter Alicia Jo Rabins wrote haunting songs about Biblical women. In her new project Rabins tackles a figure of a different kind: Ponzi-scheme mastermind Bernie Madoff.

A one-woman show about a man who ruined fortunes, bankrupted charitable organizations and whose actions seem to have driven people to suicide? Sounds odd, but Rabins's "A Kaddish for Bernie Madoff" is a surprisingly sensitive and moving musical essay, and it just debuted in Madoff's hometown of New York City.

Extensively researched, "A Kaddish" includes songs from the perspectives of Madoff's wife, lawyer, and victims, as well as Rabins’s own attempts to spiritually and practically grapple with what happened. In "The Quant" Rabins tries to make sense of Madoff's reasoning: "I understand these things in a way most people can't/Futures contracts. Split strike conversions/I'm a quant. I can do the math. Most people can't." At the centerpiece is a moving rendition of the Mourner’s Kaddish, which doesn't only speak for Madoff's victims. In a way, it's speaking for the demise of Madoff himself, and of our trust in the financial system.

Clips from the show aren’t yet online, but you can listen to Rabins’s songs here, and check back for updates.

Gay Avek

Matt Honig, a documentarian from outside Washington, D.C., is making a movie that traces the history of Judaism, political change–and punk rock. Punk is a lifestyle that’s mostly tied to music, and it espouses a do-it-yourself culture. This makes for loud and fuzzy self-produced albums, and also music that expresses self-empowerment and the idea that–socially, politically, or otherwise–you can do anything.

Honig is only 17 years old, but he already has a few laurels as a filmmaker–he created a homemade animated film depicting the popular band Alkaline Trio, and the band released it as an official music video. Now, filming on Honig’s documentary (titled Tikkun Olam: The Relationship Between Judaism and Punk Rock) is underway. Honig and his collaborators are trying to finance it themselves, and to that end, they have released an mp3 compilation and a CD featuring some of their favorite bands. In honor of the punk-rock in-your-face attitude, the CD is entitled Gay Avek–that’s Yiddish for “go away.”

The 19 songs on Gay Avek highlight some unexpected crossovers between punk culture, folk culture, and activism. The CD includes great folk-singing activists such as Woody Guthrie and Leonard Cohen, who have strong Jewish ties.

Download it for only $5, or you can listen to the whole thing free. Or for $3 more, they’ll send you an actual CD in the mail, with some great cover art featuring a stenciled rendition of Emma Goldman. More than a testament to the radicality of Judaism’s past, it’s also a great sign that Judaism in the future–and the Jews of tomorrow–will continue the proud legacy of fighting the powers that be.

Silver Jews Ride into the Sunset

These days, writer and musician David Berman is getting more mileage out of his bizarre New Yorker-like cartoons than he is from Silver Jews, the band he used to lead.

The Silver Jews--for which Berman was once singer, songwriter, and lead guitarist--were a veritable force in the alternative rock scene of the 1990s. Silver Jews featured a rotating cast of musicians that included members of much more famous bands. As the band grew in popularity, their sound changed from a fuzzy indie-rock vibe to that of a more refined country band. And, as more people asked him about the band’s name, Berman was forced to confront what had once been a spur-of-the-moment joke. Ironically, that name eventually encouraged Berman's interest in his own Judaism. He began studying Torah every day and, on a trip to Israel, immersed himself in religious life.

Although Berman and co. aren't currently touring, the new album Early Times collects 14 previously-uncollected songs from the band's first days. Some of these songs, like "Secret Knowledge of Back Roads" and "I Love the Rights" are unpolished and brash. Coming after half a dozen Silver Jews albums, this new one feels disorienting and funny--kind of like looking at naked baby pictures of one’s grown-up friends. But it's also unexpectedly cool, seeing a band that turned out great, and knowing that it didn't always sound quite as seamless.

Dona, Dona - The Mystical Meaning

There is an old Jewish folk song called Dona Dona that I learned as a child in summer camp and it calls to me now. Is it just nostalgia or is there a deeper message? First let's review the words, and then look beneath the surface to find the hidden treasure of meaning.

On a wagon bound for market
There's a calf with a mournful eye
High above him flies the swallow
Winging swiftly thru the sky.


Refrain:

How the winds are laughing
They laugh with all their might
Laugh and laugh the whole day through
And half the summer's night

Dona dona, dona etc.
"Stop complaining," said the farmer
"Who told you a calf to be?
Why don't you have wings to fly with
Like the swallow so proud and free?"

Refrain:

Calves are easily bound and slaughtered
Never knowing the reason why
But whoever treasures freedom
Like the swallow must learn to fly.

Refrain:

At first glance, this song seems like a lighthearted, somewhat sentimental dialogue between a farmer and his calf on the way to the slaughterhouse. The calf is sad because he is going to die and the swallow is flying overhead, indifferent to the calf's plight. The farmer rebukes the calf, criticizing him for being one and goading him into growing wings like the swallow, as if he could. The song concludes with a wry observation about the helplessness of calves and how easy it is to end their short lives. The final line, however, does give a hint that this song is not talking about a calf and a swallow, but about freedom. Many folk singers have sung this song, from Yiddish sopranos to klezmer bands to Joan Baez who sang it in English. They all find in it a universal message about the victims of oppression and the desire for political freedom. But there a deeper message in this song that points towards spiritual liberation.

Continue reading.

Life (and Music) after Death

Is listening to music a religious experience?

The autobiographical book Automatic: Girls, Death, and R.E.M., by Matthue Roth--who you might also know as the founder of Jewniverse--is about music, but it's also about friendship.

Growing up Jewish in working-class Philadelphia, Matthue became friends with Patrick, a Catholic kid. Both were social outcasts, bad dressers, and targets for bullies. Patrick had neurofibromatosis, a degenerative skin disease. Matthue was a nerd, hanging out in libraries and at his synagogue, praying with men 80 years older than him. But both boys found solace in R.E.M., a band of misfits and "geek rockers."

The two are on wildly different paths in life--Patrick plays guitar for a band that gets minorly famous; Roth becomes an Orthodox Jew. But the two share an unlikely friendship that perseveres until Patrick's sudden death.

The short book (it's about 50 pages) takes its title from the R.E.M. album Automatic for the People. The structure of the book is also based on this album, with 12 chapters, one for each track. But you don't need to like R.E.M., or even to know who they are, to appreciate this tribute. The book is available as an Amazon download, or you can click here to order a hand-bound edition that Roth designed himself.

Psalms for the Perplexed

As the lead singer of the Israeli band Teapacks, Kobi Oz was a wild, adrenalized vaudevillian. Most famously, in 2007, he scandalized the Eurovision music competition with a song about Iran's nuclear capabilities called "Push the Button." But Oz's new solo CD Mizmorey Nivuchim ("Psalms for the Perplexed") is surprisingly low-key--dominated by acoustic guitars, soft drums, and a string section.

The real treat of Mizmorey is a website with interviews, translations, and videos that explain the puns, language, and background of each song. Some songs are playful--"Prayer of the Secular" and "Zalman" question the piety of both religious and non-religious Jews--while the poignant "Elohay" ("My God") mixes recordings of Oz's grandfather singing traditional Yemenite songs with Kobi's own lyrics.

Still, Oz hasn't lost his ironic sensibility and snarky wit. And thanks to the Mizmorey website, we English-speakers can get the jokes, too.