Shavuot- Celebrate good times, come on!
Moadim L’Simcha! Thursday at sundown begins Shavuot, the celebration of the gift of Torah at Mt. Sinai. It is a time of learning, of dedication to study and the consumption of cheesecake! Shavuot is also inextricably tied to another holiday- Simchat Torah. Why two Torah-centric holidays? Both are seasons of Joy, but the manner of celebration for each is different. (more…)
My Garden
Y-Love (Yitz Jordan) is an MC unlike any other. He is a black convert into the Bostoner sect of chassidus (the mystical branch of Orthodox Judaism). He is among the most innovative freestylers on the scene, weaving seamless polyglot rhymes in English, Arabic, Yiddish, and Hebrew. Most unique is Y-Love’s revival of Aramaic, the language used to discuss Jewish Law and Kabbalah. With each word he spits in the tongue of ancient Babylon, Y-Love breathes new life into hip-hop, one beat at a time.
Parshat Kedoshim: Blue Fringes, rock music and outreach
Last Shabbat, we read Parshat Kedoshim, which explained the mitzvah of Tzitzit. As an English-speaker, the common translation of Tzitzit into “fringes” leads me to explore their contemporary implications of both the word and idea. Traditionally, the knotted fringes remind us of the 613 mitzvot and the four corners of the tallit on which they’re placed can represent the lands from which our people will return from exile. I’ve come to think of tallit as a wearable reminder of the impefection of life and the world around us.
Each of its fringes is a mitzvah yet to be woven into it, thus completing it, and the gathering of those fringes together from the four corners of our Tallit symbolically express hope for the gathering of exiles and redemption. Its a nice additional layer of meaning.
But with a State and modern transportation and communication, the nature of our exile has changed. Our Diaspora is now by and large spiritual, and our exiles those mentally distanced from Jewish life, for whom Jewishness is not at the center of their lives, but appropriately, on the fringes. We see them on the streets, at coffee shops and a couple times a year and on High Holidays. But we wish they were walking into and playing an active role in our institutions, not avoiding them. Each Jew is like a thread; hundreds of them woven together by the warp and woof of our heritage create the strong fabric of our communities, like a Tallit.
Its fitting then that tzitzit are not the decorative, but the functional element, for it follows that on some level, our institutions exist to reach out to those on the fringes, a garment that is home for hundreds of loose threads! Let’s gather our fringes and make our communal garment whole again, starting with those whose connection to Judaism is so often “hanging by a thread.” We like to do that with music, especially a style of music that they’re already listening to. And since we’re on the topic of Tzitzit, its only appropriate that this week J-ARTS is featuring hot Jewish rock band Blue Fringe.
Musical Ingathering of Yom Haatzmaut
During the season around Israeli Independence Day, we love to listen to our brothers and sisters from Israel and catch an earful of Sabra sounds. Israeli artists visiting our Diaspora communities provide wonderful opportunities to celebrate our homeland and teach its undeniable importance to our people. But Israeli performers aren’t the sole means of sonic solidarity; the message of Isreal sometimes is best expressed by someone going TO the land, to live there as part of the Zionist dream.
American artists who make that decision, to leave exilic comforts to live in Eretz Yisrael, have unique experiences. Generally, they are steeped in Jewish culture, have active spiritual lives and are by nature, both verbally and artistically expressive. Their creativity is like a conduit, both feeding off the land and the people of Israel and reinvigorating it.
If we as Jews perform a Mitzvah by living in the Promised Land, these artists perform double duty through their craft. Their residence is a mitzvah, but when combined with their creativity, it is in some way Hiddur Mitzvah, a beautification of the mitzvah. Their songs, stories and art are often a more expressive and effective window to the Land of Israel than any rally or speaker could ever hope to acheive. They let us explore our own connections to Israel, our notions about exile and thus learn about ourselves.
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