S.O.S. - Save Our Simcha February 26, 2008
I hope Moshiach is reading this.
I hope Moshiach sees precisely what condition klal Yisra’el are in danger of being in and how so many Jewish souls are trapped in bodies which are being sucked into a joyless vortex of stringencies and bans.
A concert, billed the “Big Event”, was planned to happen in the coming weeks at Madison Square Garden, bringing together Jewish music heavyweights Lipa Schmeltzer, Shlomie Gertner, and composer Sheya Mendlowitz — the 20,000+ tickets were sold to a crowd set to assemble for a night of music and entertainment which was to be the buzz of New York.
Soon after it was announced, it was banned. Prominent rabbis came out against the concert, saying that, in part:
It refers to the performers as “mezamrim m’ktze hamachane” (singers from the edge of the camp) and says [in Hebrew] “they’re going to sing and joke in front of men and women with an outcome of frivolity and light-headedness.” Oh, dear.
The ban goes on to assert that all concerts are prohibited. It also proclaims an “issur” for newspapers to publish ads for the event. And, it urges all to boycott these musicians and not hire them for your personal simchos or for tzedakah events.
BloginDm also notes that:
THE KOL KOREH WAS AN OLD, RECYCLED ONE FROM LAST YEAR, WHEN THEY WENT AFTER FRIED AND MBD IN ISRAEL!!!
Perhaps the worst news comes from a comment on Vos Iz Neias, the charedi newswire I’ve been into for quite sometime. Apparently, Sheya Mendlowitz let a little something slip during his Saturday night radio appearance with Zev Brenner:
I guess after you’ve been physically threathened, you would also change your tune (no pun intended) pretty quickly. Shye Mendlowitz alluded to that at his call-in on the Zev Brenner show this past mozei shabbos. He mentioned that this thing had gone into dangerous territory and he did not want to go into details as to what transpired behind the scenes. My sense is that violence was threatened and everybody is backing off because of this.
So now, in New York, just like Israel, concerts are banned. How this can be construed as a good thing is beyond me. Indeed, as the Noy G Show shows, these quotes from Lipa make one question where the Orthodox world is heading:
I have recently started learning Bichavrusa with a leading Rosh Yeshiva, and I promised him that I will never sing any songs which were composed by non-Jews. Being true to my word, I have sang at more then a dozen Chasuna’s since I made that decision - and I have not sang “Yidden”, “Abi-Mileibt”, or “Numa” (Rabbi Nachman M’uman) or any other song that is questionable as to its origin.
Has it really come to this? Now songs which involve musical compositions of non-Jews are forbidden to perform? Baruch Hashem I make hiphop! And — let’s say that I were to be singing lyrics about sex and murder — would the fact that my beats were all made by Jewish producers make my lyrics somehow kosher? As Noy G said, the zeitgeist spreading among far too many authorities is “ban it all and let G-d sort it out” and I, for one, am scared.
Scared that one day the Hasidic people I see on the street might not be saying “shalom” to me, but might be ready to take me out because I dared put on a show that brought kids closer to Judaism.
Scared that one day I may look into the dreamy eyes of a depressed child a few years from now and hear, “you mean you can do your music in front of other people?”
Scared that I will see year after year of increasing disaffiliation statistics, year after year of kids going “off the path”, while some pontificating group of sticks-in-the-mud can continue to manipulate Torah giants into banning everything short of oxygen.
We are talking about events with separate seating, set up by people who learn b’chavrusa (privately) with heads of yeshivas. There is nothing abominable, forbidden, or even questionable that I would ever suspect Lipa Shmeltzer of organizing or having a hand in. I can’t believe that the good names of frum, G-d fearing Jews are being dragged through the mud and that honest people — who, let’s face it, at the end of the day, are just trying to make a living using the talents and skills G-d gave them (what, Shwekey should do wireless networking?) — are being shamed and embarrassed in public (and for what?).
The Torah is beautiful, and Judaism should not have to be enforced this way.
King Moshiach, if you are reading this, may G-d allow you to reveal yourself.
Save our simcha. Save our joy.
Please. Save us now.
The irony of the no goy-composed logic is that inevitably over the course of time tunes of non-Jewish origin have slipped into our culture. Even sacred music that we sing in shul or around our Shabbat tables is suspect. Historically, musicians in the Jewish community were among the most likely to mingle with the surrounding cultures. The musical boundaries of the communities were porous.
You don’t have to be a musicologist to realize that Jewish music from any part of the globe sounds a hell of a lot like the secular music of the surrounding communities.
There is a solution, though: Ban all tunes, even in davenning, and even though that we think of as “MiSinai.” It’s the only way to ensure that we protect the Yidden from “songs of questionable origin.”
I wonder if they realize that most “niggunim” have their roots in tavern songs and military marches…Perhaps we should ban even “chassidishe” garb, since it is nothing more than the same style of clothing worn by Eastern European nobility from around 1600 - 1700 c.e.???
It is absolutely disgusting what is happening in the Hasidic world. The ones (I understand not all) that claim to be the most passionate about Judaism are the ones that are destroying it from the inside out. how do you expect kids NOT to leave the derech if they can’t even congregate to listen to the JEWISH music they love, let alone the mainstream stuff. Forbidden fruit tastes the sweetest…
[…] I’m sending out an S.O.S. at thisisbabylon.net. […]
the musicians that heed the ban are not worth listening to anyway
boycott the boycotters
Every word you said is so frigin true.
to Yosef G.
Good post, in fact all the posts have been good on this topic. The flip side of that irony is that so many songs in American pop culture have been written and/or performed by Jews.
To name just a few:
Irving Berlin (White Christmas!)
Mel Torme (Chestnuts Roasting On An Open Fire!!)
George and Ira Gershwin
Jerome Kern
Rogers & Hammerstien
Burt Bacharach
Bob Dylan
Lieber & Stoller (composed most of Elvis’ hits)
Billy Joel
the Beastie Boys
Simon & Garfunkel
Lou Reed
Leonard Cohen
Kinky Friedman
Phil Ochs
Paul Simon
Arlo Guthrie
Carole King
Joey Ramone
The list goes on and on…
Maybe if we sang Lecha Dodi to the tune of “Blowing in the Wind” or Adom Olam to the tune of “You Aint Nothing But A Hound Dog”, it should be deemed kosher lemehadrin, because the tune wasn’t composed by a goy!
To me, there is a much larger issue here, and that is, that the proccess with which the gedolim iteract with the general community desperately needs to be reformed. This particular incident is just symptomatic of the growing disconnect between the general frum population, especially the young generation, and the Daas Torah. While I have utmost respect for their Torah scholarship, I’m just not seeing effective leadership there. The most glaring aspect of this is that this ban didn’t even originate with the Rabbis. They put their signatures on a very severe proclamation based soley on the say-so of a certain well known Zealot from Boro Park, who told them outright lies about the participants of the event, and who has had a personal vendetta against Lipa Schmeltzer ever since he first came on the scene. How could they issue such a stern edict without first investigating the facts, or at the very least, contacting the concert’s organizers? How can the leaders of a community allow themselves to be misled and manipulated so easily, when people’s Parnassa is at stake? If the rabonim depend on askanim (who often have agendas) to be middlemen for their information about what’s happening in the community, rather than seeing for themselves, then they’re effectively removing themselves from the very community they purport to lead! By the time they get their second and third hand information, its been filtered and distorted beyond recognition.
Another problem is the notion that bans solve everything. This is not the first time that Rabbonim have released strongly worded bans to address what are perceived to be problems in our community. These kneejerk reactions are often the result of an oversimplification of the issue without consideration for the far reaching ramifications of such measures. In this case, There is breach of contract with Madison Square Garden (who don’t give a rat’s tuchis about Daas Torah), and from what I hear, more that a quarter million dollars on the line. Some other bans that come to mind are the takana limiting the amount of musicians you can have at your wedding to 4 pieces (which would put violinist, trombonists, percussionists, harpist etc out of work) and the ridiculous ban on wigs made from Indian hair a few years back. This is irresponsible, ineffective and it makes our Rabonmim look like a group of dour, monolithic, senile, cranky old men who are completely out of touch with the world.
True leadership would be to analyse issues that asrise, try to understand the causes, determine if its really such a problem at all, discuss different solutions and ALL of their possible ramifications, and, most importantly, get out there and interact with the people, maybe they have a perspective on things that you just dont get from sitting in a beis midrash with seforim all day. If you want to sit and learn all day, G’d bless you, its a wonderful thing to devote your life to. But if you want to be a leader of a community that desperately needs guidance, you need to come down from your ivory tower and interact with us directly.
Lastly, I must say that this ban has caused a rift in Klal Yisroel.
There are people out there who side with the rabbis, who, for the most part, dont like Lipa or the idea of concerts to begin with. They cannot understand how frum people could dare question the wisdom of such an edict. They consider performers and concert goers “Mechutz Lamachane” or outsiders on the fringe. Then there are those who feel the rabbis and those that surround them are an overly conservative, rigid, puritanical, anti-fun lot, who believe the Rabonnim are infallible and would follow them like lemmings into the sea , and who will mow down those who they disapprove of like a Mack truck.
They feel alienated and distanced from those who are supposed to be leading them.
Leadership doesn’t mean embracing those who are already close to you and ignoring everyone else.
Sometimes I think the rabbis do this every few years to flex their muscle, but I am saddened to say, it will ultimately weaken them. Every time they make a big deal out of non-issues, it chips away at their credibility, and ultimately, their athourity.
Y-Love: I, too, yearn for Moshiach. Unfortunately, IMHO, he won’t be coming anytime soon. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again: The second Temple was destroyed because of sin’as chinam, baseless hatred of fellow Jews. And for every generation in which the Temple is not rebuilt, it is considered as if the Temple was destroyed in their generation. And today, you have modern-day Zealots (and I use that word very deliberately) who don’t hesitate to destroy the lives of anyone who doesn’t go in lockstep with their version of “daas Torah”. They turn personal vendettas into “holy wars”. And they do this with the (witting or unwitting) support of the greatest Torah scholars in the world. And these same people daven three times a day, no doubt making sure to shuckle twice as hard as anyone else in shul, and say, “Nu, Hashem, where’s Moshiach?” And Moshiach continues to laugh through his tears. No, he’s not coming anytime soon. We’re gonna have to fix this on our own, if we want any hope of seeing him in our lifetime.
i had tickets for this event and i knew i shouldnt go. i guess it was worth for our or at least mine, rabbanim to stop even one person from doing what they consider wrong. if something is done soley for hashem only good will come out from it, so if they meant well only hashems kovid not theres i will respect it and them we have to remember the thruth will come forthe eventually.
Maoz Tzur’s tune comes from a Christian hymnal. I doubt that that will be banned.
I fear that people will see this and throw the baby out with the bathwater. They will only see Judaism as dry, archaic and authoritarian. No music in Judaism? The Leviim sang in the Beit HaMikdash!
Well-put. These people are sucking the simcha out of yiddishkeit and turning it into something I feel ashamed to be associated with.
The gedolim, by signing on to this, are becoming increasingly less relevant in the lives of “normal” Jews.
Ivdu es Hashem Besimcha! Kol Hamosif, goreya!
no such thing as goyishe music, only goyishe musicians
[…] storefronts in Brooklyn are all related events. (You can imagine how I feel about the concert ban.) Things like this make me wonder what the future holds for religious […]
Remember the nazi-taliban forbid all music in Afganistan!!! But nazi-taliban leader omar mohammed personally loved music & listened to it himself!!!! I have found inlife that those who outwardly wear religious garb are usually not most morally upright people, regardless of their stated religion or sect!!!!!
Simple fact is if in theory, “non jewish” (whatever that might possibly mean) music is not OK for frum jews to listen to, is it even OK to record or play back music at all? Its impossible to have a recording studio or a stereo/ipod/walkman/etc that doesnt come from non jewish origins. Where does this end? The 12 note scale, the instruments used today, none of these things are of jewish origin. Heck, you cant even say that klezmer is 100% jewish.
In a conversation with a rabbi recently, I learned that generally restrictions are supposed to include an understanding of human nature, that outright bans are for the most part understood to be unrealistic for the very reasons people here have already explained.