I’ve thought a lot about the facts that I was awarded life only because my grandparents had the prescience to leave Belarus; and that I was born into the wealthiest country in history at a time of freedom and therefore presented with unlimited possibilities of all sorts; and that I was born into a people with a very special history, with concomitant obligations and baggage; that I had the luxury of choosing the country I wanted to live in and the good fortune to live a life I chose, rather than following one I was born into; and that I was born at a time that my coming-of-age coincided with the bloom of the Beatles’ and Dylan’s recording careers. I may have missed the existence of the walkman during my formative years, but all in all I think I was well-born.
But if I were able to do it all over again, I think I might have chosen to be born in Brazil, sometime after the advent of bossa nova. Their music is so often so magical that it makes everything non-Latin sound plodding and pedestrian. My friend Miki did have that good fortune. He can do just a little clapping shuffle with his hands, and it sounds like dancing. He sent me an email this week with the subject “You will fall in love” and the link to our SoTW
He, of course, was right.
All too frequently I discover music through obsessive detective work — someone I respect makes a passing reference to an artist I’m not familiar with. I start following clue after clue, fall into a binge of three days or four weeks poring through the entire discography, acquiring a dozen CDs, ignoring work, family, and reality listening to them, reading interviews transcribed from Croatian radio, the whole shebang.
But in this case, I did it right, just like a normal human. Well, almost. Miki sent me the link, and I watched it. Then I watched it again. And again. And again. You can figure out the ellipsis. And I did indeed fall in love with the girl, the song, the clip, the event filmed there. As has every person I’ve shown it to in the last week, as will I hope you as well.
So it was only after watching it 30 or 40 times that I took a break to research, document, dissemble, dissect and analyze the poor thing.
The girl, Roberta Sá, was dropped out of the 2002 ‘Brazilian Idol’ competition after 4 weeks, but she’s had a pretty good run of it since. Many of the highly respected icons of Brazilian music have recorded with her, including Chico Buarque in the clip here. He’s 64, creator of an extensive and highly respected discography, a master of lyrics who managed to stay in trouble with the Brazilian authorities for many years.
The song itself was quite a surprise to me. It’s a homeless gent, maintaining that he shouldn’t be pitied, he has the freedom of a gypsy:
On stage in the square, the circus, a park bench
Running in the dark, graffiti on the wall
You will know me–Mambembe, Gypsy
Beggar, rogue, nigger,
Good or bad mulambo, singing.
Runaway slave, a lunatic.
I make my festival
Poet, clown, pirate, pirate, Wandering Jew
Sleeping on the road, nothing, nothing in
And this world is all mine
Chorus:
Under the bridge, singing
Beneath the earth, singing
In the mouths of the people, singing
But padding the clip with facts just distances us from it. I may just as well stick to my local Israeli associations—Uri Mamillian accompanying Meir Ariel and (oxymoron follows) a meltingly sweet and smiling Yonit Levi.
But of course none of that is the point. The point is the magic in the clip. The magic floating guitar. The charm, the sweetness, the utterly captivating power of the smile. And most of all, of course, the nascent, vibrant electricity between the two singers.
Just for an experiment, listen to the music without watching the clip. Nothing out of the ordinary, right? I’ve listened to quite a lot of Roberta Sá’s recordings, and they’re respectable, but really nothing special. I keep thinking of Ruhama Raz, for those of you who know her, sweet and innocent and girl-next-door harmless. And I’ve listened to some of Chico Buarque’s stuff, and it’s too lyric-based for me to overcome the Portuguese barrier (as I can do with many other more universally musical Brazilian artists).
But the clip, my gosh. It’s so disarming and charming and intoxicating. Like Miki said, I fell in love. And enough words, go enjoy the absolutely entrancing flirtation between these two singers.
I’m a member of that dwindling species, the heterosexual male. I was raised (by a professional feminist) before the sexual revolution. I’ve never had the opportunity to really explore Mars (though I’ve looked at a lot of very beautiful pictures of Venus). I’ve never consciously cultivated my female aspect, painted my nails, or willingly ordered a “nice salad”.
I’m simply not wired to sense the attractiveness of males. I get that young Marlon Brando in a tight t-shirt can turn a head or two. But James Dean? I never wanted to coddle or cuddle him.
The female of the species—that’s another story. Take for example, Rachael Price, singer of the fine group Lake Street Dive, whose praises I have previously sung in somewhat hyperbolic terms. What can I say? She makes me a more than a little dizzy. She is, according to all five of my humble male senses, the epitome of what a woman can/should be. A chanteuse, a siren. A visage that demands my testostironical attention, a call of the wild to the fundaments of my DNA.
So when I see her dueting with this guy Vilray – how can I put this delicately? – whose abdomen looks more like a 40-pound bag of melting ice than a frosty 6-pack – I’m struck by the incongruity. Not just struck. Floored. Astounded. And filled with hope.
Because physically, Vilray reminds me of myself in junior high. More girth than glam, more Bud than bod, more tummy than tone, more stagger than swagger. And here he is, harmonizing right up close with that most divine Ms Price.
And she’s smiling. Genuinely. She’s smiling at him. She likes him.
I’ve been told a million times that for the female of the species, the brain is an erogenous zone. I guess I believe it, in theory. But in practice, my mind can only believe that women are as shallow and superficial as us guys.
Vilray – in the strictly Chippendale sense (we’ll get to his fingers in a moment) – is a 5. Being generous, because I really admire the guy. Rachael Price is easily a 17. Seeing her harmonize intimately with him is for me a miracle of nature: the zaftig guy winning the hand (that’s a euphemistic synecdoche, folks) of the fairest of damsels.
Vilray, I’m telling you right here and now: You are my hero, the representative, the proxy of every male who has bewailed his less than Graecian physique and overcome. Go for it!
But Vilray is not just a symbol. He’s a flesh and blood young artist, a prodigiously talented one. And if there’s a guy from our sub-species who deserves to get the girl and sell a lot of records, it’s him
Vilray, born and raised in NYC, got his biggest exposure when he was filmed busking with bassist Damon Hankoff at the Metropolitan Lorimer station of the G train. The song is Frank Loesser’s ‘(I’d Like to Get You) On a Slow Boat to China’, originally recorded by Peggy Lee and Bing Crosby in 1948. You can hear Vilray’s warm, Sinatra-esque vocal, his 30s swing guitar picking, and his virtuoso whistling. But that’s just the tip of the aforementioned bag of ice.
Vilray is a man out of time, an anachronism. He is of the 30s, Tin Pan Alley and (fortunately) was somehow time-tunneled several generations forward. He sings pre-war songs (that’s WWII for the kids), writes pre-war songs, wears flamingo-hued jackets, sports a pencil moustache, and uses vintage gear “for the warmth”.
“I do what I can to be both original and evocative of the earlier time but you can only write what comes. I have been steeped in this music since I was 16 so it’s very instinctual now.” I know, Vil, I know. At 16 I was collecting stamps and reading Sports Illustrated. At 16 Rachael Price was being taken to the drive-in by Brad Pitt.
“Fats Waller is a particular touchstone for me. I play two tunes which I wrote for him to sing, ‘She Calls Me MacLeish’ and ‘Go On Shining’. The first is the kind of joke tune that he sometimes sings, ‘Pent Up In A Penthouse’ or ‘What’s Your Name’. The other one is one of his spacey mysterious songs like ‘Inside This Heart of Mine’ or Jitterbug Waltz. My approach to writing is usually to write for a singer or band from that 1925-1944 period of recording. That’s what the writers were doing then.”
Fats Waller (1904-1945) was an enormously popular and influential pianist, singer, songwriter and entertainer, a major figure of the pre-war Tin Pan Alley Western and Gypsy swing style, daddy of the stride piano. He’s pretty fabulous. And Lena Horne doesn’t look like she’s having a bad time here.
If you skimmed the quote from Vilray above, let me reiterate: He writes songs for Fats to sing. That’s my kind of guy.
I readily admit that Tin Pan Alley/pre-war swing aren’t my areas of expertise. So I’m listening to Vilray’s ouvre, boning up to write this, cramming as it were. Who are his predecessors? I get that the guitar is emanating from an earlier era, but I can’t put my finger on just who played that way.
Listening to new music, asking myself questions. Like I’ve done several trillion times in my life. Then I remembered Facebook. So I shot Vilray a note, late at night for me, late afternoon for him. And he responded. Hence ensued a short but fruitful Q&A chat, with the artist himself supplying the very information I’m interested in hearing. I think that’s the coolest thing in the world.
I once heard Jacob Collier say that he was fortunate to be of a generation which offered the tools for him to make whatever music/video was in his mind In His Room at the age of 18 (and what music it was!), then press a button and export it to the world (and become an internationally-recognized genius within months). Others would say that it’s this generation that’s fortunate to have a Jacob Collier to explore the potential that this digital revolution offers.
In any case, the next time I’m tempted to bitch about the internet’s effect on the way we don’t communicate, I’ll try to remember that I can sometimes engage an artist in real time. Amazing.
Anyway, Vilray told me that Les Paul was a major influence. I know he invented the multitrack mixer all by himself. I wasn’t aware that he invented the solid-body electric guitar and a whole bunch of other doodangles. And he’s a remarkable guitarist, a remarkable musician, as you can see here, with his charming and talented wife Mary Ford. Les Paul is only person to be included in both the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Inventors Hall of Fame. I’m sure going to be listening to some more of him.
But of course Vilray isn’t just influenced by Fats Waller and Les Paul. He’s a throwback to that era (and Ms Price looks very happy to be joining him on that hayride), but he’s an original. He’s clever and suave and prodigiously talented.
“We share one 1930s Amperite ribbon microphone like the one Sinatra sang into when he was getting started and I use a Premier 76 tube amplifier from the 1950s (bought through Retrofret Vintage Guitars). Nothing sounds as warm and comforting as this old stuff.”
Vilray says that dim lights, both in concert and in his apartment, are part of the warm, vacuum-tube parlor-concert atmosphere he’s creating. I tried that line a couple of times. Luckily for us, when Vilray tries it on Rachael, it works.
Vilray looks and sounds like another time, but he is in fact a seriously creative young artist who right now deserves to be listened to and supported. He’s funny and sharp, a super singing stylist with a great voice, knockout chops on the guitar, and a wow-level whistler to boot. He’s got an interesting website, and lots of fine clips on YouTube and Bandcamp. I signed up on Patreon to help him record. Nu, for a few bucks you too can be a big shot patron of the arts.
A 1930s microphone, a real-time Q&A session, writing songs for a long-gone legend to sing, turning down the lights with Rachael Price. You gotta love this guy. So he’s not Brad Pitt. Who among us real people is? He really does deserve our respect, our attention, our money, and the hand and heart of that most amazing young lady. That’s the way the universe should work.
Charles Mingus, ‘Myself When I am Real’, from “Mingus Plays Piano”
Charles Mingus, ‘Adagio Ma Non Troppo’, from “Let My Children Hear Music”
I came to jazz late in life, by a rather circuitous route. I’d been immersed in rock & roll since I was knee high to a grasshopper, and grew up with rock. I was 15 when ‘I Want To Hold Your Hand’ hit the radio, and lived within that music for the rest of the decade (quite literally, actually — I once saw a Grateful Dead concert from inside a loudspeaker; what’s that you say, Granny?).
Thirty years later I went through a mid-life crisis. As always, I took care to DJ my life. I stopped listening to rock cold turkey, nourishing my bruised soul with the Bach solo keyboard oeuvre (see SoTW 5, Glenn Gould, Toccata in Cm) for two years non-stop, attempting to impose order on an otherwise chaotic world. Then I segued to the Preludes & Fugues of Dimitri Shostakovitch (see SoTW 84, Dmitri Shostakovich, Prelude & Fugue No 16 in B-flat Minor), an homage to Bach’s “Well-Tempered Clavier”. And then, somehow, I tripped over Charles Mingus’s “Let My Children Hear Music,” an orchestral album he made in 1972.
To this day I associate Shostakovitch and Mingus in my mind. They’re both highly intellectual, willful, charismatic composers; often severe, harsh, brutally truthful; with not a little sweetness and romanticism in the mix. They’re both masters of melody who more often choose non-melodic, frequently atonal modes of expression. Often with both I find the accessible, the whistleable, bobbing and peeking through the dense forests of magnificent, grandiose, overwhelming angry constructs.
So I started to learn jazz. I put nose to grindstone, downloaded a dozen lists of Essential Jazz Albums, sold my designer rock LP collection to a Dutch dealer and used the money to buy The 50 Greatest Jazz CDs. And no looking back.
I’d known an odd smattering of jazz beforehand–”Kind of Blue“, Vince Guaraldi’s “Cast Your Fate to the Wind” album, the inescapable Getz/Gilberto, even the original soundtrack of “Orpheu Negro”. But somehow I think of “Let My Children hear Music” as the first jazz album I encountered, fell in love with, and sort of understood on its own terms, going to it as A Jazz Album, meeting it there on its home ground and dealing with it as such.
It’s a strange place to start jazz. It’s an orchestral album, more or less, rich arrangements ranging from a medium-sized combo to big band to full orchestra. It’s almost symphonic in conception, large-scale pieces running around ten minutes. The music is grandiose, inspired, inspiring, large-canvas.
Charles Mingus (1922-1979) was a linebacker-sized bandleader, composer and bassist. He was brilliant and impossible and left a legacy of music employing an exceptionally wide range of styles, as accomplished as it is varied. Here’s the avant garde Charlie (with Eric Dolpy). Here’s the cuddly one (‘Self-Portrait in Three Colors from “Ah-Hum”). And here’s one of the first SoTWs I ever wrote, about his composition ‘Remember Rockefeller at Attica’, one of my very favorite Opening Cuts.
He had a lot of fun with the names of his compositions. “Let My Children Hear Music” includes ‘The Shoes of the Fisherman’s Wife are Some Jazz Ass Slippers’; “Mingus Plays Piano” includes ‘Orange Was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues.’ Other notables include ‘All the Things You Could Be By Now if Sigmund Freud’s Wife was your Mother’, ‘If Charlie Parker Were a Gunslinger, There’d be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats,’ and ‘Pithecanthropus Erectus’. He often gave the same composition different titles.
On the one hand, he came into the studio with a very firm conception of what he wanted. On the other, he demanded the most creative skills from his musicians. Mingus was known to refuse to write out charts for his recording musicians, as was the practice of the time. He would teach them the fundamentals of the composition aurally, and then demand that they improvise the rest. He demanded involvement, total musical commitment. He once beat up one of his band members on stage, for not doing well enough during a performance.
The origins of the compositions on “Let My Children Hear Music” are obscure. I just re-read the history of the album as described in the definitive autobiography “Mingus” by Brian Priestley, and it’s simply incomprehensible. And here are Charlie’s original liner notes, extensive, brilliant, also incomprehensible.
So let’s just stick to the few bare facts that are pretty clear and reliable here. From the mid-50s to the mid-60s, Mingus recorded several albums a year, mostly in a 5- or 6- piece setting, but not rarely employing other voicings. The music had a vast range, from the obstreperous, strident and experimental to the sweet and memorable. He drew on blues and Ellington and poetry and Mexico and everywhere else under the sun. He confined himself to playing the bass, kept the same drummer (Danny Richmond), but switched other accompanying musicians frequently, due to no small extent to the fact that he was an obnoxious bully on the bandstand, virtually impossible to work with.
Following a personal and physical crisis from the mid-60s to the early 70s, Mingus hardly recorded or performed. His creative powers returned for a short while, but then he contracted Lou Gehrig’s disease and died in 1979 at the age of 57.
In 1963, he recorded a solo piano album. Mingus of course played a little piano, probably doing most of his composing there. But he wasn’t considered much of a player per se. The album, “Mingus Plays Piano”, is one of my favorites of any genre. It’s heartbreakingly personal, intimate, candid, including both covers of standards (‘I Can’t Get Started’, ‘Body and Soul’), Mingus originals (the classic ‘Orange was the Color of Her Dress, Then Silk Blues’), and one remarkable improvisation, ‘Myself When I am Real.’ This is how Mingus describes it in the liner notes:
Now, on this record there is a tune which is an improvised solo and which I am very proud of. I am proud because to me it has the expression of what I feel, and it shows changes in tempo and changes in mode, yet the variations on the theme still fit into one composition. I would say the composition is on the whole as structured as a written piece of music. For the six or seven minutes it was played (originally on piano), the solo was within the category of one feeling, or rather, several feelings expressed as one.
Sue and Charlie Mingus
Please, listen to it. Improvised, he says. Incroyable. Such rare beauty. Such art. How could he not be proud of it?
Then this is where the story gets weird. Someone, maybe Hub Miller, transcribed it. Then maybe someone named Alan Raph orchestrated and conducted it. Then maybe Mingus sat in the corner and watched a whole orchestra perform it for “Let My Children Hear Music”, under the production and supervision of Teo Macero. I even read one account that said that the latter was actually recorded over the original, but I hear no piano in the mix.
The resulting track is called ‘Adagio Ma Non Troppo’. ‘Adagio’ means ‘slow’ in musical terminology. ‘Ma Non Troppo’ means ‘but not too strictly’. Listen to it. Is it not moving? Was it not worth venturing out of the cozy mindless comfort of rock music for this?
I recently saw a gig by the Charles Mingus Dynasty, a 7-piece group dedicated to performing his music, not slavishly reproducing it, but admirable going with the spirit of his voice. Charles’ widow Sue was in the audience. I introduced myself as a long-time fan. She thanked me. It was somehow unsatisfying. So let’s escalate it a level–thanks, Charles. What a great experience, listening to the bare sketch and then listening to the fully-fleshed version. Like holding the miracle of a new-born baby and then skipping to the next track, the kid all grown up holding a stunning work of art he’s just created. All the potential, all the realization. How wondrous can be the works of man.
The big one’s coming up. Yom Kippur. The Day of Atonement. The Day of Judgement. The final verdict in the Book of Life.
As a boy, my Christian friends had ‘He’ll know if you’ve been bad or good.’ What was at stake was a new Lionel caboose.
I got God Himself with His indelible quill inscribing “who will live and who will die; who by water and who by fire, who by sword and who by beast, who by famine and who by thirst, who by upheaval and who by plague, who by strangling and who by stoning.”
After that, you don’t need “House on Haunted Hill” for nightmares.
It all starts at the beginning of the month of Elul, 40 days before Yom Kippur, when the serious ones among us start getting up every morning (still night for me) at 4AM or some such unGodly hour to recite prayers of penitence. Then 10 days before, you get Rosh HaShana – two full days of wearing white, dipping apples in honey and spraying your dress shirt with pomegranate juice, hoping (praying) that He inscribes you (at this point in magic ink which takes 10 full days to dry) in The Book of Life. Or else…
Then the night before you take either a chicken or 18 units of your local currency and wave it over your head three times to transfer to it your transgressions. I’ll let you guess which means I employ.
On the afternoon of The Evening, here in Israel everything shuts down. By the time the sun is heading for the horizon, there’s nary a soul on the street. The radio and TV stations close down. You ask forgiveness from those you’re closest to for anything you have done to hurt them over the year. Because Yom Kippur only works to absolve you of your transgressions against Him if you’ve already made amends with humanfolk. Three out of every four Jewish citizens prepare to fast.
A simple last meal, all spruced up in your finest whitery (except for the rubber souled shoes), you take the Dead Man Walking trudge to the synagogue–hoping for the best, fearing the worst, something even more ominous than the 25-hour fast that’s just begun. Water, fire, sword, beast…
You sit in your reserved seat (that cost you a pretty penny) as the cantor takes his place on the altar, and he begins that familiar, haunting chant: Kol nidrei, v’esarei, ushvuei, v’haramei, v’kinusei, v’chinuei…
The whole congregation is so geared up, so tense, so penitent, so scared out of their wits, that the guy could be singing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ (in a minor scale) and you’d be on the verge of meltdown.
Actually, it’s not far from that. Kol Nidre is legalese, a contract. More precisely, the dissolution thereof. It’s a string of technical terms: All the vows, and prohibitions, and oaths, and pledges, and consecrations that we’ve taken upon ourselves – seven technical terms of legal commitments, English can’t keep up with them – we disavow them. We declare them null and void with another list of gibberish verbs to satisfy the lawyers.
Not only that. The prayer—I mean, the contract– is mostly in Aramaic, the long-dead lingua franca of the neighborhood, Jesus of Nazareth’s native language, the language of the Talmud. Only one sentence in the middle is in Hebrew.
Al Jolson, ‘The Jazz Singer’
Not only that. The content has no clear connection to atonement. It’s pretty much perceived as “If I said to myself ‘I swear I’m never taking this route to work again in my life’”, I’m retracting that. All my vows not involving a commitment to another person, I’m unilaterally dissolving. It’s a technicality, making sure that none of my stupid promises stick, so that I won’t get in trouble with The Big Boy for not keeping them. It’s so deeply ingrained that all year long some folks of my ilk say, “Okay, so I’ll see you for lunch on Tuesday, b’li neder” (but it doesn’t count as a vow).
And, of course, the melody.
Some believe that the tune for Kol Nidre was given to Moses by God on Mount Sinai. The opening of Kol Nidre is what the masters of the Catholic plain-song term a “pneuma”, or soul breath. It begins with a long, sighing tone, falling to a lower note and rising again, as if only sighs and sobs could begin the prayer service.
Cantor Yossele Rosenblatt
What I’m driving at here is that it’s not the inherent content of this legalese text that moves us so on the cusp of the most solemn day of the year. It’s the moment, the state of mind and soul, the drama.
What’s the point of Kol Nidre then? For me, it’s the beginning of a 25-hour attempt to purify myself spiritually, to cleanse myself of unkept promises and transgressions by genuinely and profoundly atoning before my conscience and God. The point transcends legalese.
It’s music, the music of the Jewish soul. We all know that “music hath charms to soothe the savage breast,/to soften rocks or bend a knotted oak”. Not legal contracts.
There are countless recordings of Kol Nidre, ranging from the sublime to the profane, from the sacred to the ridiculous.
Perhaps most famous is Al Jolson’s rendition in “The Jazz Singer”, the first talkie (1927). Jack Robin (ne Jakie Rabinowitz) rejects his parents’ expectation that he will succeed his father as cantor, in order to pursue his career as a ‘jazz’ (popular) singer. In the movie, the errant, assimilated son is reconciled with his parents and his tradition. But that was a Hollywood ending, expressing the wish fulfillment of producer Sam Warner, the brother who kept peace between his two Alpha siblings Harry and Jack (unburdened by such compunctions over jettisoning their tradition). Sam died at the age of 39, ending harmony within the Warner family, the day before the premiere of the movie. He was buried on the eve of Yom Kippur. Just like the movie.
Jan Peerce
I won’t even mention the 1952 remake of the film starring (Lebanese Maronite Catholic) Danny Thomas or the 1980 embarrassment starring Laurence Olivier and Neil Diamond (who at least was an MoT).
I wish my intuitive association for Kol Nidre were one of the great cantorial voices of the Twentieth Century. Yossele Rosenblatt (1882-1933) was a poverty-stricken cantorial legend in the US. The Warners offered him $100,000 (equivalent to $1.3 million today) to portray the father in ‘The Jazz Singer,’ but they could not persuade him to sing Kol Nidrei. He felt that it was too sacred to be used as entertainment. They did persuade him to do a cameo in the movie, playing himself.
Jan Peerce and Richard Tucker (brothers-in-law and fierce competitors) both began their singing careers as cantors before succumbing to the bright lights of opera.
Richard Tucker
All of these versions include instrumental accompaniment. In a traditional service, it is sung either by the cantor alone or accompanied by a male choir. Of course, it can’t be recorded or filmed due to the prohibitions that apply to the day. So these recordings don’t really communicate the starkness of the moment. Here’s one dignified, authentic version, by Cantor Joseph Malovany (b. 1941), that communicates the beauty of the music. It’s worth watching till the end, where he talks a bit about Kol Nidre.
But we don’t choose our mind’s associations, and when you press the Kol Nidre button on the juke box of my mind, what comes on is the version by Perry Como (1912-2001).
Perry was the son of Italian immigrants, a barber, and one of the most popular singers of the mid-century. He was famous for his gentle voice, his calm demeanor and relaxed disposition, his cardigan sweaters, and his all-round niceness.
An example of Como’s popularity came in 1956, in a poll of young women asked which man in public life most fit the concept of their ideal husband: it was Perry Como. A 1958 nationwide poll of U.S. teenagers found Perry Como to be the most popular male singer, beating Elvis Presley, who was the winner of the previous year’s poll.
Perry Como
Perry had a weekly television show from 1949 till 1963, and a monthly one till 1967. That sentence bears some thought. Think of the stature of such a public figure.
In the late 1950s, Jews in the US were still living in the shadow of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust, self-conscious of the hospitality extended to them by their adopted country (in harsh contrast to virtually every other state in the world), excluded from many hotels and country clubs and universities and industries, striving desperately to achieve acceptance and safety. My grandparents were “your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free, the wretched refuse of your teeming shore”. Many Jews of my parents’ generation sought refuge in assimilation, but most still held a complex, tenuous commitment to their faith. But we absolutely carried the awareness of still wanting and needing to be accepted.
And every year, just before the High Holidays, Perry Como – Mr Consensus – would sing Kol Nidre on network television. It was the ultimate expression of America embracing its Jews, the most reassuring promise that we were welcome and safe – perhaps the first time in history where a Jewish population would find such acceptance, such a haven.
Of course, I see things differently today. I see assimilation as an existential threat to American Judaism. I don’t know if Al Jolson’s great-grandchildren will be in synagogue for Kol Nidre this year. I will.
And I no longer depend on Perry Como for affirmation of my faith or peoplehood or personal well-being. As far as my earthly life goes, I’ve put my eggs in a much different basket. And as far as my spiritual life – well, I’ll be doing some hard and serious thinking when listening to the music of the cantor singing Kol Nidre.
