A Young, Talented Voice
Dear Aviva Frankenthal,
As your very special series, Aliyah Journey, comes to its conclusion, I want to say how much I enjoyed every article. You definitely have a future in journalism.
You will encounter ups and downs in Israel, but I am confident that you will weather every down. You have strong parents, and your Frankenthal grandparents were true role models.
I wish you hatzlacha in everything you undertake and look forward to another article by you from time to time.
Naomi Klass Mauer
(an old friend of Saba and Savta)
The Golden Age of Jewish Music?
Not long ago, as I was thinking about Jewish music, it occurred to me that many in today’s generation are unfamiliar with the seminal work of the Diaspora Yeshiva Band. This sentiment was confirmed when I read the wonderful article by Mendi Glik about the uber-talented Ruby Harris, a Diaspora staple (Mendi’s Notes, Feb. 13). Glik concedes that somehow, he had not heard about DYB until recently. Yet it is safe to say that today’s Jewish rock musicians, and even folk-rock artists along the lines of Eitan Katz, owe an immense measure of gratitude to the band that started it all.
I first encountered DYB at Brooklyn College in the winter of 1979, when signs went up on campus about an upcoming performance at the Hillel building by this band whom I had never heard of. Intrigued, I went to the show and was blown away by musicians who played unapologetic rock in a perfectly kosher Jewish environment. (It did not hurt that they performed “With a Little Help from Hashem,” DYB’s clever take on the Beatles’ “With a Little Help from My Friends.”) Many in the crowd were familiar with Diaspora from their year in Israel, where DYB would play on Mount Zion on Motza’ei Shabbos, but for me, a dyed-in-the-wool rock fan, it was a revelation that good Jewish rock music existed. (Earlier bands such as the Rabbi’s Sons and Ohr Chodosh had incorporated elements of folk music, but not of rock.)
That summer in Israel, Motza’ei Shabbos was my Har Tzion night, the evening when I would revel in this great music, which encompassed rock, country, soul, and other elements. Over the next many years, I saw DYB frequently, knowing that no show would be like the previous one or like the next.
Another band that surfaced in the late 70s-early 80s was Safam, quite different from Diaspora but also incorporating rock into its music. These two bands changed the face of Jewish music, and it is too bad that some contemporary artists have, as noted by Mendi Glik, fallen into the electronic music trap.
One correction: Glik seems to credit Chuck Berry with the invention of rock and roll. But by the time Berry recorded his first songs, rock was already a genre. Many credit “Rocket ’88,” written by Ike Turner and recorded by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats, as the first rock and roll record, and it was released in 1951, four years before Berry’s “Maybellene” charted. Chuck Berry was highly influential, but one valid criticism is the sameness of some of his songs. In fact, I sat at the foot of the stage at the Lonestar Café at a Berry performance and so could hear him, while playing an instrumental middle, ask his bandmates, “Which song are we playing?”!
I close with a personal story. Last summer and fall, I battled esophageal cancer, an ordeal that included chemotherapy and surgery. I was happily stunned when Avraham Rosenblum, Diaspora’s leader and a treasured friend, called me one night and asked if he could come over and play music with me. I invited Rabbi Yaakov Kranz, a close friend and superb guitar player, to join us. The three of us sat in my living room for over an hour, kumzitsing together. Suffice it to say that this was a highlight of my life and a significant uplift at a time when I was still physically weak from surgery. I am in Avraham’s debt for offering to play with me, a confirmed amateur!
Avi Goldstein
Far Rockaway, N.Y.
The Twisted Lionization of Jesse Jackson
It’s generally poor form to speak ill of the recently deceased, but the problem with holding your tongue is that it often allows revisionism to congeal as history.
No doubt, the Rev. Jesse Jackson has a complicated legacy. We shouldn’t judge people’s lives, not even high-profile leaders, by their worst moments. But Jackson had many bad moments. Yet if a person only saw the obituaries of legacy news outlets, they might come away believing this charismatic civil rights leader with a talent for alliteration, turns of phrase, and self-promotion was a beacon of decency, a defender of life, and a uniter of people.
Most of these hagiographers omitted some important biographical information. Admittedly, some of Jackson’s biggest controversies seem quaint by today’s ugly standards. His dubbing of New York City as “Hymietown” comes to mind. For decades, however, the reverend helped pull the Democratic Party toward the socialistic, America-reviling, developing-nations-loving ideological positions that are now common among progressives.
Jackson spent a lifetime praising tyrannies and disparaging his own country. Cuba, he said after one of his visits, was marching “toward democracy, peace, and reconciliation.” Worse, he declared “Long live President Castro!” at a rally while tens of thousands of political prisoners languished in camps. Jackson also argued that the communist Sandinistas were doing a better job than the Founding Fathers, men he would never stop demeaning. African dictators? As Special Envoy for the Promotion of Democracy in Africa, Jackson legitimized a gaggle of them, including Charles Taylor, who would later be convicted for crimes against humanity. Hugo Chavez? Jackson not only championed the dictator’s “presidency,” he spoke at his good friend’s funeral. The honorable reverend was the first U.S. leader to embrace Egyptian terrorist mastermind Yasser Arafat, later contending that “Zionism is a poisonous weed that is choking Judaism.”
At home, no one exploited racial tensions as successfully as Jackson. Though the reverend never had an actual flock, he did have Operation PUSH, a shakedown operation that saw many corporations sending millions his way.
Begrudgingly, I always admired Jackson as a talented pugilist. His brand of ruthless attention-seeking was matched only by an otherworldly chutzpah. Not by a long shot was the reverend the first religious leader who turned out to be a hypocrite on matters of fidelity. But how many of them had the nerve to serve as the spiritual adviser to the president of the United States, in this case the serial philanderer Bill Clinton during the Monica Lewinsky scandal, while carrying on their own affair with a young staffer?
Jackson, a minor player in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, became an overnight celebrity after appearing on television the day after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination with a blood-soaked shirt, claiming to have been the last person to speak to the civil rights icon. This story was almost surely a case of Jackson’s myth-making. Nevertheless, from then on his influence endured, more or less, until he was caught on mic fantasizing about cutting Barack Obama’s “nuts out” for “talking down” to black people in 2008.
One imagines Jackson was deeply envious of the latter’s rise to prominence and later the presidency, a perch he could, thankfully, never reach.
Brian Goldenfeld
Thousand Oaks, Calif.