Tag: Music

Leviticus, Leonard Cohen, and the Paradox of Rest

On By SarahIn American History, Behar, Behukkotai, Music, Politics, Shemot, VayikraLeave a comment

The final two Torah portions of Vayikra/Leviticus, Behar and Behukkotai, conclude a book largely oriented around rituals relating to the Mishkan or Tabernacle of the desert, the template for the future Holy Temple in Jerusalem. Many of Vayikra’s laws concern purity and impurity as they pertain to sacrificial worship in the Mishkan. Yet, the book’s final chapters extend this concern outside the precincts of the Mishkan, to encompass the sanctity of time and of place more broadly. The beginning of Parshat Behar discusses the sanctity of time in regard to the seventh day of each week, the Sabbath, the day of rest. Then, using similar language, the text introduces Shemitah, the requirement to allow the land of Israel to rest every seventh year. In fact, the language of “rest” punctuates the entire ending of Vayikra. Immediately when the Israelites enter the Land of Israel, God ordains that the land itself will observe a “sabbath of the Lord” (this referring to Shemitah).

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The commandment to rest, both individually and nationally, does not appear for the first time in Vayikra. Both the commandments of Sabbath and of Shemitah appear earlier in Shemot. A comparison of the respective presentations of these commandments in each book sheds light on the paradox at the heart of what it means for the Jewish nation to rest as a society founded upon God’s order.

Read the full article in The Lehrhaus

Crazy Beautiful Startup: A Review of The Wedding Plan

On By SarahIn Film, Hassidut, Mishlei, Music, Pop Culture, The Destruction of the TempleLeave a comment

 

In the Summer 2017 issue of the Jewish Review of Books, I review The Wedding Plan, the latest from Israeli filmmaker Rama Burshtein.

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Excerpt:

Born in New York and raised in Israel, Burshtein currently lives with her family among a small cluster of Hasidic families in the predominantly secular Tel Aviv. Early in her career, she worked in the ultra-Orthodox cottage industry of films made by and for women, but when Fill the Void came out she crossed over to the international film festival and art house cinema scene, without losing touch with her initial audience. It was possible to enjoy Fill the Void as the tale of an unexpected love story amid tragic circumstances in an exotic setting, but it also spoke to her original audience. That film’s soundtrack was punctuated by a modern Israeli rendition of the song  “Im Eshkacheikh” (If I Forget Thee O Jerusalem), which is often sung under the wedding canopy. For those conversant with Jewish tradition, the song powerfully expressed the connection between the film’s plot and the tension between joy and tragedy already evoked in the Jewish wedding ceremony itself.

A similarly poignant countertext in The Wedding Plan is the hymn “Eshet Chayil” (Proverbs 31), which is traditionally sung each Friday night before Shabbat dinner. Like the film itself, it sings the praises of a faithful “woman of valor.” Early in the film, Michal confesses her desire for a husband to sing “Eshet Chayil” to her, and the film closes with a rendition of the song. While the traditional performance of the song presupposes a husband to sing it, the woman of valor’s husband is not really described in the hymn. It is she who takes care of all of her family’s needs, engages in complex business ventures, cares for the poor, elevates her husband’s standing, and is, consequently, cloaked in strength and majesty, as well as wisdom and kindness. In incorporating this song, Burshtein places her idiosyncratic heroine in the tradition of great Jewish women, but not without some gentle irony. How far, after all, is Michal from that desperate bachelor who proposed to her, and every other woman, on the first date?

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Moana and the Call of Jewish Destiny

On By SarahIn Film, Music, Passover, Pop Culture, ZionismLeave a comment

This article originally appeared on TheLehrhaus.Com

Animated Disney films, with all of their fantasy and froth, often contain some deep ideas or archetypes. Moana, the latest offering from Disney studios, is no exception. Moana, the protagonist whose name means “ocean” in several Polynesian languages, is a girl who is destined to assume leadership of the fictional South Pacific island of Motunui. Yet she feels drawn to the sea. She undertakes a series of adventures along with a demi-god “trickster” named Maui in order to restore equilibrium to their increasingly imperiled natural environment. All of this is set against a mash-up of pre-modern Polynesian traditions and myths that, according to scholars and critics, is accurately and respectfully depicted. The film’s animation is gorgeous—like Moana, the viewer also feels the call of the shimmering Pacific ocean and expansive sky. All in all, it is an enjoyable film, setting aside some of the pagan elements which go with the territory.

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More interestingly, the film also breaks from, or improves upon, the typical Disney formula whereby a princess is stuck in some sort of repressive environment but yearns to break free. The central expression of this trope in Moana is the song “How Far I’ll Go,” composed by Lin-Manuel Miranda of Hamilton fame:

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Something to Lose: Eviatar Banai and the Sukkot Paradox

On By SarahIn Koheleth, Music, SukkotLeave a comment

This piece originally appeared on Lehrhaus, an exciting new online magazine of Jewish thought and culture. Please check out the website and follow it on Facebook or Twitter. 

Eviatar Banai is an Israeli rock musician who comes from a well-known family of performers. He is also a ba’al-teshuva, a returnee to faith, and his songs reflect the various stages of the religious journey he has undergone in the public eye. In his mesmerizing new song “Pergola” he reflects upon many of the personal changes he has undergone – musical fame, self-affiliation with the Haredi community, and the material accoutrements that accompany both developments. Many of the lyrics read as ironic, such as references to certain trappings of a bourgeois lifestyle (a “Hyundai Santa Fe,” his “crazy mortgage,” and eating “Kosher sushi” in the tony Jerusalem neighborhood of Shaarei Chesed). He describes his fame in equally wry terms – poking fun even at the way people praise his religiosity and his contributions to the Israeli cultural landscape. Indeed, the song’s repeated refrain, “yesh li mah li-hafsid,” “I have something to lose,” points to the potential downside of success. One can become, as Banai sings, “a slave to the body, a slave to fear.” The more we have, the more we are vulnerable to our fears of losing it all.

Continue reading “Something to Lose: Eviatar Banai and the Sukkot Paradox” →