Sep 22 2006
September Bulletin - HazzaNotes
In a particular home renovation show on television, neighbors are asked to fix up a room in one another’s house. Two days and a thousand dollars later, each room is transformed, from beige walls to red. Old furniture is covered with new fabric, a mirror or plant is strategically placed and voila! A completely new perspective!
Having just moved into a new house, I have been thinking lately about building a Jewish home. What are its components? There are the physical indicators: a mezuzah on the door, a Kiddush cup in the hutch, Jewish books on the shelves, or Jewish art on the wall. Most importantly, in a Jewish home, God is our roommate. Each Jewish home is like a mishkan, the portable tabernacle built in the wilderness. God asked the children of Israel to build the mishkan so that the Divine Presence could dwell among them. We build a Jewish home by choosing to live a particular way: the choices we make about what to eat, how to treat one another, or even what to watch on TV (home renovation shows aside), all can be instructed by our tradition.
How else can we make our homes Jewish? One easy and low-impact “spiritual renovation” idea is to build a Jewish CD library. Invest in several CD’s and play them while doing a Jewish art project with your children or grandchildren, or while preparing the house for Shabbat. Some of our family favorites include the Klezmatics, Flory Jagoda, Debbie Friedman, and Craig Taubman’s “Celebrate” CD series (compilations for holidays and topics such as healing, peace, and even Jewish hip-hop). Try Israeli artists such as Chava Alberstein, Sarit Haddad, Naomi Shemer, Yehuda Poliker, Shlomo Artzi, and Acinoam Nini. For children’s music that is enjoyable for parents too, try Kol B’Seder’s Songs for Growing, Shlomo Gronich and the Sheba choir (Ethiopian Jewish children’s choir), The Sixteenth Lamb (compilation of Israeli children’s songs), and CD’s by Shira Kline of Shirlalala. For the nontraditional ear, try Joshua Nelson’s Jewish Gospel CD or the Abayudaya Jews of Uganda’s CD Shalom Everybody Everywhere. There is an abundance of new-age Jewish liturgical music from Rabbi Shefa Gold and Hannah Tiferet. For a taste of the old country, try From Avenue A to the Great White Way and listen to how Cantorial music formed the backbone of the American song book and the Yiddish theatre (and Cab Calloway singing Hazzanut! ). Naxos Records is also in the process of releasing an entire archive of CD’s of previously unrecorded music spanning the 350 years of American Jewish history.
Please contact me at Hazzan@ShaareZedek.org for assistance in locating any of these recordings.
