Rabbi Brian Leiken talks with audience members after his presentation about Jews and rock and roll.
Photos by Elaine Durbach
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April 2, 2009
The volume was loud, but rock isn’t rock if it’s played too quiet. Any modern parent knows that because that’s how they drove their own parents nuts. So the audience at Rabbi Brian Leiken’s March 29 talk in Scotch Plains looked taken aback at the decibel level as he played video clips of pop music’s Jewish luminaries — and then they started bopping along to the music.
He started off fairly quietly, with a grainy black and white clip from The Jazz Singer, with Al Jolson davening at the bedside of his character’s dying father. Then Leiken progressed via the likes of Irving Berlin (aka Israel Baline) and his contributions to the general culture with songs like “God Bless America” and “White Christmas;” Bob Dylan (Robert Zimmerman), the voice of a youth in rebellion; and Matisyahu, the hasidic reggae star who started life as Matthew Miller.
Talking at the JCC of Central New Jersey last Sunday afternoon, Leiken pointed out that this love of music goes way back. “Since young David played the harp to calm King Solomon’s troubled soul, music has always been important to the Jewish people,” he said.
His talk, hosted by the JCC’s Department of Arts and Cultural Education, coincided with the end of “Jews Rock!,” the exhibition of Janet Macoska’s photos of Jewish rock stars. Leiken wrote the foreword to her book featuring those pictures.
Offering some music of his own, Leiken illustrates a point about the Jewish factor in rock and roll.
The videos Leiken showed didn’t feature only the musicians. The Reform rabbi from Norwalk, Conn., also talked about the Jews who have guided, financed, and inspired rock music, including people like Brian Epstein, the legendary manager of the Beatles, and the American impresarios who nurtured the musical explosion of the 1950s.
Leiken said events like the Six-Day War and the race riots in America in the 1960s broke the bonds of conformity that so many pop musicians rebelled against. That opened the way for music that could express new feelings without denying its roots. Performers have brought their Judaism to their music, and their music into the observance of Judaism.
Just how much rock has become a part of Jewish — and Israeli — culture emerged in a moment of tragedy. Leiken mentioned that when Yitzhak Rabin was assassinated in 1992, the Israeli prime minister had the lyrics to “Shir Lashalom,” “A Song for Peace,” in his shirt pocket. The rollicking song, with lyrics by Yaakov Rotblit and music by Yair Rosenblum, had become the anthem of the peace movement.
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