There’s something that I notice every morning these days when I’m having my early day tea. It’s a beautiful Menorah which sits on our dining room table. Every evening one more candle goes on as we celebrate the Festival of Lights. Of course the funny thing is that I’m not Jewish – I’m a Taoist. None-the-less, in celebration of these wonderful eight days here are eight things I love about Judaica……….
1. I love my Jewish friends. They make me laugh, they make me cry, they are sweet intelligent people who I think of every day. I’m especially thankful for my friend Lee, the world’s greatest Red-headed Lesbian Feminist Separatist Anarchist Polarity Therapist Cantor Doctor Mother, her partner Amy and their son Gabriel.
2. I am thankful for the American Big 3 – Gershwin, Copland, and Bernstein. They, together with Sir Edward Kennedy “Duke” Ellington, form the very core of American music.
3. I am thankful for the old men at the Miami Beach Chess Club, where I used to play chess between rehearsals at the New World Symphony. These old codgers were all about 3’2″ and most of them had come over after the Holocaust. Most of them were also International Grand Masters, and they collectively would kick my ass and inadvertently teach me yiddish.
4. I love Yiddish. Anyone who knows me knows that I consider it the world’s greatest language. You don’t have to know what it means to know what it means. Thank you Michael Wex for your hilarious and brilliant book on the history of Yiddish called Born to Kvetch. It’s a must read.
5. The Kosher Nostra – yeah, sometimes these guys get a bad rap, but I have learned more from Daniel Barenboim, and had more fun on stage with Perlman, Zuckerman, et al than a goy from Buffalo could ever expect to have. Who knew?
6. I remember the great Jazz tradition, and the interplay there used to be between African-American and Jewish musicians (remember the Brubecks, anyone? Bueller? Bueller?). Jazz was the music of artistic freedom in the mid-20th century, and many Jews harkened to the music and to the cause. Of course, this is before the Nation of Islam and the rest of that ilk decided they needed their traditional whipping boys (ps. On an aside, people forget that when Malcolm X came back from the Hajj he was a changed man and denounced racism of any sort and promoted tolerance between people, which is probably why he was assassinated).
7. Food, bubbalah, it’s all about the food.
8. And tonight, when my boys and I light the Menorah that I bought in the old city of Jerusalem 12 years ago, and we spin the dreidel to get Hanukkah geld, I will once again give thanks for the Jewish people, their fascinating religion, their amazing history, and their rituals which form the very basis of western civilization.
Shalom Aleichem everybody, and Happy Hanukkah.