"Nation of Immigrants" Seder

The Boston area is great for Jewish cultural events. If you really wanted to, you could do at least 2-3 events per week without even being a member of a temple. This past Sunday we attended the 4th annual Anti-Defamation League of New England's "A Nation of Immigrants" community seder, which was open to the public. The theme was based on an essay by John F. Kennedy in which he emphasized the positive impact immigrants have had on this country and argued for liberalizing immigration laws to end the bias towards Northern Europeans. It was an inspiring event, with about 300 people of various religions and ethnic backgrounds in attendance.

The seder was designed to maintain the basic structure of a traditional seder yet promote the relevance of its themes to all other ethnic and religious groups who meet adversity. In this sense it was a very pleasant contrast to the words found in a traditional hagadah (seder book), which tend towards the outdated and chauvinistic. The traditional hagadah talks about the Jews being freed from slavery in Egypt, and thanks god for striking down our enemies and making us fruitful in multiplying. I have found this type of writing hard to swallow because 1) Jewish slavery occurred thousands of years ago, 2) any persecution the Jewish People suffered in Egypt very likely paled in comparison to the holocaust, 3) Jews outside of Israel have had a very low birthrate and our numbers are rapidly shrinking as a percentage of the U.S., European, and world population, and 4) We live in a pluralistic society, and ethnocentrism just doesn't sit well with me and a large portion of the U.S. population, particularly non-Orthodox Jews, and 5) Who really believes that the Red Sea parted?

While telling the story of the Jews escape from Egyptian slavery, the Nation of Immgrants hagadah broadened much of the language to include the redemption of a much broader range of oppressed peoples. There was multi-cultural entertainment interspersed with addresses by people of various backgrounds. The most inspiring was a woman from Honduras who was raised in a tough town in Masachusetts and found herself pregnant as a teenager and on the road to fitting the stereotype of someone from her ethnicity and class. However, she found the strength to take advantage of the opportunities that this country offers and she will be taking the bar exam shortly to fulfil her dream of becoming a lawyer who represents the disadvantaged.

Lenny Zakim was the leader of the Anti-Defamation League of New England for many years and he did tremendous work in bringing together Jews and people of other religions and ethnic groups to work on inter-group harmony and shared goals. Unfortunately he died prematurely of cancer and the beautiful Zakim bridge was named after him. The New England ADL has also been independent in its stances from the national organization, especially in regard to promoting recognition of the Armenian genocide at the hands of the Turks during WWI. An organization like the New England ADL makes me proud to be Jewish.

Israeli rap version of "Adon Olam"

The version of "Adon Olam" by the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella" stuck in my head for days, so I sought other versions of the song on youtube. I came across a powerful Holocaust-themed version that combines violin, rap, and modern dance. I hope you enjoy it. As I've said before, I don't think that the Holocaust should be the main pillar of anyone's Jewish identity, as we must focus on the positive aspects of Jewish history and culture. However, there's no denying that the Holocaust, by its impact on the Jewish people, is seared into our memory.

An Ethnic Jewish Event

I like a wide variety of cross-cultural events, but am quite pleased when I find an enjoyable Jewish-oriented event that doen't require religiosity. I looked over the event calendar at the Combined Jewish Philanthropies web site for something interesting to do last weekend and found a listing for a Jewish a cappella festival at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I had never heard of Jewish a cappella. Surprisingly, I found out when I got there that it is a major phenomenom sweeping college campuses across the nation with significant Jewish enrollment. There was a large crowd of mostly college-aged people trying to get into the large auditorium where the concert was to be held. Arriving 15 minutes early, I managed to get a seat in the last row, but people kept coming in. The concert started 20 minutes late because of the continued arrival of attendees. Rows of chairs were added wherever there was room and latecomers had to stand along the walls. I estimated a crowd of about 450. The first group was called Jewish Fella A Cappella (JFA), from Brandeis University, which got tremendous cheers. However, I was somewhat disappointed in the 8-man group because I didn't hear any outstanding voices and the group did a lot of silly mugging and imitation of Motown chorus steps. The gigantic ovation they got made me wonder if they were popular because they represented the host school or if young strongly-identified Jews (religious and/or ethnic) craved some youth-oriented Jewish entertainment. The next group, Pizmon, was made up of both male and female students from Columbia, Barnard, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. They were clearly better than JFA and used vocal artistry rather than silliness to win over the audience. However, I felt they were pretty good, but not excellent. I had the same feeling about The Shabbatones, a male/female group from the University of Pennsylvania. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the next group, Manginah, a male/female group from Brandeis. They were truly excellent, and I left feeling good about the event. All the groups sang at least half their songs in Hebrew, and I surmised that they were Israeli popular songs. I missed the last two groups because I had to get home. They included Kaskeset of the University of Binghamton and Varsity Jews from the University of Toronto. The next day, I searched YouTube for Jewish a cappella music and came across the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella group whose version of Adon Olam totally blew me away. I hope you will view and enjoy it. My conclusion about my Jewish a cappella experience is that there's a great craving among strongly-identified Jewish young people for youth-oriented Jewish music (I guess Britney and Beyonce might not appeal to them). There's also rising Jewish art in the former Soviet Union after the fall of Communism. As an ethnic Jew, my heart feels good!