But then things changed.

After his hit “100 Years” in 2003, Ondrasik (the man who is Five For Fighting) faded away into the recesses of pop culture.

Once VH1 and MTV stopped playing music videos on their main channels, and TV aired channels to stream 24/7 individual genres of popular music (rap, hip-hop, pop, rock, etc.), Five For Fighting’s music videos were no longer slated for the videos the kids would watch.

When Five For Fighting released “The Riddle (You and I)” in 2006, the teenagers of 2003 were no longer counting down for their favorite music videos. They’d just click whatever they wanted immediately on YouTube.

When the music video died, video did not just kill the radio star. It was an epic battle.

Five For Fighting’s single hit #4. But not on radio for the young people. This was Billboard’s Adult Contemporary Charts. Long live rock. Let it be. Middle aged.

At a certain point, the new kids on the block couldn’t take it anymore (or so the DJs decided). The piano and the slow tempi Five For Fighting played 3 years ago added up to exactly that:  the music of 3 years ago. It was a forced retirement.

Three years after already being three years too late–we’re talking 2009 now–54F released a largely unheard album, Slice. Its single “Chances” peaked at #8 on the US Adult Contemporary Chart. (But how many people can even name 5 current US Adult Contemporary hits?)

Since the producer didn’t get Ondrasik to write a song for young people, it doesn’t matter how good or bad the songwriting was on Slice. The melody of the single they chose is perhaps the least dynamic track on the album. No catchy chorus, the words are heavy, and the kids already confessed not to liking Five For Fighting anymore.

But the album could have been a comeback. They could have chosen a better single. Why not the nostalgic “Slice,” the patriotic “Note To The Unknown Soldier,” the aspirational “Story Of Your Life,” or the rhythmically complex “Love Can’t Change The Weather?”

Or, why not my favorite song from the album, “Above The Timberline?” This song (co-written with Stephen Schwartz, the man behind Wicked and Godspell) is the most sophisticated, most experimental, catchiest, hardest-rocking, most sublime song on the whole record.

It could have been huge.

And maybe that’s why they didn’t choose it.

“I get a little tired” is a very vulnerable opening line for this masterpiece of a song. We are listening to a story about resigning from this world to pursue something higher. Literally and metaphorically.

“You need to find a mountaintop / And get out of this town,” advises Ondrasik. Forget all the mundane worries of the life you know.

Look upon high. “Above the timberline.” It’s not easy to get your mind all the way up there. “The higher I go, the harder I climb.”

You can almost hear echoes of the second of the Psalmist’s 15 Psalms of Ascents (120-134). Esa einai el heharim—I lift my eyes toward the mountains. Me’ayin yavo ezri? From where will my help come?

Granted a distance from all of these earthly troubles, Ondrasik feels a greater intimacy with the one who gives him comfort (a woman, or a god)? “I’m closer to you. / It’s clear in my mind. / Love shines bright above the timberline.”

The singer is—unbeknownst to him—engaging in the Hasidic practice of hitbodedut, the “seclusion of the self” to commune with nature and all that is Divine. He is guided only by himself and the spirits. “I’m listening to the wind. / I’m writing down the words.”

Five For Fighting, rising to the stars and the moon, is enshrouded in the robes of a mystical journey. And it all begins with his focus on the horizon: above the timberline. That point where our eyes no longer see the skies—the end of the heavens, miktzeh hashamayim (Psalm 19:7)—is called Mi by the Zohar. Mi is not merely an abbreviation of miktzeh, but it is the Hebrew word for “Who?”

When the Kabbalist sees the edge of the skies, the Jewish mystic does not see an answer, but a question. Who is the Mystery beyond the skies (Zohar I:1b)? And, to whom is John talking anyway?

Well, who cares about John Ondrasik? These esoteric mysteries and existentialist questions that arise in Ondrasik’s mystical ascent are essentially divorced from the everyday experiences of the Billboard Hot 100 demographic: cool kids. The peak of religiosity in popular music is Macklemore and Ryan Lewis trying on outdated clothing at a thrift shop.

But who cares about those kids? John Ondrasik declares his allusive muse, “All that really matters: / You’ll all I’ll ever need.”

The things that matter to Five For Fighting really won’t matter to the American youth. They’re deeply personal—relevant only to a maturely developed sense of self. As for the things that concern most people, Mr. Ondrasik is leaving those “realities / Parked down at the curb.”

“Above The Timberline” is the boldest song Five For Fighting has ever tried. In fact, I believe it is the best song he has ever written, and I am happy to give Stephen Schwartz credit for advancing John Ondrasik’s songwriting to a place more magical than ever heretofore explored.

With a song of Zoharic concerns like this one, it’s no wonder that Five For Fighting has been slated for the Adult Charts. This fascination with the unearthly must be the reason that it is rumored that you have to be 40 years old before you study Kabbalah. (False by the way. The great Kabbalist Isaac Luria died at the age of 38—the same age Ondrasik was when he released the smash hit “100 Years.”)

Age might not really matter, but we still see age as the dividing line. There’s no rule that says you have to be 40 to like adult radio. But obsessing with the material world (boys, girls, clothes, money, etc.): this is the excuse that keeps kids away from mysticism, from nature, from deep questions, and from Five For Fighting.

A mystical journey or an intimate melody can be the best secret–a secret best kept kept secret. Intimacy can fizzle when you try to make it popular.

According to his website, John Ondrasik is at work on new album now. The kids might never hear it, and he’ll just have to hope that those who seek the esoteric, and such an esoteric album, find it anyway.

So, it was only after the sinking of the Japanese ship Tsimtsum that he could have learned that the very name of the sea vessel foreshadowed his diminishing self.

Pi and Richard Parker on an even smaller Tsimtsum than the first.

Tsimtsum (or, sometimes spelled, tzimtzum) means “contraction” or “reduction,” and it generally refers to the Kabbalistic myth that, in order to create room for the universe to exist, God had to stop taking up so much space. God had to contract God’s self–making God’s presence smaller, weaker–so as to set aside a place in the cosmos for God’s creations.

In this post, I myself would like to practice some tzimtzum, and, rather than write at length about all the different religious and Jewish themes in Life of Pi, I’d like to open up a few conversations.

Feel free to leave your answers below. No need to answer all the questions, just the ones that appeal to you.

And since there are 4 questions, feel free to use them at your seder.

1) Pi describes his story as a tale that would make anyone believe in God. Which part of the tale would lead someone to faith? Pi’s suffering at sea, or Pi’s unlikely salvation and return to land?
- Is God’s splitting the Sea of Reeds sufficient for our faith as a Jewish people, or did we need to suffer as slaves in Egypt?

2) Pi tells two tales. In the first, he is pitted against animals, and, in the second, he is pitted against humans. Does a myth hold a stronger truth when it is demystified, or when in its original form?
- Would you prefer hearing scientific justifications of the Ten Plagues or considering them inexplicable miracles?

3) Pi discusses his childhood at length in the beginning. Is understanding someone’s youth essential to understanding that person as an adult?
 - Why does the Torah tell us about baby Moses in the basket in the Nile, growing up and  killing an Egyptian beating a Hebrew, and then running off to Midian?

4) In Pi’s life, was God’s tzimtzum essential to his coming to faith?
- In our lives, do we suffer or rejoice–or even believe in–God’s tzimtzum?

Those were the days.

I figured that that would be as good a time as any to try out some new music.

And trying out new music is always the best time to give the benefit of the doubt.

So, that’s the short version of how I’ve ended up with two Black Keys albums on my iPod: Brothers and Attack & Release.

And Paramore‘s All We Know Is Falling.

My rule is: If I have purchased anything with the hope of writing about it for Jewish Eyes On The Arts, then I’ll listen until I can find something to discuss.

…

I wish I could count how many times I’ve listened to these albums hoping to find something deep that resonates with me religiously.

After all, I like to identify with Bruce Springsteen being a “Born To Run” misfit, as a minority, for I am a “Hebrew,” and in Hebrew, “ivri” means something like either “a person passing by nomadically” or perhaps something more akin to “outlaw.” Or, I can see myself as part of a people living in Exile, calling out for a sympathetic Listener on “Radio Nowhere.”

Paramore’s All We Know Is Falling.

So, Paramore is basically a Christian band (or at least Hayley Williams is a Christian), and they do thank Jesus in the liner notes of All We Know Is Falling. I don’t place any of my faith in Jesus, but I have often envied Christians who feel comfortable thanking Jesus publicly. I wish Jews could get up there at the Grammy Awards and thanked God, or at least the rabbis who officiated at their b’nei mitzvah.

And… that’s the stopping point for anything profound Paramore says, or that I have to say about Paramore. At least, for now.

When it comes to the Black Keys, there are zero semi-touching shoutouts to Jesus. (And that might be expected given lead singer Dan Auerbach‘s partially Jewish ancestry.) Jesus aside, the lyrics of the songs appear to have nothing in the way of religion for me to cogitate.

This is an album that is not called Brothers.

The Black Keys’ original lyrics rarely have deep religious significance. Is “Psychotic Girl” perhaps about a witch? Is Auerbach’s commitment not to get involved with a psychotic girl code for a vow to fulfill Exodus 22:17‘s commandment that we not let witches live? No. Almost certainly not.

Perhaps what actually most bugged me about both the Black Keys and Paramore is how I could relate to so little of their repertoire. The songs rarely have a complex story. She’s a psychotic girl. I’ma stay away. No surprises, and hardly any content.

On “I Got Mine,” it appears to me that the Black Keys might be hinting at some sort of moral: Don’t try to satisfy others; just satisfy yourself.

If I hadn’t already deemed Attack & Release a disc of lyrical drivel, then it would be because I hadn’t thought about “I Got Mine,” which is so antithetical to my values.

For my Jewish identity to exist in the collective, I need to strive to satisfy both others and myself–not just one or the other.

Pirkei Avot 5:9 lists different understandings of what is whose:

There are four types of people. One who says, “Mine is mine, and yours is yours”–this is the median person, and there are those who say that this is a person of Sodom and Gomorrah. One who says, “Mine is yours, and yours is mine”–this a foolish person. One who says, “Mine is yours, and yours is yours”–this is an exceedingly gracious person. One who says, “Yours is mine, and mine is mine”–this is a wicked person.

My read: If the protagonist of “I Got Mine” (whom I think the Black Keys wants us to like) is against satisfying others (fans, lovers, and so forth), then he is declaring others’ emotions no longer his responsibility. His fans, lovers and such are all now at the whim of what he determines his own satisfaction. So now, what he does for others is just what he does for himself.

The message of “I Got Mine” is “Yours is mine, and mine is mine.”

Feel free to do the math.

This is actually my favorite thing so far from the Black Keys: this album cover.

One of the purposes of Jewish Eyes On The Arts is to seek those pieces of pop culture and the arts that express or hint at values in deep ways.

It’s disappointing to hear an album by a beloved artist, only to discover how superficial a work is.

Fortunately, this is the first time I’ve written such a damning blogpost for this site. (Even my post on Babies was kinder.)

Given that we’ve been around for over 2 years and have over 100 posts, perhaps there’s a blessing in the rarity of this kind of “glitch.”

I’ll blog more soon about something way more awesome.

That’s why it was totally out of left-field (and he actually received attention) when his latest solo release, Sunken Condos, featured an Ashkenaziced version of the 1978 soul jam “Out of the Ghetto.” Isaac Hayes, the song’s original writer and performer, was partially Baptist, partially Pentecostal, and later a Scientologist, but never a Jew. Perhaps for this reason, the title of the song rubbed Fagen wrong over the years.

Fagen’s latest groovy critique of human civilization.

If you search through the Steely Dan catalogue, you’ll see that Donald Fagen and Walter Becker never once penned the word “ghetto” into their own song lyrics. They’ve managed to sing about tough guys and mean streets (“Show Biz Kids,” “Godwhacker”), the drug scene (“Kid Charlemagne,” “Charlie Freak”), and plenty of the more vulgar sides of life (“Everything You Did,” “With a Gun”) but they have never spoken of “the ghetto.”

Ross Scarano of Complex Music recently interviewed Fagen and discussed Sunken Condos’ only cover song.

SCARANO: Why cover Isaac Hayes?
FAGEN: While I was writing this group of songs, I happened to hear an Isaac Hayes tune. I realized the word “ghetto” has been associated, for many decades now, with the inner city, and I decided to reclaim it for the Jews. So I changed a word or two, added a klezmer arrangement, and that’s all it took, really.
SCARANO: Hearing that word come out of a white mouth changes things.
FAGEN: Well, yeah, especially a Jewish white mouth. Then, when you talk about the mean streets and poverty, you’re talking about Warsaw, instead of the Bronx.

It’s unusual for Fagen to have a provocative and clear argument for changing a cultural norm, or even the use of a single word. Fagen usually mopes about the status quo without attempting to fix society’s faults. It intrigues me to no end that Fagen actually has a statement to make (and he has talked about this song in nearly every interview about the album now).

But, could it really be that the one bold new message that Fagen has expressed in his later career as a solo artist has been a reprimanding of the misuse of a word that belongs to Jewish history? What’s the big deal with “ghetto?”

Donald has something to say.

It would be tough to argue that Fagen is a conventionally religious Jew. (Maybe he’s a Jew who religiously loves soul music. But that’s different.) Perhaps then he’s more of an ethnic, or cultural, Jew. So, Fagen’s concern now is turned to the ethnic misappropriation of the word “ghetto.” The word “ghetto” is appropriate for Jews to talk about in reference to the ghettos in Europe, where Jews like Fagen’s ancestors lived. But to say that Harlem is a “ghetto” is like calling an Arab suq a Persian “bazaar” (two different kinds of market places; two different cultures).

But, if Fagen were actually consistent on who can say what, you might expect him to be consistent on who can play what. If everyone could only use the words and the music of their own ethnicity, and if these social categories were actually strictly defined, then why would two Jewish guys named Don and Walter have spent their lives imitating the music that “belonged” to black people?

As a fan of the Dan (and the Don), I find it ridiculous to believe that Fagen, age 65, is suddenly heralding a zealous campaign against one word (“ghetto”). I think something more is going on. I suspect that Fagen’s re-appropriation of the word “ghetto” (a reactionary appropriation of the word “ghetto”) is a criticism against Jews’ inability to get in line with Fagen’s religion: soul music, socialism, and secularism. After all, aren’t Fagen and the Jews part of the same people?

Imagine the song being sung to, instead of a once-impoverished African American woman, a Polish Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust but made it to America.

You’ve come a long way baby,
From welfare and foodstamp lines.
You’re movin’ on up
And leavin’ poverty behind.

It could be that the Polish woman never stood literally on the foodstamp lines, but “from rags to riches” is the (often false but) summative story of the American Jews who eventually came to “dominate” Hollywood, the music business, the media and the academy.

You’ve had a good education.
You’ve seen the best of the schools,
But when you take a drink,
The ghetto comes out of you.

Despite Jews’ integration and major successes in American society—Supreme Court Justices, philanthropists, leading academicians, and entrepreneurs galore—the Jews are still Jews. When it comes time for them to identify in the positive, a good chunk of them still do say that they are Jewish. They are not yet no-longer-Jewish.

I took you out of the ghetto.

Why did Robert Zimmerman work so hard to emulate Woody Guthrie and become Bob Dylan? Why did Melvin Kaminsky become Mel Brooks and produce a repertoire of films with countless jokes about the backwards ways of the Jews? Why did we go to public schools? Why did we get enlightened? Why did we all leave the ghetto?

I took you out of the ghetto,
But I could not get that ghetto out of you.

Was Donald Fagen just another failing Jewish entertainer who couldn’t actually bring his people out of the ghetto? Moses brought the Jewish people out of Egypt and into the Jewish Homeland. But look at what that brought us: Philistines, Babylonians, Persians, Greeks, Romans, Crusaders, Nazis. The Jewish people, says Fagen, have been trapped in the ghetto. Even after leaving the ghettoes of Europe, the Jews in America still stand out from the gentiles. They still look different (Seth Rogen and the Jewfro), act differently (Larry David and the paranoia), and sound very different (Fran Drescher and the nasalness). Despite the stubbornness of some of their kin, secular Jews have worked hard to liberate us from the ghetto.

You’re a foxy lady.
Your mama had a beautiful child.
You’re built like a brick house,
And that’s no lie.
When we go to the disco,
You drive the fellas wild,
When you shake your booty
Ghetto-style.

The second verse gets harder to imagine being sung to our hypothetical Polish Jewess. But, if she were just a few years younger and had grown up in the United States, maybe she’d dig this jive. Maybe she’d fit into what Donald Fagen has hailed as the most expressive of American culture: soul music. (Alternatively: Maybe this Poless does shake her booty ghetto-style; after all, she might know Yiddish dance.)

Your roots are in the mean streets.
That’ll never change.
Ghetto mama,
Stay the same.

The mean streets of Warsaw, Kiev, Łódź will always be ingrained in the Jew. The saying goes, “Once a Jew always a Jew” (a principle behind Chabad’s kinship and Nazism’s “racial purity”-focused anti-Semticism). The Babylonian Talmud states, “A member of Israel who has sinned is still a member of Israel” (Sanhedrin 44a). No matter how much you transgress and deviate from Jewish paths, somehow you can’t run away. Jewish blood still runs throughout you. And defines you.

Donald is simultaneously sarcastic and sad, resigning and reprimanding. “Ghetto mama / Don’t you change.” Billy Joel once sang, “Don’t go changing… I love you just the way you are,” and Donald Fagen is now singing it to his own Yiddishe Momme (Yiddish for “Jewish mother”). Donald Fagen has given up on assimilating the Ghetto Momme any further. Let the clarinets and violin play, and we’ll party like it’s 1899—for a few brief moments when nobody’s persecuting us.

And maybe when our party’s over, someone else’s party will come get us.

This wouldn’t be the first time I’ve read too much into something. But, given Donald Fagen’s general paranoia, I sense that I’m reading into this exactly why this Duke of September bothered to record this 70s groove. The song is so far divorced from the klezmer instrumentation that serves as the backdrop to Fagen’s rendition, it’s hard not to seek out the larger implications of Fagen’s subtle attack on Jewish identity.

Fagen—perhaps self-conscious of his namesake sounding identical to that of the antagonistic Jew (Fagin) from Charles Dickens’ Oliver Twist—offers us little reason to be Jewish. In fact, the klezmer over Isaac Hayes’ groove appears to get in the way of the funk. The song is very funky, but the horns are repetitive and stilted for the most part. Repetitive and stilted like the Judaism that never jived with Steely Dan.

Beneath Donald Fagen’s “Out of the Ghetto” lies a messianic vision, awaiting the day when the Jewish people will get up and shake their booty. But definitely not ghetto-style.

In the hustle and bustle of all of this, we did not yet get a chance to a highlighted a trip Timna and I took at the end of the year.

On December 27, Timna and I found ourselves at Kibbutz Hanaton, where a new mechinah program for 20 young Israeli adults was just launched. Already graduated from high school but not yet in the army (where Israelis typically serve before entering college), the mechinistim (i.e. the participants in the mechinah) are deeply engaged in leadership training and questions about their identity as Israelis, as Jews and as world citizens.

Jewish Eyes On The Arts was very graciously invited to Hanaton’s mechinah by Itai Capsouto, who heads this mechinah that was just launched at the end of 2012. While visiting the mechinah, Timna and I facilitated two sessions. 

In the afternoon, Timna headed up a seminar about protest art and political art–using art as media for social change.

At the end of the seminar, we brought out spray paint canisters and posters, and the mechinistim were divided into two groups: one expressing the Israeli side of an imitation separation fence (the infamous fences that separate the West Bank and the Gaza Strip from the less-disputed parts of Israel), and one group spray-painting the fence’s Palestinian side. (Check out some of the images right here.)

In the evening, I got a few volunteers to help out with an Erev Yerushalayim Habirah Venashirah (a slight pun on an Erev Birah Venashirah–”Night of Beer and Song”–what we put on was a ”Night of Jerusalem the Capital and Song”). With a few snacks and refreshments here and there, we sang a whole slew of songs with different takes on Jerusalem–a metaphorical Jerusalem (Bob Marley‘s “Rivers of Babylon”), a boring Jerusalem (“Hinneh Ani Ba“–”Here I Come”–by Hadag Nahash), an idealized Jerusalem (Naomi Shemer‘s “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav“–”Jerusalem of Gold”), among many others.

I still can’t believe how fun it was to get to know the mechinistim for a day, and I can only hope that we’ll find some good time to collaborate again soon.

Also… ::drumroll:: keep on the lookout for the launch of the website of Mabat Yehudi Veyisra’eli Al Ha’omanuyot (literally, something like “A Jewish-Israeli Perspective On The Arts”–מבט יהודי וישראלי על האמנויות)–Jewish Eyes On The Arts’ work in Israel and for Israelis the world over.

And stay tuned… regular Jewish Eyes On The Arts blogging will resume shortly!

I saw you on a Tuesday at the deli.
Then on Wednesday you were at the bank.
I should’ve asked the digits to your celli.
But my tongue was tied.
My mind just drew a blank.

Thus begins “Jewish Girls (At The Matzoh Ball)” by The LeeVees, a Jewish band formed nearly for the exclusive purpose of recording the Hanukkah album Hanukkah Rocks. (They’ve had no new album since their 2005 debut, but they have played a few shows).

So, what’s the connection between Hanukkah and these lyrics by The LeeVees, headed by Adam Gardner of Guster and Dave Schneider of The Zambonis (America’s only rock band whose every song is about hockey)? Answer: Absolutely nothing!

But, when creativity strikes and you’ve got the Jews gathered together, how could you resist the urge to create a funny song mocking Jewish stereotypes?

Last week, Michelle Citrin released a new single, “Hanukkah Lovin’.” While the song mentions some familiar cultural references to latkes and such, it has about as much religious depth as “Santa Baby” (of course, written by two Jews, Joan Javits and Philip Springer).

Does a Hanukkah song need religious depth though? After all, “Dreidel, Dreidel” has the religious shallowness of a puddle:

I have a little dreidel.
I made it out of clay.
And, when it’s dry and ready,
Oh, dreidel I shall play!

Do you see the symbolism?

No?

Well, me neither.

Perhaps we can turn to some unusual suspects for finding deeper songs about Hanukkah.

For example, why not Josh Groban‘s cold wintry album Illuminations? After all, Hanukkah is the Festival of Lights. In Groban‘s “Higher Window” (“There is a light from a higher window, / Shining down on you tonight”), maybe we can find reference to Hanukkah’s supernal light we hear about in the Hasidic teachings of the Sefat Emet. On “Hidden Away,” can we see a reference to that miracle of the oil that extinguished long after we thought it would? (“You’re a wonder, how bright you shine: / A flickered candle in a short lifetime.”) On “War At Home,” do we hear echoes of Jewish infighting simultaneous with the external fighting against Antiochus IV‘s imposition of Greco-Roman culture?

Being that there are so few deep Hanukkah songs circulated in English-speaking culture, and being that so many of the songs that deal well with the symbolism of the holiday are, at best, subtly “Jewish,” I don’t know where to find good Hanukkah songs.

What songs light up your Hanukkah?

On Thursday night November 29, the closing of the Context exhibit, accompanying Ellen Alt‘s Text exhibit, went out with a celebration. It was an evening of Shenanigans–music, dancing, and plenty of art.

The big attraction of the evening was Alt’s Interactive Talmud Page: two columns side by side, one comprising wordy images and one comprising image-ish words. And all attendants had the opportunity to add a little something to it.

Check our Facebook page for photos from the night. Thanks all for a fantastic 2 months since our opening on October 11!

The future is near, so watch for some upcoming events!

Bob Dylan told Mikal Gilmore of Rolling Stone that he wanted to record a religious album, but instead came up with Tempest. On his new disc (released 11 years to the day after 9/11), Bob bursts forth with apocalyptical imagery reminiscent of Bruce Springsteen‘s angry Wrecking Ball, also released this big year for a presidential election. 

In any event, you can’t discount the mystical overtones of the opening words on Dylan’s 35th studio album.

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing,
Blowing like it’s gonna sweep my world away.

Thus begins “Duquesne Whistle.” The whistle of the train is a recurring image in Dylan’s catalogue. (Check out “Freight Train Blues” on his eponymous debut, the home recording of “I Was Young When I Left Home,” and “Tonight I’ll Be Staying Here With You”). In fact, train whistles in songs predate Dylan–going back at least as early as “I’ve Been Working On the Railroad” (“Can’t you hear the whistle blowing?”).

There’s something savoring and exciting about this whistle (and the song’s lovesick lyrics hint at it–as does the beginning of the song’s gradually violent music video), but surrounding it, there’s also something deeper and darker in the sound of the whistle. Something profoundly mysterious.

For Dylan, so many of these sounds that call upon people are Biblical pronouncements from God. In 1989, on Oh Mercy, Dylan penned “Ring Them Bells” with the following words:

Ring them bells so the world will know
That God is one.

Awfully Deuteronomic of Dylan. This is the Shema: “Listen, Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is One” (Deuteronomy 6:4)–the Jewish declaration of faith recited every morning and evening.

It was upon walking home last night after hearing the election results when I decided to listen again to Tempest. 

For the first time, I heard dispair in the timbre of the clean yet muggy guitar that opens the album. The filtered sound, removed from the center of my headphones, suddenly felt incredibly empty: stride striving to bring cheer to no avail.

After a long, deceptively quiet intro, a drumkit brings in the band with a blast; the whole band enters with a blast. And Dylan says to us, “Listen.” Shema.

But, listen for what? To what?

Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing. Yes, but also, listen for far more than just the whistle of a train.

Aside from his gospel album Slow Train Coming, Dylan has recorded over 50 songs that mention a train. It’s not just religious that he uses it; the train is a religious image. 

In an age when nobody says, “Hey, I’m going to take the chariot into town” (except potentially Amish people and other electric-transportation-dissuaded people), the Biblical image of the chariot is outdated.

Ezekiel saw the wheel, and mystics sought that Heavenly wheel in Ezekiel’s vision–hence, the development of Merkavah mysticism in Judaism (merkavah being Hebrew for “chariot”). Later, in the 19th and early 20th Century–when the construction of the American railroads was championed by a demographic occasionally associated with singing spirituals while working–when the workers saw the wheel, it was no longer the wheel of a chariot. It was the wheel of a train.

The train traveled at a speed beyond human imagination. And it drove to places far from home–far from the toil of the land the construction crew knew. The train’s destination was not only Somewhere Far Away and Somewhere Better, but a train carry take you away to Redemption, or to Paradise.

Randy Newman‘s Faust opens with the invitation for everyone to ride on the “Glory Train,” and Dylan’s Tempest tells us that Redemption and Paradise might be around the corner. Or it might not be. In fact, this hesitation echoes the skepticism, the bad weather, and the Jewish imagery of “Jokerman,” the opener on 1983′s Jewishly influenced Infidels:

Standing on the waters, casting your bread,
While the eyes of the idol with the iron head are glowing.
Distant ships sailing into the mist,
You were born with a snake in both of your fists while a hurricane was blowing.
Freedom just around the corner for you–
But, with the truth so far off, what good will it do?

Casting bread at waters–as if performing Tashlikh on Rosh Hashanah. Yet idolatry is so tempting. We see “distant ships sailing into the mist” because we see someone off to an unknown fate–with the hurricane blowing in the distance. A Tempest, anyone? (After all, Dylan’s song “Tempest” recalls the tale of the Titanic.)

Dylan had us stand with freedom just around the corner. But it is at best a metaphor. Not the full truth or reality.

And now we stand again with Dylan. Attentive. Listening to that Duquesne whistle blowing. “Like it’s gonna sweep my world away.” Elijah‘s world was not swept away by a chariot; the chariot swept him away from the world. The Duquesne whistle is not here for Paradise.

“Listen to that Duquesne whistle blowing–/Sounding like it’s on a final run.” A frightful end may be in store. And approaching fast. She’s “blowing like she ain’t gon’ blow no more.”

Dylan is not on AC/DC‘s “Highway to Hell.” He’s on a railway to Hell.

“You old rascal, I know exactly where you’re going.” Listening for Dylan’s dark twinkle in his croaking voice–you and I can hear what Dylan is saying: “Go to Hell, you old rascal.” Lucky for us, Dylan will lead the way. “I’ll lead you there myself at the break of day.” He doesn’t even need a train.

When we go down, Dylan will come with us. The whistle is “Blowing like it’s gon’ kill me dead.” We are sinking at the command of a whistle, “blowing through another no-good town.”

On Election Day 2008, at a concert in Minnesota, Dylan introduced his bassist Tony Garnier, “wearing the Obama button.” “I was born in 1941,” said Dylan. “That was the year they bombed Pearl Harbor. I’ve been living in darkness ever since.” He paused between each sentence, like it was poetry. “Looks like things are going to change now,” he proclaimed.

While Dylan had spoken positively of Obama before 2008, in his latest interview with Rolling Stone, Dylan had very little to say about our President who awarded him the Medal of Freedom. Dylan evaded questions about Obama, and the poet came across as nervous and confused when Gilmore asked him if he even votes.

Yesterday, I voted for Obama, and I imagine that his reelection will serve the USA well. That being said, I am not convinced that this is a country where sweeping change is possible in the hands of any one leader. This is a country so big and so divided that changes that come most often come at a level smaller than anything our president can single-handedly herald.

So, it was a pretty tiny spark of excitement I felt last night upon hearing the news. That excitement, accompanied by some skepticism.

Have Democracts like me placed our hope in a false Redemption? When the Duquesne whistle blows, is the next stop Heaven or Hell? Or maybe Minnesota?

“Listen,” commands Dylan. We have to listen to the message of the whistle.

The Chasidic commentator Netivot Shalom (a.k.a. the “Slonimer Rebbe“) once said that the shofar–the ram’s horn blown on and in the days surrounding Rosh Hashanah–plays notes that translate into a secret language only for Jews. The shofar is ineffable and can only be understood by those engaged in it, those who listen to it.

And it is the same thing with the Duquesne whistle in Dylan’s midst. You’ll have to really listen to understand the calling. There are no words.

Dylan once said, “Something is happening here. / But you don’t know what it is. / Do you, Mr. Jones?”

We’re moving forward, but where are we going?

Mr. Yankovic names that era, “The Good Old Days.”

Weird Al’s point is: we all have different definitions of the word “good.”

FUN FACT: Al subliminally makes this point about the word “good” on his album titled Even Worse, reproducing the visuals of Michael Jackson‘s album cover for Bad, the music of which is parodied on “Fat.”

A month ago on the Jewish calendar, right between our two High Holidays (Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur), I was reminded of Weird Al’s questioning of how useful it is to use describe things in terms of “good” or “bad.”

You might be familiar with the Tzom Gedalyah, a fast day commemorating the day when–amidst political turmoil–Jews murdered Gedalyah, a Jewish governor, in the Land of Israel not long before the Destruction of the first Temple in the 6th Century BCE.

A lot of Jews–otherwise “observant” Jews–do not actually fast though on Tzom Gedalyah. For some people, it might be laziness (or hungriness), but actually there’s good reason not to fast these days.

There’s this funny verse in Zechariah that reads basically as follows:

Thus spoke the Lord of Hosts: the fast of the 4th month, the fast of the 5th month, the fast of the 7th month, and the fast of the 10th month will become joy and happiness. (Zechariah 8:19)

About a millennium later, the rabbis of the Babylonian Talmud admit to being puzzled by this verse. They know that there are fasts in each of these months: the 17th of Tammuz, the 9th of Av, Tzom Gedalyah, and the 10th of Tevet–which happen in the 4th, 5th, 7th and 10th months, respectively. The hard part is: how could a fast day turn into “joy and happiness?”

So one sage, Rav Chana bar Bizna, citing another sage (Rabbi Shim’on Chasida), says that the dates of these fasts aren’t always fast days. In times when there is no peace, these 4 dates are fast days. But, when the Jews are living in a time of peace, these will be days of great joy (Rosh Hashanah 18b).

Over the generations, commentators on the Talmud came to ask the obvious question: what qualifies as “a time of peace?”

Rashi (1040-1105 CE), in his notes here, likens the time of peace to the era in history when the Temple was still standing in Jerusalem, or to when there was Jewish autonomy in the Land of Israel.

But this begs the question: Really!?

If you’ve ever read the Books of Samuel or Kings, or mostly any Book of the Prophets, you might have noticed that there’s a lot of fighting. And a lot of these wars take place around the Temple, the Jewish monarchies, or both.

So, basically the rabbinic conceptualization of peace looks like this:

And one of Weird Al’s memories of the good old days resembles this:

I tied her to a chair, and I shaved off all her hair,
And I left her in the desert all alone.
Well, sometimes in my dreams,
I can still hear the screams.
Oh, I wonder if she ever made it home.

Weird Al and the Rabbis agree.

When it comes to nostalgia, we all look back fondly on the good old days, and our memories lead us to different visions of peace (or violence).

So maybe things haven’t gotten so much worse.

“The good old days weren’t always good, / And tomorrow ain’t as bad as it seems.” – Billy Joel, “Keeping The Faith”

In collecting fans’ funding for their new album The Sound Of the Life of the Mind, Ben Folds Five did something very clever. They promised that everybody who donated would get their name printed for all to see. Everybody gets to be a “Vice President of Promotion” listed in the liner notes.

Although I’ve been listening to the album since its early release for us Pledgers (September 12, Ben Folds’ birthday), today is my first day holding the physical CD that finally came in the mail.

Just a few days after the High Holidays have ended, I’m looking at this list:

And, that’s just one of three pages of names.

I’ve already spent around half an hour scanning names on one page, and I still haven’t found me. The PledgeMusic site tells me that there were altogether 7525 pledgers.

In terms of paper, 7525 is a lot of people. In terms of the cosmos, 7525 ain’t much. Compare it to God’s attendance list of who’s alive in the world today.

There’s this image that recurs on the High Holidays in the prayer Untanneh Tokef (“Let’s declare power”) where God, reviewer of the Book of Life, is counting the sheep of the flock (i.e. God’s children, humanity). And as God is counting, God determines the destiny of each soul who passes before the Divine.

?מי יחיה ומי ימות  Mi yihyeh umi yamut?
Who will live, and who will die?

I’m beginning to think that my name will not live on as an immortal fan of Ben Folds Five. I do not see my name on the list. Did the great BF5 actually miss me?

Right now the time is 11:29 AM.

I will check back in when I have found my name–or reached the end without finding myself.

11:37 AM. Anxiety or doubt has gotten the better of me, and I read the rest far faster than the other half.

I did not find my name.

Ben Folds Five may be human and the promise of immortalized fandom may be a small feat, but I realized very fast I was fulfilling a religious desire of so many Jews throughout history, hoping they made the list: whether it was the Heavenly list of who would make it this coming year, or if it was the human list of who would be spared from the cruelties of extermination camps.

I am lucky that this is the list that concerns me in my life. Not believing in God’s list of who gets to live is relieving. And not being concerned with lists of persecution or protection is a blessing in my life.

But, if I believed in God’s list, and I knew that the carefully programmed Pledge Music site, in coordination with Ben Folds Five’s album design team, probably in cooperation with Copy & Paste, left me off of their list, who could say that God wouldn’t have also forgotten me?