// literary & arts //
Spring 2016
Not by Might and Not by Power, but by Spirituality Alone:
A Music Review of Zusha
Leora Balinsky
Ani Ma'amin Be’emuna
Be'emuna
Emuna Shelema
Beviat HaMashiach
Beviat HaMashiach
Ani Ma'amin
Ani Ma'amin
Translation:
I believe with faith
With faith
Complete faith
In the coming of the Messiah
In the coming of the Messiah
I believe
I believe
These words were originally written by Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar. They comprise the second of his renowned Thirteen Principles of Faith, an attempted enumeration of core Jewish beliefs. For many Jews, these words are considered a sort of Jewish anthem, solemnly sung at memorial ceremonies commemorating Jewish death and struggle. The principle—of the importance of complete faith in an eventual redemption—is defiant in its stubborn hope.
I sang these old words to new music on January 5th of this year, at a jam-packed apartment in Jerusalem’s Hipster/Hasidic/Hipster-Hasidic neighborhood of Nachlaot. I was sitting on a comforter laid out across the floor, a close friend leaning on my lap, my head resting on another friend’s chest. Behind me, many people were packed together, sitting cross-legged or with their knees tucked into their chests to accommodate the large crowd in the snug space. In the back corner stood a black and white clad man in full “Ultra Orthodox” garb, surveying the situation in front of him. To his right were people standing, shuckling--meditatively leaning back and forth—with their eyes closed. In fact, most of the eyes in the room were closed. It felt intrusive to turn my head and look around, to gaze upon people experiencing something intimate with themselves, and with each other.
My closed-eyed companions and I were gathered together for a small, acoustic concert by Zusha. A self-described “World Soul band” whose music “focuses on the Hasidic musical style known as neegoon, wordless melody,” Zusha “seeks to inspire people of all backgrounds and faiths to live with intention, meaning, and love.”[1] Three religious Jewish men in their mid-twenties comprise the band: vocalist Shlomo Gaisin, percussionist Elisha Mlotek, and guitarist Zachariah Goldschmiedt. The group’s name is an acronym for its members’ first initials. It is also a tribute to an 18th century Hasidic master by the name of Reb Zusha.
This particular concert began with an original wordless melody. Gaisin sang soothingly yet piercingly as Mlotek softly harmonized beside him. After singing through the melody once, Mlotek instructed “OK. Now with everyone.” The audience heeded the gentle command, almost enchanted, our throats immediately emitting a melody that many of us had never heard before. Somehow we sang as though we had known it forever. Song after song was performed, each repeated so many times that singing it became as natural as breathing. “Mashiach,” the song invoking Maimonides’ words, was sung with a special intensity.
Sitting in the room, I felt a bizarre, inexplicable sense of déjà vu. Afterwards, however, I realized that I was experiencing the closest thing imaginable to the phenomenon of Shlomo Carlebach in his heyday. Carlebach revolutionized Jewish prayer and song during his career in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Feeding on the mood of his milieu—a search for meaning, freedom, spirituality, and expression—he presented Judaism as something worth seeking, as a comforting religious refuge.
Carlebach’s magic was in his overwhelming charisma, his soulful and simple melodies, and his adoption of the come-as-you-are ethos of his time. His concerts and musical gatherings involved singing and teaching melodies and songs, interspersed with sharing poignant stories of Hasidic masters, the merits of righteous simpletons, and pithy Kabbalistic teachings. Carlebach’s pillars of love and soul manifested themselves in ways that were distasteful to much of the Orthodox establishment.[2] For example, he hugged both men and women, violating norms of touch between the sexes, and he played his music for mixed-gender crowds, leading the most significant American arbitrator of Jewish law Rabbi Moshe Feinstein to address the question of whether it was even permitted to listen to his music or to adopt his melodies, given his unorthodox ways. Rabbi Feinstein’s answer: There is no prohibition against Carlebach’s melodies because they have no intrinsic religious value. [3]
Carlebach rode on the wave of hippie counterculture while projecting an aura of tradition and authenticity. Now, Carlebach’s melodies are the core of Jewish music for much of the Jewish world, from Reform and Conservative to choice segments of Orthodoxy. Today, there are many offshoots of Carlebach who carry and claim his musical legacy, and many of them are well within the Orthodox Jewish establishment, playing at large community gatherings, bar mitzvahs, and weddings. In contrast to Carlebach’s style, however, many such concerts have separate seating for men and women. Though they may play Carlebach’s tunes, they march to a quite a different, uncontroversial beat.
And then there is Zusha, which follows the Carlebachian template, albeit one that is revamped for 21st century millennials. Zusha encourages self-expression, self-actualization, and the search for meaning. The band’s members are deeply religious and rooted in tradition, evidenced superficially in Goldschmiedt and Gaisin’s sidelocks as well as in Gaisin’s traditional Hasidic sartorial choices. They sprinkle Hasidic teachings throughout their performances, relating stories with use of Hebrew and Yiddish idioms, often referencing Jewish rituals, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the coming of the Messiah.
Despite this, I can’t help but recall the question asked of Rabbi Feinstein regarding the controversy of Carlebach and wonder what Rabbi Feinstein would make of Zusha’s performances: at the small concert I attended, young men and women used each other’s bodies as furniture, and at other, larger concerts, men and women dance together, unabashedly touching as they move together to the music. For a collective whose music and messages are rooted in traditional religious texts and sentiments, Zusha’s performances have a surprisingly non-traditional feel.
As a fairly spiritual person, I love singing during prayers, expressing my petitions and supplications in melodies, wordless and wordful alike. I was confused, then, about why I left Zusha’s show feeling both overwhelmed with spiritual fullness and underwhelmed with my religious experience. During the performance, I was utterly immersed in the sounds of friends and strangers singing with intense passion. I sang my heart out completely. But I left the concert with one phrase lingering on my tongue: “profoundly secular.”
It is told of Reb Zusha, the band’s namesake, that he was inconsolable upon his deathbed. His students surrounded him, offering words of comfort: “You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind of as Abraham!” one said. Reb Zusha answered him, “When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham?' Rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you more like Zusha?'”
I am part of a generation that has internalized Reb Zusha’s lament. Our focus on staying true to our unique, authentic selves is derided by older generations. We collectively refuse to conform and commit to our society’s pre-established standards, perhaps most blatantly to our society’s religious standards. But we still care about the search for meaning, choosing to seek it outside of institutions. As the oft-quoted 2013 Pew study on the state of American religion reports, nearly one in five Americans identifies as spiritual, but not religious.[4] Among the religiously unaffiliated, the ratio doubles.[5] And 88% of people who label their religious identity as “nothing in particular” are not in search for a specific religious identity.[6] The broadness of “spirituality” enables the widening of horizons, while particular religious identification seems to limit them.
Goldschmiedt describes Zusha as “inherently universal” and as “a blank canvas.”[7] The band members’ eccentric dress and jargon-filled speech makes them interesting and different while their wordless melodies allow for anybody to sing along, no particular upbringing required, no belief system mandated. And their messages are sweet, comforting, and meditative. Particular Jewish texts and concepts are used as a springboard for developing a deeper understanding of the human condition and the search for meaning. Zusha manages to offer an intense experience that is profoundly spiritual while avoiding clashing with the anti-establishment proclivities of many of the band’s listeners. Gaison, Mlotek, and Goldschmiedt’s unapologetic but non-coercive religious particularity does not compromise their universal appeal. In this sense, Zusha is a uniquely Jewish-American project, catered towards the American experience.
It is precisely Zusha’s universality that generated my confused alienation from my general religious intuitions at the January performance. There was something about being situated in Jerusalem, a locus of diverse, but particular, religious energy, that did not meld with Zusha. Jerusalem is the object of my thrice-daily traditional Jewish prayers, which beseech God to return to Zion and restore it to its former glory. My religious persona in Jerusalem is intertwined with the particular story of the Jewish people and the traditional narrative of Jewish destiny. The broad, individual-based, universal messages of Zusha felt incongruous with Jerusalem’s significance in Jewish texts and tradition as the place for one people to worship their one God in a particular fashion.
Two weeks later, back in the New York, on the subway, I listened to Zusha’s “Mashiach” again. I felt compelled to drink in the scene around me, indulging in the most outrageously clichéd New York experience of my life. There were men and women dressed for a night out and mothers talking with small children. A man across from me nodded with his eyes closed to the sound of the music blasting from his large headphones. At one stop, a young man came onto the subway and began earnestly announcing the impending coming of Jesus, reciting verses from Isaiah as proof. Surprisingly, right then, it clicked. Zusha clicked. I felt a deep yearning for redemption and Redemption, spurred by the subway-preacher’s yearning—our yearning was one. There was unity. And I felt that unity streaming through me, and God was there too, even though the idea of god on whose behalf the subway-preacher was preaching was not quite my God, and he believed that his messiah was coming back whereas I was still waiting for mine to make his first appearance. But with the sound of Zusha in my ears, I somehow believed, with complete faith, that the Messiah was on his way to New York City and that the people living their lives as usual on the subway car were hastening his arrival.
----------------------------------
[1] “About”, Zusha, www.zusha.com/about/
[2] I cannot, in good conscience, avoid mentioning Carlebach’s long history of alleged sexual assault, an aspect of his legacy that is too often ignored and suppressed. See: http://lilith.org/articles/rabbi-shlomo-carlebachs-shadow-side/
[3] Igrot Moshe: Even Haezer, 1:91
[4] http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise-religion/
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “Culture Guide”, Moment Magazine, http://www.momentmag.com/culture-guide/
Be'emuna
Emuna Shelema
Beviat HaMashiach
Beviat HaMashiach
Ani Ma'amin
Ani Ma'amin
Translation:
I believe with faith
With faith
Complete faith
In the coming of the Messiah
In the coming of the Messiah
I believe
I believe
These words were originally written by Maimonides, a medieval Jewish philosopher and Torah scholar. They comprise the second of his renowned Thirteen Principles of Faith, an attempted enumeration of core Jewish beliefs. For many Jews, these words are considered a sort of Jewish anthem, solemnly sung at memorial ceremonies commemorating Jewish death and struggle. The principle—of the importance of complete faith in an eventual redemption—is defiant in its stubborn hope.
I sang these old words to new music on January 5th of this year, at a jam-packed apartment in Jerusalem’s Hipster/Hasidic/Hipster-Hasidic neighborhood of Nachlaot. I was sitting on a comforter laid out across the floor, a close friend leaning on my lap, my head resting on another friend’s chest. Behind me, many people were packed together, sitting cross-legged or with their knees tucked into their chests to accommodate the large crowd in the snug space. In the back corner stood a black and white clad man in full “Ultra Orthodox” garb, surveying the situation in front of him. To his right were people standing, shuckling--meditatively leaning back and forth—with their eyes closed. In fact, most of the eyes in the room were closed. It felt intrusive to turn my head and look around, to gaze upon people experiencing something intimate with themselves, and with each other.
My closed-eyed companions and I were gathered together for a small, acoustic concert by Zusha. A self-described “World Soul band” whose music “focuses on the Hasidic musical style known as neegoon, wordless melody,” Zusha “seeks to inspire people of all backgrounds and faiths to live with intention, meaning, and love.”[1] Three religious Jewish men in their mid-twenties comprise the band: vocalist Shlomo Gaisin, percussionist Elisha Mlotek, and guitarist Zachariah Goldschmiedt. The group’s name is an acronym for its members’ first initials. It is also a tribute to an 18th century Hasidic master by the name of Reb Zusha.
This particular concert began with an original wordless melody. Gaisin sang soothingly yet piercingly as Mlotek softly harmonized beside him. After singing through the melody once, Mlotek instructed “OK. Now with everyone.” The audience heeded the gentle command, almost enchanted, our throats immediately emitting a melody that many of us had never heard before. Somehow we sang as though we had known it forever. Song after song was performed, each repeated so many times that singing it became as natural as breathing. “Mashiach,” the song invoking Maimonides’ words, was sung with a special intensity.
Sitting in the room, I felt a bizarre, inexplicable sense of déjà vu. Afterwards, however, I realized that I was experiencing the closest thing imaginable to the phenomenon of Shlomo Carlebach in his heyday. Carlebach revolutionized Jewish prayer and song during his career in the 1960s, ‘70s, and ‘80s. Feeding on the mood of his milieu—a search for meaning, freedom, spirituality, and expression—he presented Judaism as something worth seeking, as a comforting religious refuge.
Carlebach’s magic was in his overwhelming charisma, his soulful and simple melodies, and his adoption of the come-as-you-are ethos of his time. His concerts and musical gatherings involved singing and teaching melodies and songs, interspersed with sharing poignant stories of Hasidic masters, the merits of righteous simpletons, and pithy Kabbalistic teachings. Carlebach’s pillars of love and soul manifested themselves in ways that were distasteful to much of the Orthodox establishment.[2] For example, he hugged both men and women, violating norms of touch between the sexes, and he played his music for mixed-gender crowds, leading the most significant American arbitrator of Jewish law Rabbi Moshe Feinstein to address the question of whether it was even permitted to listen to his music or to adopt his melodies, given his unorthodox ways. Rabbi Feinstein’s answer: There is no prohibition against Carlebach’s melodies because they have no intrinsic religious value. [3]
Carlebach rode on the wave of hippie counterculture while projecting an aura of tradition and authenticity. Now, Carlebach’s melodies are the core of Jewish music for much of the Jewish world, from Reform and Conservative to choice segments of Orthodoxy. Today, there are many offshoots of Carlebach who carry and claim his musical legacy, and many of them are well within the Orthodox Jewish establishment, playing at large community gatherings, bar mitzvahs, and weddings. In contrast to Carlebach’s style, however, many such concerts have separate seating for men and women. Though they may play Carlebach’s tunes, they march to a quite a different, uncontroversial beat.
And then there is Zusha, which follows the Carlebachian template, albeit one that is revamped for 21st century millennials. Zusha encourages self-expression, self-actualization, and the search for meaning. The band’s members are deeply religious and rooted in tradition, evidenced superficially in Goldschmiedt and Gaisin’s sidelocks as well as in Gaisin’s traditional Hasidic sartorial choices. They sprinkle Hasidic teachings throughout their performances, relating stories with use of Hebrew and Yiddish idioms, often referencing Jewish rituals, the rebuilding of Jerusalem, and the coming of the Messiah.
Despite this, I can’t help but recall the question asked of Rabbi Feinstein regarding the controversy of Carlebach and wonder what Rabbi Feinstein would make of Zusha’s performances: at the small concert I attended, young men and women used each other’s bodies as furniture, and at other, larger concerts, men and women dance together, unabashedly touching as they move together to the music. For a collective whose music and messages are rooted in traditional religious texts and sentiments, Zusha’s performances have a surprisingly non-traditional feel.
As a fairly spiritual person, I love singing during prayers, expressing my petitions and supplications in melodies, wordless and wordful alike. I was confused, then, about why I left Zusha’s show feeling both overwhelmed with spiritual fullness and underwhelmed with my religious experience. During the performance, I was utterly immersed in the sounds of friends and strangers singing with intense passion. I sang my heart out completely. But I left the concert with one phrase lingering on my tongue: “profoundly secular.”
It is told of Reb Zusha, the band’s namesake, that he was inconsolable upon his deathbed. His students surrounded him, offering words of comfort: “You were almost as wise as Moses and as kind of as Abraham!” one said. Reb Zusha answered him, “When I pass from this world and appear before the Heavenly Tribunal, they won't ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you as wise as Moses or as kind as Abraham?' Rather, they will ask me, 'Zusha, why weren't you more like Zusha?'”
I am part of a generation that has internalized Reb Zusha’s lament. Our focus on staying true to our unique, authentic selves is derided by older generations. We collectively refuse to conform and commit to our society’s pre-established standards, perhaps most blatantly to our society’s religious standards. But we still care about the search for meaning, choosing to seek it outside of institutions. As the oft-quoted 2013 Pew study on the state of American religion reports, nearly one in five Americans identifies as spiritual, but not religious.[4] Among the religiously unaffiliated, the ratio doubles.[5] And 88% of people who label their religious identity as “nothing in particular” are not in search for a specific religious identity.[6] The broadness of “spirituality” enables the widening of horizons, while particular religious identification seems to limit them.
Goldschmiedt describes Zusha as “inherently universal” and as “a blank canvas.”[7] The band members’ eccentric dress and jargon-filled speech makes them interesting and different while their wordless melodies allow for anybody to sing along, no particular upbringing required, no belief system mandated. And their messages are sweet, comforting, and meditative. Particular Jewish texts and concepts are used as a springboard for developing a deeper understanding of the human condition and the search for meaning. Zusha manages to offer an intense experience that is profoundly spiritual while avoiding clashing with the anti-establishment proclivities of many of the band’s listeners. Gaison, Mlotek, and Goldschmiedt’s unapologetic but non-coercive religious particularity does not compromise their universal appeal. In this sense, Zusha is a uniquely Jewish-American project, catered towards the American experience.
It is precisely Zusha’s universality that generated my confused alienation from my general religious intuitions at the January performance. There was something about being situated in Jerusalem, a locus of diverse, but particular, religious energy, that did not meld with Zusha. Jerusalem is the object of my thrice-daily traditional Jewish prayers, which beseech God to return to Zion and restore it to its former glory. My religious persona in Jerusalem is intertwined with the particular story of the Jewish people and the traditional narrative of Jewish destiny. The broad, individual-based, universal messages of Zusha felt incongruous with Jerusalem’s significance in Jewish texts and tradition as the place for one people to worship their one God in a particular fashion.
Two weeks later, back in the New York, on the subway, I listened to Zusha’s “Mashiach” again. I felt compelled to drink in the scene around me, indulging in the most outrageously clichéd New York experience of my life. There were men and women dressed for a night out and mothers talking with small children. A man across from me nodded with his eyes closed to the sound of the music blasting from his large headphones. At one stop, a young man came onto the subway and began earnestly announcing the impending coming of Jesus, reciting verses from Isaiah as proof. Surprisingly, right then, it clicked. Zusha clicked. I felt a deep yearning for redemption and Redemption, spurred by the subway-preacher’s yearning—our yearning was one. There was unity. And I felt that unity streaming through me, and God was there too, even though the idea of god on whose behalf the subway-preacher was preaching was not quite my God, and he believed that his messiah was coming back whereas I was still waiting for mine to make his first appearance. But with the sound of Zusha in my ears, I somehow believed, with complete faith, that the Messiah was on his way to New York City and that the people living their lives as usual on the subway car were hastening his arrival.
----------------------------------
[1] “About”, Zusha, www.zusha.com/about/
[2] I cannot, in good conscience, avoid mentioning Carlebach’s long history of alleged sexual assault, an aspect of his legacy that is too often ignored and suppressed. See: http://lilith.org/articles/rabbi-shlomo-carlebachs-shadow-side/
[3] Igrot Moshe: Even Haezer, 1:91
[4] http://www.pewforum.org/2012/10/09/nones-on-the-rise-religion/
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] “Culture Guide”, Moment Magazine, http://www.momentmag.com/culture-guide/
\\ LEORA BALINSKY is a freshman in Barnard College. She can be reached at [email protected]. Photo used here is the cover art for Zusha's album entitled "Kavana," released in January 2016.