Magic Jewball

About how many things can you say, “I have been obsessed with that since I was a child?” I think some things are just inborn and they follow you around throughout your life. For me, one of these things has always been “this song sounds like that song.” I remember being fascinated by the George Harrison My Sweet Lord/He’s So Fine case as a little kid and just about any other music plagiarism case I came across. I just find it freaky and strange when two songs sound remarkably alike. By a stroke of luck, when I grew up and ended up in the music business, I sat for ten years in an office next to the one of the legal clearance person, who had the job of both clearing our artists’ samples (those are the pieces of other songs that an artist will deliberately build his/her song upon) and reaching out to the violators of our copyrights. What I found from sitting there is that the legal department counted on the honesty of the artist in reporting whose work the song was based on… to a degree. But then the clearance person would sit and listen to all the songs and try to figure it out. if she couldn’t, the song was sent to a musicologist. So there was always a lot of repeating of passages of loud music and a lot of me jumping up and running next door to say, “this sounds just like Paranoid Android!” and so forth. Since it wasn’t my job, I found it great fun.

Today is my mother’s fifth yahrzeit, the anniversary of her death, and as usual, I like to impart a lesson from her. My mother was something of a Led Zeppelin fan. These days, it isn’t unusual to say, “my mother is a Led Zeppelin fan” because mothers today had the chance of growing up in the late 60′s or in the 70′s or 80′s. My mother grew up in the 40′s and 50′s and liked classical music. And Led Zeppelin. She was proud of the fact that she liked something hip with the young people and once corrected a student who mixed up Jimmy Page and Robert Plant in a picture. She told that story all the time; she loved that she was able to do that.

But she wasn’t really a metal or hard rock fan. She liked the Middle Eastern melodies and she liked Robert Plant’s lyrics. In fact, she started to build a lesson plan around Stairway to Heaven but never finished it, which is too bad, because that would have been this post. But it’s OK because I still have a something to say about what she taught me and have it relate to Led Zeppelin. You may have heard (and if you know me, you definitely have heard) that Jimmy Page is finally being sued by Jake Holmes over the song Dazed and Confused. Now, I should first say that I have always loved Zeppelin and that Dazed and Confused has always been one of my favorites of their songs. I liked LZ so much that I went to see The Firm in concert in the mid-80′s just so I could say I had seen Jimmy Page on stage. Wow, was he…. in concert. So you can imagine my dismay when in the age of the Internet I found that LZ had “borrowed” many of their songs from others, including lots of poor Folk and Blues musicians.

Several of them have sued and won and now appear on the credits of LZ’s songs. But I simply can’t begin to describe the chutzpah of taking someone’s music or lyrics, basing your song on it, and then simply putting your own name as the sole credit. And I think the most egregious example of this is the Jake Holmes one. Jake Holmes was a folk singer in the 60′s (and later a jingle writer – he came up with the “I’m A Pepper” and “Be All You Can Be” commercials) and when you listen to his version of Dazed and Confused, which came out a few years earlier, it’s clear that the LZ version is simply a copy with new lyrics, a different arrangement, and some instrumental additions. Further, he was the opening act for Jimmy Page’s previous band, the Yardbirds, who proceeded to do a cover of Dazed and Confused live with Jake Holmes’ original lyrics. Awkward! I am not sure why it took Holmes so long to sue. He has expressed bitterness and dismay over the years in interviews and said he attempted to contact Page to no avail. I hope he comes forward and explains but in the meantime, I am cheering for him.

Many people say that this was something artists of the 60′s did all the time: reference roots music in their songs. “Variations on a theme,” if you will. Not to mention, as Kohelet says in Ecclesiastes, there’s nothing new under the sun. All songs kind of sound like some other song. But here’s the important part: since I knew Kohelet said that and I know where it comes from, I began my sentence with “as Kohelet says….” Luckily, I don’t owe Kohelet any royalties. But this is something my mother taught me and it comes from Pirkei Avot, or “Ethics of the Fathers” in the Mishnah. The maxim goes, “whoever says something in the name of the one who said it brings redemption to the world.” We learn this from the Megillah of Esther (you remember that one from Purim, I’m sure) where Queen Esther tells the King in the name of Mordechai, that traitors are plotting against him.

My mother never quoted anyone else without saying, “I have to say this b’shem omro [in the name of the one who said it].” It was hugely important to her that the original writer or speaker got credit. Writing papers every week as I do, I constantly have to be aware of this and I wish Led Zeppelin had been, too. Because it’s OK to base our work on that of others; that’s how our society has always functioned. You just have to say so and let the world know who said it first.

Hear Jake Holmes’ Dazed and Confused on YouTube.
Hear Led Zeppelin’s Dazed and Confused on YouTube.

Title adapted from the Led Zeppelin version.

בזכות מרים נחמה בת הרב יצחק
זכרונה לברכה

And so, my 613th post.

Numbers are mostly arbitrary. I love the title of the Simpsons clip show, “The Simpsons 138th Episode Spectacular,” because really, just because we live in a base-ten society, does that mean there’s something so fantastic about numbers ending in zero? Numbers in Judaism really mean something but, as the Passover song, “Who Knows One?” shows you, there’s something special about pretty much every number. As promised, 613 is the number of mitzvot, or commandments, in the Torah. Now, you knew Jews had a lot of rules, but did you know how many? (Teachers guide says: 613). I like 613 mostly because it doesn’t really mean anything else. When I was a kid, I had a silver bracelet with three silver balls on it. I liked to think that they represented the members of the Police, about whom I obsessed all the livelong day. Clearly, they were a Christian symbol. Or a family. Or, you know, the whim of the jeweler. But when I see 613, I know that’s what it is.

No one can follow all 613 rules because some are for men and some are for women and some are for parents and some are for people with parents, etc. And even in the best of times, I never followed all that I could. But what I like about them is that they correspond to every aspect of your life. That is, with the smallest thing in your life, getting up in the morning or crossing the street, you could be doing those things in a way that benefits the universe and mankind. I know that seems heavy but I think it’s really a relief. Because one of the signs of growing up is that you start to search and think about what the meaning and purpose of your life and the world and all that exists is.

That could be the end of the post but just for fun, it’s actually the intro. I wanted to talk about growing up and random numbers because very soon, I’ll be hitting a round, base-ten number birthday. Not for a few months, but Summer break was when I always started thinking of myself as the next year older because I spent my summers as a child in the camp where my family worked and was surrounded by a different set of kids. Kids who had all had their birthdays in March and April. So in order to not seem a year younger than everyone else, I just pretended my Fall birthday had occurred in the Spring with the result that by the time my actual birthday rolled around, I had already mentally been that age for several months.

On my last zero-ending birthday, I spent a long time worrying about it. And then one day, for some reason I still am not sure about, that all vanished and I embraced it. I took a day off work, went to a spa, and had lunch with my parents and dinner with friends. Really a perfect, perfect day. But the day wasn’t that important in the scheme of things. The important part is that each decade has been better than the last. I mean, think about it. While new experiences are great, there’s something to be said about knowing what you’re doing and having the maturity and wisdom to handle everything that comes at you. I’m still not totally there but I wouldn’t trade the confidence I have now for any part of my “youth.” And I’m sure when I look back in ten or twenty years, I’ll laugh at how much I thought I knew at this age. Because that’s the way I look at my teens and twenties now. Excruciating. Don’t get me wrong, I miss the culture of my teens desperately (you may have noticed this) but not at all the awkwardness. And the wondering about what life would be. And the desperation of (gasp!) trying to find a guy to complete me. To be comfortable in your own skin is priceless, even if that skin isn’t as dewy fresh as it used to be.

A friend of mine from my youth, Molly Ringwald, just wrote a book for women of our age group, apparently. I doubt I’ll read it but I did like this one thing she said:

“When you’re a teenager, you’re forever thinking, ‘Do they like me?’ ” she writes. “When you’re a grown-up, as anyone over the age of 30 can attest, the question becomes, ‘Do I like them?’ ”

“I never thought I would be glad to be older,” she said, finishing her pinot grigio, “but it is kind of a relief.”

Amen. So in the end, I think numbers are really as meaningful as you want them to be. If you want to use a base-ten birthday to celebrate how far you’ve come and to be thankful for another year on this fine earth of ours, that’s all well and good. And if the 613th post on your blog reminds you to add meaning to all your actions, I’m sure that’s just what God and Al Gore intended when they invented the Internet. But I think every number is special.

Now, we all know the meaning of life is also a number: 42. But now that I’ve grown up a bit (and really, just a bit), I think I’ve come back around to my original view, that it’s about giving to others. And maybe this is the decade where I’ll really make that happen in the way I promised to in my high school yearbook. I’ve certainly gotten smart enough to have a better haircut. But of course, I’m no longer a person who needs to express who she is through her hairstyle, so that’s already a contribution to mankind.

Just as I was finishing this post, Postsecret appeared in my feed reader with this as its final (oops, not final… just where I stopped reading!) postcard:



I considered making it a whole other post but decided that it worked in this one. I sometimes think that my twenties were spent trying to relocate the life that had been sucked out of me by that place. All I can say to this person is that life is a journey and that your sacrifice made you the person you are… not your education. This person may be talking about an entirely different sacrifice, but for me, I never think about whether it was worth it. It happened, I got through it, I like who I am, and even though seeing this picture made me want to cry, it’s all good now. It will be good, I swear.

Lene Lovich – Lucky Number

At my worst days in my old job, when my boss was being his most evil, the way I dealt with it was to look like I was paying attention to whatever he was saying, but sing in my head the classic Jewish song, Esah Einai, which is a gentle tune which goes around and around and has the words to Psalm 121.

In Hebrew it’s:
Esah einai el heharim,
me’ayin me’ayin yavo ezri
Esah einai el heharim,
me’ayin me’ayin yavo ezri

Ezri me’im Hashem,
Oseh shamayim va’aretz
Ezri me’im Hashem,
Oseh shamayim va’aretz

If you left your Book of Psalms in your other pants, it’s this one:
I lift up my eyes to the hills
From whence will come my help.

My help comes from the Lord
The maker of heaven and earth.

About two or three times around that song, I could pretty much forget he existed.

Today, my former co-worker who ended up with my job and is the son of a preacher and a very churchy guy himself, has this as his Facebook status message:

I am blessed even with all the problems I have to face. I stand strong! I am able to stand because my faith is solid. I look to the hill which cometh my help. I say to you, stand strong on your faith.

Now, Pious B is laughing at this because I like to send her this guy’s mangled inspirational status messages for fun. But I do NOT think this is a coincidence. Seriously, you need Psalm 121 to survive that job; it should be listed in the requirements.

Even Korean tourists to Israel love Esah Einai!

If you’ve been reading my Twitter updates these last few days you are probably either wondering who the hell Jaron is or what the hell Jaron and I are talking about. Well, I am here to explain all! Last week, Jane wrote a blog post which was ostensibly a letter to a country artist called Jaron and the Long Road to Love (try saying that ten times fast!) but was really a justifiable complaint about how lots of Christians use Jesus as an excuse to hate. Jaron and the Unwieldy Title of Band played the central role because they have a new record called “Pray For You” which is about wishing lots of bad things on your ex with a sort of churchy motif. You can read the lyrics in that post, I won’t reproduce them.

Now, I’ll get a couple of things out of the way here. While I reeeeally loathe those “Lord, I pray you take Obama in all caps” status messages on Facebook, the ones from my “friends” were all by Jews. Statistically, that’s about right since two thirds or more of my Facebook friends are Jewish. So I didn’t think of that as a particularly Christian thing. And OK, I’ll flat out admit it, as a Yid, people saying they are God-fearing Christians and yet not acting Jesusy has never been a particular concern of mine. I guess I’m just self-policing. I’ll let the Goyim handle that one, because I really couldn’t tell you what’s Jesusy or not.

No, in actuality, the thing that inflamed me most about the post was not hypocritical Christians at all but the fact that Jaron is Jewish. So the stuff about his church and his preacher and his Jesus, well, he doesn’t really have any of those. Or he’s not supposed to, one would think. For me, the issue wasn’t that a Christian wrote a hateful song; it was that he wasn’t a Christian at all! So why should I care that one Jewish guy wrote a song from a Christian point of view? Why was the central question in my mind, “what happened to Jaron????” This is the background.

A long time ago, Jaron and his twin brother had a band called, creatively, Evan and Jaron. If you are a religious Jew, that’s really the end of the explanation. For the rest of the world, they had a hit called “Crazy For This Girl.” But even before they had that hit, they were our band. When I was little, like most music-crazed kids, I wanted to be a rock star. Or marry a rock star. But it never occurred to me that that could ever happen because I was an Orthodox Jew and rock stars played shows on Friday nights and had TV appearances on Saturdays and traveled around to places with no Kosher food. More importantly, there just weren’t any, so you knew it wasn’t possible. Then we had Evan and Jaron who were Kosher and didn’t play shows on Shabbat. And I knew this earlier than most people because I worked at their first label (the one before the hit… but we did try hard).

And here’s the part where I take it really personally. When we were working Evan and Jaron, I think the person most excited about them in the whole entire world was my mother. Although not really a t-shirt person, she loved the “got shabbos?” tee we made to market them. She adored the list I showed her of Kosher restaurants staffers were given so they could take E&J out in any town. She was thrilled that the kids had a role model. I’m sort of glad she never got to hear Pray For You. I don’t think if she were alive I’d even tell her.

So I really, really wanted to know what happened to Jaron. Wikipedia has just a sentence about the new band (which is just Jaron, I think) and skips right from Evan and Jaron to that. I felt like there was a yawning gap there that needed to be addressed. The person who is always in the know about these things is Pious B, so I wrote her. She wasn’t sure but thought it was doubtful that he was no longer Jewish and that it was all just a reinvention. But it still bothered me so I called someone I know at his new label and this person said, “are you sure it’s the same guy?” I guess the Evan & Jaron backstory is not a huge piece of the marketing plan. Intriguing. I reported back to Pi to tell her I was still investigating, and she said, “I will be checking for a Jaron post. He may be a Jewish traitor but he’s still a hot bitch.” Indeed.

Later that day, I received this cryptic message:

From: Pious B
Subject: Add to Twitter

JaronATLRTL

Yee haw!
Sent via BlackBerry from T-Mobile

But I did not want to follow Jaron on Twitter. And yet… so I answered, “Oh, I don’t think so. But I’ll ask him if he’s still a yid.” Pi said, “I think he’s a MOT in name only. I always got the impression that the Evan portion of the duo was the religiously committed one, but you would know better than I.”

So I sent my own letter to Jaron, via Twitter. I asked him if he was still a practicing Jew. Now, I don’t for one minute think that account is actually Jaron. I assume it’s one of Jaron’s marketing people as it’s mostly retweets of people saying they like the song. And, in fact, after waiting a day and remarking that I still had no answer to my question, I finally got, “what question? Thanks for loving the song.” Well, I never said I loved the song and in fact I’ve never actually heard the song and don’t expect to. But I asked again. I said, “what’s a nice Jewish guy doing singing about church & preachers? Are you still a practicing Jew?” That was about as deep as I could get in 140 characters.

Finally, he answered.

I’d like to state, first and foremost, that Pi nailed it, as usual. Also, that whatever I think about Jaron’s decision to reinvent himself for the Country market, I respect this answer and the fact that he even answered at all. I’m not as religious as I was in 1998 either and would find it hard to respond to that in public, in fewer than 140 characters, and with a sense of humor. With regards to that reinvention, when I worked in the record store, for seven Christmases I had to listen to weeks of holiday music and a good portion of it was Jews singing Christmas songs. A Jew, as we all know, wrote White Christmas. I used to joke that I was going to put together a collection of these numbers and call it, “Shalom, it’s Christmas!” Let’s face it, it’s hard to make a living just marketing to MOT’s. But as I told Pi, I just wanted to know whether Jaron was doing a “Barbara Streisand sings Silent Night” thing or if it was a “Bob Dylan plays for Jesus’ team now” deal. Because it deeply matters to me and, I suspect, to a lot of girls who used to go to Evan and Jaron concerts in modest outfits.

The interesting thing, though, is that, as I said, I couldn’t tell you whether “Pray For You” is in the spirit of Jesus or not; that’s not my department. What I can say is that it’s actually a Jewish theme to wish these sorts of things on your enemies. Things like, “may you grow like an onion with your head in the ground.” Here it is on a cross stitch on Etsy. And here’s a list of some other traditional Yiddish curses. So it’s actually sort of a Mosesey thing. I once saw a documentary where someone said, “Christians never dreamed of white Christmases until Irving Berlin told them they should.” I’m truly happy to hear that Jaron still identifies as a Jew but maybe the Yiddish curses don’t translate as well. Still, I wish him well and much success on the new venture. And don’t forget, shuls rhymes with lulz. You can keep that one.

For those on Jesus’ team, MOT = member of the tribe = Jewish

Evan And Jaron – Crazy For This Girl

Last night, partially inspired by Jamie Oliver’s Food Revolution (in which he shows schoolchildren, in disgusting fashion, how chicken nuggets are made) and partially by my missing my regular meals, I made my own chicken nuggets. Now, unlike the elementary school kids, I don’t actually eat chicken nuggets very often. But I confess to snarfing down lots of Chik’n nuggets, that is, the Morningstar brand of fake chicken. That’s because, a. for Koshery reasons, it’s aggravating to make meat dishes at home, and b. I’m actually sort of partial to Morningstar’s fake meats. As to why I eat such a convenience food, I can’t really describe to you how often I mis-time my day and only realize about a half hour before I am supposed to leave that I’m about to spend the next three hours in transport and in class, neither of which are conducive to eating, without any food in me. So I make something quick which can be nuked in the time it takes me to get dressed.

But it’s Passover and I miss my Chik’n nuggets and tangy BBQ sauce snack/quick meal. So I went to my local Kosher shop and just knew that they would have pre-made chicken nuggets and they did. But even if you are like me and are well aware that all the extra costs of cleaning for Passover are built into your food, you might not be prepared for the fact that they were selling four chicken fingers (maybe about the size of 1.5 nuggets each?) for $5.15. Seriously. The mind boggles. So instead I walked away with a package of chicken breast and a box of the Passover equivalent of Shake n’ Bake which is made of the ubiquitous mix of matzah meal (or matzah mel as my mother called it; I think that’s Yiddish), potato starch, and spices. Then I went home, cut up the chicken into nugget size, and proceeded to create some semblance of what we call chicken nuggets. And they tasted fab!

Hey, did you know that you can’t have dishes made with flour or corn, like breaded chicken nuggets, noodles, or corn flakes, on Passover? If so, then you are already ahead of the Pioneer Woman, everyone’s favorite Internet recipe sharer. Now, this is not to take an easy poke at Ree because God bless her for doing a Passover recipe when she’s not even Jewish and I doubt more than 5% of her readers are. For the record, here are her three mistakes:

1. A noodle kugel, and with corn flake topping, for Passover
2. Stating originally that a dairy recipe should be served with meat.
3. Correcting herself to state that the kugel isn’t Kosher for Passover because it’s dairy and the seder is a meat meal. In fact, you can easily have a dairy seder, but either way, serving dairy with meat isn’t not Kosher for Passover, it’s not Kosher, period.

But again, hurray to her for trying, and the inadvertently comical nature was kind of awesome. No, instead I’d like to pick a quibble with the commenters. I should state right off that it’s already my pet peeve when people ewewew others’ food choices (if I had to list my top ten reasons why I’m happy to no longer be at Big Ass Record Company, the guy who said “ew, that is so gross” every time I had fish for lunch would be way up there), but it’s somehow even more disturbing when it’s an ethnic or religious food item. Maybe I’m too politically correct but those “I could never eat that staple of life those people have been eating for forever” comments just rub me the wrong way. That’s all to say that, Ree, I forgive you for your totally wrong Noodle Kugel on Passover recipe and bringing a ham to someone’s seder (really!) but I just cannot forgive your commenters for:

“When I saw the word ‘Kugel,’ I thought you were giving us a recipe for Kegel exercises.”

“this is the first time I’ve questioned your recipe sanity. I twitched a little when you dumped the sugar in the noodles.”

“Well, I cringed when I saw the peaches.”

“Sorry this one does not look good to me at all. Peaches and noodles in the same dish. ??”

“I have a thing about mixing foods together that should not be. Noodles-Peaches- nuh-uh!”

“Umm.. This has got to be one of the most bizarre recipes… LOL… not sure I want to try it…”

“No… nope, nuh-uh, negative. You will NEVER convince me to eat noodles mixed with peaches and baked in milk… blargh”

“Nastiest crap EVER!”

One person even blogged about how this Jewish custom was an aberration of nature. Thanks!

So, a PSA for an Easter-Passover morning: Ashkenazic Jews eat something called kugel. The noodle kind often has bits of fruit in it. Get over it! Learn to live experimentally like this well-intentioned yet spellingly-challenged person:

“I would never think to combine egg noodles with fruit…so different, at least to me. I need a potlock dish, so maybe I’ll try this. Thanks for expanding my pallet.”

Indeed. Remember, we grew up on hummus before PW’s readers could tell it apart from spackling paste. And look at what’s the trendy food now. But even if you could never do that, how about, “I’ve never heard of such a dish, with noodles and peaches. Interesting. Very interesting.” Someone did say that, despite the fact that I didn’t put it in blockquotes. It messed up my unified paragraph. But see how you can say, “I would never eat that” without telling an entire culture that you think their customs are freakish?

Not to mention, realize that things you eat every day would seem gross in abstraction, you are just used to eating them. Dried out, processed grain cereal floating in cow’s milk….ew! A chicken’s unfertilized egg? Blech. Have you never traveled and tasted something that you’d never even considered a food but that tasted divine? No? You need to get out more. This is one of the reasons why Jamie Oliver thinks he needs to change Americans’ food habits. But as much as all that annoys me, mocking someone’s traditions is always off-limits to a well-brought-up person. I’m not trying to be an offense collector, I just think it’s sort of a rude thing to do. I always wanted to call that guy at work’s parents and tell them they missed an important piece of parenting.

But thanks, Pioneer Woman, for being inclusive, even if your audience isn’t quite ready to expand their, er, pallets. Just don’t bring a ham to my seder.