(54Mosaics)
Click Play to hear this week’s Song/Answer to the 54Mosaics question for v’Zot haBracha, NotReady4U2Die (Eulogy for a Shepherd).
As this song reflects the completion of this past year’s Torah cycle, this is the last new post on 54Mosaics for the immediate future. We’ll repeat the 5776 cycle and add some new stuff here and there. Thanks for following along. Hoping it inspires you to make some Torah, music, and other creativity of your own . . .
Thanks to Automatic Toys and Robby Helperin for their awesome songwriting and musicianship on this one and to Kevin Feller for producing/engineering.
Question - If you want to read the question on Tumblr, click here
Photo – Courtesy of Dawn Hudson
Lyrics/Sources - If you want to see lyrics or sources, click here
Soundcloud - If you want the link to the song on Soundcloud, click here
Respond to the question or this song with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create? Join the conversation at www.54mosaics.tumblr.com.
This song was written at LimmudLA's Road to Redemption during the Slichot by the People workshop in which participants wrote and drew their own Slight. It was inspired by one of the Slight that facilitator, Leat Silvera, taught the group.
Writers: Benjamin Liebeskind, Phyllis Horning, David Sternberg, Hannah Bubis, Shep Rosenman. May we all be forgiven by ourselves and others for our wrongs; may we forgive others for theirs. Gmar chatimah tovah.
Click Play to hear the first of Shep’s Songs/Answers to the 54Mosaics question for Peach/Passover, Mah Nomar? (Who Knows One?/Echad Mi Yodeah?).
This week’s posts are dedicated to the memory of my Uncle Normie.
I stepped onto the bimah (stage) to lead services at Lenny Wolkind’s bar mitzvah. I was soaked - I got there just in time to put on my tallis (prayer shawl) but didn’t have enough time to replace my soaking running shoes with the funky-formal pair of John Fluevogs sitting in my backpack. In that instant, a cascade of conflicting thoughts and emotions rushed at me in the span of a second, as I took a breath to get focused for leading the prayer service:
What a gift to be able to participate in close friends’ smachot (joyous occasions) by leading services for them, especially on Rosh Chodesh (new month) Nissan. Uncle Normie was named Nissan. It’s been a month since he died. It took me some time to process Aunt Marion’s death too but am I going to do this here, right now, as I’m about to lead services?
In some sense, the only reason I am standing here is because of Uncle Normie. He opened the door of leading Tefilah (prayer) to me. I sat with him every Friday night for a year before my bar mitzvah and many times for many years after that, whether in person or on the phone. He taught me to layn (read torah - including some of the more geeky technical stuff that I don’t fully understand to this day but I somehow know how to do it) and to daven (lead services) in multiple nuschaot (modes). He taught me when to showboat (e.g., the end of the Torah service), when and how to introduce new songs, and when to find a popular song that everyone can sing along with. He was an early adopter of the approach to Tefilah that used pop tunes, chassidic tunes, classic and modern Israeli tunes and he had a ball with it.
Uncle Normie is the one who taught me to be intentional in choosing songs that fit the mood of the day, that reflect the values of the Torah portion or a community event, who taught me that even in moments of sadness like the one I was experiencing by finally coming to terms with his death a month afterwards, that it was incumbent on me as prayer leader to find the joy in the moment when that was appropriate, such as for Lenny’s bar mitzvah.
I didn’t have the language for it then but he was the first person to educate me on dualities and polarities and how life often is about managing them. Not only was that true of leading services but that was true in who Uncle Normie was: rabbi/cantor with a sweet a beautiful tenor and he told some of the funniest jokes, many of which were thoroughly inappropriate; loving and devoted to family but quickly willing to express his dissatisfaction with someone/something and just as quickly willing to let go of the issue.
In that moment, more than anything, I powerfully missed Uncle Normie. I missed his voice, his laughs, his jokes, his stories. He was the last Rosenman of that generation. Who would keep up his legacy? Dassy. Mindy and her kids, all good story-tellers and jokesters in their own way but none of them were lainers/daveners. That would be left to Zvi, to Eytan, maybe Maya someday, to other nephews and nieces and their kids, to me. Then it hit me. It was also left to the kids that I teach for their bar/bat mitzvahs - Henry, Eva, Lucy, Ariel, Natan, and to some extent, Lenny with whom I chatted about the meaning and context for bar mitzvah - an updated version of the schpiel Uncle Nomrie gave me about 40 years ago. Uncle Normie’s legacy would live on through them too.
May Uncle Normie’s memory be a blessing.
The first song I’m posting in response to this week’s question is a song Uncle Normie and my dad used to sing at their Pesach/Passover seders every year. It’s the Yiddish version of Who Knows One?/Echad Mi Yodeah? In theory, it goes back to our family’s traditions in Jerusalem, maybe even in Eastern Erope before that in the late 19th century.
I chose this song because I sent it to Uncle Normie a while back. He appreciated that I put all of this work in and liked the recording. He also informed me that I got some of the lyrics wrong. That’s probably because I never really learned the song; I absorbed it by listening to it twice a year for twenty some odd years and then recreated it about 20 years later.
So if any of you know the correct lyrics, please tell me what they are. I’ll re-record it.
Question - If you want to read this week’s question on Tumblr, click here
Respond to the question or this song with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create? Join the conversation at www.54mosaics.tumblr.com
Question: Shmot 5776 – Sometimes we feel forced to do things that we don't feel good about or want to do. How do you deal with that?
Source: And it came to pass on the way at the lodging-place, that the LORD met him, and sought to kill him. Then Zipporah took a flint, and cut off the foreskin of her son, and cast it at his feet; and she said: ‘Surely a bridegroom of blood art thou to me.’ So He let him alone. Then she said: ‘A bridegroom of blood in regard of the circumcision.’ - Shmot/Exodus 1:23-25
Respond with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create? Join the conversation at www.54mosaics.tumblr.com.
Click Play to hear Shep’s Song/Answer to the 54Mosaics question for Tsav, Sample Life Everlasting.
Question - If you want to read the question on Tumblr, click here
Lyrics/Sources - If you want to see lyrics or sources, click here
Soundcloud - If you want the link to the song on Soundcloud, click here
Respond to the question or this song with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create? Join the conversation at www.54mosaics.tumblr.com.
Question: Vayigash 5776 – Deep conflict and alienation. If you start with an embrace, a hug, will that help you achieve peace?
Question: Vayigash 5776 – Deep conflict and alienation. If you start with an embrace, a hug, will that help you achieve peace?
Source: And [Yosef] fell on his brother Binyamin's neck and wept; and Binyamin wept on Yosef's neck. And he kissed all his brothers and wept on them and after that his brothers talked with him. Genesis 45:14-15
Respond with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create? Join the conversation at www.54mosaics.tumblr.com.
Question: Miketz 5776 – Can you feel compassion for someone who wronged you?
Question: Miketz 5776 – Can you feel compassion for someone who wronged you?
Source: And Yosef made haste, for his compassion yearned for his brothers; and he looked for a place to weep, entered the chamber and wept there. - Genesis 43:30
Respond with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create?
Question: Vayeishev 5776 – How do you react when people mistreat you?
Question: Vayeishev 5776 – How do you react when people mistreat you?
Source: And it was that when Yosef came to his brothers; they stripped off his coat, his coat of many colors that was on him. And they took him and threw him in the pit; the pit was empty. There was no water in it.... Come let us sell him to Yishamaelites. - Genesis 37: 23-24, 27
Respond with your thoughts, a poem, a photo, a play, a song, whatever inspires you, below. What will you create?
