Tuesday, September 23, 2008

So, is This Jewish Music?

You would have had to have been living in a cave somewhere in Antarctica to miss the discussion of late about Jewish music and what shall constitute it. I'm not editorializing about the topic right now, but when I received the following link I admit to wondering just how this would fit into the new "guidelines."

The musical excerpt below is from a Chabad telethon and if you don't just listen to the music but follow the streaming donation count as the singing takes place you'll see that some people "voted" with their pocket books as to the Jewishness of the music when listening to the song.

http://tolife.com/blog/?p=181

6 comments:

Lion of Zion said...

"I admit to wondering just how this would fit into the new "guidelines.""

pondering your question i found the answer in the title of a popular pink floyd song. oh wait, that song is definately not מותר acc. to the ban.

re. chabad, you're talking about the people who gave a הסכמה to matisyahu

Lion of Zion said...

and for that matter, i guess tv (and co-opting otherwise decadent popular entertainment personalities) is kosher if it's used to raise $

Anonymous said...

Lion I don't think you can call the Harlem Boy's choir a decadent entertainment group, unless maybe you are that committee in Israel.

Ever wonder why Chabad in the out of NY cities is so much more popular then the other frummie type of groups? Maybe because they keep things real. Maybe because they are more focused on kashering your kitchen, getting you to be shomer shabbos and keep mitzvos and not be lost from being a Jew then they are in trying to ossur everything they see. So they use tv as a tool for raising money? Good for them. It gets their message out, gets the money in that lets them do what they have to.

Anonymous said...

You do realize that even posting the link to this video snip would be enough to get you ossured according to those music guidelines? Of course, you are ossured already because this is a blog, on the Internet, using a computer. If you add in that you are female, are speaking aloud in a mixed gathering and are in public then you're batting a thousand. Common sense that public leaders should have? Dead, buried and long forgotten in far too many cases.

Lion of Zion said...

sarah,

"I don't think you can call the Harlem Boy's choir a decadent entertainment group"

i wasn't referring to the harlem choir.

"Ever wonder why Chabad in the out of NY cities is so much more popular then the other frummie type of groups?"

i don't mean to take away from their accomplishments (although some might question them), but it is not necessarily due to them being more popular. in many locales they are the only game in town. (generalization alert) both the MO and "frummies" have abandoned middle america and college campuses. from my own personal experience, i almost ended up spending a few years in madison (WI) and chabad would have been my only ortho outlet.

"So they use tv as a tool for raising money? Good for them."

yes, good for them, but then i don't want mussar for having a tv in the house. (harry maryles had a post a few months ago where he defended a chabadnik for serving as an advisor to a tv show that had an episode with ortho characters. i disagreed then also.)

Anonymous said...

Honestly, the rendition on the tape was not my taste. But isn't that the point with music? It's a matter of taste, of what a person finds exciting or soothing or whatever. For a committee to unilaterally decide that one type of music is more "Jewish" then another type is their imposing their taste on someone else while stating that their taste is more Jewish then my taste is.