Pitom's Jeremy Brown on violin and Yoshie Fruchter on guitar. (Hannah Gopa)

Blasphemy and Other Serious Crimes, the latest album from the jazz-metal band Pitom, has a title that makes explicit reference to the vidui, or confession—one of Yom Kippur’s central prayers. The vidui is a recitation of the many ways in which we sin—by robbery, by lying, by blasphemy. But while the album may flirt with sin in its raucous approach, it comes from a place of devotion. Yoshie Fruchter, the leader of Pitom, is the son and grandson of cantors, and professes an abiding love for the traditional melodies sung on Yom Kippur. The songs on the album, which was released by John Zorn’s Tzadik label, are meant to invoke the intense emotions that accompany the holiday’s centuries-old prayers. The result is rich, loud, and cathartic.

For Vox Tablet, Fruchter and Jeremy Brown, Pitom’s violinist, played a stripped-down version of the track “Neilah,” and they explained to host Sara Ivry why a jazz-metal-rock take on the Day of Atonement seemed like a good idea. [Running time: 15:09.] 

Lorin Maazel conducting Mahler’s Eighth Symphony in Duisburg, Germany, 2010. (Patrik Stollarz/AFP/Getty Images)

My father was obsessed with Gustav Mahler. I grew up with the composer’s Second, Fourth, Fifth, and Ninth Symphonies blaring constantly from the living room stereo. My brother, Andy, and I were the only teenagers in America constantly yelling, “Dad! Turn that damn music down!”

My father loved Mahler’s emotionalism and range. He loved Mahler’s passion for atypical instruments: harmonium, glockenspiel, mandolin. He loved the way the symphonies incorporate snippets of bird sounds, unpretentious folk music, and Jewish ritual melodies. He loved the humor and intensity he found in Mahler’s work. Mahler’s music messes with people’s heads—the guy was a terribly polarizing figure, much like my father. Dad was a psychiatrist and enfant terrible who ran a community mental health center; he loved working with the mentally ill and loved teasing people who expected him to be a formal, cerebral figure. It delighted him that Mahler had visited Sigmund Freud, who wrote that he admired “the capability for psychological understanding of this man of genius.”

In Mahler Remembered, Norman Lebrecht quotes the 19th-century German conductor Oskar Fried on the composer:

He was a God-seeker. With incredible fanaticism, with unparalleled dedication and with unshakable love he persued a constant search for the divine, both in the individual and in man as a whole. He saw himself bearing a sacred trust; it suffused his whole being. His nature was religious thorough and through in a mystical, not a dogmatic, sense.

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(Abigail Miller/Tablet Magazine)

Israel and the Palestinian bid for statehood have dominated this week’s news, and whatever happens at the United Nations, Jews around the world are certain to be thinking and talking about it during the upcoming High Holidays. There were other big stories this summer, too: the Arab Spring, for one, and what some see as a rejuvenation of Israeli civil society by the tent-city protesters. Tablet Magazine asked a range of rabbis from across the country—Reform, Conservative, and Orthodox; from New York to California, Florida to Illinois—what they’re planning to tell their congregations.

ON SERMONIZING

Rabbi Jack Moline
Agudas Achim, Alexandria, Virginia

I’ve been at this 30 years, and for 20 of them there’s been some crisis around the holidays that demanded our attention. In 1993 when they had the signing of the Oslo agreement on the White House lawn we all had to rewrite our sermons. But there are very few things in this world that you have to consider if you’re going to be a Jew. One is God, one is Israel, and another is your relationship to the Jewish people. So it’s my responsibility when the largest number of people come together to be Jewish to raise all of those issues. People come to synagogue on the holidays for strengthening and introspection. They don’t need my opinion. They want orientation.

Rabbi David Wolpe
Sinai Temple, Los Angeles, California

The Palestinian statehood issue is this year’s crisis, but I’m not sure it’s fundamentally different from anything that’s gone before. My father began the holidays with the state of the Jewish world on the first day of Rosh Hashanah, and I’ve repeated that. And it seems to me that a great issue for human beings individually and for Israel as a country is to what extent you act on your own interest, and how much you act based on what other people think of you. (more…)

Muslims praying.(eyelash/Flickr)

The Gregorian Calendar’s date for Yom Kippur varies every year, but because it always lasts for a 25-hour period (sundown to sundown, give or take), the fast always lasts the same amount of time. Not so for Muslims and their holiday of fasting, the holy month of Ramadan. Because the fast takes place solely during daylight hours (albeit for every day of a full month), the period of time during which an observant Muslim must go without food or drink can change depending on when in the year Ramadan falls. And because Ramadan can fall at any time of the solar year—depending on the moon, it falls back roughly 11 days each year—that means that some Ramadans are more difficult than other Ramadans.

A case in point in this year. Ramadan begins today and lasts through the 29th, and while the days won’t be as long as they will be, say, next year, or the year after that, we are definitely talking about going well over 12 hours without sustenance—for 30 straight days!

In an ecumenical spirit, here is some Yom Kippur fasting advice that our Muslim friends may find helpful (caffeine suppositories optional).

Related: Fast Food [Tablet Magazine]

A Shabbat table, with a random Buddha.(TikkunGer/Flickr)

What makes this Yom Kippur different from all other Yom Kippurs? Or at least approximately 6/7th of all others? This year, the Shabbat Shabaton—the Sabbath of Sabbaths—falls on, well, Shabbat. Of course, because the yom tov is already, in a sense, Shabbat, it does not really make for a hugely substantial change to the day (unlike when, say, Rosh Hashanah falls on Shabbat, and services seem truly endless). However, according to Rabbi Daniel Nevins of the Jewish Theological Seminary, there are a few changes. (more…)

(Collage Tablet Magazine; doughnut photo MorgueFile; Chelsea Clinton photo Justin Sullivan/Getty Images.)

I’m writing this column at four in the morning, and not because I’ve decided to pursue a second career as an insomniac or a vampire. It’s just a nagging case of jetlag that I hope will pass by Kol Nidre. It’s hard enough to ask forgiveness for all the bad things I did last year even without my screwed-up biological clock waking me long before dawn.

I have to admit that the jetlag this time was way beyond physical and made the return to Israel especially difficult. After three weeks in Urbana, Illinois, with my wife and son, the American Midwest had penetrated deep into our bones through the grease in the food, the bagel-shaped billboards, and the ubiquitous supermarket specials (otherwise it’s hard to explain why Lev, my five-year-old, insists on presenting himself as “only $4.99”).

My wife’s jetlag manifests itself in the new daily routine she developed in consultation with the unusually sticky menu of the Urbana IHOP. Back in Tel Aviv, she continues to begin her morning with pancakes and strawberries, goes on to a lunch of French toast slathered in butter, and rolls up to a dinner of Nutella crepes topped with whipped cream and a side of onion rings. If she lumbers in at this rate, very soon Lev and I will be able to leave our apartment and go to live inside her. (more…)

Over the last few months, Tablet Magazine’s art department has been investigating new trends in Judaica, inviting artists and designers to share their work with us. We’re not quite ready to reveal our findings just yet, but there’s one piece that struck our fancy and seemed particularly well-suited to the season: a xylophone bearing the words of the central Yom Kippur prayer Ashamnu. The piece, which takes its name from the Hebrew word for confession, is called Vidduy: The Musical and was created by Dov Abramson, a 35-year-old American-born, Israel-raised graphic designer.

“Being primarily a conceptual instrument, Vidduy: The Musical is not tuned to a standard key but does play tonal music when struck,” Abramson wrote in an email. “This is aligned with the concept of a ‘free-form’ confession, and holds a vague reference to the famous Hasidic tale of the boy who brings his flute to synagogue (even though it is prohibited to play, or even carry, a musical instrument on the holiday)—and the Rabbi says that this child’s flute sounds reached higher in the heavens than all of the other congregants’ ‘standard’ prayers.”

On a purely visual level, Vidduy appears austere and unadorned when compared with much of what’s offered in today’s Judaica shops. “The vast majority of people still equate Jewish visuals with a very limited spectrum of design, form, color, and type,” Abramson wrote. “That’s why I take so much pleasure in seeing the amazement in a person’s eyes when they see a Torah pointer in the form of a screwdriver, or a Kiddush cup that doesn’t look like ‘what a Kiddush cup is supposed to look like’; and even though I consider myself an old-school kind of guy, and my work stems and feeds off of these ancient traditions, I take much pride in being one of those designers who are exploring the boundaries of Jewish visuals and design.” (more…)

Yosef Tunkel’s caricature of Yatskan performing kapores with Zeitlin as chicken

One of the convenient aspects of studying Jewish history is its 3,000-year-old paper trail—the texts and records of the rabbinical and intellectual elite allow us to examine contours of Jewish law and history. But in contrast, we tend to know less about average Jews, whose lives didn’t receive much attention in the writings of the intellectuals. That began to change in the late 19th century, when the Yiddish press hit the streets, for the first time recounting the lives of the unwashed masses of Jews in the public record. Tablet Magazine offers some of their stories, reconstructed from century-old newspaper accounts.

Newspaper readers don’t often consider what kind of behind-the-scenes insanity goes into the articles they peruse. I’m not referring here to either the intrepid news-gathering or the hysterical keyboard pounding of writers on deadline. The insanity I’m curious about has to do with the tension-filled relationship between writers and editors.

Is it true, as some writers contend for example, that editors wantonly destroy perfect copy? Or do they artfully reshape a writer’s prose into a more cogent text? The editor-journalist relationship is as fraught as that between a mohel and baby. The mohel has no choice but to snip; the baby has no choice but to cry, but he drinks a little wine and he gets over it. (more…)

Jason Marquis earlier this year.(Drew Hallowell/Getty Images)

I will be saying this to myself every year until the day I die: One shouldn’t go to work on Yom Kippur, because during one Yom Kippur Sandy Koufax refused to pitch in Game 1 of the World Series. The cool thing about this Jewish mothers’ tale is that it is actually true (Koufax’s Los Angeles Dodger teammate Don Drysdale started instead, lost the game, and told his manager afterward, “I bet right now you wish I was Jewish, too”).

The basement-dwelling 2010 Washington Nationals are no 1965 Dodgers, and Nats pitcher Jason Marquis, who is Jewish, is certainly no Koufax. But Marquis is slated to start Friday night—Kol Nidre—at the Philadelphia Phillies, and (via Kaplan’s Korner) he plans on doing so (in fact, he has in past years, too). “Your team expects you to do your job and not let your teammates down, and that’s the approach I take,” he said.

Now, look. That is not an invalid response. And for every Koufax, there is also slugger Hank Greenberg, who in 1934 played on Rosh Hashanah while his Detroit Tigers were in a tight pennant race, only to sit out Yom Kippur once a World Series spot was all but secured. Moreover, I don’t think the importance (or lack of importance) of a big game should make a difference: If you feel you shouldn’t play on Yom Kippur, then that should include the World Series; if you feel you should, that should include a meaningless September regular season outing. And Marquis didn’t ask to be made a role model (which, given his 6.60 ERA this season, is maybe a good thing!).

But: Dude. Ask your manager to move your start. C’mon. How are Jewish 8-year-old Nats fans—poor schmucks—going to learn to observe the Highest of the Holidays?

Meanwhile, check Kaplan’s Korner for updates on Kevin Youkilis, Ryan Braun, and the rest.

Marquis Plans To Make Start on Kol Nidre [Miami Herald]
Earlier: Huge Yankees-Sox Game Set for Kol Nidre