The Great Parade

I've got my first music writing gig in a while, reviewing the new Shondes album for the Forward. And while it's weird to be listening to music in the middle of Sefirat HaOmer, it's also kind of cool. The other day, right before my gig, I got a song stuck in my head ("Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, if you were wondering). I was fasting from music, but I could still taste it, so to speak -- much like Roger Ebert, who can no longer eat food due to cancer, writes about still getting ghost tastes in his mouth.

And then yesterday was Lag BaOmer, the joyful day that ends it all.

No matter where in the world you are for Lag BaOmer, either Meron or not in Meron, there are crazy celebrations. In Crown Heights yesterday, we stumbled upon a huge parade, a parade that was more like a March on Washington -- literally thousands of little Hasid-lets in bright orange T-shirts worn above white long-sleeve shirts. In the grand tradition of Hasidic events with superlative non-descriptive titles like The Big Event, yesterday's festivities were known as The Great Parade.

And I know this won't mean anything to 99% of you, but it was sort of the Hasidic equivalent of a Beatles reunion show, if the Beatles had never played on stage together before. The (Great!) Parade's three headliners were all one-namers, like Madonna or Prince: Lipa! MBD! Avrohom Fried (who, okay, isn't a one-namer, but has that star appeal nonetheless). And -- and, okay, this was a big one, especially for those of us who are under two years old -- Uncle Moishy!

The biggest show going on wasn't even on the stage. It was in the streets. Intent on making my family happy, I trudged to the end of the line that snaked outside the barbershop, where dozens of men waited for their first haircut in 33 days. Ahead of me, a bunch of people were recounting the age-old debate about whether the Lubavitcher Rebbe is really the Messiah -- since the star-studded event brought in thousands of newcomers to Crown Heights, and there's really only one thing that newcomers to Crown Heights talk about. Behind me, people were discussing the merits of Uncle Moishy's music. As you can imagine, I have some pretty strong opinions -- I'm a huge fan, and I think that Uncle Moishy honestly gets what kids want to hear. My only serious gripe is that, since my Hebrew name is Moishy, there's really no way my daughter can have an Uncle Moishy. Unless he's an uncle-in-law. But, uh...no.

The day went on. Highlight: the What Will Happen When the Messiah Shows Up float, which had a bunch of plastic action figures rising from elaborately-done Styrofoam graves, and a conveyor-belt of babies with impromptu pasted-on cotton-ball beards going around and around in a circle of resurrection. Words can't begin to express how cool it was, and I honestly pray that the real thing, when it happens, will look as cool. Low point: The petting zoo. I honestly don't think I've ever seen more depressed animals. I think the kids were picking up on it, too -- kids were prodding the giant turtle to come out of its shell, which, if you were that turtle, was no incentive to; and there was a monkey inside a cage that was alternately brooding in a corner and having a psychotic meltdown. I'm pretty sure it was mostly the fault of the booking company, and not the parade managers, but still: not cool, folks. And I highly doubt that Shimon bar Yohai's followers had giant turtles or monkeys or ibexes around when they went into the forest for their Lag BaOmer celebrations.

Oh, other high point: Bumping into the awesome singer Dov Rosenblatt (and my brother-in-law Boz, who teaches awesome classes) at a booth for Jnet. In his post-Blue Fringe life, he's moved to Los Angeles and started making musical iPod programs. I was hoping he was performing, but he was just there to have a good time. As is, on Lag BaOmer of all days, totally acceptable.

And now that I can listen to music, it feels like I should binge. My biggest urge so far has been to hear the They Might Be Giants song "Subliminal," which isn't even one of my favorite songs of theirs. But who am I to judge? Like Roger Ebert and his food memories, I don't have control over what my ears want.

Taking the Messiah out of the Three Weeks (and Putting Joy In)

Today is the 17th of Tammuz, the day when five big catastrophes happened in Judaism:

* Moses smashed the original Ten Commandments;
* The daily tamid offering was not offered in the Temple for the first time since it was constructed;
* The walls of Jerusalem were breached by Roman armies;
* A Torah was burned by a Roman general; and
* An idol was erected in the temple.

Last night was singer, pianist, and storyteller Rabbi Raz Hartman's last night in town. I got there late (I had a show of my own, and I was running late, and on low energy. But when I heard Raz singing, I bolted down the hall. (Being as though this was a fancy Upper West Side apartment building, with single-and-well-jobbed Jews all over the place, it was probably the first time the hallway had ever seen bolting.) It was a sudden rush of adrenaline, a memory of the first time I sat at his table for Shabbos. There's probably something in Hasidus that talks about the need for sudden devekut, but I don't know the quote. All I knew is, I needed to be there, right now.

And it was a joyous time. It was a really good time. I used to stay on the Upper West Side a lot, back when I was single and weird. I went to a bunch of social gatherings, and they were almost uniformly uncomfortable -- lots of "you're a professional poet? No, but what about for money?" -- and I was almost ashamed of my initial reaction that night, which was to gloat that I was the only male present (bli ayin hara) with a full head of hair.

But I pushed it to the side. Oh, there were the bankers and the lawyers and the people with their shirts tucked in and girls who wouldn't look twice at me, but I have my own girl, and I have my own job. And Raz was singing songs about rebuilding Jerusalem, and telling everyone in the audience that we need to come over for Shabbos dinner when we're in Israel. And it was so awesome and holy and joyful that it was hard to remember that we were on the precipice of a fast day, and that the next three weeks were the anniversary of the amazing city that we're singing and storying about getting ransacked and destroyed by the Roman army.

Occasionally, here at MyJewishLearning, we get in theological debates. (It is a Jewish website, after all.) When I wrote our article on The Three Weeks, I originally included a concluding paragraph that talks about the coming of the Messiah, and how the Jerusalem Talmud prophecies that the Messiah was born on the climactic day of the Three Weeks, on Tisha B'Av. It was cut out -- because, as one editor noted, some people don't believe in the Messiah.

Yeah, I'm Orthodox, and saying that you don't believe in the Messiah is like saying you don't believe in fairies -- you're either a heartless bastard or a 10-year-old boy with something to prove. The Messiah and the World to Come represent hope, and goodness, and that one day we'll have better things to worry about than bills and nuclear war.

To my surprise, though, they let me keep in a quote from the Munkacs Rebbe, who is totally awesome (and, by the way, is a cousin of our site's good friend Dan Sieradski) which closes out the article:

The Talmud says, "When the month of Av enters, one should decrease in joy." The Hasidic rebbe Rabbi Chaim Elazar Spira (1861-1937) said that, though the Talmud says to "decrease in joy," it should be read, "decrease...in joy." In other words, though it is proper to mourn, even in that mourning, we should do so joyously, knowing that better times are ahead.

That, I hope, is a sentiment that everyone can get with. Whether they're balding or not.

Baba Sali: The Messiah Is Coming

The Internet has been around for a while -- and, while the immediacy of the medium is unsurpassed in spreading news stories and viral videos of nose-picking politicians and lightsaber duels, the most emotion that's most commonly associated with retrospective looks at internet viral memes is one of acute, painful embarrassment. For every "ZOMG Look At This" that us bloggers have posted, and then proudly bragged to our colleagues that we broke the story, there are a thousand things that would have made the world a better place if we'd totally ignored it in the first place.

And then there are the truly sad ones. The Heaven's Gate cult, originally thought to be harmless -- hey, they weren't recruiting, and they weren't affecting anyone but themselves -- who were among the early Web presences and whose site endures as a testament to their mass suicide.

Okay, but I wanted to talk about something that also has elements of pathos and sadness, if on a totally different level. It's all about a watch.

The great Moroccan sage the Baba Sali ostensibly gave a couple of watches to Rav Mordechai Eliyahu, one of the most important Sephardic rabbis in Israel. One was silver, one was gold. The watches are broken -- or, rather, they move much slower than normal watches. According to Mishpacha magazine (quoted here), Mordechai Eiliyahu's son relates how the watches work:

"One day, the Baba Sali's son came to my father and presented him with a watch. He explained that his holy father had come to him in a dream and told him that he should look in a certain drawer in a certain desk, where he would find this watch. He was to give it to my father and tell him that when the watch reached twelve o'clock, then Mashiach would come. At that time, the watch hands showed twenty minutes to eleven. Since then, my father keeps a very close eye on the watch, and found that sometimes it goes and other times it just stops."

Recently, I stumbled across, this post on another blog, which reported that one of the watches had struck twelve -- that the Messiah's arrival was imminent. Then I noticed the date of the post, August 2005.

Another Heaven's Gate, I thought.

My stomach sunk. I've always been an insufficient believer in the Messiah -- our sages say we should be ready for Mashiach's imminent arrival at all times. I always want to be. Messiah stories thrill me. But I haven't been able to get my head around the concept that the world might be changing, that I might actually see my grandfather and my dead best friend again. Shlomo Carlebach says that that's the kind of thinking that keeps the Messiah from coming. But, hey, I can barely believe that Obama is president -- and there he is, tellin' off the fat cats of Wall Street on the front page of the New York Times.

So, what of it now? Well, it turns out that the watch that struck twelve was only the silver watch -- and, as of November, there was a report (though unconfirmed) that, while Rav Mordechai Eliyahu was in the hospital, his son had custody of the watch, and it had moved to twelve. Or almost twelve?

I haven't been able to find anything more recent. But, as the Baba Sali Facebook group commemorates, today is his 25th yahrzeit. And I can't think of a better way to honor it by thinking that the Messiah might come today. Hey -- there's still hours before sunset. In New York, anyway.