Also there’s joy - The Jewish Standard

As so often happens, this week there’s a theme that serendipitously runs through some of the stories in the paper.

Yes, the High Holy Days are coming, so it wouldn’t be surprising for ideas of repentance and renewal, of reverence and awe, of closing circles and spiraling into a new ones, to make themselves ever more present.

Or on a more practical level, thoughts of food and big family dinners and logistics can dance, or they can intrude. (It depends on your comfort with food, big family dinners, and logistics.)

It can be the melodies of the season, the ones that you might not think of much during the year but hit you all over again every early fall with their beauty and the memories they evoke.

This year, there was a surprise theme. It’s the joy that comes from live musical performances. Specifically, from Jewish music.

There are stories about two one-night-only performances; oddly, they’re both at Symphony Space on the Upper West Side. One has strong local roots — the creator, Howard Tilkin, grew up in Livingston and the idea for the evening grew when he was working on a performance at the Paper Mill Playhouse in Millburn. The other isn’t local — it’s the Klezmatics, who, amazingly, are celebrating their 40th anniversary.

And listen to the titles. Mr. Tilkin’s is “Shana Tova: Stories of Hope and Renewal.” The other is “The Klezmatics and Friends: Celebrating 40 Years of Radical Joy.” One is about a Jewish holiday, the other a Jewish musical form. And they’re both about hope and joy, both inside and outside the Jewish community. They are very serious in some ways, but both are also about having fun. Which is something we haven’t done very much lately. But as the holiday season approaches, even as the world darkens around us, even as we are reminded of the black hatred and evil of September 11, exactly 25 years ago on erev Rosh Hashanah, we also should — no, we also must — remember the need for joy, for jope, and for just plain fun.

We wish our reader an easy week as we move ever closer to the end of the summer and the beginning of the holidays.

—JP

Opinion