Why Dark Light Rabbi Prefers “Jewish” Music
January 25, 2008 Kiruv, Music, Ohr Somayach/Dark Light
You were probably wondering why Ohr Somayach “prefers” one listen to Jewish music instead of classical music. Weren’t you wondering what exactly the reasoning is? The source for such a preference? What sage advice Dark Light was weighing carefully? On the one hand, you have Beethoven…on the other hand, you have the Miami Boys Choir.
I know, I know, “Do I have to choose only one?”
Music aficionados, before you reach for the Beethoven sonata…please note the following consideration of Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair.
At the other end of the scale, there are those who say that even the influence of classical music can contain the negative spiritual genes of its composers. However, it is well known that many of the great Chassidic nigunim (tunes) bear more than a passing resemblance to Russian and Polish marching songs.
Rabbi Nachman Bulman, zatzal, the great Mashgiach (spiritual counselor) of Ohr Somayach, founder and rabbi of numerous Torah communities and institutions, once told me that in every generation we have had composers who were able to extract the pri, the “fruit” from the klippa, the “shell” of impurity.
So you see, even if this is true…even if there are composers who can extract the “fruit” from the “shell” of their “negative spiritual genes,” and we’re certainly not saying they all can, oh, no, no, no, but even if that is true, please consider this:
EVEN if a composer does succeed in that, well…we still don’t know which ones did, and which ones didn’t, because we, a lesser generation, don’t have great Rebbes like they did in previous generations in Russia or Poland (and Romania!).
And even if you say they do have composers that a certain rabbi or other “borrowed” music from or was known to listen to a specific composer’s work, how do we know that the recording you are listening to is being PERFORMED by musicians who have ALSO extracted the “fruit” from the “shell” from their “”negative spiritual genes?” WE DON”T KNOW THAT! And unless it is fully shomer shabbos orchestra, no one can know that!
So it is preferable to be stringent. It is preferable to listen to haredi music only.
11 comments
You took a clear statement that classical music can be kosher and twisted it to say the opposite. My father R’ Bulman zt’l certainly considered it permissible to listen to classical music. This should be of interest to you, too: he thought that some of Simon & Garfinkel’s music was distinctively Jewish.
He didn’t care much for most modern Jewish music, including most of Miami Boys’ Choir type gruel.
You would have loved my father. Chaval you had no chance to know him.
What is your own favorite music, btw?
Toby,
I was brought up in a very musical family, and studied violin beginning at age four. I have my grandfather’s violin. My favorite music is classical…my favorite composer is Beethoven, but I like some modern composers as well. For the sake of transparency, I should note that I listen to some “rock” music as well, but not the kind played on the radio. Radiohead is my favorite “rock” band, though they have a modern classical influence clearly discernible on some of their best pieces, such as “Pyramid Song.” Additionally, Yorke’s rhythms defy the simplistic popular music constraints utterly.
I would note that OS does not seem to rely completely on your father’s viewpoint, but still insists frum music is “preferable” to classical music, a viewpoint that seems based on ardently anti-western viewpoints.
This viewpoint is:
1) Indicative of how far-right OS is.
2) Indicative of how inappropriate this institution is for secular and liberal Jewry, whose ancestors Jewish heritage, like my own, is a normative, traditional Judaism, not the harsh, anti-western style Judaism of Ohr Somayach.
Look at what they do. They use your father as a left goal post. It is not their shita. It is their furthest left border.
I wonder if a pro-western, neo rational modernishe maskilishe judaism can be treated as remotely the same religion as rabbinic orthodoxy, hasidic or misnagdish. Because it’s really much closer to the once reviled hellenism, no?
Making the split could be a big step in creating a modern “orthodoxy” that is not bound to traditional jewish fundamentalism, which, as i’ve experienced it, is really just a natural outgrowth of learning traditional canonical Jewish sources as if they were “The Truth (of g-d)” The problem is how much this is a radical step away, even from the Rambam (at least from his concessions to ruling judaic dogmas) and the Vilna Gaon.
Was the Vilna Gaon anti-western? I meet so many secular maskilim who want to identify with him as an example of a smart, rational Torah Scholar, but I can’t imagine he would have listened to secular music, or allowed/encouraged his students to, or had personal interactions with anyone who did. yes/no?
I don’t think there’s a principled argument to be made for “haredi music,” or even for the existence of “haredi music,” besides maybe those collections of chassidishe niggunim. Certainly there is no argument to be made for the stuff that comes out of the “Jewish music” factory even being listenable to anyone with the slightest understanding of how to appreciate real music. That doesn’t mean there are not some individual singers and even composers who do meritorious work, but the quality of what comes out on these CD’s (which are basically advertisements for wedding bands) is so homogeneous and awful — with trumpets and saxophones and electric guitars shoved into the most inappropriate and ridiculous places — that we “haredim” should run for the hills rather than allow this music to be labeled with the name DK labels all black-hatters.
Secular music? There’s secular, there’s secular. There’s secular, there’s sacred. There’s sacred, there’s profane. There are a lot of different ways to skin this cat.
Oy, guys – we’ve got bigger problems. DovBear has uncovered a chillul HaShem, a threat to tznius so profound as to alarm even a confirmed apikoros like myself: http://dovbear.blogspot.com/20.....y-for.html
I don’t know whether Chassidic nigunim based on any non-Jewish musical base, but if it’s Russian, then great: Glinka, “1812″.
Selebrated Soviet composers were oftenly Jewish, and Soviet Army ceremonial marches had some Jewish(non-OS)”fruit” in them…
DK, the liking of Jewish music may very well stop one of these days, as some our gedolim are considering banning ALL concerts of any sort (mordechai Ben David is a horrible influence on our frum teens, and don’t even get me started on the evils of Avraham Fried). The only kosher music that might be possible to listen to anymore is classical.
Jenny,
On some level, classical music is the greatest musical threat to right-wing haredim, as it epitomizes the brilliance of western civilization.
Actually David, you are dead wrong about this one. OS is not a thing—it is a collection of people. And myself and many others here (staff, I mean) do love classical music and highly recommend it to the students. You were here many years ago and clearly have an ax to grind, but if you fancy yourself as a journalist then the no.#1 rule of journalism is, get your facts straight. You haven’t been here for how long? Over 20 years? If you’re going to write intelligently about OS you need to know what you’re talking about.
I always liked you David. and I’m sorry to see you so filled with bitterness about the frum world. I’ve read your blogs and you make some good points, but also some ridiculus ones, like saying that classical music is the greatest musical threat to haredim. The fact that there is brilliance in western civilization is no threat. Torah judaism never attempted to produce their own Beethoven, so there is no threat at all. And doesn’t the Talmud say that goyim have chochmah. And classical music is chochmah. So where’s the threat? Answer–there isn’t any.
The threat, Chaim, is that while the goyim were producing these trayf works, at one point or another, each of them thought about Yoshke. Since there is no way of knowing who thought what at which point, the mahpid approach is to declare all classical music assur. It goes without saying that somewhere there’s a rov who agrees with me – probably several.
Do your rebbaim know you have such a liberal streak?
[...] writes, Actually David, you are dead wrong about this one. OS is not a thing—it is a collection of [...]
Leave a Comment