Coda: A Single Star
Just a little musical coda to my last post. Take a couple of minutes.
The song says simply:
How is it that a single star, alone, can dare.
How can he dare, for God's sake.
One lone star, I would not have dared.
But then, in essence, I am not alone.
Listen to Mati Caspi. Listen to the young people responding. Can any prayer in the evening liturgy move educated young Israelis this perfectly? More and more I am growing aware that Israel's modern Hebrew musical culture is traditional Judaism's real spiritual rival. Can it dare, for God's sake, to outlast the orthodoxies?
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You're just brimming with hope today.
Sadly, I don't think a musical genre can overcome a religious orthodoxy. The support logistics to sustain it aren't there. Rock-n-roll threatened the religious orthodoxy of its day, and still continues to threaten it, but only because the orthodoxy is still here. In some ways it is even more orthodox than it was Elvis first swung his pelvis and the Beatles were more popular than Jesus. But rock and Christian orthodoxy exist together today in a weird cease-fire of open hypocricy. Christian orthodoxy has even co-opted the musical genre, to a certain extent.
We are tribal animals and tribal animals are born to hate The Other. Music can transcend the hate and bring tribes together, but they will always be tribes, I think.
August 10, 2009 4:44 PM | Reply | Permalink