Now Shlomy Gertner wants some of the limelight, so he puts out his own little Tzetzel.
Here's the text of his message:
ויאהב שלמה את ה' מלאכים א' ג
Proud to say that after been made aware of the fact that
אין רוח חכמים נוחה
I've backed off and will not take part in the upcoming event.
Looking forward to serve כלל ישרא-ל
לשמוע ולהשתמע
Shlomie
What gets me is how they all see themselves as "servants" of Klal Yisroel, as if they're Marbitzei Torah or Kiruv Workers. There's also the message that "I'll be back," and that he's not giving up his singing any time soon. Then, we can talk about the whole him being in love with himself issue, as the Possuk he chooses shows.
13 comments:
I like how he wrote happily and then crossed it off.
Ok, so this round goes to the Rabbonim. But the issues and problems and underlying realities do not change.
We live in world where people have lots of free time and want to enjoy themselves. We have washing machines, packaged meat, computers and even government programs for those who need them, in America, Israel and England.
So the question is, what outlets are there for kosher fun, especially for the tens of thousands of the young and restless in the heimishe velt?
It used to be, when record players were new that people could sit there and watch the record spin and spin around on the record player's top, as someone, maybe a chazan, maybe the Barry Sisters (they were oh so Jewish and sang in YIDDISH!!!), maybe even Burl Ives, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, or Dean Martin, Perry Como, sang to us, and every shlemiel singer new the words and tune for "A Yiddishe Mama" to make our Bubby's cry and bring tears to the listeners eyes. There was even the Jewish Al Jolson a kind of transition from Chazonus to jazz singing. It was a diffent world with lots of Jewih fun.
Even listening to the radio was ok, it was all so tame. People went to the black and white movies, like the Modern Orthodox do today with all movies. Yeshiva bochurim would even take their dates to the movies in the 1930s, 1940s, 1950s and into the 1960s until the age of Elvis Presley, The Beatles, Rolling Stones and drugs and "free love" took over. Movies went from a few innocent smooches to big time EDITED, and the radio became full of garbage and nonsense. The world became full of pollution and so did culture.
So what did frum and Orthodox people do, they turned to the likes of Cantor David Werdiger, to Ben Tzion Shenker and his Modzitz renditions, to anyone who could bang out a half decent tune and melody and invite to play and sing at weddings )sometimes you can see similar fossils when some seforim stores have "sales" of all tapes and CDs of "2 for a dollar" or "$2 for for 1 tape".
Along came Shlomo Carlebach, but he bombed out with being too controversial with his center of "love and learning" in San Francisco and other funny stuff. So he was no good. Then the Miami Boys choir came on the scene over 30 years ago and people loved it. Their records and cassettes were popular, together with "613 Torah Avenue" but people needed more.
More bands and singers sprang up. With Israeli entertainers joining in the frenzy, with some Sefardim like the Piamentas and Shweky and.... now.... ladies and gentleman.... yes.... we.... have.... fully-quailified Heimishe singers like Gertner and L>I>P>A.
So as long as the "fun" was not in the heart of the heimishe kreizen the Charedishe Rabbonim would grumble and not do much more. It was easy to stop people from listening to goyishe singers and the Barry Sisters (kol isha, poshut) and people got tired of chazonim themselves (too operatic and old fashioned), as for Miami Bots choir and their huge following, well they didn't sound Chasidish and the tapes from Balzer kids or Viznitz in Chaifa were awful, so the Miam Boys Choir was no threat even with 15,000 Orthodox Jews all gutte Yidden packing into the Nassau Coliseum and big concerts at Brooklyn College and places that Chasidim don't go to normally, the Rabbonim never banned them either, even if there were lots of stories about how boys that sang for them went off the derech not long thereafter. That was still "far away" because most of the crowd going for Miami Botys was from the yeshivishe oilem of Yerachmiel Begun (he wore that hat and beard and looked so yeshivish, as he raked in millions of dollars off the backs of child slave labor taking advantage of the boys' vanities and their Moms' "pride".) So their audience was Modern Orthodox or from the more cool yeshiva world and the Rabbonim still did not openly panic or say anything because that was far from home.
But now, here come Gertner and L>I>P>A who are very pure heimish yinglish, very clean-cut with no baggage and none of the rumors like those that fly around MBD and no taint of Chabad like around Avraham Fried, so out come the Rabbonishe knives and Gertner and L>I>P>A are told by the Rabbonim of Boro Park and Flatbush that it's "their way" or the highway and that the real heimishe will have to accpet the gezeirah.
But the ban on concerts will not stop people's hunger for fun and entertainment.
This is the 21st century in the modern world. It will just drive everyone underground, so that instead of having out in the open concerts, people are being driven further into "secret lives" of videos, cable TV with hundreds of channels, you can't even tell who has a TV because as of next year all outside antennas will be banned in the US, all will be cable or satelite, so people can get service on the pretext of getting a phone line and still get TV and Internet with it as a package deal. And what will the Rabbonim do then, go on house to house searches?
People will have secret parties and will fly to far off Las Vegas to have non-kosher fun, like many already do, and those numbers can be expected to grow.
All actions have both known and unintended consequnces.
It is not clear if the Rabbonim actually can fathom the unintended consequences of driving the urge for fun and entertainement underground and how that will efect the character and fiber of Klal Yisroel.
Score another one for the Dark Side.
Forgive my ignorance, but can someone plese explain to me what the halachic issue is against concerts?
A shvartze co-worker of mine was in Vegas, she came back and reported to me that she saw one of a group of my people "with them long side curls" in a casino. Is that muttar? I would imagine not.
They didn't teach us these things at the BT yeshiva!
" he puts out his own little Tzetzel"
Hey, what's the problem, it's the yohrzeit of Neyam Elimelech !
Why are you being so callous and nasty to Shloime Gertner?
Lowlife.
Wonder what a guy like you would say if he was in such a matsav.
But....
It would never happen because nobody would ever be interested in hearing your fake 'chazunes' or listening to anything you have to say.
Hershel you're becoming one big kvetch, what happened to you?
Mayer Fertig's Article about the ban etc.
For all those who would like but can't understand Yiddish, maybe the time has come to go for some lessons. At http://eYiddish.org you can learn Yiddish via the internet with teachers from Israel.
Hi as a personal friend and admirer of Shlomie all I can say is Kol Hakavod.
He withstood enormous pressure, and made a lot of tough decisions here. While Lipa gets all the credit in the world, at the end of the day, he should get almost as much credit. If I understand the picture correctly the producers of the concert were willing to go ahead with it and his backing out was the last straw on the camel's back that canceled the event.
While Lipa gets all the credit in the world, at the end of the day, he should get almost as much credit.
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Credit?!?
These sorry wimps caved in to the financial threats of thugs (in rabbinic garb). They deserve pity at best.
Shame on them for their lack of integrity and courage in the face of evil bullies.
I'm Moycheh on the belittling of Rabbonim, who are guilty of nothing other than trying to insulate our children against a bridge to the outside world.
After all this time and brouhaha, 3 things come to mind:
That the Rebbe in his wisdom encouraged MBD for his being Mesameach Yidden, as well as Horav HaTomim Avraham Sheyichye Friedman. I don't think he has ever used non Jewish music, but MBD certainly had by then.
That Lipe is a target because he is the most subversive, precisely because he never took on a target among the "leadership", rather addressed real regular Jewish life in his songs. After all, have you seen a Kol Koreh and ban on "handeling" during davening?
That the Baal Shem Tov on gave permission to their talmidim to create new Jewish songs based on non Jewish ones, thus elevating them to kedushah. Never mind that all of our chazonus is opera based, which means church music based.
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