H I G H H O LY D AY I S S U E
KE H I LAT H JESH UR UN BULLETIN
VOLUME LXXXVIII, NUMBER 1
SEPTEMBER 5, 2018
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25 ELUL 5778
New Jews With an Old Song BY RAB B I C H A I M S T E I N M E T Z
O
NLY IN ISRAEL COULD THERE BE AN ORGANIZATION LIKE KOOLULAM. IT DESCRIBES ITSELF AS A “SOCIAL-MUSICAL INITIATIVE AIMED AT BRINGING
TOGETHER PEOPLE FROM ALL CORNERS OF THE DIVERSE, MULTI-CULTURAL ISRAELI SOCIETY. OUR IDEA IS TO STOP EVERYTHING FOR A FEW HOURS AND JUST SING – TOGETHER...” THEIR PERFORMANCES FEATURE A DIVERSE GROUP OF ISRAELIS
IN THI S I SSU E SERMON BY RABBI STEINMETZ
1
SERMON BY RABBI WEINSTOCK
4
SIMCHAT TORAH CHATANIM
6
COMMUNITY NEWS
8
UPCOMING EVENTS
13
CLASSES
18
THINGS TO KNOW
20
BNEI MITZVAH
23
WITHIN OUR FAMILY
25
HOLIDAYS
30
FALL SHABBAT CALENDAR
32
from every ideology and religious background. Hundreds of people volunteer to sing together, precisely because they know they are different from each other, yet at the same time, very much the same.
“Alive, alive, alive - Yes, I’m still alive! This is the song which grandfather Sang yesterday to father And today I [sing] I’m still alive, alive, alive The people of Israel live”
For Yom HaShoah, Koolulam produced a unique sing along. Partnering with Beit Avi Chai and Zikaron BaSalon, a group of 600 Holocaust survivors and their families sang Ofra Hazah’s hit song “Chai”1, which has the following chorus:
The video of this sing along was highlighted in Jewish media across the world. But the media accounts left out a significant point: “Chai” was actually composed in response to the Holocaust. It was written by Ehud Manor, the famed Israeli composer, to be performed by the Israeli entrant in the 1983 Eurovision contest in Munich, Germany. Manor wanted to declare, before the German nation and the entire world, that we, the Jewish people, were still alive. When the song was performed, the backup singers all wore yellow, the color of the hated yellow star. Manor recounts how he was emotionally overwhelmed when the singers sang the words “Am Yisrael Chai” on the German stage.
חי, חי,חי.. . אני עוד חי, כן זה השיר שסבא שר אתמול לאבא . והיום אני
,חי, חי, אני עוד חי ….עם ישראל חי
1 You can watch it on youtube at youtu.be/Vuh1-jDi7Qw
The very existence of this song forces us to wrestle with a mystery: How is it that “Am Yisrael Chai?” How did the weaklings of exile find their way to redemption after 1,900 years? What continued on page 2