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When the Music Stops
By Sam Glaser
Reprinted from Olam Magazine

It was perhaps the longest Friday Night service in my life. On a long anticipated trip to Jerusalem, my neo-Chassidic brother dragged me to his venerable synagogue where I was forced to endure several hours of penitential cacophony. I had heard that Pinsk-Carlin was a place where the Sabbath prayers were sung at top volume with incredible intensity. As I searched for a melody or a downbeat my feeble attempts at singing along were drowned out by the shouting of the congregants undulating all around me. I felt like a pagan; I was certain that everyone had his or her eyes on my 6’3 frame, my beardless face, my Nordstrom sport jacket.

I couldn’t shake the feeling that I was bowing where I should stand erect…I was stumbling over prayers that I have known since Hebrew school. “What is wrong with me?” I whispered to myself. Certainly this should have been a peak experience; I was finally back in Israel on this dream trip with my whole family during the holiday-filled month of Tishrei.

As we walked the trash-lined Me’a She’arim streets back to his home for dinner I couldn’t purge my judgmental thoughts. Perhaps I was subconsciously retaliating for the judgment I imagined coming my way. “How could people live in this mess?” I wondered. “Hasn’t anyone heard of building codes? What’s with these clone outfits? How many layers can people wear in this heat? And what happened to all the Jewish camp songs I grew up singing?”
Despite the protest of worried relatives back home, I had accepted these three weeks of concert dates with the hope that I would return to the States spiritually turbocharged, with clarity on current events and a feeling of oneness with the Jewish people. At this point the only clarity I possessed was a clear vision of the comfort of my own bed back in L.A.

Something changed. I can’t explain how or when. The ageless beauty of the land and the warmth and tenacity of the people began to flood my senses. I seemed to be relaxing into the Israeli day-to-day and lowering my lofty expectations. Perhaps it was the marathon Yom Kippur services (yes, I found a fairly “normal” synagogue) where for the first time I was so overwhelmed with the connection that food (or lack thereof) seemed superfluous. Maybe it was the joy that I saw in my children’s faces as they raced their Razor scooters undaunted through the traffic-free Day of Atonement streets of the Jewish capital. As soon as I stopped searching for “spiritual transformation” and started “smelling the roses,” my heart was overtaken with the unshakable joy of belonging to the Jewish People.

A highlight of my trip was the Simchat Torah celebration at the conclusion of the festive week of Sukkot. After a week of sukkah-hopping, all night jam sessions and culinary overindulgence, I returned to the Pinsk-Carlin synagogue for the morning service at my brother’s side. Suffice it to say that eight hours later we emerged from a carefully choreographed frenetic ballet in seven acts, which seemed not to have been altered since Mt Sinai. Two sets of risers, each equipped for one hundred and fifty jumping Chassidim, continuously appeared and disappeared from an unseen closet. One American friend whom I had invited showed up in shorts, unaware of the dress code. He was immediately thrust into the center of the circle and someone placed a fur streimel on his head. I watched with glee as his smiling, sweating face disappeared into the crowd. The energy was so intense that the melodies kept gradually ascending in pitch…usually choirs go flat over time but this group would somehow spontaneously drop down half an octave so the pitch could slowly climb once again. We eventually stopped for a festive lunch but not before the sun had begun to set.

At one point I had retired to the sidelines as my aching legs could no longer endure the perpetual snake of arms-entwined dancers. An elderly rabbi with the kindest face I had ever seen sat down next to me and expressed in a Hebrew slow enough for me to grasp “Shmuel (my Hebrew name,) the Cohanim (members of the priestly tribe who can’t be in the presence of a corpse) have left the room!” Assuming this was a part of the ceremony I smiled and thanked him for the information. “No,” he exclaimed, “You don’t understand…it’s because you’re sitting here like a dead man!” And with that he pulled me off the bench and into the swirling blur of bodies.

My trip could not have had a more fitting ending. Over the course of the month I had entertained audiences across the religious spectrum as well as groups of soldiers, children and seniors. I traveled the land from the North to South, Mediterranean Sea to the West Bank. Perhaps more importantly I took a journey from frustration and discomfort to the suspension of judgment and then to immersion. To my dismay I found that I either performed for the religious or the secular; never did the disparate worlds come together. That vision of oneness that I imagined had proven frustratingly elusive. Until my last show, that is.

In the main square of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City of Jerusalem I played a benefit for Kids for Kids, an organization that assists young victims of terror. Over five hundred people joined hands and danced in concentric circles with the moonlight casting a glow on the golden stones. Anyone returning from prayer at the Western Wall at the Sabbath’s conclusion could not help but join in the celebration as they approached. Among the attendees was a group of sixty soldiers on a new program to encourage secular young conscripts to have a Shabbat experience in the Old City. Elegant New York families on vacation, tie-dyed deadheads and Chassidim spun around with equal enthusiasm. For that single moment I felt the profound power of our people united. All it took was a rousing beat, a pinch of patience and an open heart.

The question is, how do we find these moments when the music stops?