With 2014 ringing in a New Year promising more rumblings of discontent and disagreement among various segments of Klal Yisroel, it was interesting for me to find this old post from 2008 about the threatened cancellation of a Lipa Schmeltzer concert to have taken place at Madison Square Garden, which he dubbed, “The Big Event.” The concert was ultimately cancelled.
To me, Schmeltzer’s concert debacle, and indeed Lipa Schemelzer himself, represent the tension in the haredi community between pushing 21st century boundaries and maintaining old norms. This is true on both sides of the argument. While Lipa and his followers promote exploring new creative horizons in Jewish entertainment, those against visiting these new vistas want to pull back the reigns on such journeys in ways previously unseen. Before 2008, there had been some distant grumblings in America (louder in Israel) about Jewish musicians crossing the line and disguising secular niggunim with Jewish lyrics. However, never before “The Big Event” concert had there been such a decisive smack down by the powers that be for Jewish musicians and music lovers alike.
Those of you who have been hibernating from the Jblogosphere the past week may have missed the Lipa Schmeltzer/Big Event Concert story. Basically, the current king of the Jewish music jungle, Lipa Schmeltzer, has been deemed too wild by certain factions of the orthodox community. Furthermore, these factions believe that current Jewish music has become goyified (my word, not theirs). Songs that stem from non-Jewish melodies, even if the words and taam have been changed to elevate their kiddusha, are deemed inappropriate for kosher Jewish entertainment. Concerts have taken on an air of such frivolity that people might, Chas Vesholom, Numa Numa right over the mechitza in the concert hall!
The Big Event Concert is scheduled to be held at Madison Square Garden on March 9, 2008. Due to the concerns of community members and rabbanim, this concert and future Jewish music concerts have been banned by a group of about 35 rabbanim. They also prohibit people from hiring any performer who partcipates in the Big Event Concert. Lipa Schmeltzer, after long consultation with his rav and family decided to pull out of the concert. As of now, it isn’t clear whether the entire concert will be cancelled. I am not going to rehash the story and reactions at length, Gruntig has a good synopsis that includes a radio interview with the concert producer, Sheya Mendlowitz.
I had read an amazing article by Marc D. Stern, entitled, “On Constructively Harnessing Tensions Between Laity and Clergy.” After reading opinions about the concert ban and discussing the issue with my husband and best friend, I remembered Stern’s article and it gave me pause. Trying to eliminate the emotional reaction to the particular situation at hand, the piece makes me think about the issue that’s larger than the concert. Both Schmeltzer and Mendlowitz pleaded with outraged fans not to bash the rabbanim who called for the ban. The negative reaction has been overwhelming. It could be because many of the concert ticket holders affected are not talmidum of the rabbanim who forced the issue. It could be that many are followers of the various rabbanim, but still feel that they made an unfair and uninformed decision.
In his article, Stern writes,“Tension between the laity and the rabbinate is not a new phenomenon. It existed in Talmudic times—as for example in Rabbi Akiva’s reminisces about his feelings towards scholars when he was not yet one and, in the same discussion, of the reciprocal hostile feelings of scholars towards non-scholars….The rabbis insisted that any talmid chacham who has no enemies cannot be a true talmid chacham—presumably because he is not fulfilling his function of rebuking those whose religious observance falls short.”
On the one hand, we complain about rabbis who are “in the back pocket” of wealthy baal bateim. The “buy-a-psak” variety, if you will. We demand integrity from our poseks. On the other hand, if the poseks make an unpopular decision, we are quick to criticize and wonder why they don’t cater to the desires of the majority.Many arguments against the concert ban are based on the premise that the rabbanim who signed the decree were either unaware of what they were signing or that their signatures were copied. Either scenario implies that the rabbinic leadership are a bunch of elderly senile rulers or that their heads are so far up in the clouds of Torah, they are blind to the earthly lives of their congregants down below.
Addressing this issue, Stern says,“A rabbinate which the laity believes is abusing its authority or living in another religious and intellectual universe, unresponsive to the intellectual, spiritual, or economic needs of the average Jew—the latter, the very failing for which Rabbi Yehosua memorably rebuked Rabban Gamliel—is destined to failure. This is not hyperbole; it was just such a reaction that characterized the broad rejection of the early American Orthodox rabbinate and its European predecessors.”
Is the response to the concert ban highlighting the failing of American orthodoxy?
Stern sites the reason for the growing alienation between the rabbinate and layperson as the displacement of the pulpit rabbi as posek by the rosh yeshivah:
“Today, the pulpit rabbi stands in danger of being eclipsed by the rosh yeshiva, a phenomenon due not only to the supposed greater knowledge of the rosh ha-yeshiva, but by the fact that exposure to the rosh ha-yeshiva is now all but universal in some measure for all males during their formative years—as it not so long ago was not. (While women do not enjoy the same exposure, the tendency to spend a year or two or more after marriage learning means that the central rabbinic authority during the early marital years will again be the rosh ha-yeshiva, not the pulpit rabbi, for women as well as men.)”
What about those of us who never went to yeshiva/seminary and those of us who do not currently live within the yeshiva system? What about those of us who are not hareidi and don’t have a rebbe who sanctions our everyday activities? If the “gadolei hadorim” of our age are people we have never had any immediate contact with, how does that affect our reverence for their opinion and how we feel when their opinions impede our lifestyles?
Stern’s response is,
“A laity alienated from a rabbinate it sees—not by any means wholly irrationally—as obscurantist, ignorant of the world and lost in irrelevant and abstract Talmudic dialectic–will not have the resources to respond to new challenges in an authentically Jewish way, will not have the involvement in Talmud Torah which is, or ought to be, one of the most important hallmarks of an Orthodox Jew…..
At best, an Orthodoxy estranged from the rabbinate and rashei yeshiva will either have only a tenuous contact with halacha or will have to turn for halachic rulings to rabbis who themselves are hostile to, and have (nevertheless) little direct experience with, modern life. And with certain happy exceptions—Rav Moshe Feinstein and Rav Shlomo Zalman Auerbach are the most notable—the results are not encouraging.”
There is much more to Stern’s article, but these are the passages that I related to the Big Event Concert. Regardless of one’s opinion on whether or not the concert should be banned – shouldn’t our regard for the opinions of revered poskim rise above all else? Clearly, common opinion of our rabbanim is murky. We don’t know who to trust, who to believe, who is authentic and who is not. We are no longer a shteible society where we can knock on the study doors of our gadolim and ask them directly about the issues that frighten us. We can’t personally vouch for their characters. Our opinions are formed on 2nd, 3rd, or 56th hand information by, say, a friend who was once at a shiur given by the Rav’s uncle’s brother’s son-in-law who regaled the crowd with a first hand account of the Rav at his cousin’s seder table in 1973.
The sad thing is that both Lipa Schmeltzer and the rabbanim who signed the ban are victims of the same phenomenon. It’s easy to bash Schmeltzer when he is nothing but a comical figure in a video or a singer on a far away stage. Would it be so easy to condemn him were he our brother, husband, son, nephew, friend, or neighbor? The rabbanim are getting reamed by the same anonymous masses – most of whom have never stood in the same room with them.
Popular Jewish newspapers have turned into the equivalent of People magazine for the Torah observant crowds. We have turned into a tabloid nation – succumbing to the same phenomenon that society has with celebrities – love them, hate them, love to hate them. Are we so naive as to think we intimately know today’s Torah giants and the complicated issues they face because their names, pictures, whereabouts, and activities are so often reported on in the press?
There are arguments to be made on both sides of the concert issue – the important thing is to be able to make an informed argument. There is background and information that none of us on the outside looking in are privy to. I think it’s possible to be dan l’chaf zchus on both sides and expect that a peaceful resolution will be found.
Updated News – The Big Event Concert was cancelled according to the New York Times.
The organizer of the show, Shea Mendlowitz, will appear 2/27/08 at 8pm Chicago time on the Zev Brenner show online at talklinecommunications.com
