Texas A&M Chabad takes part in NYC Shabbat weekend

On the first weekend of November, the International Student Shabbaton was held in New York City, where Texas A&M students, together with the directors of the Chabad Jewish Student Center, Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff, joined over 750 other students from around the world for a weekend of inspiration and student leadership.
The weekend began with a student leadership conference where selected students from different universities gathered in Manhattan for two days of intensive student leadership training. “We met many business philanthropists and marketing executives who really inspired us with the work they do and shared many ideas on how we can be good leaders on our campus,” explained Ryan Coane, the sophomore treasurer of the Chabad Jewish Student Group at Texas A&M and the director of finance of Student Government–Diversity at Texas A&M. “In addition, we got to meet other student leaders from other Chabads on Campus to share and exchange ideas.” The president of the Chabad Jewish Student Group, Naomi Heller, a sophomore majoring in animal science at Texas A&M, also attended the leadership conference. She said, “It is amazing to see so many Jewish guys and girls who want to help increase Jewish life on their campus!”

The Chabad Jewish Student Center at Texas A&M opened in July 2007. Since that beginning in the home of the Lazaroffs, Chabad at Texas A&M now owns, and operates out of, a 4,000-square-foot facility with plans to expand!

For Shabbat, the students converged into the Crown Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn at the world headquarters of Chabad Lubavitch and the Chabad on Campus International Foundation for a Shabbat Experience. With inspirational speakers and lively atmosphere throughout the weekend, the Shabbat experience was enhanced with the multitude of students joining in. “There was so much energy, I hope to carry some of that back with me to Texas A&M!” exclaimed Chad Davis, a senior Corps of Cadets member at Texas A&M.

Saturday night, students were treated with a live concert from YOOD, a band from Israel that is currently touring the U.S.A. A surprise guest, critically-lauded rock troubadour and Emmy-nominated film and television composer, Peter Himmelman, joined the evening.

“I loved the weekend with all the singing, dancing and touring New York City and, best of all, meeting so many Jews from all over the world. We are all family at Chabad!” Davis exclaimed.

The Chabad Jewish Center at Texas A&M is independently funded by friends and families. For more information or to make a donation, contact Rabbi Yossi and Manya Lazaroff at 979-220-5020 or on the Web at www.jewishaggies.com.

Daughter of haredi tycoon launches musical career

Amidst controversy, limited female audience, Chabad-affiliated Rivkah Krinsky shifts gears from mother, teacher to acclaimed international singer

Yoav Friedman

You obviously haven’t heard of her, but she manages to fill concert halls to full capacity, be it New York, Moscow or Melbourne. Her debut album has been selling all over the world, even though she only launched her singing career after hitting 30 and giving birth to no less than five children.

Meet the new nightingale of Hasidic culture: Rivkah Krinsky, daughter of Chabad-affiliated diamond tycoon Joseph Gutnick.

Unlike Lev Leviev’s daughters, 32-year-old Krinsky never chose to go into her father’s business. She opted for the musical gene she inherited from her maternal grandmother, who was a soprano singer.

As a child, Krinsky told Ynet, she used to sing with her mother and sisters every chance she got. Even as an adult, she never thought of becoming a singer, and until recently, made do with teaching guitar lessons to kindergarten and elementary school children in New York and Long Island.

Until that one day, when Krinsky was invited to perform in a women’s event – and has not stopped singing since. It’s no easy task being a singer in an Orthodox world.

Even when a woman in this religious community makes such an unconventional career choice, half of her potential audience refrains from listening to her songs, since in Orthodox Judaism men are generally not allowed to hear women sing, a modesty prohibition called "kol b'isha ervah".

But Krinsky says she is proud to be a religious singer: “When I started performing and recording the songs I realized that this would be a challenge for me, surely in light of the significant financial limitations. Nonetheless, one can attest to the growing phenomenon of women gathering on specific occasions and that concerts for women have become more common today.

“There’s something special about singing to women only, a sense of unity and strength surrounding the space. It seems that women are looking for opportunities to bond and strengthen their common potential.”

Despite her optimism, an example of the obstacles placed on a religious female singer came in the guise her advertisement being eliminated from Chabad’s website after rabbis from Israel protested against it.

'Music is the soul’s quill'

Talkbackers on the Chabad site attacked Krinsky’s advertisement posting, saying it’s a disgrace and far from being modest. Krinsky prefers not to address the internet affair so as not to upset anyone.

She diplomatically responds, “The Chabad website personnel approached me for an interview, which did allow for added exposure to my new album and I am happy about that. However, I am not responsible for their advertising policy.”

Krinsky is the eldest of 11 Gutnick siblings. He father, the richest Jew in Australia, is known for his donations and contribution to Likud Chairman Binyamin Netanyahu. She studies at Beit Rivkah in Australia and did her seminary studies in Canada and New York, where she met her husband.

A few weeks ago, Krinsky released her debut album "In Your Hands", which doesn’t follow the classical Hasidic style, but features modern music accompanied by a delicate voice with an Australian accent. Apart from containing biblical texts, some of the songs were written by Krinsky in an attempt to reach out to a wide audience.

“My music is deliberately intended for secular audience as well,” she says. “Some people in the religious community think it’s too modern.”

Krinsky recently came back from a concert in Switzerland and will soon be off to Melborune for another concert. She says performing gives her a sense of satisfaction. “Chabad’s founder, Rabbi Shneur Zalman from Lady said that music is the soul’s quill. In many cases, music can touch the soul in ways that no speaker or book can.”

The Bob and the Baba

By Yair Ettinger

One of the show's most delightful numbers opened with an ancient Hasidic melody. Matisyahu, Daniel Zamir's surprise guest, stood at center stage and began to sing alone. Zamir joined him on the sax. Accompanied by Zamir's band, the two bearded musicians left the emotive Hasidic tune behind to depart on an improvised jazz-reggae-rap-rock adventure that mercilessly pounded the crowd for 10 minutes. Matisyahu jumped from quotes from Bob Marley and Lee "Scratch" Perry to screaming "Shma Yisrael," the cornerstone of Jewish prayer. A brief lull in his barrage of worshipful text was devoted to his signature beatboxing. Zamir's frenetic sax did not lag far behind. The guest appearance of New York rapper-reggae artist Matisyahu, who is in Israel on a personal visit, was the first surprise awaiting the crowd that attended the Saturday night performance of jazz artist Zamir at Jerusalem's Yellow Submarine club. Neither artist performs traditional Hasidic music and both come from different musical worlds, but their joint association with the Chabad Hasidic movement made traditional Hasidic nigun songs a natural meeting point. But that was the source of the second surprise: In an interview following the show, Matisyahu revealed that he had decided to abandon his association with Chabad, his hallmark from the first day he appeared on the radar of international reggae. "I am no longer identified with Chabad," he announced. "Today, it's more important to me to connect to a universal message. While they were playing on stage and I closed my eyes, I was thinking that what we do is not at all about Judaism and not about Chabad. It's much bigger than one religion or another. It relies on something real that can speak to anybody. It's about truth and memory." Matthew Miller, an American, and Daniel Zamir, an Israeli, met at New York's prestigious New School of Music seven years ago. During that period, both artists embarked on separate spiritual journeys in which they embraced religious Judaism - Zamir did so independently and Matisyahu in a Chabad yeshiva in Crown Heights. Matisyahu says their friendship began only at the final graduation ceremony. "When I arrived at the New School ceremony, I was already wearing a suit, a hat, payot [sidelocks], and a tzitzit [fringed undergarment]. It was so weird but suddenly I saw another guy who looked like a penguin. I said, 'Who is that guy?'" The meeting of penguins led to a joint Shabbat in Crown Heights and there, according to Zamir, "Matisyahu introduced me to one of the rabbis who recruited me into Chabad. Fairly quickly, I realized that it was exactly what I wanted, that it's the path, the kernel of truth, the essence." Matisyahu says, "When I was in yeshiva, I was a little lonely. I didn't know people and my former friends were no longer around. Daniel would occasionally come to visit me and we became close friends." Zamir: "It was incredible. The guy disengaged from everything for a year and a half to study at yeshiva. He did nothing else. For him, it was a hard-core experience. He came to me to eat real food." During that period, Zamir began to appear in jazz clubs and released albums under the New York "Tzadik Records" label. Miller, who eventually adopted the Yiddish pronunciation of his first name, Matisyahu, briefly remained at the yeshiva before launching an international career that placed him on the cover of Time magazine and earned him a place on the Forward newspaper's list of the 50 most influential Jews. Matisyahu has appeared in Israel several times but, a month ago, he brought his wife and two children to Jerusalem's Nahlaot neighborhood for a visit. The idea was to spend the High Holiday period worshiping in the neighborhood's synagogues in the company of close friends from the United States. However, the visit also sparked a "spiritual shift," to quote some of his friends. He devoted the time between synagogue services to studying Hasidism, mainly the Collected Teachings (Likkutei Moharan) of Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav. Two of Matisyahu's friends live in an apartment in Nahlaot with two framed pictures of Bob Marley and the Baba Sali, a Moroccan Jewish sage, hanging side by side. Matisyahu's friends introduce these sources of inspiration as "The Bob and the Baba." Many members of their community of American immigrants sheared off several kilos of dreadlocks in their path to spiritual redemption. One of them saved two dreadlocks as a tribute to his former membership in Seattle's reggae community. They hang from his temples beside a traditional pair of payot. "Matisyahu encountered a form of Judaism here that spoke to him. It was new to him and I think he liked the fact that you don't have to surrender your original sources of inspiration," they said. "There were Chabad rabbis who supported him at first but, recently, they've criticized him for continuing to appear in front of an audience of men and women and also in front of non-Jews. It's important to Matisyahu to appear before non-Jews. The advantage of Bratslav is that it's less centralized, there isn't one rabbi, and it speaks more to the soul." Chabad and its deceased leader, the Lubavitcher Rebbe, have greatly defined Matisyahu's identity and he has mentioned them in an endless number of shows and interviews. Although he was not an official representative of the movement, he was invited to appear at their conferences. His friends say that he has remained a pious Jew and that he bears no animosity toward Chabad. They say he has no intention of switching the Chabad Lubavitch flag for the flag of the Bratslav Hasidic movement and "is actually searching for freedom from a pronounced identification with one specific group." How does Chabad respond? Unlike Scientology, which considers the enlistment of celebrities as one of its Ten Commandments, Chabad refuses to view Matisyahu's departure as a failure. Yet, in the past Chabad has spurned disciples who chose to promote the Lubavitcher Rebbe's teachings by means it considered inappropriate. The most famous example of this was the Lubavitcher Rebbe's request that "Dancing Rabbi" Shlomo Carlebach, a former avid disciple of Chabad, discontinue dancing on the Hasidic leader's behalf. There was also the case of Rabbi Shmuel Boteach, who was the movement's emissary in England. He was expelled from Chabad after publishing his book, "Kosher Sex." "It is as convenient for Chabad as it is for Matisyahu," comments a senior Chabad member in response to Matisyahu's new religious orientation. "Matisyahu was never a part of the movement's conventional line. It's possible that he felt that his membership in Chabad caused him to be scrutinized. He may have received a negative comment here or there within the Hasidic movement, and, perhaps, he felt limited. I do not believe that this was caused by his appearance before a mixed audience, because [international, Chabad singing star] Avraham Fried appears before women as well. This is a case of an inflamed audience in nightclubs and discotheques where Matisyahu gets boys and girls dancing." And how does Zamir, who was attracted to Chabad because of Matisyahu, respond? "I respect it, but I have remained absolutely attached to Chabad. I hold a truth in my soul. It is a powerful blessing. When I am on stage, it is important to me that a Jew connect to his own soul. I see that as a beautiful thing. Long live the King Messiah [a reference to the Lubavitcher Rebbe]."

Yeshiva of Rock

Four years ago, I received a burned CD copy of an unreleased album. Hastily written on the disc in black marker was the band’s name, The Marcus Brothers. The CD contained an album-worth of explicitly Orthodox rock. It was something of an underground Chabad secret, the group’s core members two real-life brothers, one of them a Lubavitcher emissary in California.

The pair (occasionally joined by four other brothers singing back-up) eventually re-formed as The 8th Day and last month released their second album, “Brooklyn.” The record is something rare in the burgeoning business of frum rock. Instead of marketing a collection of revved-up wedding songs, The 8th Day takes its cues from contemporary popular music, from the dirge-like post-grunge of “C.D.S.G.” (Chassidim Don’t Say Goodbye) to the reggae-rock of “Wake Up.”

“Brooklyn” lacks some of the under-produced charm of that first bootleg, but it contains enough of its own to make it worthwhile. Foremost among its charms is the band’s melding of Hasidic pop and rock sounds. (Try finding another band that sings about bubbes with guitars grinding in the background.)

The 8th Day is at once yeshiva-oriented and musically up-to-date. Other ultra-Orthodox musicians tend to either be trapped in a liturgical-inspired genre (such as well-known Hasidic musician Avraham Fried, who happens to be the Marcus brothers’ uncle) or sacrifice the motifs of Hasidic culture for mass appeal (Matisyahu).

The 8th Day alternates its lyrics between English, Hebrew and Yiddish. This musical melting pot is what makes songs like “C.D.S.G” — with its soaring English-language chorus punctuated by a rat-a-tat-tat hip-hop delivery in Yiddish — so interesting. Unfortunately, the band’s English lyrics too often tend toward weakly formulated clichés (“The hearts are broken, how can you shatter a dream?” on “Broken Hearts”). Nevertheless, “Brooklyn” is an album well worth examining — at the very least to see the enormous influence that modern rock is exerting on a new generation of Hasidic musicians.

You can listen to “C.N.S.G.” and title track “Brooklyn” on The 8th Day’s MySpace page. See The 8th Day playing “Yarmulke Blues” here.

Mordechai Shinefield has written about music for Rolling Stone, The Village Voice and the New York Press.