All you Need is Yiddishkeit

As usual, the Google Analytics numbers for my national Examiner.com site tend to be modest, with most of the activity coming from San Francisco. Nevertheless, I was glad to see that my recent article about Hamidbar Medaber (the desert speaks), the latest release in John Zorn's Radical Jewish Culture series provided those numbers with a bit of a bump. My guess is that there are many who would view "radical Jewish culture" and an oxymoron (and many of them would probably be of the Orthodox persuasion). On the other hand I was fascinated the first time I encountered a recording by Hasidic New Wave and could not resist the opportunity to write about their "complete works" when Zorn released the collection as a boxed set. (I also could not resist using a Levy's ad ("You don't have to be Jewish") to illustrate that article. I suspect that my interest has a lot to do with my conviction that Yiddishkeit is more an American phenomenon, rather than a Jewish one (and certainly not an Israeli one). I see it as a unique approach to identity that has seen me through a lot of difficult circumstances, and I could not be more pleased when that approach finds its way into my experiences of listening to music.