Black Sabbath
I went to see the Daniel Libeskind‘s Contemporary Jewish Museum – very understated either consciously or budget wise. I headed there late yesterday to see the Black Sabbath exhibit, which was an odd set up of a few bar tables and chairs with headphones and a play list all depicting black musicians singing Jewish songs. I picked up the CD anthology with Nina Simone to Johnny Mathis singing. There was a video projected on the wall with Johnny Mathis speaking about going to a synagogue with friends and hearing Kol Nidre and just loving it so much he wanted to record it – his Jewish friends were there to help him with pronunciation but said 95% of it he was able to do on his own because it was sung from his heart.
The sad thing about this exhibit is that Jews and blacks have a history together, an intertwined cultural journey yet in recent years the strange phenomenon of black anti-Semitism has sprung up, which defies that shared history. I’m adding Johnny Mathis’ Kol Nidre to my Yom Kippur ritual.