After the concert was over the rabbi, whose name is Phillip Lefkowitz, pronounced Farbrengiton impeccably Jewish.
"Judaism has no musical genre", he said. "We steal music from everybody.Klezmer music is Eastern European. Any music is a legitimate expression of Judaism." Then like the native New Yorker he is, the rabbi started tummling.
"Do I personally like the way it sounds?" he asked, shrugging. "What they're doing is using the musical medium to express their Judaism. That's how the music speaks to their time. I don't know if I could spend a whole Yom Kippur like that. The loudness is OK. Our God is 2,000 years older than the Christian God. He's hard of hearing. He needs a hearing aid but he won't wear one. He's a stubborn old Jewish man."
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Farbrengiton Review
Here. I like this rabbi: