Over at Jewschool, BZ posts a critique of the Jewish Week and the camp administration. He makes the same point we made about the music chosen. Read the whole thing. It's a well-written, passionate piece, from a Reform perspective. The Kutz camp leadership has not been inspiring, to say the least. And, to the extent that their actions appears to reflect the perspective of many in the Reform movement's leadership, its disturbing.
Here he responds to the article's characterization of Carlebach.
For the first time, song leaders taught the chasidic songs of Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach alongside more modern Reform tunes.
“More modern”??? Carlebach was writing his now-classic tunes in the ’70s, at the exact same time that Friedman and Klepper were writing theirs. And they were all doing basically the same thing — setting Jewish prayers to simple melodies influenced by an American folk idiom to enable people to join together in spirited musical prayer. Just because Carlebach had a bigger beard than Klepper and sang with an Ashkenazi accent doesn’t mean that his music is any more “traditional” or less “modern”.
