The Teen Learning Program

Part of me misses teaching, part says "Good riddance." Same with working as a cantor. I did it, I was good after a few years of not being good. I proved a point; it's over.

Tree of Life Congregation where Joe, my spouse, is the rabbi, has a teen learning program twice monthly. The idea is to keep the post-bar and bat mitzvah kids engaged with the temple until they leave for college. Margalit, Joe's assistant, asks people to volunteer time and expertise. She asked me to teach Jewish music to the kids. I agreed to do it, but in my typical passive-aggressive way decided to not teach anything I did as a cantor.

I thought I would start with West Side Story, originally produced on Broadway by Harold Prince, with Leonard Bernstein doing the music, Arthur Laurents writing the book, Jerome Robbins on choreography and Stephen Sondheim writing lyrics. Larry Kert was the original Tony. All of them were Jewish, and, except for Harold Prince, all of them were gay or bisexual. My spiritual ancestors.

Kids might see West Side Story in school, but they are not given a context. They don't know that the music and dancing were revolutionary compared to My Fair Lady or The Sound of Music, which are from the same era. They don't know that just about everyone who played a part in bringing it to the stage was Jewish, and how they related to immigrant outcasts clashing with the dominant culture, also a theme for gay outcasts, especially in the 1950s.

I showed two excerpts from the 1961 movie, "The Dance In The Gym" because it is so exciting and includes Robbins' choreography, slightly altered from the stage version, and "I Feel Pretty" because that song has the most obvious Sondheim lyrics. Bernstein wrote some of the lyrics also.

I found one other work from each of the four participants. I showed "The Wedding Dance" from the 1971 movie of Fiddler on the Roof because it was Jerome Robbins' work. Fiddler is where Robbins really got back to his Jewish roots. I played the last part of Bernstein's "Chichester Psalms." The New York Philharmonic, where Bernstein became conductor shortly after the premiere of West Side Story, told Bernstein not to write for Broadway again. In 1964, he wrote a setting of psalms for a choral concert in Chichester, England. He picked the psalms and told them they had to sing them in Hebrew. I performed this piece in the choir at Temple Israel of Hollywood around 1999. I still cry when I hear this performed. It ends with Hinei Matov Umanayim Shevet Achim Gam Yachad,
a text the kids all know.

Arthur Laurents wrote the screenplay for The Way We Were, really about standing up for principles, and about the Hollywood blacklist in 1950. Of course it became a vehicle for Barbra Streisand and Robert Redford. Laurents was both characters, Streisand's radical Jew and Redford's sell-out writer. Then there was that song by Marvin Hamlisch.

Lastly, I showed a film excerpt from a 1980 stage production of Sondheim's Sweeney Todd, directed by Harold Prince. We saw Angela Lansbury describe "The Worst Pies in London."

The kids enjoyed it, all three of them, and the few parents, one of whom said the song "The Way We Were" still made her cry. She couldn't believe the movie came out forty-two years ago.

The kids didn't ask about anyone's sexuality, and I didn't tell. I gave them a list of all the Jewish people we had talked about and dared them to look them up. They won't. I only got some interest when I explained that Sweeney Todd slit people's throats in his barber shop and Mrs. Lovett baked their chopped-up bodies into pies. I recommended the 2007 Johnny Depp- Helena Bonham Carter movie directed by Tim Burton. They might look that up.

The classes were supposed to be two weeks apart, but because I was sick the week of the first class, we delayed it a week (costing me two students) and I had to teach again the next week.

Feeling guilty about avoiding prayer music, I decide to teach about Debbie Friedman. We sing many of her tunes at Tree of Life, particularly her healing prayer, Mi Shebeirach, which we do every Friday.

Debbie used to come to BCC, the temple I belonged to in Los Angeles. I met her there once and we chatted briefly. What impressed me about her was that she next showed up a few months later, ran up to me and hugged me and said "Hi, Barry!" I barely remembered having met her.

I showed a video of her teaching "Not By Might" from the Chanuka haftorah, then part of an interview with her where she explains her history, and finally a tribute movie, shown after Debbie's death, at the Union for Reform Judaism's biennial.

Debbie's contributions included changing the texts to include feminine verb forms, writing songs in Hebrew and English, often both in the same song, and writing songs that people could sing with the soloist. She said she was surprised that not everyone liked what she did. I explained that to the kids. Temples with a tenor soloist, an organ and organist, a choir and choir director, felt threatened by a lone soloist with a guitar. Although she didn't say it, having a woman lead services was new and not always acceptable. I get her music. I see why it is popular. I was that tenor soloist. I didn't want the congregation to sing along. I was happy to have my voice soar above a choir or organ (more often a piano). I found her music hard to sing and too "touchy-feely." Still, I don't think Reform Judaism would have survived without her and people (mostly women) who play guitar and lead congregations in song.

Early in class, one of the boys said he heard Debbie had died, and I confirmed that. At the end, a girl asked if she left a husband. I told all of them the truth, that Debbie was a lesbian, that she was open, but never discussed it publicly, and that she had a girlfriend. I don't know if they were ever married. The kids were cool with that explanation.

So that was it. I had three boys and a girl the second week, and one other boy on Skype who lives in the hinterlands about sixty miles away.

I enjoyed doing this, although it took lots of time, and I obsessed about every detail nearly to the point of insanity. Mid-twentieth century American culture, and in particular the Jewish and Queer influences on it, is my real academic interest, and Debbie Friedman is probably the person who most influenced how Jews in the Reform movement pray today. She was a friend, a deeply spiritual person, and a major talent. It is important that the kids know who she was.

Here's the list of people to look up from my first class. Go ahead. Look them up.

Leonard Bernstein (1918-1990)

Jerome Robbins (Rabinowitz) (1918-1998)

Stephen Sondheim (1930)

Arthur Laurents (Levine) (1917-2011)

Larry Kert (1930-1991)

Zero (Samuel) Mostel (1915-1977)

Barbra (Barbara)Streisand (1942)

Harold Prince (1928)

Jerry Bock (1928-2010)

Sheldon Harnick (1924)

(Chaim)Topol (1935)

Sholem Aleichem (Solomon Rabinovich) (1859-1916)

Sidney Pollack (1934-2008)

Marvin Hamlisch (1944-2012)

Alan (1925) and Marilyn (Katz) Bergman (1929)

Also, go to YouTube and see what you can find of Debbie Friedman.