Singing Zionism!

A Baby Boomer couple hams it up at an Erev Zemer

Anyone who knows Clara and me, knows that we love to sing.  Working as a rabbi, I always made music and singing an important element in my community's worship.  Additionally, we would add singing to every occasion for getting the community together:  whether for a Jewish holiday or just a social gathering.  Those who knew us in Australia, know that I became quite active in the local ukulele-playing 'scene,' playing with a number of strum n' sing groups, and even running one myself for a while.

Therefore, it should be no surprise that, having moved to Israel, we regularly attend and participate in 'Arvei Zemer - Evenings of Song.  We subscribe to a monthly series offered by the Municipality of Ashqelon's Department for Retiree Affairs, and last night was the most recent gathering.  We have attended other series, and I'm told that such evenings are held all over the country.  As with so many traditions, this one does not seem to speak to the younger generations, who would rather go clubbing:  when we attend, we are often among the youngest people in the room.

In an Evening of Song, a small ensemble of professional musicians leads those in attendance in a series of sing-along songs from the musical tradition of Israel known as Shirei Eretz Yisrael, Songs of the Land of Israel, which express the people's longing for and love of the land and its people with all their eccentricities.  I suppose an evening can be done with recorded accompaniment, but the series we attend is accompanied by a trio consisting of an accordionist, guitarist and a woodwind player who alternates between flute and clarinet.  As with all other things in life, you gets what you pays for.  The words to the songs are projected onto a large screen, people sing with various degrees of abandon and even go forward to pick up an extra hot mike and perform in front when a favorite song comes up.

I think that Evenings of Song are a particularly Israeli institution.  I have not seen anything like it anywhere else.  The closest I've seen is in Australia, the ukulele meetups, although there the instrument is the focus and the music is a melange of Country, Classic Rock and other genres of music.  

I suppose that the closest thing in American life is the Karaoke evening, although admittedly the comparison is not particularly apt because, like the ukulele strum-along's in Australia, such events do not rest in a particular genre of music.  Additionally, karaoke is more an exhibitionist exercise whereas Israeli Evenings of Song are much more about the collective, singing together the songs of the land, with which they grew up.

I don't think that any other country has a genre that is quite the equivalent of Shirei Eterz Yisrael.  These songs, like Sea Shanty and the African-American Spirituals among others, often originated as work songs, in this case for the Zionist pioneers to sings as they went out into the fields, to somewhat ameliorate the back-breaking work they did to reclaim the land and make it bloom.  They also served as an important communal activity in the long evenings on lonely settlements, after the work was done, when there was no television or movies, and little recorded music or radio.  Finally, and many of you who have learned a new language can relate to this, the songs helped the newcomers with the Hebrew language.  They are lyric-rich, and their linguistic structure can help someone just learning Hebrew to assimilate the complex grammatical structure of the language.

A parallel social tradition in Israel - also pretty much limited to Baby Boomers and older - is Rikudei 'Am, Folk Dancing evenings.  Clara likes these, too, although this is where I draw the line because, not knowing the steps, I feel really clumsy trying to mimic others' movements.

While neither 'Arvei Zemer and Rikudei 'Am cannot be said to hold a universal appeal even within the generations that grew up with them, they are certainly unique and popular Israeli institutions that express the Israelis' essential patriotism along with their attachment to their citizen-army.  Having regularr opportunities to attend such evenings, is one of the little rewards that come from living here.