The Music of Rebellion

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Abraham, Amsterdam, archeologist, Arthur Rubinstein, Avraham, Baruch Spinoza, Beit Midrash, Bible, Concerto in D minor, consumerism, David Cardozo Academy, Glenn Gould, Halacha, Inquisition, Jews, Karl Richter, kosher, Marrano, matzah, Mitzvah, Moses, Moshe Rabeinu, Mount Sinai, Nathan Lopes Cardozo, National Socialists, Nazis, philosophy, Protestant, Shabbat, Shlomo Rodrigues Pereira, synagogue, Talmud, Torah, Winston Churchill, yarmulke

Winston Churchill once sent a very long letter to a friend. At the end he wrote: I am sorry but I had no time to write a short one.

It takes eighteen minutes to bake a matzah and it comes out flat. JDOV gave me twelve minutes to speak about my life and my love for Judaism and told me that it must sound like Bach’s Concerto in D minor (BWV 1052).

So here we go.

But let’s first listen to Bach.

I was born in 1946 in Amsterdam, by breech delivery. It was very painful. My mother endured it with iron strength. We nearly did not make it. It was the same iron strength that she showed when she saved the lives of all of my father’s family, all Jews, from the hands of the Nazis.

My parents were a mixed marriage: my father Jewish, my mother not.

These two facts – breech delivery and being born from a mixed marriage – set the stage for my life. I see everything upside down and always as an in-outsider. I see great beauty where others see only the ordinary. I see problems where others believe that everything is fine. For me, the average is astonishing.

Our name is Lopes Cardozo. That is a real Jewish name – not Goldstein or Rabinowitz. Those are “goyishe” names.

On my father’s side we come from Spain and Portugal, after the Inquisition, in 1492. We are anusim, Marranos. Our forefathers were raised as Christians, and only in Holland could they start to live a Jewish life again.

My father was a very proud Jew. He could not stop speaking about it. But it had no religious meaning.

My mother lost her parents when she was very young and moved in with my father’s family, so she grew up in a strong, secular, socialistic, but culturally very strong Jewish family and society. Friday night was holy, with lots of delicious food, although they were as poor as church mice. They did not eat kosher, but no treif meat would ever enter the house. Jewish expressions, customs, and jokes were the daily language.

My father was an ardent admirer of Spinoza, the great Jewish philosopher in Amsterdam in the seventeenth century who walked out on Judaism and was banned by the rabbis. It is the most well known Jewish ban ever. It made him world famous; I am still trying to get a similar rabbinic ban, but to no avail. It would considerably raise the sale of my books.

Spinoza got me thinking. He attacked the Jewish tradition vigorously. There is no God, he said, at least no biblical God. The Torah is not divine, not godly. In fact, it is primitive and nearly meaningless. Judaism is a lot of nonsense, he declared. And so I wanted to know what he was attacking. Why did he have no good word for the Jewish tradition? And what is this Jewish tradition actually all about?

So I started to read without end, speaking with rabbis – Orthodox and Reform; philosophers – religious and non-religious; as well as atheists and believers.

To make a long story short: I became so fascinated with the Jewish tradition that I went to the chief rabbi of Amsterdam, Chacham Shlomo Rodrigues Pereira, and told him to convert me, since I was the child of a mixed marriage – and so he did.

I was sixteen. Many years later my mother also converted, after I convinced her of the beauty of Judaism. My parents got married three months before I was married to a very nice lady sitting here in the audience – all by the same rabbi in the Sephardic Synagogue in Amsterdam.

I learned twelve years in Chareidi yeshivot, and I have a Ph.D in Philosophy. I love yeshivot, but I never felt that they gave me the full picture. Judaism is much greater than what yeshivot teach.

Let me tell you what happened to me when I was learning in yeshiva. A non-Jewish friend came to visit me and asked to see the Beit Midrash. So I put a yarmulke on his head and told him to come in. He expected a large hall with all the students whispering, like in a university library.  But what did he encounter? Three hundred young fellows walking around nervously, shouting at each other as if the world was coming to an end.

In total shock, he asked me. “What is this, a demonstration against the Queen of England?” ”No,” I said, “they are discussing what God actually said three thousand years ago at Mount Sinai.” “You still don’t know?” he asked. “No,” I said. “Indeed, we still don’t know, and that’s why we are still alive after four thousand years, and because of that we outlived all our enemies. A tradition that keeps arguing with itself will stay alive and grow.”

Now listen to Johann Sebastian Bach.

It is God speaking to us in music – with so many options for how to play it, without end. Like the rabbis speak about God’s words with so many interpretations. Remember Glenn Gould, Richter, Arthur Rubinstein and so many others. Such were Abaya, Rava and many other sages in the Talmud – each one playing totally different music, but simultaneously, with strict adherence to the music notes, to rigid rules of musical genius. An iron fist, and an uncompromising dedication to detail, resulting in a phenomenal outburst of emotion.

That, my dear friends, is what happened at Sinai. God gave heavenly musical notes at Sinai for us to play on our souls. Strict notes, but to be played with infinite passion. To listen to Bach is like being struck by an uppercut under the chin and staying unconscious for the rest of the day. And so it is with the Torah. It is like an archeologist forced to go to rock bottom in search of all the hidden possibilities; to exert himself in order to unearth them and find infinite treasures.

God owes a lot to Bach. He put God in the center of our world. Where would God be without Bach?

But Bach’s music is more than that. It is a rebellion. A rebellion against all earlier forms of music. Against making music sterile, stagnated, boring and flat. It opened new dimensions that people did not want to see or hear.

The same is true about Judaism. It is a religious protest against complacency, spiritual boredom and mediocrity.

Religion means to live in utter amazement, in astonishment. To live like Bach. To walk around in total wonder. And to know what to do with that wonder. To translate it into deep feelings and the solid side of the human deed: The Mitzvah, the Halacha.

Halacha teaches us how to live life in utter amazement. Just as Bach did.

After Moshe Rabeinu [Moses], Bach was the greatest halachist who ever lived in modern times – the iron fist, the heavenly explosion, the rebellion and the strict adherence to rules and detail.

And what did we do with Judaism? We denied Bach’s music to play the central role in Halacha any longer. And so we made it flat and boring.

We tell our children to obey, to conform, to fit in. Not to disturb the establishment. Not to challenge religious and secular beliefs. And by doing so, we have nearly killed Judaism.

Eating kosher is a rebellious act. An act of disobedience against consumerism that encourages people to eat anything as longs as it tastes good. When we go to synagogue, it is a protest against man’s arrogance in thinking that he can do it all himself. Observing Shabbat is an attack on society in a world that believes our happiness depends on how much we produce.

Avraham [Abraham] was the first ultimate rebel who destroyed idols. And so were the prophets.

And so is the Torah – a rebellious text declaring war on a world that has still not learned how to live a spiritual life of incredible greatness while standing firm with its feet on the ground.

And so are we Jews. To be a Jew is to forever swim against the mediocrity of this world. We are a nation of protestors. We are the real protestants. But we forgot who we are.

And therefore I decided to become religious. I love rebellion and spiritual war. I can’t live in boredom.

I will continue to play Bach, the rebellious man of Halacha who introduced me to God and the Torah.

So, just listen to Bach and hear the music of the Jewish tradition.

Nathan Lopes Cardozo – David Cardozo Academy

Petula Clark Reflects

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Civil Rights Movement, Claude Wolff, Dalida, Downtown, Finian's Rainbow, Fred Astaire, French, George VI, German, Give Peace a Chance, Harry Belafonte, Here Come the Huggetts, Italian, Julie Andrews, Lady Gaga, Lost in You, National Broadasting Company, Norma Desmond, ohn Lennon, Paris, Petula Clark, Polygon Records, radio, Reflections, Royal Albert Hall, Shirley Temple, Spanish, Sunset Boulevard, television, Tony Hatch, Trevor Nunn, Vogue Records, Welsh, Winston Churchill, Yoko Ono

Petula Clark

On Petula Clark‘s latest album Lost in You is a track called Reflections. The music is by Bach [BWV 208] and the lyrics by Petula herself. They hark back to a time when she roamed barefoot in the Welsh mountains near the home of her grandparents with whom she spoke Welsh. They were the years before she was famous, before the British public claimed her as “our Pet” – which means they are very distant indeed.

Fame came to Petula at the tender age of nine when she was “discovered” singing during an air raid on a wartime Forces broadcast in 1942. At eleven she was singing at the Royal Albert Hall and by her teens she was a radio star. Nicknamed the “singing sweetheart,” she performed for King George VI, General Montgomery and Churchill. It was, in her words, a “weird” childhood. “But I wasn’t unhappy. I loved singing because when I sang I didn’t feel so shy. My life wasn’t all showbiz. My sister and I stayed for months at a time with our grandparents in their stone cottage [in Abercanaid, near Merthyr Tydfil] with no electricity and I just loved it. What’s a normal childhood anyway? And let’s not forget, it started me on a very good career.”

Indeed so. Hers has spanned more than seventy years, four continents and just about every performance medium – radio, television, film, recording and stage. She has sold seventy million records and is the most successful female artist the United Kingdom has ever produced. A month off her eighty-first birthday she has just embarked on a ten-date British tour.

After seven decades at the top she has very firm ideas about how she wishes to present herself. The one subject guaranteed to incur her wrath is age. Even over a bad phone line the frostiness is palpable.

“It’s offensive and it’s rude and people keep ramming it down your throat,” she says. “I said to my agent the other day, ‘Is this how it’s going to be now – age becomes the reason for an interview?’ I don’t think about my age and I don’t care about anyone else’s. It’s about doing what you do well and about learning and progressing. I’m still learning. I don’t ever think I know how to do this.

“When I was a child I had no nerves at all. That certainly isn’t true nowadays because more is expected of me. But every time I go on stage I think ‘tonight I’m going to get found out.'”

Point taken. But isn’t a performer still working and at the top of her game at eighty something to be celebrated? After all, touring is arduous for anyone.

“I don’t find it arduous. Things are taken care of and you have a lot of laughs. I’m seeing parts of the country I haven’t seen for years. I really love touring and it’s not as if I’m doing a world tour like a rock band.” Oohhkaay.

Her career divides easily into chapters. In the Forties she was Britain’s answer to Shirley Temple, singing in her own TV shows and acting in films such as Here Come the Huggetts. In the Fifties her father Leslie – whose own showbiz dreams had been scotched by his parents – formed record label Polygon Records to manage Petula’s burgeoning recording career.

She was doing well in Britain when a French promoter invited her to perform at the Olympia in Paris in 1957. After much persuasion she agreed and her life changed for ever.

“I wasn’t keen to go. I couldn’t even say hello in French and I thought France smelled of garlic. I was so English. But they kept calling me, saying there was this French performer called Dalida who was copying my records and I must come over to ‘defend’ my songs. They nagged me into it. I did one performance – not very well because I had a cold – and they went crazy.”

As a result Vogue Records in Paris wanted to discuss her recording for them. During the meeting the next day the lights went out and someone came in to change the bulb. When the light came back on the bulb-changer was revealed to be Claude Wolff, the company’s very good-looking PR man. It was a coup de foudre, love at first sight.

“That was it,” says Petula. “I didn’t care about having a career in France. He was my motivation.” And was it the same for him? “Well he had a girlfriend at the time which made things a bit complicated but yes, apparently it was.”

Neither spoke the other’s language – “We had rather halting conversations” – but in 1961 Claude and Petula married. They lived in France because it was easier for her to work there than for him to work here. Moving to France also enabled her to break away from her father. She had found fame and fortune as a child and he wanted her to remain one, whereas to the French she was a sexy young woman.

Her fame soon spread beyond France to other French-speaking territories and throughout Europe. As well as French, she recorded in German, Italian and Spanish.

Everything changed again in 1964 when songwriter Tony Hatch played her a few bars of a song inspired by his first trip to New York. It was still unfinished but Petula liked it. The song was Downtown. It became a worldwide hit (it is still her best known song) and launched her into what was arguably her golden age. America couldn’t get enough of her and she made TV history there.

During a duet with Harry Belafonte for her own “special” for NBC, she took hold of his arm. The sponsors were horrified by this inter-racial affection and demanded a retake. Petula and Claude not only refused, they also ensured all other takes were destroyed, leaving only the touching take. “This was 1968. The Civil Rights Movement was in full flow and they were worried about selling cars!” she says, still exasperated.

In the same year she became the last woman to dance on screen with Fred Astaire when they starred in Finian’s Rainbow and in 1969 she hung around with John Lennon and Yoko Ono during their “Bed-in” and sang on Give Peace a Chance.

By then Petula also had two young daughters – Barbara and Kate – who stayed in Europe with their father while their mother was working in America. Recently she spoke of the guilt she still feels at having left them so much.

“I tried hard to be the perfect mother, the perfect wife and a great performer. I thought I could do it all but it can’t be done. I had a good stab at it but being a parent and married is a full-time job. And you married is a full-time job. And you don’t turn your back on America.” For their part her children assured her there is nothing to forgive.

Nonetheless she scaled down her workload in the mid-Seventies after the birth of her son Patrick. But she and Claude had drifted apart. They separated in the Eighties but have never divorced and remain close. She admits to having “someone special” in her life now but declines to elaborate.

The next chapter of her career surprised even Petula when Trevor Nunn asked her to play Norma Desmond in the stage production of Sunset Boulevard.

“At first I said ‘no way’. Then I asked ‘What do you think I can bring to it?’ and he said, ‘Vulnerability and humor.’ He broke me down.” She has now played Norma longer than anyone else. “I’ve always played nice people so it was great fun to play a bitch!” Whom does she admire among today’s artists? “There are many great women out there but I’m certainly not in the same business as Lady Gaga.”

Unlike many of her pedigree she is not dismissive of X Factor and its wannabes. Then again her own success came more or less overnight. The difference is that hers has never stopped.

Unlike fellow child star Julie Andrews she has yet to be made a dame. “I don’t think I care. What’s important is doing your job well. When I go out on stage I still ask myself ‘do I really know how to do this?'”

Anna Pukas – Daily Express