In the title of his superb 1968 book on “What It Means to be a Jew in America,” author Roger Kahn called American Jews “The Passionate People.” I doubt this characterization fits most of us; but it does fit some, particularly those who have had significant influence on other lives.
Two particularly passionate American Jews died in recent weeks. Both had ties to Wisconsin, and I have interviewed them for The Chronicle. Both were and still are controversial in some quarters, and they leave behind controversial legacies — and no wonder; passionate people usually inspire positive and negative passion in others.
Of course, the most famous of this duo was singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman, who died earlier in January. But the other, gun-rights advocate and Wisconsin resident Aaron Zelman, who died toward at the end of December, had a national following as well.
Friedman, who fits the biblical phrase “sweet singer of Israel” (II Samuel 23:1), clearly inspired the more widespread love. From the time she at age 16 began teaching herself to play the guitar – which happened at Herzl Camp in Webster, Wis., according to the booklet in “Songs of the Spirit,” a two-CD anthology of her work – she was devoted to creating music for Jewish subjects and texts.
And the success of her songs surprised her, as she told me in a 1987 interview after one of her Milwaukee performances: “I never imagined my life would turn out this way.” Many of her songs have become synagogue and summer camp standards, to the point that sometimes people don’t realize that a beloved melody is hers.
Even more, her personal warmth and charisma, and her devotion to teaching, touched thousands. Her unexpected death as such a young age – she was only 59 – caused a national outpouring of grief, some of which is expressed in this Chronicle issue.
Yet her legacy is mixed and somewhat controversial. For all her influence on liberal Jewish movements, I have not seen much notice of her passing in the Orthodox community, although some Orthodox synagogues do use her music. In truth, her life and career did not fit with Orthodox teachings; she lived as a lesbian and she was a woman who sang to audiences of women and men, both violations of traditional Jewish law.
Yet even among non-Orthodox Jews, I well remember more tradition-minded cantors, rabbis, and congregants telling me how they disliked the idea of folk or folk-rock influences on Jewish worship music, clearly meaning especially Friedman’s songs. Moreover, as a musician myself, I was never one of Friedman’s whole-hearted fans. Many of her songs, including some of her hits (“Not By Might, Not By Power”), strike me as sentimental, too sweet, awkwardly written, and unconvincing.
But even the best composers write some clunkers; we love them for their great works. I love Friedman for her energetic and stirring “Oseh Shalom,” for her touching prayer for healing “Mi Shebeirach,” and especially for “L’Chi Lach,” a straight-to-the-heart melody worthy of classical composer Franz Schubert.
To go from Friedman to Zelman is like going in the Passover seder from charoset to moror. I have seldom encountered the furious and fiery devotion to a cause that I saw when I met Zelman in 1992, only a few years after he founded Jews for the Preservation of Firearms Ownership (JPFO).
According to his family and friends, the private Zelman could be kindly and humorous; and he certainly answered my questions politely when I interviewed him. But his public persona and his organization’s literature gave no quarter to those he regarded as enemies of the right to bear arms.
He apparently could not or would not believe that anybody could favor restricting gun ownership out of a good faith desire to reduce human suffering and make a better society. He contended that because totalitarian regimes — the German Nazis, the Russian and Chinese communists — stringently restricted or forbade private gun ownership, therefore anybody who favored the least similar gun restrictions must be a totalitarian seeking to destroy freedom.
His passion often pushed him and his organization beyond the bounds of civil discourse and good taste. That made it easy for many people in the mostly pro-gun control Jewish community to dismiss Zelman as a crackpot.
But there is another way of regarding Zelman – as somebody in the line of the biblical prophets. As Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel wrote in his 1962 book on the subject, “The prophet is a man who feels fiercely… To us the moral state of society, for all its stains and spots, seems fair and trim; to the prophet, it is dreadful.” Perhaps above all, “The prophet is an iconoclast…. Beliefs cherished as certainties, institutions endowed with supreme sanctity, he exposes as scandalous pretensions.”
These traits characterized Zelman, too, and drove him to more than 20 years of work in his cause. And he found Jewish people all over the country who resonated to his message – some 10,000 of them, if his son Erik is right about JPFO’s membership.
Indeed, Zelman had some achievements in common with Friedman. Both expressed what others in the community were thinking and feeling but couldn’t say for themselves. Both created communities of people who otherwise might have felt isolated and alone.
Together, sweet singer Friedman and fiery prophet Zelman exemplify the wonderful diversity and complexity of American Jewish life. Despite my mixed feelings about the one and my disagreement with the other, I feel privileged to have met both.
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