Shlomo Carlebach yahrzeit concert

Yehuda Green (I think)

Taken at the end of the concert, after they brought the "house lights" back up--I've never figured out how to adjust my camera for low light.)

For months after finishing my year of aveilut/mourning for my mother (in June), during which I refrained almost completely from listening to music, I scoured the papers and Internet looking for a really good concert in the right place and at the right time. This was it. On Saturday night at the West Side Institutional Synagogue, Pey Dalid, Eitaz Katz, Elli Kranzler, Yisroel Williger, and Yehuda Green, accompanied by the Krohn Brothers Orchestra (see here) joined in a celebration of Shlomo Carlebach's music, in a concert commemorating his sixteen yahrzeit (anniversary of death).

We heard so many familiar and beloved Carlebach songs, others that we knew but hadn't known were his, still others of which we'd heard the melody but couldn't figure out from where in the Tanach/Bible or siddur/prayer book we knew the words, and yet others for which we couldn't quite catch the words. Everyone was having a grand time singing along, clapping, and dancing.

Dr. Elli Kranzler, who has wisely "kept his day job" (as the saying goes) as a psychiatrist when he's not playing gigs or acting as baal tefillah (prayer leader) at the Hebrew Institute of Riverdale, told a tale that he couldn't remember who'd told him. According to the story, Rabbi Carlebach told somone that, when he died, he wanted to meet Mozart. "But Mozart wrote symphonies, concertos, masses and operas. What will you talk about?" "I'm going to tell him that I wrote Mi-Chamocha." "Which one?," Dr. Kranzler asked, and then sang snippets of three different versions of Mi-Chamocha all composed by Carlebach.

This became a running theme, as Yisroel Williger proceeded to sing snippets of so many versions of "Oseh Shalom" composed by Carlebach that I lost track of the number. He wrote something like six (?) different versions, which means that, apparently, most of the versions of Oseh Shalom that I know are Carlebach tunes, a pleasant surprise to me.

After dancing I don't know how many rounds with a circle of women, I finally kicked my husband out of the women's section--it was a mixed-seating concert--and sent him to the men's section to do some dancing himself, lest he miss the fun. When I went forward to see whether I could spot him among the dancers, he waved to me to "come on down." Much to our surprise, he'd run into a Russian couple (originally from Moscow) who davven/pray at our synagogue on Yom Kippur every year and whom he helps find the place in the Russian machzor (holiday prayer book). They'd met Carlebach in Moscow, and he'd been very helpful to them when they'd first come to the US.

What a wonderful time we had! Apparently, I don't even know how much Carlebach music I know, and there's plenty more that I have yet to learn.

I also learned that I needed another hat. Since my husband insisted on wearing a sports coat and dress pants instead of jeans, I ditched my plan to wear a jeans skirt and a baseball cap, stayed in my shul clothes, and wore the same dress hat that I'd worn to a recent Chassidic wedding. As I feared, I ended up with the most over-dressed head in the entire room! In need of an "in-between" hat--dressy enough for work or a concert but not for a formal event--back I went to La-Di-Da yesterday, since we were on the Upper West Side again. Stay tuned. I'll try to find a minute to take and post photos of my current hat collection.