Vampire Weekend's Surprising Jewish Stories
14 min read
Can you find the connection to Judaism in these popular songs?
Many popular songs are replete with Jewish references. Yet how often do you consciously connect their lyrics to Judaism?
Check out these entertaining and insightful references, and best to read with your earbuds at full volume.
Inspired by King Solomon and a chapter of his book “Ecclesiastes”, Pete Seeger first assembled the lyrics and recorded a version of the hit song, "Turn! Turn! Turn!", subtitled "To Everything There Is a Season", in 1959 before The Byrds applied their jingle-jangle folk-rock magic, turning these ancient words of wisdom into a hit single that went all the way to No. 1 on the pop charts in 1965. The message: Life as we know it is cyclical.
The bulk of the lyrics consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of the Book of Ecclesiastes, which is read during the Sukkot holiday.
To everything there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:
A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, a time to reap that which is planted;
A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;
A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;
A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together;
A time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;
A time to gain that which is to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;
A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silent and a time to speak;
A time of love, and a time of hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.
The Biblical text posits there being a time and place for all things: birth and death, killing and healing, sorrow and laughter, war and peace. Seeger's song presents the words as a plea for world peace with the closing line: "A time for peace, I swear it's not too late." This line and the title phrase "Turn! Turn! Turn!" are the only parts of the lyric written by Seeger himself.
"Hallelujah" was written by Canadian singer Leonard Cohen and released in 1984. The song achieved widespread popularity after John Cale's version of it was featured in the 2001 film Shrek. Hundreds of other arrangements and versions have been performed in recordings and in concert. One of the best is by Jeff Buckley.
Now I've heard there was a secret chord
That David played and it pleased the Lord
But you don't really care for music, do ya?
It goes like this, the fourth, the fifth
The minor fall, the major lift
The baffled king composing "Hallelujah"
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Your faith was strong, but you needed proof
You saw her bathing on the roof
Her beauty in the moonlight overthrew ya
She tied you to a kitchen chair
She broke your throne and she cut your hair
And from your lips she drew the Hallelujah
Hallelujah, Hallelujah
Leonard Cohen never found the “secret chord that David played, and it pleased the Lord,” but after a decade or so, he did manage to find a vast audience for this majestic 1984 composition, which also includes references to Samson, Delilah, and Bathsheba. The song has been translated into Yiddish.
Cohen addresses our deepest longings for connection, hope and transcendence.
Financial Times arts and culture columnist Enuma Okoro wrote that "the lyrics and the tone of the song seem to sway between hymn and dirge, two musical forms that could serve as responses to almost everything that happens in our lives: songs that celebrate and acknowledge the blessings and provisions of our lives, and songs that bemoan our losses, our heartbreaks, and our deaths". Okoro noted that the Hebrew language roots of the word hallelujah mean "praise God", adding that Cohen said people have been "singing it for thousands of years to affirm our little journey.”
Don’t be fooled by the lovely Central European cabaret-style melody. When Leonard Cohen sings, “Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin,” he’s talking about the string quartet that serenaded Jews at Auschwitz on their way to the gas chambers.
In some death camps, a string quartet was pressed into performance while the killing was going on. They would be playing classical music while their fellow prisoners were being gassed and burnt. So, that music, "Dance me to your beauty with a burning violin," meaning the beauty thereof being the consummation of life, the end of this existence and of the passionate element in that consummation.
Silent eyes
Watching
Jerusalem
Make her bed of stones
Silent eyes
No one will comfort her
Jerusalem
Weeps alone
She is sorrow
Sorrow
She burns like a flame
And she calls my name
Silent eyes
Burning
In the desert sun
Halfway to Jerusalem
And we shall all be called as witnesses
Each and every one
To stand before the eyes of god
And speak what was done
Written just after the Yom Kippur war, “Silent Eyes” could be Paul Simon’s most Jewish song. It is about longing and weeping for Jerusalem in prayerlike phrases — “She is sorrow, sorrow / She burns like a flame / And she calls my name.” And it envisions a time when all will be called to account — “We shall all be called as witnesses / Each and every one / To stand before the eyes of God / And speak what was done.” It isn’t too much of a stretch to wonder if the Jerusalem of the song is a stand-in for the Jewish people. With its central image of “silent eyes,” its latent subject could be the Holocaust.
On a larger scale, the speaker implies, we must all answer for what we did not do to stop suffering in general, in Jerusalem or during the Holocaust or at any time or place. We see the devastation wreaked by war and nature, we hear the "weeping," but we only watch with "silent eyes." And if we say nothing, then when we are asked to speak for ourselves, we will have nothing to say.
[Hebrew:]
Im ninalu daltey Nedivim
daltey Nedivim
Daltey Marom
[English translation:
"If doors of generous men are locked,
Doors of heaven"]
Staring up into the heavens
In this hell that binds your hands
Will you sacrifice your comfort
Make your way in a foreign land
Wrestle with your darkness
Angels call your name
Can you hear what they are saying
Will you ever be the same
Mmmm mmm mmm
Im Nin'alu, Im Nin'alu
Mmmm mmm mmm
Im Nin'alu, Im Nin'alu
[English translation: "If they are locked"]
Remember, remember
Never forget
All of your life has all been a test
You will find the gate that's open
Even though your spirit's broken
Open up my heart
Cause my lips to speak
Bring the heavens and the stars
Down to earth for me
Mmmm mmm mmm
Im Nin'alu, Im Nin'alu
Mmmm mmm mmm
Im Nin'alu, Im Nin'alu
Mmmm mmm mmm
Im Nin'alu, Im Nin'alu
“Isaac” was named after the featured vocalist Yitzhak Sinwani, who sang portions of the Yemenite Hebrew poem Im Nin'alu in the track. Initially Madonna toyed with the idea of calling the song as "Fear of Flying" since the idea behind the composition was to let go. However, at the end she decided to just call it "Isaac" after the English version of Sinwani's name.
It is perhaps Madonna’s most Jewish song, featuring Aramaic lyrics based on a Yemenite poem, a cantorial-style improvisation, English lyrics (“Open up my heart / ‘Cause my lips to speak / Bring the heavens and the stars down to earth for me”) inspired by Psalms 19:15, and a verse inspired by Jacob’s dream of wrestling with angels (“Wrestle with your darkness / Angels call your name / Can you hear what they are saying / Will you ever be the same?”). She gives Sinwani the last word when he intones, “The gates of heaven are always open.”
Madonna said spirituality is even more powerful than politics when it comes to changing the world for the better.
Comedian Adam Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” is a humorous novelty song written by Sandler with Saturday Night Live writers Lewis Morton and Ian Maxtone-Graham. Since he debuted this song on a 1994 “Weekend Update” segment of “Saturday Night Live,” Sandler has been having fun updating this seasonal confection.
The song is a listing of Jewish celebrities with both real-life and fictional connections to Judaism as a way of creating sympathy for Jews everywhere. It is intended to instill Jewish pride in children feeling alienated during Christmas. The original version contains the names of 21 celebrities.
“…I wrote a song for all those nice little Jewish kids
who don't get to hear any Hanukkah songs
Here we go
Put on your yarmulke
Here comes Hanukkah
So much funukah
To celebrate Hanukkah
Hanukkah is the festival of lights
Instead of one day of presents, we have eight crazy nights
When you feel like the only kid in town without a Christmas tree
Here's a list of people who are Jewish just like you and me
David Lee Roth lights the menorah
So do James Caan, Kirk Douglas, and the late Dinah Shore-ah
Guess who eats together at the Carnegie Deli
Bowser from Sha Na Na and Arthur Fonzerelli
Paul Newman's half Jewish, Goldie Hawn's half too
Put them together, what a fine lookin' Jew
You don't need "Deck The Halls" or "Jingle Bell Rock"
'Cause you can spin a dreidel with Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock- both Jewish…”
No one could have imagined that this silly song would enjoy such a robust and enduring second life as a bona fide holiday season perennial, the Jewish equivalent of one of those Christmas classics you hear over and over again. The song is a perfect tongue-in-cheek expression of defiant Jewish pride.
Following a visit to Israel in 1966 and the subsequent outbreak of the Six-Day War, Pete Townshend began work on “Rael,” a song cycle loosely based on Israel’s struggle to survive despite being massively outnumbered by its enemies. It was going to be The Who’s first rock opera, but “Rael” — short for “Israel” — got sidetracked, partly due to the demands of the Who’s record company for faster delivery of more hit singles, and the project was consigned to the shelf.
“Rael” appears on the late 1967 album, “The Who Sell Out.” Its lyrics hint at what Townshend was aiming for, as well as revealing his deep empathy for the Jewish people: “Rael, the home of my religion / To me the center of the Earth…. My heritage is threatened / My roots are torn and cornered / And so to do my best I’ll homeward sail.”
“The Sound of Silence” is a song about prophecy. It begins with visions implanted in the singer’s brain. His eyes are stabbed by the flash of a neon light, revealing 10,000 people, maybe more — a number often used in the Bible for an army — seemingly unable to speak or hear or communicate in any way. The singer grows enraged, calling the people fools for refusing to listen to him. Instead, they bow and pray to a Golden Calf-like neon god they made. But then a sign flashes out a warning: “The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” Will the people listen now?
Maintaining the religious overtones, the final verse showcases the response to the speaker’s attempt to enlighten the people. Ignoring his words, the people bow and pray to their “neon god,” an interesting choice of descriptor given that it is repeated from the second stanza’s “neon light.”
The words “And the people bowed and prayed to the neon god they made” is often taken to be a representation of mass media, business, or the like, though it harkens to the biblical concept of false gods and idolatry.
The speaker then reads a sign warning that “the words of the prophets are written on the subway walls and tenement halls.” This line serves a dual purpose. Firstly, it acts to convey a final biblical allusion: In Daniel chapter five, the king of Babylon sees an apparition of a hand writing a message on a wall in the midst of a party. He calls the prophet Daniel to interpret the words, and Daniel tells him that God is displeased with his behavior and punishment is coming, which comes to pass when the king dies shortly thereafter.
The second intention of this line is to echo the idea that the poor and downtrodden of society are just as valuable as everyone else and their voice matters. But the use of “whispered” in the last line hints that this message may not be heard by everyone but that it will reach those who listen for it.
In a few short lines — “Though they murdered six million / In the ovens they fried / The Germans now too / Have God on their side” — Bob Dylan skewers the hypocrisy of superficial beliefs and unearned pieties, taking down not only the Germans but their newfound American friends, neither of whom let a little thing like the Holocaust get in the way of a heartwarming Cold War alliance.
The lyrics address the tendency of Americans to believe that God will invariably side with them and oppose those with whom they disagree, thus leaving unquestioned the morality of wars fought and atrocities committed by their country. Dylan mentions several historical events, including the slaughter of Native Americans in the nineteenth century, the Spanish–American War, the American Civil War, World Wars I and II, the Holocaust, Vietnam and the Cold War.
“When the Second World War came to an end, we forgave the Germans and we were friends. Though they murdered six million, in the ovens they fried, the Germans now too have God on their side”.
After the war the staggering loss of life didn’t prevent the Allied Forces from drawing the Germans into their camp. Germany had become a democratic republic and joined the Allied Forces, in particular the U.S., in their fight against Stalin’s communism. Dylan says that the Germans were forgiven and that they became friends. This was obviously only for political reasons. First the Americans fought against the Germans, with God on their side. Now the Americans fought with the Germans in the Cold War against Communism also with God on their side.
Dylan is ironically saying: “God is always on the side of America, and any nation who joins America may be assured that God is on their side too, no matter what crimes such a nation may have committed in the past.”
Marc Cohn, winner of the 1991 Best New Artist Grammy Award for his hit “Walking in Memphis,” has throughout his career dropped hints in song about searching for his place in Judaism. He had already been featured on a 1996 Hanukkah compilation singing a passionate version of “Rock of Ages / Ma’oz Tzur” when he released the album “Burning the Daze” in 1998. It opens with “Already Home,” which appears to be about rediscovering and embracing his Jewish heritage, and closes with “Ellis Island,” a reminder of where he came from and how he got here.
In terms of a Jewish interpretation, the song offers universal themes that resonate within the Jewish tradition, such as the idea of finding a sense of belonging, contentment, and peace.
Both of Cohn’s parents were observant Jews, and his mother headed the women’s organization at The Temple-Tifereth Israel near Cleveland, Ohio, where Cohn was raised.
“One of my regrets with all my kids was that I haven’t kept up the traditions that my father had us practice in our house in terms of seder dinners and going to High Holiday services,” Cohn said. “But culturally, I’m as proud as can be that I’m a Jew. My kids know that, and I would say it’s a very important part of who I am, and an important part of my work.”
How sad. The Torah is the genuine light meant to bathe the entire world - yet we thrill and swell with pride when some secular dark shadows deign to refract the slightest spark of it. What should we call ourselves: self-doubting Jews?
Interesting!