My inbox has been flooded recently. First, dozens of folks sent me the Wall Street Journal article about Israeli rock singers' quests for spirituality. And this led to an even more intriguiing email from Jewish music connoisseur, Ari Davidow.

It included a link to a talk by Yossi Klein Halevi whose book "Like Dreamers" may be the best account of ideological changes in Israel from '67 until recently.  While the entire talk is on this clip, I am starting it at the first question which is about religiousity in Israel and the USA and the Israeli version of 'culture wars."

This is such an interesting phenomenon. For about a decade there has been this very noticeable movement of led by older, very secular Israeli rock/pop stars using music to explore spirituality. Some, like Ehud Banai and Shlomo Gronich turned to more traditional practice, others like Koby Oz or Piris Eliyahu present a more secular approach to these issues.
 
BJMF is, in fact, hoping to bringing Koby Oz's amazing Psalms for the Perplexed program to Boston the last weekend in October.

Here are some links of things you may be interested in.

  once considered the Frank Zappa of Israel.

Having seen this group perform live, I think Piris is doing something very important. I am no expert by any stretch but to me he is composing music that is essentially Israeli, rather than European. His son, Mark, is a pretty big name in World music.

By the way, there is a group looking to create an Arts and Culture mission to Israel for Sept 2016 centered around the Jerusalem Scared Music Festival. I got to go last year and it is amazing.

There's nothing quite like a musical all-nighter in the Tower of David complex. Please email me if you would be interested.

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