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Jewish Journal

Connect. Inform. Inspire.

August 16, 2024

Distant Cousins to Tour With Matisyahu

Music /

It would be nearly impossible to find a music group whose harmonies are tighter than Duvid Swirsky, Dov Rosenblatt and Ami Kozak of Distant Cousins, a music group that fuses pop, folk and rock.

Their new EP, “Out of the Darkness,” includes “Dimati” with Hebrew song with lyrics that translate to: “Don’t turn away. Don’t leave me.” “Our new record is all music since Oct. 7,” Swirsky said. “It has obviously been tough for everyone. We were glad to have each other and express ourselves through music.” After the horrific attack, Swirsky hopes people can find some measures of healing. For Distant Cousins, the process of songwriting and performing on stage is cathartic.

With all three having stand out voices, one might think they would fight over who sings the majority of the solo for songs. “It’s more like, we fight and say, ‘oh you take it, no you take it,’” Rosenblatt said, adding that a big part of the band’s success is that they are such close friends and know each other’s personalities as well as musical inclinations.

Kozak is a comedian who has performed across the country, but since Oct. 7, he has been defending Israel as a political commentator, taking on the likes of Dave Smith and Candace Owens. Kozak enjoys constructive conversations and is against ad-hominem attacks. “We’ve certainly seen a galvanizing of artists who are proud of being Jewish and we see in these times, it can inspire and have a measure of healing,” Kozak said.

“We’ve certainly seen a galvanizing of artists who are proud of being Jewish and we see in these times, it can inspire and have a measure of healing,” – Ami Kozak

The group is thrilled to open for Matisyahu on an eight show tour, from August 22-30. “It’s a real honor for us to join Matisyahu,” Kozak said. “We performed with him over Passover and it went really well, so it seemed like a logical and natural step.” The band will also join Matisyahu on stage, adding background vocals to his songs.

With college out, many anti-Israel protests have tapered down. In February, a few venues, including Meow Wolf in Santa Fe, New Mexico and The Rialto Theater in Tucson Arizona cancelled Matisyahu’s concerts, citing “security concerns.” Most of his shows went ahead as scheduled without incident. Asked which of them is the best fighter, should a protest turn violent, Kozak replied with dry humor. “I haven’t seen the other two guys fight. But I have some training.”

Founded about 12 years ago in Los Angeles, the three members of the band low live in distant cities. Swirsky is a founder of the famed Jewish rock group Moshav, fronted by Yehuda Solomon, while Rosenblatt is the also lead singer of the New York-based Jewish band Blue Fringe, lives in Nashville, and Kozak lives in New Jersey.

The group’s song “Are You Ready” (On Your Own) was used in the 2014 film “This Is Where I Leave You,” the song “Raise It Up” was on the show “Criminal Minds” and the catchy “On My Way” was used in Macy’s Denim Nation ad campaign. The group has written music for the animated kids show “Dew Drop Diaries.”

While a big chunk of the group’s fans are Jewish, some are not as the majority of the songs are in English and have general messages of positivity. The songs are catchy and give off a feeling of spiritual cleansing even if you’re an atheist.

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Chosen Links by Boaz – Ep 5: Survivor Player Round Table For Israel

Chosen Links by Boaz /

If you would have told me 20 years ago that I’d become friends with dozens of players from the show “Survivor,” I’d be confused. If you told me 8 years ago I’d be having them on my OWN show, talking about Israel and antisemitism, I’d be REALLY excited, but even MORE confused.

For years, I rolled my eyes when friends (Mike, Ephraim, Jared, Seth & Howard mostly) obsessed about the show. Then in 2015, I broke my damn elbow on our honeymoon (the saddle came off my horse!) and I had a lot of time on my hands back home. So Mike and Jared created a game plan, and showed me a slew of seasons – I was hooked. The strategy, the strong personalities, the drama, the humor – I was hooked.

Our friend Ronnie Bardah wanted to get on, and we did what we could to manifest that reality. Mike created an audition video for him, Benjamin Coach Wade and Albert Destrade gave helpful suggestions. I used my writing skills to help with his application. And then HE GOT ON THE SHOW. It was all surreal.

Ronnie is one of many proud Jews to have played on the show, but something sickening was happening with increasing frequency: people were speaking out against Israel, using words like apartheid and genocide, and turning the word Zionist into an insult to doxx someone. This was coming from several former players, and it not only alienated countless fans, but in some cases it involved direct ONLINE ATTACKS against players who were, heaven forbid, pro-Israel. In one case a player mid-season was doxxed when people “found” posts from her Birthright trip to Israel, and, you know, being a proud Zionist.

Cut to October 7th, for most Jews, our worlds turned upside down. And I started to write. And write. And share the words of others. And share some more. “Chosen Links by Boaz” was born. The next thing I knew, people wanted interviews, often not realizing I was a full-time nurse, with this being unpaid advocacy “on the side.” I didn’t have time, but I wanted to talk to them. So I shifted my articles into group “Round Table” interviews, and the rest as they say, is history.

Ronnie was sick when I filmed this episode (which is why he could not attend), but I did manage to get a wonderful group of 15 former players to come on and film my 2 episodes. The first had them reading their parchments, and the second one premiering today, where a dozen of them – Jews and allies – talking through the complexities of Israel, the war, and antisemitism.

They do this full well knowing that some will attack them for it. But they do it because they realize the world is not black & white, and they did not want to remain silent. And I thank them for it.

But don’t worry, through it all, I’m still a huge fan of the show, and you bet I still asked a few key questions about the show/game itself!

I now present you with “Chosen Links, Episode 5, Survivor Player Round Table For Israel” – my gift to myself, and like-minded fans who want to feel a little less alone. (And remember you can also find this in most podcast stores if you prefer to listen.)

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The Holiday We Need Right Now

Judaism /

The holiday of Tu B’Av (the 15th of Av) should have been forgotten long ago. It is first mentioned in Megillat Ta’anit, a lengthy list of 35 minor holidays that were celebrated during the Second Temple; Tu B’Av was initially a holiday of the wood offering. Megillat Ta’anit explains that the Temple was rebuilt in 516 BCE, the communal leadership realized they would quickly run out of firewood for the altar. So they instituted that on the 15th of Av everyone should come to the Temple and donate wood. And so it was; on Tu B’Av people came to Jerusalem from every tribe and social class to bring the wood offering and take part in communal celebrations.

After the destruction of the Second Temple, all the holidays of Megillat Ta’anit were canceled and forgotten. Except for Tu B’Av.

This is puzzling. Tu B’Av in particular should have disappeared. After the destruction, it was just a painful reminder of what had been lost.

But one aspect of the Tu B’Av’s celebrations proved to be timeless. The Mishna explains that Tu B’Av was one of the two most joyous days on the Jewish calendar, a day when “the daughters of Jerusalem would go out and dance in the vineyards,” calling out to potential suitors to consider them as wives.

A singles celebration like this would not easily be forgotten, even if the reason for it had disappeared.

But the story of Tu B’Av doesn’t end there. The Talmud offers a dramatic reinterpretation of Tu B’Av, and attaches it to five minor historical events. One explanation is that the 15th of Av is the day when the biblical prohibition for women from one tribe to marry into another tribe expired.

Another says it was the day when the Tribe of Benjamin was once again allowed to marry with the rest of Israel; after the civil war over the “Concubine of Gibeah,” the Benjaminites had been banished from Israel.

A third explanation is that it was the day when the generation of the desert, which was decreed to die before entering the land, stopped dying.

A fourth explanation relates to the sentries that Jeroboam, the King of the Northern Kingdom of Israel had placed to prevent his subjects from visiting the Temple in Jerusalem; on the 15th of Av, his successor Hosea removed those sentries.

A fifth explanation relates to the Bar Kochva rebellion; after defeating the Jewish army, the Romans refused to allow the burial of the fallen soldiers. On the 15th of Av, they finally did.

This is a very curious list of explanations; they are merely instances when a bad situation becomes less bad. That seems like a poor reason for a holiday. Celebrations are meant for joyous events, not just for mediocre moments of “less bad.” What does the Talmud intend to convey with this list?

The key to understanding Tu B’Av lies in its proximity to Tisha B’Av. If a Shiva, the seven days of mourning, were to begin on Tisha B’Av, it would end on Tu B’Av. This informs the Talmud’s approach. Much like the end of a Shiva, these minor events mark the moment when one can move beyond the mourning and start anew. And that is exactly what Tu B’Av is about. It is the counter-Tisha B’Av, a national day of consolation.

It is in the celebration of marriage that Tu B’Av offers its most important lesson of consolation. On a practical level, marriage allows the community to rebuild, with more families and more children. The Talmud remarks that every Jewish wedding is the equivalent of restoring one of the ruins of Jerusalem, because each Jewish marriage is another step on the road to redemption.

But the lesson of Tu B’Av goes beyond that.

True consolation is intertwined with resilience, the ability to bounce back from the present and build a better future. Marriage enables one to do that. Two are always better than one at any task; and if the two love each other, they can achieve remarkable things. The key to resilience is to love others and to be loved by others.

A few weeks ago a wedding took place in Israel. Ben Binyamin and Gali Segal walked down the aisle on their own, and that in and of itself was a miracle. They had gone to the Nova Festival as an engaged couple; and while fleeing from the festival, a grenade thrown into their vehicle blew off both of their right legs.

The rehabilitation was incredibly difficult, and both fell into depression. Ben was a professional soccer player, who lost, as he put it “the essence of who he was.” Gali worried that she might never have children.

But they stuck together, and that made them stronger. Gali explained that “despite all the difficulties, we are a strong couple. The fact that we are going through this together is incredible.” Ben spoke about how “There’s a huge advantage in going through this together…It’s immensely comforting for me on an emotional level. Having the woman I love most by my side all the time, I feel she understands me best. Just as I understand her pains, her struggles, and her frustrations.”

Throughout the rehabilitation, they encouraged each other and cared for each other. They kept pushing themselves, and were determined to walk down the aisle for their wedding.

And they did.

Love makes us stronger; and that is equally true of couples and countries. Just a few short days after Tisha B’Av, the rabbis instituted a new-old holiday that prods us to heal the disagreements of the past. Perhaps once there were separations between tribes and divisions between kingdoms; but on Tu B’Av, those ended.

The distance between destruction and redemption is measured in love; and without unity, there is no future.

Tu B’av is the holiday we need right now. After nine months of grief, there are many questions: Where does one find resilience, where does one find hope?

Tu B’Av offers a simple answer. If we can heal the divisions tearing our community apart, if we can find a way to love each other, then we will find the way.

Rabbi Chaim Steinmetz is the Senior Rabbi of Congregation Kehilath Jeshurun in New York.

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Halachic Spouse Swapping, a Haredi Rabbi Lover, and Five-Star Mishloach Manot: A Review of “Olive Days” by Jessica Elisheva Emerson

Books /

The premise is salacious enough: One day, Rina’s husband, David—a bit of an a-hole, it should be said—convinces impossibly perfect, beautiful, selfless Modern Orthodox Los Angeles wife and mother Rina Kirsch that spouse swapping is completely acceptable under Jewish law. Rina is, of course, unconvinced. She is the more knowledgeable of the pair (Rina falls under the category “frum from birth” while David is a ba’al teshuva, coming to Orthodoxy later in life), but frankly, one need not venture further than the seventh commandment to be apprised of the fact that adultery, with or without consent, is forbidden by the Torah.

So maybe Rina is just a good sport. It seems she does everything she feels is demanded of her on some level. On Purim, for instance, makes an elaborate feast for the se’udah: “lentil-and-tomato soup, stuffed turkey breast, butternut-squash-and-mushroom pot pie, green beans with pistachios and date syrup, and three varieties of triangle-shaped hamantaschen pastries” as well as homemade slivovitz. She puts together mishloach manot in the theme of s’mores (kosher graham crackers, kosher marshmallows, chocolate) wrapped in a fake fire of yellow and orange cellophane, “each hot glued to a pile of sticks she’d scavenged on four straight morning outings to Griffith Park, each with a personal, handwritten note.” She sews the kids’ Purim costumes. She reconstructs the mishloach manot she let her children make. She delivers the gifts door to door.

She’s definitely a good sport.

But the wife swapping incident sets Rina on a path of seeming self-destruction, landing her in the arms, early on in the novel, of the kindly ultra-Orthodox rabbi, Anshel. Anshel falls madly in love with Rina, willing to do anything for her; Rina remains unfulfilled. Then, she listens to her husband, again, and signs up for a community college painting class, painting being her passion. Here she meets Will Ochoa, a Mexican-American man with a wife and daughter, a penchant for storytelling, and an ability to see Rina for who she is: more than a Modern Orthodox wife and mother, and yet also that.

The rest of the novel is taken up with Rina and Will’s affair and its impact on her journey to self-knowledge. All her years of doing what has been asked of her, of being a good sport, of playing her part, we realize, severely restricted her ability to know what she wanted, to even ask herself what made her happy. She had been unwilling to question what she believed, what mattered to her. Her relationship with Will enables, above all else, a relationship with herself.

“Olive Days” can easily be classified as an “off-the-derech” story, a story of leaving Orthodoxy and (the two seem to go hand-in-hand) diving straight into the pursuit of sexual thrills. Certainly, we can see echoes of Deborah Feldman’s “Unorthodox” and Riva Mann’s “The Rabbi’s Daughter” here (if in the American Modern Orthodox, not Haredi, world). But “Olive Days” is more than that.

“Olive Days” is a brilliant exploration of the lasting power of Jewishness, of Jewishness that’s not dependent on belief (honestly, I want to share this book with those who tell me that the hatred against Jews that’s rife on university campuses right now is not against my “religion” and thus not “antisemitic”). Every thought that Rina has, every move that Rina makes, from seeing cutout snowflakes in December (in Southern California, where it doesn’t snow) as irredeemably Christmassy (not secular and for all, as surely intended) to walking into a hotel room and immediately stripping the comforter off of the bed (most Jewish gesture ever, adultery aspect aside) reveals her to be Jewish in every molecule of her constitution.

I am reminded of a line by Hannah Arendt, which admittedly had a very different context (the racialization of the Jews in Nazi Europe) and yet has truth in it nonetheless: “Jews had been able to escape from Judaism into conversion,” she wrote in “The Origins of Totalitarianism,” adding, “From Jewishness there was no escape.”

Rina tries to resist the thoroughness of her upbringing, to gulp down hechsher-free Spaghetti-Os and Velveeta (she vomits) and commit to a life with a non-Jewish man. But she doesn’t get there because Will, who is both lover and inner guide, knows better. He loves her as she is.

On the whole, Emerson is an incredibly acute observer. Not only is Modern Orthodoxy painted in the most vivid detail, but the city of Los Angeles is as well. And Orthodox LA? Her insightful depiction of Pico Boulevard, “lined with the shops of the community, everything packed tight … like the Jews were afraid of taking up too much space” rivals Tova Mirvis’s Memphis in “The Ladies Auxiliary”—or Mirvis’s Brooklyn in “The Outside World.”

I can’t deny that I was a bit skeptical when I read the description of “Olive Days”; at a certain point, a reader tires of the repetitiveness (or worse, the need to one-up literary predecessors) of sex-filled “off-the-derech” tales. But mea culpa. Emerson took the genre and did great things with it. “Olive Days” is a fantastic debut novel.

Karen Skinazi, Ph.D is Associate Professor of Literature and Culture and the director of Liberal Arts at the University of Bristol (UK) and the author of “Women of Valor: Orthodox Jewish Troll Fighters, Crime Writers, and Rock Stars in Contemporary Literature and Culture.”

Halachic Spouse Swapping, a Haredi Rabbi Lover, and Five-Star Mishloach Manot: A Review of “Olive Days” by Jessica Elisheva Emerson Read More »

Thank You, Judge Scarsi

Columnists /

This week’s Torah portion includes a verse that is undoubtedly the most well-known to all Jewish people throughout time and space. For more than three millennia, these were the first Hebrew words that most Jews learned and, by tradition, the final words uttered before one’s death: “Sh’ma Yisrael, Adonai Eloheinu, Adonai Echad! Hear O Israel, the ETERNAL is your God, the ETERNAL is one!” (Deuteronomy 6:4).

It is the closest thing Judaism has to a statement of faith. Every Jew, every descendent of Israel/Jacob, is to bear witness to the fact that there is but one God. It points also to the interconnected nature of being itself. One force brought the universe into existence. Jews call that force Adonai and when we say the words of Sh’ma Yisrael, we acknowledge that profound truth.

The verses that follow form the first paragraph of the V’ahavta prayer, instructing Jews to love that one God with everything we’ve got.

But given the news of this week, I’m most interested in the three verses that precede the Sh’ma:

“And this is the Instruction—the laws and the rules—that the ETERNAL your God has commanded [me] to impart to you, to be observed in the land that you are about to cross into and occupy, so that you, your children, and your children’s children may revere the ETERNAL your God and follow, as long as you live, all the laws and commandments that I enjoin upon you, to the end that you may long endure. Obey, O Israel, willingly and faithfully, that it may go well with you and that you may increase greatly [in] a land flowing with milk and honey, as the ETERNAL, the God of your ancestors, spoke to you” (Deuteronomy 6:1-3).

Whether you see this text as divinely revealed, divinely inspired, or an entirely human document, what is objectively clear is that this people called Israel has a long history with a place that generation after generation understood as the land of promise, a land flowing with milk and honey, a land that we see inhabiting as part of our destiny so that in this one place we might revere the one God and there follow God’s ways so that we might live meaningful, good, and long lives.

Of course, we call this land Israel. Most Jews (not all to be sure but the vast majority) understand their Jewish identity—be it religious, secular, or some mixture of the two—to be inextricably bound up with this land and, in our time, the nation-state that carries its name. (Not necessarily its government, of course, or any of its duly elected political leaders but rather the state itself.)

Asking most Jews to reject their relationship to Israel and to their age-old dream of returning “upright to our land” as the rabbis would have it, would be akin to asking them to reject any other deeply held belief or article of faith.

I don’t know if U.S. District Judge Mark Scarsi is familiar with these verses but the preliminary injunction he issued this past Wednesday demonstrates a deep understanding of how most Jews relate to Israel and to one of its synonyms: Zion. For many Jews, myself certainly included, Zionism—the belief that the Jewish people have a right to return to their ancestral homeland and resume sovereignty so that they might live in dignity and freedom—is a core part of their religious identity. Asking most Jews to reject their relationship to Israel and to their age-old dream of returning “upright to our land” as the rabbis would have it, would be akin to asking them to reject any other deeply held belief or article of faith. Here’s how Judge Scarsi put it in his ruling:

“In the year 2024, in the United States of America, in the State of California, in the City of Los Angeles, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. This fact is so unimaginable and so abhorrent to our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom that it bears repeating, Jewish students were excluded from portions of the UCLA campus because they refused to denounce their faith. UCLA does not dispute this. Instead, UCLA claims that it has no responsibility to protect the religious freedom of its Jewish students because the exclusion was engineered by third-party protesters. But under constitutional principles, UCLA may not allow services to some students when UCLA knows that other students are excluded on religious grounds, regardless of who engineered the exclusion.”

Judge Scarsi’s words demonstrate a deep understanding of our relationship to Israel—the idea, the place, the people and the nation. Israel is for the vast majority of us part of our very faith and therefore part of “our constitutional guarantee of religious freedom.”

This preliminary injunction will surely be challenged and there will be much debate in legal and Jewish circles about what it all means. But for this Jew, I feel overwhelmed with gratitude for the privilege of being part of a diaspora community where, notwithstanding the deeply troubling uptick in antisemitism and anti-Israel rhetoric we are witnessing, we might enjoy protections and rights that have all too often been denied us in our wanderings from place to place, from nation to nation.

We are Israel, commanded by our tradition to endeavor with all of our might and soul, with every fiber of our being, to hearken to God’s word so that we can behave in a way that is consistent with our understanding of what it is that God demands of us. We believe that to do this fully, we must be able to live in dignity and freedom. And we believe that having one place on this planet where we can control our own destiny is necessary.

Our right to exercise these beliefs that make up parts of our faith is reasonable, justified, and not at all unlike the rights of others all over the world—including someday Palestinians—to do the same.

Reasonable. Justified. Ordinary even.

Of the roughly 195 sovereign nations in the world, we desire but one state to call our own, and it’s rather small in stature by the way. The state we currently have makes up 0.004% of the land mass of this planet (for comparison, Canada, whose population is approximately four times that of Israel makes up 1.958% of the world’s land mass, which is roughly 455 times larger).

We are Israel, a people whose homeland is part of our faith, our history, our destiny, and our identity.

Thank you Judge Scarsi for seeing us, for understanding us, and for this temporary injunction that we hope might lead to more robust and permanent protections for our people.

Rabbi Yoshi Zweiback is the Senior Rabbi of Stephen Wise Temple in Los Angeles, California.

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