{"id":34543,"date":"2020-04-03T03:53:21","date_gmt":"2020-04-03T10:53:21","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=34543"},"modified":"2020-04-01T15:22:32","modified_gmt":"2020-04-01T22:22:32","slug":"honestly-jewish-and-radical","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2020\/04\/03\/honestly-jewish-and-radical\/","title":{"rendered":"Honestly Jewish and radical"},"content":{"rendered":"

Listening to Geoff Berner\u2019s Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis<\/em> will break your heart one minute and stir you to historic rage the next. (photo by Mischa Scherrer)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

In November 2019, myriad Chutzpah! Festival and Geoff Berner fans (not always the same bedfellows) and I crowded into the WISE Hall in Vancouver to be introduced to Berner\u2019s new album, Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis<\/em>. The hotel is a real place in Augsburg, Germany. The liner notes describe it: \u201chalf the space is living quarters for refugees and asylum seekers, and half of it is a beautiful, inexpensive hostel\u2026. It\u2019s a wonderful thing for me, as a Jew, to see this project in Germany, where ordinary Germans are committed to truly welcoming traveling people in trouble, who are seeking help and a new home.\u201d<\/p>\n

The title of the first song on the album, \u201cNot the Jew I had in Mind,\u201d comes from a lecture by Thomas King called \u201cYou\u2019re Not the Indian I had in Mind.\u201d Berner wrote to King to get permission to use the title, and King responded, \u201cDon\u2019t need my permission\u2026. Nice thing about words (except for the ones the corporations try to corral) is that they\u2019re free…. So go for it \u2026 and no need to credit me.\u2026 Maybe I\u2019ll run into one of your songs and craft a novel around one of the lines.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"image<\/a><\/p>\n

The album catches at being Jewish in ways that are profoundly political and not always specifically Jewish \u2013 the song, \u201cWhy Don\u2019t We Just Take the Billionaires\u2019 Money Away,\u201d for example. Berner\u2019s lyrics and melodies will break your heart one minute (\u201cWhat Kind of Bear Am I\u201d) and stir you to historic rage (\u201cZog Nit Keyn Mol\u201d) the next. When I heard \u201cWould You Hide Me\u201d for the first time at the launch, I burst out laughing. And then looked around warily. I had thought it was only me who wandered around occasionally wondering this.<\/p>\n

The music is klezmer punk but not always punk. \u201cVilne,\u201d for example, is a beautiful song about displacement. Berner is dynamite on the accordion and is accompanied by a stellar group of musicians. Dancing is a must: as the lyrics to \u201cThe Drummer Requests\u201d say, \u201cDancing in your chair is part of please continue dancing.\u201d Berner also provides seamless translations for those of us who are sadly not fluent in Yiddish.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sure I\u2019m not the only Jew who takes this album personally \u2013 my grandfather was born in Lithuania (\u201cVilne\u201d) but I\u2019m not alone in that. As I continue to listen to the songs, I am encouraged that I can be part of a movement that is about being both honestly Jewish and radical. The music is a powerful testament to the kind of Judaism that I\u2019m always looking for and often can\u2019t find.<\/p>\n

Buy the album \u2013 you will be supporting Berner and the other musicians. And read the liner notes while you\u2019re listening to the songs. They are some of the most interesting I\u2019ve ever read.<\/p>\n

You can find more information about Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis<\/em> at grandhotel-cosmopolis.org\/de and Berner\u2019s website is geoffberner.com<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Penny Goldsmith<\/strong> sings with the Solidarity Notes Labour Choir, the Highs & Lows Mental Health Choir and, occasionally, with the Vancouver Jewish Folk Choir. She is the owner of Lazara Press, a small, independent publishing house in Vancouver.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Listening to Geoff Berner\u2019s Welcome to the Grand Hotel Cosmopolis will break your heart one minute and stir you to historic rage the next. (photo by Mischa Scherrer) In November 2019, myriad Chutzpah! Festival and Geoff Berner fans (not always the same bedfellows) and I crowded into the WISE Hall in Vancouver to be introduced […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":34544,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[788],"tags":[6058,9798,9799],"class_list":["post-34543","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-music","tag-geoff-berner","tag-klezmer-punk","tag-welcome-to-the-grand-hotel-cosmopolis"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34543","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=34543"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/34543\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/34544"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=34543"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=34543"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=34543"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}