by Peter HimmelmanForward
This story was originally published by Forward. Click here Forward’s free email newsletters to be delivered to your inbox.
This is one of the ones series Peter Himmelman’s essays explore the intersection of Judaism, creativity, and rock ‘n’ roll.
In 1986, saying no was not part of the plan. I was 26, newly signed to Island Records, and for the first time in my life, the machinery of the music business was starting to work in my favor. The songs “Weaning Moon,” “I Feel Young Today,” and “1000 Years” from my second album. GematriaThere was radio and MTV. Opening slots with artists such as Sting, Joe Cocker and Gregg Allman were discussed on tour. My task, as everyone understood, was simple: say yes. Yes to every opportunity, yes to every kind of exposure, yes to everything that could possibly accelerate my career.
Island Records president Lou Maglia was an old-school Italian record guy — street-smart, direct and deeply invested in the artists he believed in. I was among his first signatories. He took me because of an independent record I called This is Father’s DayWritten and recorded as a tribute to my father, who died aged 54, just one day after I turned 24. He was my mentor and my hero. Those who say that his death had a lot to do with my sudden conversion to observant Judaism are partially correct.
The other part is that while searching for a record deal since I was 13, and then finally getting one, I discovered that it wasn’t the answer to what I was really looking for, which was a loving family, a clear understanding of what my life’s purpose could be, and a deep sense of belonging to my tribe – the Jewish people.
That’s why, one afternoon, when I walked into Lou’s office and closed the door behind me, what I said to him must have seemed incomprehensible.
“Lou, I’m starting to keep this Jewish thing called Shabbos, and I can’t perform on Friday nights anymore.”
He looked at me for a moment, then laughed.
“Ha! Fucking Shabbos. Okay, that’s good, I get it. But can we talk about these opening slots?”
It was not cruel laughter. It was the smile of a man for whom he had no category. In Lou’s world, artists have done all sorts of self-destructive things and made radically poor decisions. But the single most important performance of the week removed themselves from the night? never ever
I was, in effect, telling him that I had decided to be unavailable for my own climb.
At the time, I couldn’t explain my decision in any coherent way. I didn’t have the vocabulary or even the conceptual framework. All I knew was that something was starting to feel hollow after my father’s death. Not music. The music was real. It was everything around him. The feeling that if I keep moving fast enough, yes often enough, I will reach a point where things will finally make sense. They didn’t. (I can say for the record, 40 years later, they still don’t.)
But around the same time, through a chain of acquaintances, I met Kenny Vance, a record producer and singer of Jay and American fame. Kenny, now my dear friend, worked with everyone, and he wasn’t shy about mentioning it.
“I used to date Diane Keaton,” he told me. “I know Woody Allen. I was its music director Saturday Night Live. But tonight, I’ll take you to my main connection, a religious Jew from Brooklyn.”
I suspect he thought I would keep an eye on the possibility. I did nothing of the sort. I was excited.
Before long, we were crossing the Brooklyn Bridge, the lights of lower Manhattan shining behind us. We arrived at an apartment in Crown Heights where Rabbi Simon Jacobson greeted us. I connected with Simon right off the bat. His eyes reflect a paradox, an awareness that survival is a source of great humor and great sadness. Simon told me about reconstructing the Lubavitcher Rebbe’s speech from his memory, a highly complex discussion that lasted several hours and drew on thousands of Jewish sources. The scale of it was incomprehensible to me. It belongs to a world governed by assumptions quite different from my own.
Later that night, after Kenny, who looked very old — I think he was 40 — tiredly headed to his home in Far Rockaway, I asked Simon about the paintings of the Lubavitcher Rebbe hanging on the wall.
“What’s the deal with these pictures?” I said “They seem kind of cultured to me.”
Simon was not offended. “I enjoy them,” he said. “To me, the Rebbe is like a very inspirational grandfather.”
by knowledgeI thought
He paused, then continued. “There are people called Tajadikim,” he said. “They have no sense of self. They live only to serve others. And they can do whatever they want.”
I knew enough that he wasn’t using colloquial tzadik, as in “What a tzadik, that Herb Shapiro. I have such a deal on my new firestones.”
“Really?” I asked. “Can they fly?”
Simon looked at me. He became serious.
“I have never seen anyone fly. But for a Twadik, flying is no greater miracle than walking.”
The comment knocked me out. Not because it sounds strange and mysterious, but because it converges with something I’ve always felt, but never heard expressed so simply: that walking itself is a miracle. That breathing, eating pancakes, peeing, that just being alive, was a miracle.
One could rightly say that I am the fastest person to join the “cult”. I went out and bought Tzitzit the next day. I started keeping kosher. “One less shrimp,” I thought to myself. Then Shabbat was held in my dumpy railroad apartment on 47th and Eighth Avenue in Hell’s Kitchen.
Shabbat, like music, was space between notes. A kind of purposeful obstacle. For one day each week, I stopped. I stopped production. I stopped trying. Most importantly, I stopped trying to turn success into proof of my worth. It wasn’t just about working off. It’s very simple. It was about remembering that I am more than my work. It felt like an authentic subversion of shallow cultural norms, something that instinctively appealed to me. It’s a more honest version of the so-called rebellion that rock and roll has always only imitated.
That’s why I didn’t tell Lou Maglia.
Not because I was sure, but because I began to realize that if I lost it, I would lose something much more important than a career.
My friend, the late Lou Maglia, Catholic, lively man that he was, stopped laughing. He saw that I was serious. He didn’t dump me. Far from it. He has been my biggest champion. When it was only logical for us to play cities like Cleveland and Chicago in support of my recordings, Lou even helped finance a tour of the Caucasus in the then USSR. (Another story for another time.) He knew that my music was not a pose, but a reflection of my deeply held values.
Hey Lou, if you’re out there listening, thank you. You were a beautiful person with a beautiful soul.
People sometimes ask me if my career was worth it. I have two problems with the question. First, it assumes that career was the central dimension of my life. Second, very few people ask what I got in return. I, thank God, have a beautiful marriage, a tight, loving family, grandchildren, a job that I could not have imagined at the age of 26 and had time. I was able to see the value of time and protect it as my own.
As for the music, Shabbat took none of that away from me. It taught me to listen to it better, write it better and do it better.
I have never found a better bargain.
This story was originally published by Forward.
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Previously published Forward
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