I had seen in a previous post: an attempt to Talmudic exegesis of the work of Jean-Jacques Goldman .
Why? Because Jean-Jacques Goldman is Jewish? It is a necessary but not sufficient.
True reason is that Goldman's songs have a special dimension. I would not say prophetic, but in all cases, which show a very strong intuition of the Jewish message.
Goldman was born into a particular family. Her mother is a German Jew, his father a Polish Jew from Lublin. He claims since the first of his anthologies (singular), the booklet shows the journey that begins with both parents, represented by a German flag and a flag Polish overcome .... a Magen David.
Like many Jews of Europe at that time the family has moved away from religious tradition, and marries another: communism and the dream of a fairer world. However, and so also common at the time, breaking with tradition does not mean breaking with the Jewish people. The father of Jean-Jacques Goldman has also regularly played basketball in a Jewish sports club (the Yask: Yiddische Arbeiters Sport Klub) and is remembered that before the war there were even sections communist "Jewish".
So Goldman has never renounced his membership of the Jewish people. But what is more surprising, and that is the subject of this note is that the lyrics are amazing Goldman similarity with what the Talmud is tell us about the man and his condition.
How many times have I heard a song by Goldman and I have close to a passage in the Jewish tradition? I dare say, but almost every song. And I'm not talking here of very explicit as songs "Like You" on the Holocaust, but songs that apparently have no connection with Jewishness.
It was the intro. Now, first, we'll take a song whose evidence of existence of Jewish spark obvious: He changed life.
I remind you of the words This song from the album "Between Light Grey and Dark Grey"
was a shoemaker, with nothing particular
In a village whose name I missed
Who was shoes so pretty, so light
May our lives seemed a little less hard to bear
He put time, talent and heart
Thus passed his life among our hours
And heady speeches, grand theories
At its task each day, we could say of him
He changed the lives
was a teacher, a single teacher
Who thought that knowledge was a great treasure
That all had less than nothing to get by
That the school and the law that has to learn each
He put time, talent and heart
Thus passed his life among our hours
E t away the rhetoric, the major theories
At its task each day, we could say of him
He changed the lives
was a little guy, just a little while fellow
inept and dreamy, just missed in short
Se believed useless men banned from
He cried on his saxophone
He put so much time, tears and pain The
dreams of his life, his heart prisons
And away the rhetoric, the major theories
Inspired day by day with his breath and his cries
He changed the lives
What
is the idea? What changes the world, this is not the great revolutionary movements. That is not the changing political deeply human existence
(except when it's a bloody regime and that for once there, life can really change, but I advise you not too ...). efficiency, it unfolds at the micro level, in terms of interpersonal relationship when it involves personal effort and constant that, far from a state of grace spontaneous, forging and polishing the character and magnitude of a man.
Who has not admired artisans picky in their work, sometimes so accurate and proud of their work they forget the need to earn a good life after all "a quick turn of the screw, nobody 'will see that the fire?
This permanence in the attention to things and men, is that what the Talmud says?
It seems to me that famous passage, quoted by Levinas in Difficult Freedom and already mentioned in this blog is quite instructive in this regard.
I am giving you here:
Zommer Ben said: "I found a verse that contains the entire Torah: Israel Listen The Eternal is our God, the eternal is a
Ben Nanas said: I found a verse that contains all the Torah: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as yourself "
Pazi Ben said: I found a verse that contains the entire Torah: You sacrifice a lamb in the morning and at dusk .
And their master Rabbi stood up and decided: "The law is according to Ben Pazi"
In reading this passage, I thought that the "Listen Israel" and "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself" resembled furiously to the "rhetoric and grand theory" Goldman.
And that side of it, sacrifice a lamb in the morning and evening seems still more basic, earthy and frankly as a soul much less obvious that of the shoemaker.
But that's it the message: the Maharal of Prague explains that the sacrifice is mentioned by Ben Pazi the korban Tamid, the daily sacrifice, the interruption of which is prohibited, whose greatness is this constancy in the action and self-improvement. To resume
Levinas: "The daily fidelity to the ritual gesture takes courage calmer, more noble and greater than that of the warrior".
The first two verses of "He changed his life" speak well of it. I would say that this is something very Jewish "Litvak," Lithuanian in the sense that the mystique and grace can not compete with the work, effort and intensive study.
The third verse on the saxophone is most strange. This is not a worker. It's a bit of a void, a "clumsy". Not very smart. Which apparently can not bring much to the world. Yet his desire, his passion, enthusiasm managed to blow the barks preventing access to the essence of human desire (God?).
In one of the traditions of Judaism, it has a name. That tradition is that Hasidism was formed in opposition to the exclusive position of Lithuania.
A Jew, even simple, can reach a certain spiritual dimension through sincerity, passion and inspiration that called the Hitlahavout among Hasidim.
For a long time (and for some the fight is not over) and the Lithuanian Hasidim have clashed violently. The rationale against the mystic. The effort against the fervor. Work against passion.
It could be that Judaism is ultimately a synthesis of this never-ending struggle.
And oddly, that's what I hear in He changed the lives .
A title that much a utopia always in motion.
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