Jewish Life through Music with Rabbi J.B. Sacks

Event details

  • Tuesday | November 7, 2023
  • 7:00 pm
  • Zoom

Rabbi Sacks continues his course designed to help us to think more deeply about the American Jewish experience, and our own relationship to Judaism and Jewishness through stories of the evolving nature of Jewish music. Rabbi Sacks co-authored the curriculum used in this course, developed for Stories of Music, a project of the Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.

Rabbi Sacks is now teaching a unit entitled Tzedek, Tzedek (Tashir v’) Tirdof–Music in Doing Justice. So far, this unit has explored two facets of doing social justice work–and the music that propels it:

  • Rallying and protesting against injustice in real time: The Power of Protest
  • Teaching and mobilizing against injustice: The Power of Ritual

Beginning in March, Rabbi Sacks will highlight a third facet:

  • Advocating and galvanizing against injustice: The Power of Performance

We will highlight:

  • several key protests against injustice in American history, music that propelled and sustained them, and Jewish involvement in both;(especially) the era of the civil rights movement, with other eras explored as well;
  • how the Passover seder serves as an example of and model for the revisioning, refocusing and utilization of rituals/liturgical moments in service of social justice values and concerns;
  • Jewish involvement in many aspects of most entertainment genres and moments that served to reflect and/or forward the work of justice.
  • several key moments in the history of musical performance, especially in the era of the Civil Rights Movement, and how music served them or responded to them;
  • Jewish involvement in many aspects of most entertainment genres and moments that served to reflect and/or forward the work of justice;
  • how Jewish creativity continues to draw from and motivate the call to social justice.

Please come prepared to learn, grow, and appreciate your own connection to the richness of Jewish life through our music. This course is to savor and enjoy!