Diaspora Opener at the Project Inspire Convention 2020

[Music] i grew up in philadelphia a child of holocaust survivors the family was not it was not observant but i was as an emotional kid i just felt a connection to being a jew i always felt you know very vested in jewish things i just didn't know a lot about it at the time there was a big folk music revival going on so yeah i started to take an interesting guitar and i loved it that was it i started cutting school and hanging out down in downtown philadelphia where the hip people were and the bands were really good and and i wanted to show people what i had to offer i was going to go to montreal to hang out with some people i knew there just to get away from everything and i pick up a hitchhiker looked kind of like me you know another long-haired hitchhiker with deeds you know he says i'm heading for woodstock why don't you come to and uh we got up there was thursday you know we found a good parking space you know somewhere near the chariot bungalow colleen i only found out it was chariot bungalow colony decades later trust me but 24 hours later i mean there were hundreds of thousands of people there that created a new template for young people you know this woodstock generation peace love and harmony and music and everybody gets along you know it was that kind of a thing after that i drifted back to philly i was playing a few folk clubs around the philiary again and then lo and behold my mother and my aunt said to me why don't you come with us to israel they were going to a bar mitzvah said yeah why not let me get out of here for a while and chill out and it was it was just an instant connection one thing led to another and i was you know becoming becoming more and more interested in what judaism in the traditional sense was saying i never knew anything about talmud i mean it was like you open up this huge book and there's all this big writing and there's smaller writing around that there's even smaller writing around that that's like whoa what is this you know and uh you know i was there for over 12 years [Laughter] [Music] within a short period of time i was picking up on other musicians and you know other guys were drifting in there were good players and gradually uh carved out a band over the next few years i started getting together with ben ceon solomon and rabbi moshe sure we were for real you know we played in real bands a lot of our music is based on news and we have jazz and very strong bluegrass and country and western and food and then mixed in with klezmer music and cathedral music traditional jewish music in the end we had a very eclectic band and people appreciated that i came to israel and i wanted to find out can you play rock and roll and be jewish and i found out and it's just nice man this is nice man all these nice guys kind of fun you can rock and roll and be jewish hashem the people will know god and that this knowledge will pour forth into the world kemayam liyam mekhasim like the waters that flow into the ocean [Music] as a band that was our purpose we we went out to reach out to people you know we were fortunate enough that we you know we had a couple hit songs in israel casita festivals at the time and you know people turned on to our music and uh you know our objective was uh to lift people up you know get them to appreciate that torah is the real deal you know that's the kind of writing i still do it's i'm trying to hit reality i'm not writing uh you know well i'm certainly not writing oh baby baby if anything is always 80's 80 now but [Laughter] but i you know but i feel i feel very blessed it is a big brother to be a musician i just i can't think of anything else i would want to do in in my life [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] you