Truth is Beauty and All Lights Matter

Last night I was having a chat with someone on the flipside.

Not entirely sure who, but I was aware that he was Jewish, because he was showing me some artifacts from his “shul” back in New York City. I heard the word “shul” and remembered it enough to include it in this post. The word means synagogue in Judaism, and I was being shown these items, not from a perspective of pain or suffering, but just history, or remembering.

It reminded me of when I played piano at my friend Dave Patlak’s little brother Danny’s Bar Mitzvah. Danny, bless his heart, is no longer on the planet, but when he was mitzvahed the family asked me to play. At the time I was playing guitar and piano in “open mic nights” in Chicago, and said “Sure.”

But I wanted to play “Hava Nagila.” (Most people were playing “Tequila” or “Innagaddavida” at events, but I thought I’d be politically correct — funny, I never knew what the title of “InnaGaddaDaVida” meant until today — according to its Wiki page, after a gallon of Red Mountain wine, it’s what the drummer heard from the drunk Iron Butterfly vocalist Doug trying to sing “In the Garden of Eden.”) Growing up Cat’lick, I didn’t know the tune other than Harry Belafonte’s version.

So I learned it — and I played it.