It’s beginning to feel a lot like tashlich.
Soon I’ll be filing into the gleaming new sanctuary at Berkeley’s Congregation Beth El to welcome in the New Year. So, in keeping with the spirit of the High Holy Days (and at risk of blowing all journalistic credibility), I’m prepared to acknowledge a major sin: For many years I was a publicist and freelance writer for the music industry in Los Angeles.
Don’t get me wrong. As day jobs go, it was pretty good. I got to be a stay-at-home dad, work short hours for decent pay, and occasionally hobnob with pop culture royalty, from James Taylor to Ice Cube.
The royalty never seemed more regal than the time I was hired to write a bio for Barbra Streisand several years ago.
A bio is a brief artist biography that usually runneth over with purple prose and even purpler praise. Singers are rarely as splendid as their bios make them out to be, but that never stopped me from pounding out the requisite sycophancy at 130 buttkisses a minute.
However, if anyone ever lived up to the hype, it was Barbra, a cultural icon and undisputedly great artist (well, maybe a little disputedly). She is probably the most famous openly Jewish performing artist of our time, with a 45-year track record of pop excellence.
She’s also one of the few artists in history to win an Oscar, a Grammy, an Emmy and a Tony (and probably a B’nai Brith Award, too). As SNL’s resident yenta Linda Richman (Mike Myers) said, when Barbra sings, “It’s like buttuh.”
Still, I wondered if Barbra’s reputation for not suffering fools gladly would turn out to be true.
It was. Not only did she not suffer fools, she seemed unwilling to suffer anyone. When I met her in the recording studio to talk about her new album, I found Barbra cold and aloof. But why, I wondered? She hired me. I was there to serve at the pleasure of the diva, ready to cook up a steaming pile of adulation. It wouldn’t cost her anything to be friendly.
But ultimately her demeanor didn’t matter. She was smart and articulate about her music. And though I had grown accustomed to meeting celebrities, Streisand kept me on my toes.
The high point of the interview came when she described one of the songs on her album, “Avinu Malkeinu,” the well-known prayer chanted during the High Holy Days.
Wondering which version she had recorded, I sang a few bars of the “Avinu Malkeinu” I knew. She said, “No, no. Not that one.” Then she hummed a few bars of a different melody. I knew that one, too, and I started humming along with her.
So for about 15 seconds, I was singing a duet with Ms. Barbra Streisand. It wasn’t exactly Frank and Judy, but it was pretty cool.
The moment has stayed with me, not just because I found myself crooning with a superstar, but because it reminded me how instant rapport is possible with almost any MOT (member of the tribe), even insanely famous ones.
We were a generation apart. She’s a Brooklyn girl, I’m an L.A. boy. I earned just enough money to put food on the table; she was a gazillionaire who could buy and sell me a thousand times over. But Barbra and I both got “Avinu Malkeinu.” We both got the underlying cultural and religious significance of the prayer, landsmen to the end.
I had a similar feeling when I visited Israel. The giggling teens strolling along Tel Aviv’s Dizengoff Street looked just liked the kids from my high school. Attending Shabbat services in Jerusalem, everything was so familiar, it was hard to believe I was 10,000 miles from California.
For me, the universality of world Jewish culture is best experienced in those kinds of intimate echad moments — a feeling of being at one with all Jews.
The beauty is, no Jew need hang out with pop stars or travel 10,000 miles to encounter the perfect echad moment. It’s never more than a Shabbat or a Rosh Hashanah away.
This year, when chanting Avinu Malkeinu at Beth El, I’m sure my thoughts will alight momentarily on Barbra Streisand and our little duet. But then, no doubt, I’ll return to the present, look around and feel content to be back in the company of ordinary Jewish people who need people.
Dan Pine lives and kvetches in Albany. He can be reached at [email protected].