When is it kosher to listen to the Beatles on the Sabbath?
When your cantor adapts the Kabbalat Shabbat Friday night service to the melodies of John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Lenny Solomon, the founder of the song-parody group Shlock Rock, did just that for a late December service at Young Israel of Hollywood, an Orthodox synagogue in South Florida.
“I’ve never had more pride in anything else that I have ever performed,” said Solomon, who has been in the Jewish music business for 25 years. “I had created something new that could be sung in the shul. This is something that I had never done, and I was beaming by the time the services ended.”
It should be noted that Congregation Etz Chayim of Palo Alto also has held Beatles Shabbat services — one in 2008 and another last April — as part of its successful Fifth Friday Shabbat program.
However, Solomon has taken it up a level, working on Beatles-Jewish music for several years and releasing a CD titled “A Shabbat in Liverpool,” with 21 Beatles songs set to various parts of Shabbat services and liturgy.
On the 60-minute CD, “Shalom Aleichem” is sung to the tune of “With a Little Help from My Friends”; the “V’Shamru” portion of kiddush is set to “The Long and Winding Road”; “Ein Keloheinu” sounds like “Let it Be”; and the Havdallah service is set to “Imagine.”
The story began in 2004 when a friend and neighbor asked Solomon, who lives in Israel, for a 40th birthday gift — a CD of the songs of Kabbalat Shabbat set to Beatles music. Solomon was skeptical, but the neighbor, Allen Krasna, sent him an Excel spreadsheet with the Beatles songs in one column and the prayers and songs of the Shabbat service on the left.
Solomon went to work.
Working on and off, he needed nine months to take the 35 tunes and incorporate the melodies with the words of the Shabbat prayers.
Solomon recorded the CD, “A Shabbat in Liverpool,” in 2005, but it took another five years to obtain the proper licensing to release the project. The collection finally was released publicly last November (samples are available at www.shlockrock.com).
In the United States to promote the CD, Solomon had never used the songs in a real service until Dec. 24 in Florida.
“I enjoyed it and sang along with Lenny,” said Avi Frier, a congregant at Young Israel of Hollywood. “I think it will take awhile, though, for something like this to really catch on and became mainstream.”
It was hardly the first time Jewish services have been set to secular music. Some of the most popular Shabbat tunes originally were secular songs, such as “Erev Shel Shoshanim” (“Evening of Lilies”), a Hebrew love song written in 1957 by Yaffa Yarkoni.
“Every song that comes into this world has a holy spark,” Solomon said. “It is the obligation of the Jewish musician to take the best melodies of the secular world and bring them from the side of darkness to the side of light. This will cause the Jewish people to get closer to God and hasten the redemption.”
Krasna, whose request spawned the creation of the CD, agrees.
“I’m in favor of anything that is done in the service that elevates one’s spirituality,” said Krasna, a lifelong Beatles fan. “Certainly, Conservative and Reform synagogues may embrace this kind of thing more easily, since they always look for ideas to make their services more relevant to the times. But I believe there is a place for these tunes even at Orthodox synagogues.”
Solomon sees the Beatles service as a work in progress.
“My first effort at leading the service was not perfect,” he said. “I do hope I’ll have the opportunity to do this again, so that other congregants can learn the service and appreciate the rich Shabbat liturgy in a brand-new way.
“I’m also convinced that there are many people who ordinarily do not attend a synagogue but who can be introduced to the holy words of our Shabbat prayers through this music.”
“A Shabbat in Liverpool: Shabbat Prayers and Songs to Fab Tunes” CD by Lenny Solomon and Shlock Rock ($10.99)