Gripping his Black & Decker power drill, Yisrael Hecht bore holes lengthwise through ram’s horn after ram’s horn. The rabbi from Chabad of Sunnyvale was a one-man shofar factory in his open-air booth, and the sounds of his handiwork echoed over the sixth annual To Life! Jewish Cultural Street Festival.
Shofar blasts blended with the excited buzz of several thousand Jews crowding Palo Alto’s California Street on Sunday, Sept. 18. They came to sample delicious food, shop for exotic crafts, meet representatives from Jewish community agencies and get in some serious shmoozing.
On the Jessica Saal Memorial Main Stage, Oakland’s Dr. J Money and the OJG’s Hip Hop Shabbat Crew were rapping about Judaism, old school-style.
“Wearing my tallis, ain’t no way my tribe can be demolished,” rapped band member Jonathan Gutstadt, who added that his band was all about “spiritual gangsterism.”
The band closed with a funky rap song called “Let My People Flow.”
Over at the booth sponsored by Palo Alto’s Campus for Jewish Life, Executive Director Shelley Hebert was giving guided tours of a scale model of the $200 million project.
“This model is a magnet,” she said, thrilled with the public response to the planned campus. “If I was taking orders for the senior housing, I could have filled it.”
Rabbi Joey Felsen of the Jewish Study Network drew a crowd to his booth by offering a quiz to test Jewish knowledge. Most questions were easy: “Who rescued the animals and placed them in the Ark?” (Hint: It was Noah.)
Others were not quite at the tip of the tongue: “Who gave Joseph his coat of many colors?” (Answer: His father.)
High scorers were eligible to win a silver Kiddush cup.
A few booths down, Rabbi Raleigh Resnick and his wife, Fruma, the Bay Area’s newest Chabad power couple, met the community for the first time. Three weeks ago they moved from Brooklyn to the Dublin/Pleasanton area to take charge of a new Chabad house there. “There are more than 10,000 Jews in east Alameda County,” said Resnick, adding that he hoped to meet each one.
Festival Director Stephanie Brown, playing mother hen as she cruised the grounds in her electric cart, pronounced the event a success. “There’s gorgeous weather,” she said. “Everyone’s smiling.”
The weather indeed cooperated, unlike in past years when the September sun baked attendees like overdone brisket. Temperatures hovered comfortably in the 80s, and though one lone lawn umbrella boasted a sign reading “Free Shade,” there were no takers.
As the afternoon wore on, contestants in the second annual Jewish American Idol contest were wowing the crowds at the MeshugaNutcracker Children’s Stage.
At 4 p.m., the finalists took the main stage to compete. It was easily the best-attended event of the day. Eden Jackel, 8, sang Carole King’s “Locomotion,” with plenty of added bumps and grinds.
Tamar Leveson, 9, sang the Israeli classic “Yerushalayim Shel Zahav” in a perfect Hebrew accent. Shelley Leveson said her daughter picked up the language at an Israeli-run preschool and later at Yavneh Day School in Los Gatos. “She found Hebrew easier to read than English,” explained the proud mother.
The big winner of this year’s Jewish American Idol was Sydney Angel, a senior at S.F.’s Urban School.
Looking like a Streisand-in-training, Angel sang “Not For the Life of Me” from the hit Broadway show “Thoroughly Modern Millie.” If there was a house to bring down, Angel would have done so. She won scads of prizes including a $100 check, which she later said she would donate to the Red Cross for victims of Hurricane Katrina.
With the sun setting, festivalgoers got in their last- minute shopping. Kosher burgers and turkey dogs were going for half price over at the Jewish Study Network stand (JSN rabbis served as the booth’s burger-flippers).
Trudy Hartman of Palo Alto had lost her wallet earlier in the day, and arrived at the festival in a bit of funk because of it. But by day’s end, she was feeling good again. “I love the range here,” she said. “From Orthodox to unaffiliated and everyone in between.”
Yosef Marcus of San Mateo took in To Life! with his two toddlers in tow. “This one is great,” he said of the festival. “It’s great to have a place to come together as Jews with no religious agenda. It’s a big mitzvah.”