The Music And Spirituality Of Songwriter Peter Himmelman

00:00 Speaker 1 There were a lot of questions that I had. These were questions that I had when I was a kid.

00:04 Speaker 2 That's songwriter and musician Peter Himmelman.

00:07 Speaker 1 You know, there didn't seem to be anybody with answers in that kind of shul system I was involved with.

00:13 Speaker 2 Himmelman, a creative thinker and questioner by nature, wanted to know why and how Judaism is still relevant to Jews, and by extension, to him. But the rabbi at the synagogue his family belonged to when he was young would not engage in that conversation.

00:30 Speaker 1 I just sort of reconciled myself to thinking that, well, Judaism mustn't be for me.

00:35 Speaker 2 But Himmelman continued to be nagged by those same questions. When he was older, he moved to New York to pursue a musical career. Before long, he found himself in the home of a rabbi who had bookcase after bookcase of Jewish holy texts and pictures of the Lubavitcher Rebbe on his walls.

00:54 Speaker 3 And then Peter piped in and, uh, said, "Can I ask you something?"

00:58 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Simon Jacobson.

01:00 Speaker 3 You talk about this rebbe. You speak about him like he can do anything, he's superhuman. Can he actually do anything?

01:08 Speaker 1 I said, "Well, can he fly?"

01:09 Speaker 2 Without any hesitation, Jacobson gave Himmelman something he'd always expected from a rabbi: an honest answer.

01:16 Speaker 3 For him, walking on Earth was just as miraculous as flying. Suddenly his cynicism and his whole attitude, like, melted away, and he looked at me with this, this look. He said, "Wow."

01:29 Speaker 2 Jacobson's answer inspired Himmelman to fully embrace Jewish observance, even as he was making a long, distinguished career of songwriting and musical performance. I'm Gary Wollek, and this is Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. Life as a Chabad emissary is often joyous, but it can be unpredictable and even dangerous. Chabad has become a ubiquitous presence in every corner of the world, but behind every Chabad house are emissaries, regular people striving to transcend their circumstances, and the community that supports and relies on them. These are their stories. Here's a great opportunity for you. You rely on the Lamplighters podcast to bring you inspiring stories of Chabad emissaries all over the world. Now you can help keep our series going strong. To dedicate an episode, please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com to explore dedication opportunities. That's podcast@lubavitch.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. Peter Himmelman was born in 1959 in a suburb just west of Minneapolis, Minnesota. I asked him if he and his family were observant.

03:11 Speaker 1 Well, I had observed that we were Jewish, put it that way. I didn't think of myself as non-observant in any way. I didn't really understand what observance was. It wasn't anything I rejected. It just wasn't available for me to have accepted.

03:31 Speaker 2 Himmelman didn't know anyone who kept the Sabbath or kept kosher. He had all kinds of questions about Jewish law and custom, which he put to the rabbi at the synagogue he and his family belonged to.

03:44 Speaker 1 One was about, uh, techiyat hametim, revival of the dead. I don't remember there being any kind of answer at all. Kind of skipped on to the next thing. I asked him about the nature of angels, and that was skipped over.

03:58 Speaker 2 Himmelman also asked why certain laws weren't followed by most people in their synagogue, like the prohibition of driving on the Sabbath.

04:07 Speaker 1 It wasn't something I was, like, raring to do. I was just interested how, where did these laws go? And he told me that, uh, it's an evolving religion and that some of the things that were in the past were no longer relevant today.

04:24 Speaker 2 That bothered the young Himmelman.

04:26 Speaker 1 It didn't make sense that a, an immutable God, an eternal God, an omniscient God would give an immutable, eternal commandment and then rescind it.

04:40 Speaker 2 And there was something else that bothered him.

04:42 Speaker 1 The rabbi had called my mom. Apparently, he told her, you know, I was being disruptive and, uh, not to send me back.

04:51 Speaker 2 Wait, the rabbi told your mother you had been banned from shul for asking questions?

04:56 Speaker 1 Yes.

04:57 Speaker 2 Unbelievable. So what did you do?

05:00 Speaker 1 I just sort of reconciled myself to thinking that, well, Judaism mustn't be for me. It's not answering these kinds of questions in any way that is meaningful. That was it. I was out, you know?

05:14 Speaker 2 Peter Himmelman was just 13 years old. But he had other interests. When he was younger, he had developed a love for popular music.

05:26 Speaker 1 My sister Nina, who's six years older than me, was playing Beatles records and, and she played Motown, and it, it just sounded great. It was amazing to me.

05:38 Speaker 2 Himmelman began playing an old acoustic guitar, but he wanted a more powerful medium of self-expression, which he found.

05:46 Speaker 1 I had a cousin who had an electric guitar that wasn't played. My dad offered him $125 for the guitar. And you plug it in, and you pluck a string, and it's incredibly loud. You know, you're projecting energy through it. That was very intoxicating for me.

06:06 Speaker 2 Himmelman started a band with some of his friends. They played cover songs mostly. Himmelman also joined rhythm and blues, calypso, and reggae bands.

06:16 Speaker 1 I'm out of time, time, time.

06:19 Speaker 2 But when he and those same friends formed the pop band Sussman Lawrence, Himmelman's original songs rose to the fore.

06:27 Speaker 1 I need to spend some time with you. I'm out of time, time, time. And we had done very well in the Midwest. We'd made a couple records. We were probably 19 or 18 when we started the band. These are some of the guys that I started playing with when I was 12 years old.

06:49 Speaker 2 Himmelman's father passed away in late 1983 after a long illness. In 1984, Peter and his bandmates decided to pursue their musical dreams in the big city.

07:00 Speaker 1 And we got into our cube van and our roadies, and we moved out east. And we started playing CBGB's, you know, The Bottom Line, The Ritz, Kenny's Castaway, all these places right away. And I was a hustler, and I befriended rock journalists. I would go visit A&R people. I was very hungry.

07:23 Speaker 2 Himmelman released This Father's Day, his first solo album, which was inspired by the loss of his dad. His Sussman Lawrence bandmates played on it, but Himmelman was the draw. His songs were beginning to capture the attention of the record industry. In 1985, he signed a deal with Island Records. But even as his career ambitions were coming closer to fulfillment, he was asking many of the same questions about Judaism that had preoccupied his younger self. Then not long after Himmelman arrived in New York, he met a record producer.

08:02 Speaker 1 His name is Kenny Vance. He was in a band called Jay and the Americans who were hugely popular, and they played on Ed Sullivan. He's been in Woody Allen movies. He was the music director for Saturday Night Live.

08:16 Speaker 2 One night, Himmelman pumped Vance for information about his many connections in the world of music.

08:22 Speaker 1 And he goes, "But tonight I wanna take you to my main connection." I'm like, "What's that?" Thinking that I would be very averse to going. "It's a religious Jew in Brooklyn." And I'm like, "Let's do it." He takes me across the Brooklyn Bridge, looking back over the lights of the city. I had this very clear sense that something auspicious was taking place, that something profound, a profound change for the good was about to happen, and I'm gonna just follow it. And we go to this rabbi's house.

09:06 Speaker 3 And, uh, I remember Peter walking in, a tall, lanky guy speaking in a very slow drawl.

09:12 Speaker 2 That's Rabbi Simin Jacobson. Jacobson was and still is uniquely qualified to answer the questions of Jews who, like Himmelman, had been given little or no reliable information about Judaism. He has a gentle, non-judgmental manner, and from the mid-'70s until 1992, he had a unique job.

09:34 Speaker 3 I became one of the members of the Vaad, the organization that was responsible for remembering and writing the Rebbe's talks. On Shabbos and holidays, as we know, they were not recorded, nor notes were taken. So I was a chozer, which means someone that remembers.

09:50 Speaker 2 Jacobson was also a meniach, someone who would commit what he had remembered to paper after Shabbos or Yom Tov. Armed with a wealth of information and wisdom from the Lubavitcher Rebbe and the previous six Chabad Rebbeim, Jacobson realized he had an important mission.

10:07 Speaker 3 To bridge the spiritual and the secular, to take 4,000 years of timeless Torah wisdom and present it in a timely, relevant, personally, psychologically, emotional, relevant way, and show how it can transform your life.

10:23 Speaker 2 Long before Jacobson published his best-selling book, Toward a Meaningful Life, and opened his Meaningful Life Center, which he estimates has educated between 3 and 4 million people in Hasidism: The Wisdom of the Lubavitcher Rebbe, Jacobson taught hundreds of spiritual seekers in his own home. He says Peter Himmelman really stood out the moment he came through his door.

10:46 Speaker 3 And he was very, could see immediately sharp, very sarcastic, very cynical even, but, but pleasant, with nothing biting about it. It was just very pleasant. And, you know, he was sitting and watching me. I saw him, like, checking me out.

11:02 Speaker 1 He had a sense of humor about him, and I liked Simin immediately. I felt zero defensiveness. I felt like I had met a cousin or a brother. I was just kinda looking around 'cause there were a lot of pictures of the Rebbe on the walls and paintings of shtetl life. The walls are lined with shelves with Jewish books. Man, this is a real Jewish home, and I really liked being in that Jewish home. It was a very positive feeling.

11:33 Speaker 3 And it was a small group. It was maybe seven, eight people, some men, some women.

11:37 Speaker 1 There were different people. There was a filmmaker, a couple musicians, and just sort of artist types.

11:43 Speaker 2 Jacobson asked the assembled-

11:45 Speaker 3 "Anything on your mind?" You know, I would open up, and people would talk. Is there a God? Is there no God? You know, the big topics of life, good and evil, right and wrong, the power of music, the power of soul. And then Peter piped in and, uh, said, "Can I ask you something?"

12:01 Speaker 1 And I asked Simin, you know, "What's the deal with all these pictures of the Rebbe on the wall?"

12:05 Speaker 3 I spoke about the Rebbe as my mentor, spiritual teacher.

12:09 Speaker 1 And Simin said, "Look, there's, I get a lot of inspiration. That's why I put the pictures up."

12:13 Speaker 3 He said, "You speak about him like he can do anything. He's superhuman." Can he actually do anything?

12:19 Speaker 1 And then he started talking about, uh, tzadikim. Not the colloquial term that I'd always heard, you know. "Oh, Morty Blumenthal, what a tzadik. He could get you a, a deal on a couple of used tires or something," you know? He meant a tzadik is someone for whom there is no sense of self. Everything is doing things for others. He said, "A tzadik, he could do anything."

12:48 Speaker 2 But Himmelman, a deeply critical thinker, challenged Jacobson on that point.

12:54 Speaker 1 You know, I said, "Well, can he fly?"

12:55 Speaker 3 So I said, "I never saw him fly, to be honest."

12:59 Speaker 1 Which I liked. You know, maybe somebody could fly. I just hadn't seen it.

13:03 Speaker 3 But you have to remember that for him, walking on Earth was just as miraculous as flying.

13:10 Speaker 1 And Simon looks at me. He goes, "Understand one thing. To a tzadik, whether they're flying 30, 40, 50 feet above the ground or walking on the surface of it, it, it's all the same miracle."

13:22 Speaker 3 Suddenly his cynicism and his whole attitude, like, melted away, and he looked at me with this, this look. He didn't say anything.

13:31 Speaker 1 That was something intrinsic to the way I see life or wish to see life. There's no such thing as mundaneness. Everything is a miracle if we are only able to see it.

13:46 Speaker 3 Later he would tell me that he couldn't sleep that night. He says, "Wow, now I know why Jews are Jews. They get it," the appreciation of what life really is.

13:56 Speaker 2 The young, ambitious musician had hit it off with his new mentor. Himmelman was a frequent guest in the Jacobsons' home, learning Hasidus and enjoying the company.

14:06 Speaker 3 We used to s- be up sometimes till 5:00 A, 6:00 AM, 7:00 AM. And I have a, a piano in my house, and Peter would sometimes get on the piano, and we'd sing, and we'd talk, and we would argue, and it was just, like, magical. I was once speaking about the coffee beans and the oranges and the apples on the table, and I said, "There's energy vibrating, pulsating energy in each of them." And I remember him looking at me, and he was, like, so excited about it. The idea is everything is energy, and it's about drawing out, freeing, releasing the energy through a mitzvah.

14:41 Speaker 2 Himmelman embraced that idea in a big way.

14:44 Speaker 1 I went out and bought tzitzit the next day.

14:46 Speaker 3 And one day Peter tells me, "I've been keeping Shabbes." So I said, "Keeping Shabbes? What do you mean keeping Shabbes? You going to shul?" He said, "No, I light the candles before sundown on broken beer bottles." And I was, like, so taken because I never spoke to him about Shabbes.

15:03 Speaker 1 I had a long talk with my long-term girlfriend that wasn't Jewish that I'd been with for years and years, o- over a decade. I realized for sure that's not gonna work.

15:15 Speaker 2 Rabbi Jacobson, to what do you attribute this apparently sudden shift in Peter's behavior after your first meeting with him?

15:23 Speaker 3 I mean, when you learn Hasidus, it's not surprising because every human being is born with a divine soul, and it's just a matter of how dormant it may be. So it's like a pilot flame waiting to be released. Peter, I think it was right at the surface. He just needed, like, a little, like a combustion chamber. Didn't need much.

15:45 Speaker 2 In 1985, Jacobson brought Himmelman to see the Lubavitcher Rebbe during Purim. The following Shavuot, Jacobson brought Himmelman for Kos Shel Bracha, when the Rebbe gave out wine after holidays.

15:58 Speaker 3 I whispered to the Rebbe that these are people who are in the music business.

16:02 Speaker 1 And I looked right at him, and the first thing that struck me about him was he's an old man, but he has this incredible vitality, you know, physical vitality. Looked like intense cognitive vitality, which you can see a lot of times from somebody's eyes. And he gave me not just a little cup of wine that he would give out to most people, but a bottle of vodka.

16:30 Speaker 3 He'd give bottles to people who are public figures, shluchim, rabbis, teachers, heads of organizations, people I think of influence.

16:39 Speaker 1 And he said, "Share a little of this with the people that you meet on the road." And everyone, all the young Hasidim came running up to me. "Who's this guy?" You know, just "Who's this guy that got a bottle? Th- th- th- who, who is this guy?" You know? Yeah, I remember taking that bottle to Memphis. I took it all around the country.

16:59 Speaker 2 Himmelman shared the vodka and what he was learning about Yiddishkeit with people he met on tour.

17:05 Speaker 1 It's a gratifying thing to have good influence on anyone.

17:09 Speaker 2 He also began to incorporate Torah ideas into his music.

17:14 Speaker 1 Every word said's off the charts. Every action small or large. Takes the planet for another spin. Hard as it is to turn.

17:31 Speaker 2 That's Himmelman singing his song The Trees Are Testifying from his 1987 record Gematria. Before he met Jacobson and began learning some of the hidden secrets of the Torah, he wrote pop songs more or less. Now he was writing songs with deeper themes.

17:49 Speaker 1 Songs that I was really reflecting on things that were important to me. I just kind of let the energy go to this other kind of song. And whatever it was that I was thinking about that it was of value or was important to me, that's what entered the songs.

18:06 Speaker 2 Unlike some artists who create their best music when they're younger, Himmelman seems to get better with time, his message more focused. Here he is singing his song Mercy On a Desolate Road from his 2014 album The Boat That Carries Us.

18:23 Speaker 1 Lord, fill the need in us. Overlook the greed in us. Give us 20 times more than we are owed.

18:44 Speaker 2 Peter Himmelman's musical career has spanned more than four decades. His discography includes more than 40 albums. He's composed film and television soundtracks. He's been nominated for Grammy and Emmy awards

18:59 Speaker 1 Unburden us from all the fear we've sowed.

19:05 Speaker 2 Simin Jacobson is still very close to Himmelman. He's followed his musical career very closely, so he's not surprised that many of the ideas Himmelman explored with him, and with other teachers of Torah, have emerged in the body of his work

19:20 Speaker 3 Look, Hasidus and Torah music are really synonymous. It's the song of life. It's the poetry of life. It's the inner song, and he, he's plugged right in there

19:31 Speaker 1 And grant us mercy, grant us mercy, grant us mercy on the desolate road.

19:49 Speaker 2 Himmelman has been married since 1988. He and his wife, Maria, have four children and two grandchildren

19:56 Speaker 1 Hoping for more soon.

19:57 Speaker 2 Himmelman attends a Chabad Shul in Southern California, and one in Upstate New York, depending on the season

20:04 Speaker 1 The things that the Rebbe says and stands for resonate very clearly with me. And, you know, I like truth in my musicians. I like it in my clerics.

20:16 Speaker 2 So it's a natural.

20:17 Speaker 1 Yeah, it feels natural. If it doesn't, you know, I'm gone.

20:21 Speaker 2 Himmelman's new record will be out in the spring, and he just finished the manuscript of a book about his reflections on songwriting and spirituality. He studies Talmud weekly with his son, Isaac. He thinks Gemara might be his next big source of songwriting inspiration

20:38 Speaker 1 There's so many beautiful ideas there. The four watches of the night, the dog barks, and the donkey brays, and the workman returns home to talk to his wife, and the woman's nursing the baby. Beautiful stuff. It'd make my eyes water just thinking about it. Beneath your watching eyes, I shall not stumble. From your timeless course, I shall not digress. Beneath your watching eyes, I stand so humble. Like a child at his mother's breast.

21:27 Speaker 2 It's clear that just as Peter Himmelman has been inspired by Rabbi Simin Jacobson, it also works the other way around

21:35 Speaker 3 Peter is a, a very, very pure and very deep-

21:39 Speaker 1 Bless the God my soul

21:40 Speaker 3 He just didn't grow up in a observant culture. He grew up in a, in a, a very, uh, what he would call hollow and superficial Judaism. He got the u- the Woody Allen education. You know? It was a joke. Judaism was a joke.

21:53 Speaker 1 And bless the God my soul.

21:53 Speaker 3 I see a man who grew up in one type of world, and how he, uh, embraced Judaism. But you know what? In his own way. He doesn't look like me. He dresses his own way, but he has that deep, deep faith-

22:06 Speaker 1 And let sweet music

22:07 Speaker 3 And built a family

22:09 Speaker 1 Flow on

22:09 Speaker 3 Loyal, beautiful family, are now building their own families

22:13 Speaker 1 Please stay

22:13 Speaker 3 The naches I have from it, I feel like a, a grandfather here

22:18 Speaker 1 And crown me now. Can I address you with this song?

22:26 Speaker 2 As for their first conversation 38 years ago about tzadikim who could walk and fly, it's testimony to their enduring friendship that Jacobson and Himmelman each tell that story pretty much word for word. Himmelman still reflects on what that conversation has meant to him

22:44 Speaker 1 What I got was reminded of something that was sort of laying dormant in me. Nothing new was given to me. Maybe just permission to explore what I'd always believed

23:00 Speaker 2 Jacobson says he's not at all surprised that Himmelman got the message from the outset, or that he's fully embraced a Torah lifestyle

23:08 Speaker 3 That story is actually very telling, that to walk on earth is as miraculous as flying. That's the story of Peter. Peter recognizes the godly, the divine hand in simple things.

23:34 Speaker 2 I'm Gary Wollek. Thanks for listening to Lamplighters: Stories from Chabad Emissaries on the Jewish Frontier. We welcome your questions and comments about what you've just heard on Lamplighters. Please email us at podcast@lubavitch.com. And if you know of a great story involving Chabad emissaries or the people they inspire, please let us know about them. That's podcast at L-U-B-A-V-I-T-C-H.com. To subscribe digitally to Lubavitch International Magazine, or to receive it at your doorstep, please visit lubavitch.com/subscribe. This is a Lubavitch International podcast.