מוזיקה יהודית מודרנית

00:01 This is Igress, and today we are going to look at the Rebbe's position on Jewish music that is not traditional Jewish music. That is Jewish music either that's being played in a style of like rock and roll or jazz, which, uh, is now a very common phenomenon. Nowadays, almost all new Jewish music coming out is copying a, a, a modern style, but this wasn't always the case. There is the scratchy new folk records that are always available. So, uh, modern Jewish music, we're also going to look at what the Rebbe has to say about, uh, setting Jewish words to non-Jewish tunes, and we're also going to look at the Rebbe's position on playing straight-up non-Jewish music. So we're gonna try to pack that all into one share. The main thing we're looking at, though, is the first question, is Jewish music styles that are not traditional Jewish music styles. What it, uh, what the Rebbe feels about incorporating, uh, Jewish music into the rock and roll genre, into the jazz genre. Those are the two we're looking at in this letter, but obviously into pop and rap and all of those other things that have now become so popular. And, uh, I confess that until I found this letter in our volume for this year, this was exactly fifty years ago, this is Tuchat Shlamat Dalet, uh, in the volume that we're learning through. I, I didn't know the Rebbe had anything on this. But this is a, this is a substantial letter. And I

01:04 did a little bit of background, and I wanna tell you the history 'cause I had to do some digging. Uh, it's not clear from this letter who this letter is to. It just says down here that this was also printed in Likud Eseres before the original letter came out. And before the letter came out in Igress, it was printed in Likud Eseres, and it's a response to someone who's in charge of a band. That's what he does for a living, is he has a, he has a band, he plays music, and he got close to the Yiddish guy, and he became frum. And now he asks about the music that he's doing, uh, and whether he should put together a new music project in the spirit of Judaism. At the time, there weren't a lot of Jewish music bands in the year Tuchat Shlamat Dalet. That would have been nineteen seventy-four. I-- seventy-four, seventy-four. I don't think there were that many back then, um, not certainly not like we have today. So it turns out that I am willing to, uh, I'll say ninety-nine percent sure that this is, uh, that this is Avi Piamenta. This is Yossi Piamenta. This is the Piamenta band, the Piamenta brothers. And the reason why I'm almost completely sure it's them is because Avi Piamenta did a My Story with Gem that's now on chabad.org, where he told his whole story. And when he tells his whole story, he says that he, he started performing flute with his brother,

02:02 Yossi, who the-- Yossi is the guitarist. He's the flautist. When he was seventeen, they played in the IDF band in nineteen seventy-three. The Yom Kippur War had just broken out, and, uh, they formed the Piamenta band shortly after, and then they became frum. Um, before they became frum, though, they were invited to perform with Stan Getz. Now, I'm not a big jazz guy. Uh, maybe I'd like to be, but, uh, so we'll find out from the rest of these letters. They performed with Stan Getz. They, like, went on tour with him. He was one of the great jazz composers and musicians of the day, at least according to Wikipedia. And, uh, their star was really rising, and then they became frum, and they both moved to Crown Heights. They started learning Torah, and they wanted to find a way to pivot because although they'd been Israelis and they had been, I mean, they were always Jews, their music was not Jewish. The music was kind of a jazz rock and roll, and they wanted to pivot into Jewish music. And the, in Avi Piamenta, in his interview, uh, on, on chabad.org, says, uh, I'll give you the quote. He says, "At this time, as time went on, we decided to write to the Rebbe and explain what we were doing, and the feeling we had was that we could positively influence other Jews. In this letter of eight pages penned by Yossi, with which he included a photo album of the history of our band,

02:59 he asked the Rebbe if he was worthy of doing what he wanted to do, which was bringing estranged Jews back to Judaism through music. And in response, the Rebbe wrote a long letter." And when he quotes parts of the letter, they're directly out of this letter. So I am ninety-nine percent sure this is the letter that was written in response to the Piamenta brothers when they asked about taking their non-Jewish music band and turning it into a vehicle for bringing people closer to Yiddishkeit through Jewish music that was done in the style of rock and roll and jazz and the like. I'm pretty sure this isn't from Tuchat Shlamat Dalet. I think there's an error in the Igress. When they do the interview, they say, i-in their, in their interview, they say they think they wrote this letter in nineteen eighty, and that would work out a lot better. And also you'll note that this letter doesn't have an actual date or a heading on it. It was sorted into the volume, Tuchat Shlamat Dalet, but the, uh, the collators are definitely not sure it's from Tuchat Shlamat Dalet. That's a nerdy side point for those of us who are nerding out on the, on the margins of Igress. Either way, here's the Rebbe's response. There's a lot of various points in here. We're gonna go through them, and then we'll summarize them. Uh, the Rebbe starts off by saying, "Le'ach sheyibadlu. Sheybata chashash shel chelek mesuyim dehatzibur shebe'etzem lo nishdana halaka shehaysah mesach bazman

04:02 ve'aratah v'sumah aderech zeh kadasa av vechulu." The Rebbe says, "First of all, I don't think you should do this until you're able to quiet down concerns from certain people in the community that you haven't actually changed your band all that much from what it used to be, and you'll need to, uh, you'll need to fight an uphill battle against them." So the Rebbe says there are people who are saying that you're not really changing much at all, that this is the same band, and that you're not really becoming a Jewish music band. You're just making your stuff a little more spirit-spiritual, I guess. And, uh, this pushback, the Rebbe says, you're gonna have to address before you make a whole project bringing people close to Yiddishkeit through your band. The thing is that, uh, this would only apply to somebody who has an existing band they want to change. This would not apply to somebody who wants to start a Jewish music band nowadays. But if someone wants to take a band that was successful up until now and switch it over to be a Jewish music band, the Rebbe's first concern totally applies, which is that he's worried. He says that, uh, people are going to say the band hasn't really changed, and you're gonna have to prove that, uh, that it has, uh, ideally through, uh, through, through an album coming out that makes it very clear that your band isn't the band that you used to be before. Point number two. "Vipashanev

04:56 mechol derechei de'eil muvan shebechalal tachnis hamichun mechaneh b'nechutze." He says, "Based on what you told me in the letter, that you should know God in all of your ways. Mechol derechei de'eil. We should know God in all of our ways, which means that no matter what we're doing, whether it is, uh, whether it is science, whether it is history, or whether it is music, we should be investing it with Yiddishkeit." The Rebbe says that in general, that is a very good idea and also a very urgent idea. It's very good, it's very important, it's very good in general to take your discipline that you're interested in and pivot it toward Yiddishkeit. The Rebbe then says, "Muvah shegmei bechal tachnis, in all such disciplines atzlacha trevi yeishev v'gideilah keshnas aidei mumcha minusi shefach hamidubar." This generally works best when the person doing it is an expert in the thing that they're doing. It, uh, it doesn't-- I, I, at, at risk of fabrengen, uh, something that non-experts have been doing for a very long time is mechol derechei de'eil, and it never works out well. When people who don't have an expertise in a certain field try to inject Yiddishkeit into it, what they usually end up doing is messing up the field horribly and, uh, and, and making Yiddishkeit look, look bad because they don't understand the field well enough. The Rebbe's kind of hinting to that in this paragraph, um, that, uh, that if somebody is going to invest Yiddishkeit or show that Yiddishkeit

05:59 is within or works with a certain discipline, they ideally should be experts in that discipline. It works best when they already know their stuff in that discipline. Um, I mean, in my own field, you guys know I do a lot of the science Torah stuff. Uh, anybody who is, uh, who has no background in science who tries to invest science and Torah, link them together, tends to end up sounding pretty silly. So what the Rebbe's saying here is that if you're going to link Yiddishkeit to something outside of Yiddishkeit, uh, you'd better be an expert in the thing outside of Yiddishkeit. Or at the very least, you should make sure that someone is looking over your shoulder who is an expert. Don't go at this alone. And finally, it should be only when you're able to dedicate yourself to it completely. Now, in this case, where he's talking to musicians, it works perfectly. Specifically when it comes to, uh, music, this is what has fallen to you. You are a musician. This actually works perfectly and even better. So the Rebbe says point one: First of all, music is a good vehicle for conquering hearts and minds. It's something that does convince people of things and bring people in a certain direction. So there's no reason to believe that music wouldn't be a good vehicle for bringing people close to Yiddishkeit. You can convince-- there's protest songs going way back. Convincing people of things through music has always been a tool. The Rebbe then says

07:10 it also helps that you can make a parnassa off of this because then you can put yourself entirely into the discipline. Uh, if music was a side gig that you weren't making money off of, it would be difficult to dedicate yourself entirely to the fus-- to the fusion of Judaism and music. But since you can actually make money off of this, you can make a living, I'm not worried you won't be able to dedicate yourselves fully. And finally, three, some of you have already conquered the market and become popular, so clearly you're good at this and you know what you're doing. So the Rebbe's saying here that I generally-- the Rebbe's saying generally, when somebody gets into the idea of fusing some part of secular society with Judaism, they should be experts, they should be people, or at least they should have experts on their team, and they should be people who can throw themselves into this entirely. And the Rebbe's saying, regarding music, you fit the bill. You are experts who can throw yourselves into this entirely. And then the Rebbe, he's, he's making a point off the letter. In the letter, he'd mentioned secular music. So the Rebbe now spins off the term secular music and says, I wanna point out that secular music, which is the thing that you're now pivoting away from, uh, and toward Jewish music, that secular music is not just secular. Secular implies is a word like folk. It implies that it's just kind of a neutral. That

08:19 the entire idea of secular music is not that it's a neutral, it's an active evil. Uh, the Rebbe doesn't use the word evil, but he says it's actively negative. That it is, uh, that when people listen to it, it brings their yetzer hara toward, uh, destroying barriers and toward destroying the establishment. This certainly was the case, uh, in sixties and seventies music, and probably in eighties music too, that a lot of the music that was coming out in that era, it's a little bit less of a fad now, I think, in the music genre. But at the time, and even now, a big, uh, a big background to music, something that's happening below, below the surface and sometimes very openly in music, was the idea of breaking the establishment. And also breaking the establishment of tznius and making people less modest. That certainly is modern music. So the Rebbe's just pointing out here that secular music is not a, uh, neutral. Secular music is usually a negative, that it is based on the idea that you can take people who are listening to it and convince them to break down social barriers, to break down the existing order, to break down the existing society, and to break down the structure of modesty. So the Rebbe says on one hand, the fact that secular music is so bad, is so bad for the people listening to it, only emphasizes the importance of you taking this on and trying to create a genre of Jewish music, because

09:26 this is, in the Rebbe's words, . Look at that. The Rebbe says, because this is literally saving lives. It is literally a danger to those people. It could, it could kill them. He says-- he, he doesn't say in theory, he says . So he said literally a danger to their lives to be listening to this kind of music. So you switching it over to a Jewish genre and giving them a format where they can listen to Jewish music, uh, that has the same things they like is, on one hand, literally saving people's lives. The Rebbe seems to be a fan. But on the other hand, the Rebbe has some pretty serious concerns about what is really the invention of modern Jewish music. I, I know I said this earlier, but I wanna drive this home as we're reading this letter. Um, even in nineteen eighty, there was not much. I mean, there, there, there, there were Jewish music bands, but not like we have nowadays. The Rebbe is talking about the invention of a Jewish music, of a modern Jewish music genre. Um, uh, not, you know, Nigunim. A modern Jewish music genre with the stages and the lights and the electric guitars. And, uh, this is really the Rebbe's piece on how, on, on how his concerns and his, uh, and his excitement about it forming. On one hand, we see the Rebbe's excitement, that this is . We're pulling people away from secular music which damages them and bringing them toward Jewish music.

10:26 On the other hand, the Rebbe is concerned. on the other side. Number one, this also is going to make it even more difficult, make your mission even more difficult. Since you're going to have to, to have to fight the current standard, the Rebbe says, look, you're coming from secular music, and I told you you're going to have to quiet down their concerns of the educators and of the Rabbanim that you're just another kind of Jew, secular music band masquerading as a bunch of Jews, uh, trying to spread Jewish music. You're gonna have to settle their concerns. It's gonna be harder to settle their concerns because their concerns are quite valid. Secular music is truly dangerous. On the one hand, the Rebbe says, I think this will make it harder for you. But furthermore, and this is the most important point, says the Rebbe, The Rebbe says, I'm concerned that, uh, you're going to have to quiet the concern. The, the Rebbe's exact words are: How are you going to ensure, how are you going to ensure that you won't end up bringing people into music, into this genre of music, and then once they meet your genre of music, they'll go looking for similar things that are not you and end up in the much broader, that is much more diverse and also much larger group of secular music? I-- it's the, the notion is like a gateway drug. How do you know that your Jewish music isn't going to be a gateway drug into

11:44 rock and roll or into jazz for kids who would not have engaged in that had they not first listened to you? So people who had never touched rock and roll are listening to all the time on scratchy records, are gonna hear the Pimentel Brothers play. They're gonna go, "I love this genre. What else do they have?" And as they keep on looking, how do you know they're not going to end up in the broader world of rock and roll? That could be a real concern, especially since, as the Rebbe said earlier, the broader world of secular music is . It's, it's spiritually dangerous, physically dangerous, uh, destroys tznius. And the Rebbe says, when it comes to what the, what secular music really represents, the secular music is about how everything is okay for you. Everything's motza to you. Hakol rotzi, that everything's actually a positive thing. It's v'iku v'yikuch. Tasta atzmecha datka ma zeh u'ma tiveh, that you should be testing yourself all the time and trying to figure out what's good without looking at prior generations. V'as man tachlit atzmecha, that ultimately you should decide on your own. V'yakha shelcha l'chol damim v'guli chol de'es kedmos klal, that a person should-- The idea of these, of secular music is that a person should make their own decisions about what's good without looking at any of the prior generations or anything that came before them. And, uh, they might end up in that world of ev-- choose your own destiny rather than looking at the

12:47 sages and looking at the Torah, uh, if they begin with your music. So you have to quiet down concerns, and you have to address legitimate concerns that your music may end up being a sort of gateway drug into secular music and into all of the negative things that come with it. And then the Rebbe says, yesh l'hadach eid v'kal zeh, that it would make sense, says the Rebbe, to expand upon this a lot, but he's not gonna do it here. Basically, the Rebbe is saying, "I have a lot more to say on this topic, but I'm cutting myself off." Ha'meirah ne'an al, the Rebbe says, what's coming out of this therefore, he gives them several conclusions, which is very helpful. You don't usually get this in letters. The Rebbe, after saying all the theory, now gives him some straight-up instructions. So instruction everyone. Ha'konsertim ke'anal meysgar segun datim pam aḥas beshanah becholach hem retzu'im v'chul. The Rebbe says, if you're talking about concerts, you wanna make Jewish music concerts in the genre of rock and roll, in the genre of jazz, as long as it's organized by religious people, a couple times every year, the Rebbe says, retzu'im, good idea. Go for it. D'ach nes tmidis opan avodah ki ez bazal, d'resh is ir gunzar v'amtsa yizhiris meyuḥadim mitmatim le'kanal. Says that, uh, it sounds like from the letter, they wanted to establish a kind of Jewish music school where the school would teach the next generation of Jewish musicians to do Jewish music. And

13:48 the Rebbe says n-he's not a fan of that. He says that, uh, setting up something like that is going to need to be done very carefully. It's going to have to involve all of the, uh, concerns that I raised above. And, uh, the Rebbe doesn't say no to it, but he seems to be hesitant about it. Uh, finally, tachlitim v'seich v'matim gam nigan matim retzu'im. When it comes to making recordings, uh, putting out records, albums that have correct music and correct lyrics, that would be that both the melody and the lyrics of the songs are uniquely Jewish, that would certainly be a good idea. V'chal, lamah las tilteku bechol anal. This is the strangest ending I have ever seen to a letter from the Rebbe. I have never seen this before in any of the letters. The Rebbe says, "Why, wh-why, why go so fast?" I've never seen that before. The Rebbe always tells people when they have a good idea to jump headfirst into it, and if they don't go fast enough, he'll write to them and say, "Why have you not gone faster?" But here the Rebbe says, uh, "In general, I don't know why you would start off so quickly with all of this." Amuk aza tfaftu mrubeh l'efafta, as Chazal say, if you grab on to, uh, too much, you end up not grabbing anything at all. Azked al atzi'im, the Rebbe says, I'll mention it by the tzi'im. So I do wanna summarize this since this was a sweeping letter.

14:46 I wrote up a little summary 'cause it was even hard for me to keep track of, uh, all the different points. Uh, let me give you some of the main points that came out of this letter. First of all, we said that you can only turn a secular band into a Jewish music band after demonstrating that it's not the same band anymore and that this is a completely new Jewish initiative. That was point one. Point two was, bechol derecheha de'ihu, the idea that we should know God in all of our ways and therefore that we should be, uh, uniting things that we find in secular society with Yiddishkeit. This works best when you're doing it as an expert in your field, or at least under the tutelage of an expert in that field, and must be done with extreme dedication. And then the Rebbe said that music is a good choice for you to do bechol derecheha de'ihu because you, uh, 'cause it can conquer hearts, because you can make a living doing it, so you can throw yourself into it entirely and totally dedicate yourself to it, and because you've already conquered the market and are already pretty well known. Uh, the Rebbe then says that the secular genre of music is not only secular, but it actively promotes bad midas, and he says this actually twice in the letter. So the Rebbe then says that on one hand, this fact that music, secular music is bad makes your work in turning it into

15:40 Jewish music even more important, but on the other hand, the onus is on you to prove that your music isn't like that. The Rebbe is also concerned throughout the letter that Jewish music will become, at least, uh, definitely near the second half, that Jewish music will become a gateway drug into the larger world of secular music, and he asks them how we can ensure that this won't happen. Based on this, the Rebbe concludes that occasional concerts and albums in this spirit would be a good thing. Establishing a school for Jewish music would need to be done very cautiously, and the Rebbe tells them to move slowly. So that's when the melody and the lyrics are all Jewish, and the question there is whether it's okay to adopt non-Jewish styles like rock and jazz, and the Rebbe seems concerned. Uh, and that concern, I gotta tell you, the, the Rebbe's concern is, uh, the Rebbe's not giving a green light. The Rebbe's allowing things at the end of the letter, but his concerns are also in the letter. I think that that concern might be enough for us not to patronize musicians who play, uh, who play, uh, uh, excessively modern tunes. There, there's certainly room to be strict in your home based on this letter and say, "I, I'm concerned that if my kids hear, um, modern Jewish music that has a lot of these elements, modern Jewish music that's based on pop or based on rap, then my children might do exactly what the

16:42 Rebbe says he's concerned they'll do and go look for other music in that genre and end up doing things that the Rebbe describes as kowat ha'ish nabach. So I certainly think based on this letter, you see room for stringency here in your own families. Um, the Rebbe certainly is not forbidding artists from producing it, though. As a matter of fact, near the end of the letter, he says, retzu'u, that it would be a good thing for the artist to produce it. So what I'm getting from this letter is a fair amount of subtlety here, where the Rebbe raises very real concerns that it makes sense for parents and educators to take into account when deciding what their children are going to listen to, but I'm also not seeing any red lights. I'm not seeing any stop signs where the Rebbe tells musicians not to do this. As a matter of fact, the Rebbe uses the language retzu'u regarding making the concerts and putting out the albums, so the Rebbe doesn't seem to have a problem with them producing it. So that covered. I wanna spend whatever time we have left just talking about, uh, non-Jewish music itself, 'cause here we're not talking about non-Jewish music. We're talking about melody and lyrics being Jewish, but in the style of non-Jewish music. I wanna briefly address some things the Rebbe said and some things that are just in Halakha about non-Jewish music, um, or setting Jewish lyrics to non-Jewish melodies, things like the Maccabeats and bands like

17:37 that who take, uh, Jewish words and set them to very popular non-Jewish tunes. So just a quick Halakha review. The Apta Debba in Arachim, it's in fifty-three thirty-two, if you wanna look it up, says there that it is asur to sing tunes that were composed for the sake of idolatry. Okay, so that one's pretty clear. If there is a song that an idolater put together to worship idols with, it is asur for us to sing it, even if you replace those words with words that are Kosher. So if there is an idolatrous tune from, I don't know, the Hindus come up with a beautiful song, and we decide we're going to take that song and set and, and say, say Kedusha to it, that would be a, uh, this is a new kesef. The Kedusha to the tune of, uh, Hindu idolatry, that would be a bad thing. That's not allowed according to the Apta Debba. It's brought in Shulchan Aruch like that. That is straight up asur. Now, there's a Divrei Chaim, and a lot of other poskim agree with him, that there's an additional rule that's attached to this that's a little more strict and has a little more to do with us, which is that if the original tune contains inappropriate words or messages and people know about that, then you'll remember those original words every time it's sung, even with Jewish lyrics. So if you take an inappropriate Jewish-- an inappropriate secular song And you set Jewish words to it, that

18:35 would also be asur because it causes people to remember the original inappropriate lyrics. Now, when the inappropriate lyrics have been lost to memory, uh, most Poskim are not worried anymore. For example, I, I don't think anybody knows the words, if there ever were words, to Napoleon's March, uh, which we sing on Yom Immeram. As a matter of fact, a lot of Yom Immeram tunes, this is, uh, I don't know if this is a dirty secret. It is a secret that not a lot of people know about most of our Yom Immeram tunes is a lot of the tunes that we sing on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur did originate as secular songs that were ultimately taken on-- taken into the Shoal. They didn't originate as idolatrous songs, and nobody remembers what the original words were anymore. So in cases like that, people really aren't as concerned. So it should come as no surprise that the Rebbe was very unhappy when he discovered that there was a, uh, a-- The Lubavitch organization in Manchester hosted an event, and an opera singer at this event performed church tunes. Now, you can imagine why this didn't make the Rebbe very happy. You have from the Alter Rebbe that it is befeidush also to sing songs, forbidden to sing songs that were composed for the sake of idolatry, and there's certainly room to say that, uh, that that would be included under that prohibition. But in any event, I have this letter. There's a letter written in English to

19:36 Zamal Jaffe. Um, we did a whole show on Zamal Jaffe. He has a giant archive of letters. I was able to find who this musician was. This took some research. This was Jan Pearce. He's a famous international operatic singer. He was the star of that evening, and they put it on the brochure, and they put on the brochure what he would be singing. And, uh, on that list of things he would be singing was a bunch of, uh, church songs, and the Rebbe was very unhappy. I'm just gonna... I, I don't have much time, but I do wanna show this to you. Let's go straight to the PS. This letter is, is published on Chabad.org. It was written on Yud Aleph Nisan of Lamed Aleph. Uh, and the Rebbe says, "It's not easy for me to write the following lines, but I have no choice, and I trust you will understand. I'm referring to the concert program arranged by the Lubavitch organization in Manchester last December, which has just now come to my attention." He starts with the positive. Uh, the Rebbe begins with the positive by congratulating them for doing a good presentation in general. He also mentions that he's upset that Dave Bear Perrin was not included on the list of honorary officers of Lubavitch organizations and says, "I'm sure it was a typo. Make sure not to exclude him next time," which I just find a very sweet part of the letter. The Rebbe says, "I noticed somebody important who you left

20:34 out, and I'm, I'm concerned about that." But now, now I'm quoting the Rebbe again. "Now I come to my main objection to the program itself, which appears in the center of the publication. I need hardly emphasize that a concert arranged for a Jewish cause should have a Jewish character and not just be a theatrical show." I, I wish I could take that one sentence and plaster it literally everywhere on every Chabad mesa. This is something that unfortunately we make a mistake about a lot, that when a Jewish or when a Jewish event is created, not just in Chabad, this is a mistake that's made everywhere. If we're doing a Jewish event, it should have a Jewish character and not just be a good show that has the word Jew stamped above it. Anyway, certainly a concert arranged by and connected with Lubavitch. It is quite understandable, therefore, that I began to look for Jewish topics in the program, and I only found something of that nature at the very end of the program after the intermission, and even there, the topics are of a mixed na- mixed nature and suffice it for the wise. The Rebbe's saying, "I looked through your program, and I don't like your event. The reason why I don't like the event is because this is a Jewish event, and you put a couple Jewish things near the end as like token Jewish parts of the event. But fundamentally, this was a secular event where you tacked Judaism onto the end."

21:28 And I'm telling you, I have seen many, many programs in the past ten, twenty years that have had this exact problem, where it's essentially a secular event where Judaism is tacked on to the end, even though it's being run by major Jewish organizations. Here, the Rebbe's calling this out explicitly and saying this is not appropriate, that Jewish events should be Jewish all the way through. The Rebbe says, "I don't know who arranged this program, but it's well known that the artist has a rich repertoire of tru- truly Jewish pieces." This individual, uh, Jan Pearce, had an operatic repertoire of Jewish pieces. There was added-- There was added disappointment in the fact which-- Excuse me, I misread. There was added disappointment in the fact which has so taken me aback that I was afraid to delve into it further, that the very first item on the program appears, appears to be a church piece composed for a church service. So the Rebbe says he's very upset about this, uh, and then he says something down here that I think we really could use. I had no idea the Rebbe ever said anything like this. He said, "Much more could be said," uh, et cetera, et cetera. Let me get you the part I want you to see. Again, the purpose of bringing these regrettable items to your attention is not only to prevent their repetition but also to urge you that if there are any copies of the brochure left, they should be immediately destroyed, at

22:24 least insofar as the pages of the repertoire itself is concerned. Indeed, it seems to me as one of those fortunate breaks for Lubavitch that so far no one has come out with protests against Lubavitch in this connection. The Rebbe's saying here that if you still have flyers showing that you did this horrible thing, uh, get rid of them, destroy them, and I'm considering this a break. We very rarely get a break from society, but it seems nobody noticed that you did this, so definitely destroy the evidence. And I'm certainly-- I'm not giving legal advice here. Uh, obviously, don't destroy real evidence. But, uh, but regarding this, it, it, it sounds like in this case, Lubavitch did something the Rebbe found disgraceful. That was asur. I mean, they were playing church music at their event. And he said, uh, "If there's evidence of this, destroy the evidence." Uh, being, being, being, being, being open about our horrible mistakes is not a top priority for us. Get rid of the booklets. Uh, so that's about church music itself. I have a little bit of time left, so in the final moment, we ever wanna show you a minor. We don't do a lot of minors here. Uh, minors, for the uninitiated or the soon-to-be-initiated, are very short responses from the Rebbe, mostly from the eighties and onward, where the Rebbe would answer a line rather than a whole letter. There's a minor down here, and this is a more subtle question. So they're asking a much more

23:25 subtle question of setting lyrics to non-Jewish melodies. We saw earlier off the Halacha that if the-- that a near-- Jewish, Jewish lyrics being sent to a non-Jewish melody where the non-Jewish melody is inappropriate is, uh, is almost certainly not going to be Motta. A lot of Poskim are not okay with that because it reminds people of the inappropriate original words. Uh, but there's obviously a gray area. Uh, how many people know the original words, whether the original words are still known. There certainly is space between, uh, taking the most popular secular song and setting, uh, Hanukkah words to it, as is done in-- as is done right now, uh, and, and taking, uh, tunes that were-- that died out three hundred years ago and singing Rosh Hashana, uh, words to them. Obviously, there's a gray area between them. So regarding that, somebody wrote that question to the Rebbe. If you look below the line, it says, "Your minor shy lee masses tak lee doo doo doo ma up, up sukin bee lee goo nay ooh ma sa ay lo." So somebody wrote to the Rebbe asking, "Can I take ne goo-- Can I take, uh, can I take-- Can I make songs? Can I make recordings that use sukin, that use verses from the Torah, but I set them to the tunes of non-Jewish music?" And the Rebbe writes back, uh, "Tarf li shel probably hara-- tarf lias probably, yeah, tarf lias haras rab me anash. You have to ask an anash rav. You have

24:28 to ask the Lubavitch rav shia kia. Mere hair rav, it's gotta be a real rav, somebody who's used to poskening, not your local, not, not your local Orthodox rabbi. It's gotta be a mere hair rav, ve asken, and it should also be somebody who's involved in the field, somebody who is, uh, somebody who's, uh, busy. Uh, ve, um, ve-- and you have to ask them, excuse me, ha efshur k'dai lach shia, whether it is possible, whether it also is k'dai, whether it's possible, and also whether it's a good idea to allow such a thing. And then the Rebbe says, "Sfeik l'chumra. If there's a doubt as to whether this is okay, I would say don't do it." The Rebbe says that if you're not sure about setting Jewish words to non-Jewish music, better to be-- better to err on the side of caution and not use the non-Jewish music at all. So what we have here is, I think, a pretty good survey, if I do say so myself, of the Rebbe's shihta on secular music. We have a, a very long letter to the Piamenta brothers explaining exactly what the Rebbe wants, uh, out of modern Jewish music the Rebbe's concerns are about Jewish music that has modern genres associated with it. We also got a lot of things along the way about how to deal with It was an adventure. We, uh, we saw the Rebbe's very strong opposition to, uh, Jew-- to Chabad events having mainly non-Jewish or even mainly secular and

25:32 so-called neutral, uh, content, and specifically the Rebbe's disappointment that a certain Chabad organization at one point had church music played at the event and telling him to destroy the programs so people don't find out. And finally, we looked at a ma'ana at the end where the Rebbe talks about, um, taking Jewish words and setting them to non-Jewish tunes. And there, although he says ask a Rav, uh, he puts a lot of conditions about-- on asking a Rav. The Rav must be a Rav from Anash. It has to be a Lubavitch Rav. It has to be You have to ask them not just whether it's mutar, but whether it's kedai, whether it's a good idea. And finally, the Rebbe says that he would be stringent if there's any doubt whatsoever, and I think there certainly is at least some doubts. There's room to be strict in this area. Absolutely. Okay, that's it. Thank you all very much.