Jeremiah Lockwood
By Jeremiah Lockwood
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Culture A Year of Revolutionary Nigunim
The nigun, a wordless spiritual folk melody, is one of the great achievements of Jewish aesthetic expression. I grew up hearing nigunim at the family table on the Sabbath and holidays with my grandfather and my cousins. We sang a continuous stream of melodies, one flowing into the next, for what felt like hours. As…
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The Schmooze My Night With King Mohammed VI
It was bound to be a bizarre experience for me. Instead of rolling through my modest Brooklyn neighborhood, I was going to the fancy Pierre Hotel to sit in a room full of New York City’s elite. If you are not accustomed to the rigors of society life, a tableau of rich folk dolled up…
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Culture The Nigun Project: The Magid of Koznitz’s Nigun
The Magid of Koznitz (1737–1814) was born under miraculous circumstances. His father, an old bookbinder, and his mother were impossibly impoverished villagers in the Ukraine. One Sabbath this pious couple was visited by a stroke of good fortune. The couple, already advanced in years, was so poor that they fasted much of the time, saving…
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Culture The Nigun Project: Through the Castle at Night
For the Modzitzer Hasidim, the nigun played so central a role in the spiritual life that it nearly trumped the value of Torah learning in the eyes of the community. The great Modzitzer Rebbes were as much composers of nigunim and philosophers on the poetics of music, as they were men learned in the Talmud….
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Culture The ‘Nightingale of the Desert’ Sings The Baal Shem Tov’s Nigun
I met Khaira Arby in January at a rooftop party in Timbuktu, Mali, when my band, The Sway Machinery, was en route to perform at the legendary Festival in the Desert. Arby, known as the “Nightingale of the Desert,” is a mainstay of the festival and has been one of the most popular singers in…
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The Schmooze Kol Nidre in Memories and Dreams
I’ve been spending the morning pacing around the house singing Kol Nidre while my two-year-old son Jacob toddles about playing with his toys. Just like every year, it seems, the High Holidays arrive to find my life in a startling upheaval of activity, with the world swinging back into movement after the sultry months of…
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Culture The Nigun Project: The Baal Shem Tov’s Nigun
I met Khaira Arby and her band, back in January of this year, at a rooftop party in Timbuktu, Mali where my band, The Sway Machinery, was en route to perform at the legendary Festival of the Desert. Arby, known as the “Nightingale of the Desert,” is a mainstay of the Festival and has been…
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Culture The Nigun Project: Surely, There Will Be Vodka
For the latest installment of the Nigun Project, I am indebted to a Forward reader who posted a link in the comments section of a recent piece in the nigun series. The link led me to a website that contains many selections from a wonderful multi-volume series of albums of Chabad nigunim released during the…
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