Apropos of nothing:
Oh, Jewish blogging world, you are losing your touch.
Or maybe I’m just losing touch with you. Last Rosh Hashanah, Regina Spektor — whose song “Laughing With,” by the way, was just named one of the Best Lyrics of 2009 by, um, us — blew a shofar at one of her concerts.
This might be Regina overkill. After all, we’ve already reviewed her new album and blogged about her song lambasting Holocaust deniers. But as long as she keeps being cheeky and inventive and writing crazily good songs, we’ll probably keep writing about it. And, with the recent tragic loss of YIDCore — the only band I’ve ever seen with enough chutzpah to blow hummus out of a shofar and onto their audience — well, somebody needs to step up and take the mantle of introducing traditional Jewish instruments into pop music.
Thank you, ReSpekt Online, for keeping me in the loop. *Ahem.*
chutzpah
Pronounced: KHOOTZ-pah, Origin: Yiddish, nerve, brazenness, presumption, extreme confidence.
shofar
Pronounced: sho-FAR or SHO-far, Origin: Hebrew, a ram’s horn that is sounded during the month of Elul, on Rosh Hashanah, and on Yom Kippur. It is mentioned numerous times in the Bible, in reference to its ceremonial use in the Temple and to its function as a signal-horn of war.
