High Holy Beats

Today is the first day of Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. This is the entirety of my knowledge of the holiday. In fact, I had no idea it was today until I spent fifteen minutes outside of the Physics lecture hall before realizing that the building was empty and no one was going to show up. Not that I'm bitter.

Anyway, I might know next to nothing about Judaism, but I sure do like some of the newer klezmer acts on the music scene. Like Geoff Berner, whose Klezmer Mongrels will continue to be one of my favorite albums of all time. Here, however, is Whiskey Rabbi, the title track off one of his other albums:

And here's Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird with “Yossel Ber,” a Yiddish song that I have been told dates back to the 1940s.

And, finally, the Russian group Nayekhovichi with “Borsht.” A trilingual (English, Yiddish, Russian) live version of this song, entitled “Borsht Revisited,” appears of Daniel Kahn's album Partisans & Parasites:

Related posts:

1. Gelt
2. High Class Pros in SoHo Bars
3. Italicized Excerpts