Spirituality in Music and Religion - Oteil, Duane Betts, Yom Kippur, family heirlooms and more...

Meditations about spirituality in music and family heirlooms, starring Oteil Burbridge​ and my great grandfather.

Oteil at the Cap, photo by Andrew Blackstein.

I really can't say enough good things about Saturday night’s Oteil Burbridge and Friends show at The Capitol Theatre. Dynamic, exciting, unexpected. I may be biased because I not only love Oteil, but also Lamar Williams Jr. and Duane Betts. They are old friends who I think the world of and am happy to see have this excellent opportunity to grow and shine. But I think this is the best group out there playing the type of music I love right now. The variety of players, the way they interact - Melvin Seals and Steve Kimock are legends in their own rights - and the choice of material is just top notch. Tom Guarna also on guitar, Jason Crosby on keys and John Morgan Kimock on drums. Killer show from beginning to end. The actual end was a seamless blend of “Blue Sky,”Old and In the Way’s “Midnight Moonlight” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed,” partly seen below.

The band may have been putting even a little extra into it, with actor John Amos riding the rail in his wheelchair. Oteil and Lamar were singing right to him and their joy at having him there was readily evident backstage after the show. “John is Black America’s father,” Oteil said. (Mr. Amos is also my neighbor in South Orange/Maplewood and his sister Joanna Wright is a longtime district teacher and school board member. My son Jacob is close with her.)

Add it all up, and Oteil’s quest for musical joy and purity and this was a night that for me, and certainly for others int he packed theater, reached beyond entertainment. it was spiritually nourishing, a perfect evening in the midst of the Jewish days of awe, and just before the start of Yom Kippur.

View from above. Photo by Andrew Blackstein.

The band evinced creativity, energy, diversity in material and approaches, with different members taking the spotlight. It was just a stellar night of uplifting music, with an excellent choice of material, including Dylan, Col. Bruce, Earl King and originals by Duane and Oteil, as well as Jerry and the ABB, of course.

And it was thrilling to hear my friend Lamar singing the classic Jerry Garcia song “Cats Under The Stars” with Melvin Seals, who played the song with the Garcia Band countless times.

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And now for something totally different…. some family history and reflections of the Jewish high holy days just passed.

A tallis is a prayer shawl presented to a Jewish child on his/her bar/bat mitzvah and worn after that inside synagogue. This year for the holidays, I wore my grant grandfather Isidor Kiefer’s shawl. He was born in 1871, so this tallis is from approx.. 1884. At the risk of sounding a little woo-y, I felt its power, and the presence of my ancestors coursing through me, and I heard the prayers more clearly. I don’t know if that can or will last, but I was honored to be wearing Opa’s tallis, and glad I found it.

My aunt Joan had it for decades and lent it to me for my own kids’ bar mitzvahs. It then vanished into the craws of my house, and some serious searching never found it, until last week, when I was looking for something else. I assure you that it will not be misplaced again.

Isidor was a man of substance, and a renowned archivist and historian of the Jewish community of his (and my grandmother’s) hometown of Worms, Germany. He was born on May 26, 1871, in Worms, was a tin manufacturer and chairman of the town’s Jewish community until 1934, when he wisely fled to New York via Belgium after seeing other Jewish leaders arrested. The 11^th century synagogue of Worms – now a Unesco World Heritage site – burned for two days during Kristallnacht, November 9, 1938. Lost were its 13^th century interior, Torah Scrolls, furniture and a small Jewish museum.

In exile, Isidor conducted extensive research on the history of the Jewish community in Worms and was intimately involved in efforts to restore the historic synagogue and cemetery after the War and the Holocaust. An article in World Jewish Travel says, “He had lost his status, his home, his country, and he longed for Warmaisa. … Kiefer, did not consider the Jewish community in Worms as legally extinct, but rather still alive, but in exile… Kiefer insisted that the reconstruction of the synagogue was central for the Jewish world in general and he started a signature collection in mid-1955 for supporting the reconstruction.”

He was at the 1959 groundbreaking for the rebuild – and I have his scrapbook of the event – but died in October, 1961, two months before it was reopened. His death at 90 was marked by this obituary in the New York Times:

I visited the Worms synagogue in 1997 and was proud to see a giant painting of him in the lobby. The director and archivist greeted me like a VIP and the whole experience was very moving, but it wasn’t lost on me that the once-thriving synagogue is now a museum. I’m proud to carry on Isidor Kiefer’s lineage, and maybe my passion for digging through archives and recording history came from him.

More on Isidor and the Worms synagogue: https://www.worldjewishtravel.org/listing/28380/

More info and tickets for all: www.alanpaul.net/appearances/

Brothers and Sisters: the Allman Brothers Band and The Album That Defined The 70s, was my third straight instant New York Times bestseller, following  Texas Flood: The Inside Story of Stevie Ray Vaughan and  One Way Out: The Inside History of the Allman Brothers Band. My first book was Big in China: My Unlikely Adventures Raising a Family, Playing the Blues and Becoming a Star in Beijing, about my experiences raising a family in Beijing and touring China with a popular original blues band. It was optioned for a movie by Ivan Reitman’s Montecito Productions.  I am also a guitarist and singer who fronts two bands, Big in China and Friends of the Brothers, the premier celebration of the Allman Brothers Band. We may well be playing near you soon. Click here to find out.