Dear
Friends,
Happy New Year!
Hope you enjoy the last week of the year and get to work on those
resolutions. That's right. According to the Torah, a very reliable
source, the months of the year are numbered starting with Nissan. How amazing that the year  actually starts
with Passover, the holiday commemorating the open revelation of the Exodus, and
ends with Adar, where we appreciate God behind the scenes in the Purim
story. So too goes human history: From innocence in the Garden of Eden to
the hard knock life outside, from manna in the desert to sowing our own oats in
the Promised Land, from the Holy Temple to dispersion among the nations. Funny that the month of Adar where we increase
our joy is that one where God's presence is hidden. True pleasure can be found when we train our eyes to see God
in every detail of our lives.
Another great thing about this coming Rosh Chodesh Nissan is
that it is the day of my nephew Avraham's Bar Mitzvah in Jerusalem. Hard to believe that in a few days I'll
be praying at the Western Wall with my extended family as  we welcome this
amazing young man into adulthood. Mazeltov! He's a learned and sophisticated student who also
happens to play studio quality percussion and clarinet, sings, skateboards,
surfs, scooters, unicycles, rides mountain bikes and shares his parent's love
for humanity. If you have personal prayers you'd like uttered at the Wall
please send them to me by email.
I'm in the middle of the busiest time of my season and I'm
so grateful for every note of every concert. Somehow I survived each show from record snowstorms in
Philly last month to five gigs in one weekend in South Florida to four states
in four snowy days over Purim. I
must admit that the best part is coming back to LA and hugging my wife and
rapidly growing children. On the
way back from Israel I'm stopping in Atlanta, Marietta and Chattanooga so tell
all your friends down south to visit the website and get the details. We are now booking June through December! Please call us for great ideas on how to create a spirited program for your community.
The Songs We Sing Volume Two is mixed and will be mastered
mid-March. For those of you who
pre-purchased, THANKS! And thank you for your patience as we get it duped and
shrink-wrapped just as soon as we're able. The 20% pre-purchase discount will only last through March. Enjoy the saga of the Yarmulkah in my Skullcandy article below and the latest YouTube video links. We wish you a beautiful, holy and redeeming Passover.
Sincerely,
Sam
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Preorder The Songs We Sing Volume Two!
Sam is currently wrapping up his 21st CD...the follow up to the ever popular Songs We Sing released in 2000.  Volume Two has twenty-eight lovingly recorded songs by Sam and his full eight-piece band and an array of guest vocalists. This monumental work breathes new life into these classic "common denominator" hit songs that unite the Jewish world. Preorder yours now at a 20% discount through the end of March...it will ship in the first quarter of 2010 and you can count yourself among the first to hear it.
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The CHAI TOUR 2010!
Be a part of Sam's 18th year on the road! Get your organization signed up on this special tour while the best dates are still available! Click here for the concert options and click here for the full schedule; dates are added weekly.
Event programmers: Uplifting contemporary Jewish music will bring all ages in your community together like no other activity. As always, we discount significantly for midweek shows and when Sam is already in your area. Sieze the date!
Upcoming stops include:
Jerusalem, Israel
Marietta, GA
Chattanooga, TN
Los Angeles, CA
Palm Springs, CA
St Petersburg, FL
Albany, NY
Dallas, TX
Poland
Vancouver, Canada
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Skullcandy
By Sam Glaser
March 2010
Someone once asked me how my skullcap stayed put
on my head. I replied: "peer
pressure." Wearing a yarmulkah 24/7  was something I said I would never do. Even
though I sent him to yeshiva in the first place, my brother Yom Tov started
wearing a kippah full time before I did.
I remember the conversation clearly: we were riding mountain bikes in
Joshua Tree National Park. As we flew down the sandy trail we narrowly avoided
the cacti that lurked around every bend ready to sabotage our ride. Somehow we managed to have a
conversation on the way and I shouted, "I will NEVER wear that thing all the
time!"
I should have learned from my month with
Dennis Prager at Brandeis Collegiate Institute. Quoting Franz Rosensweig, Dennis taught us "never say never." Better to say "not yet." I repeat this every time I hear a
fellow Jew say "I will never ______!" (Fill in the blank with keep Shabbat, keep
kosher, set foot in that synagogue, etc.) At that point in my
life I had no interest in being identified as a Jew wherever I went. The fact is that I readily divulged I
was Jewish to any stranger I would meet.
But to be singled out before someone even knew my name? No way!
All that changed when I discovered a community
in LA where I could celebrate being Jewish on a full-time basis. It's like the Dr. Seuss's Sneetches who
had stars upon thars. Moving to
Pico-Robertson, our beloved shtetl in the middle of urban LA, I was surrounded
by kippah-festooned men of all stripes.
Not that I took on the custom to fit in...it's that I now had living
examples of young men just like me who were proud of their heritage and ready
to take on whatever challenges the rabbis sent their way. I was starting to
perceive the world through spiritual lenses and for the first time I felt the "yids with the lids" were
the real players.
I soon found that wearing this black six-inch
circle on my head has fringe benefits.
It serves as a unique conversation starter. In fact, I found that I
couldn't go long without someone approaching me and telling me about every
Jewish experience he had since his Bar Mitzvah. I have patiently fielded endless
rounds of twenty questions by Jew loving gentiles. I get grabbed for a minyan in places like the airport,
Disneyland and movie theaters.
Most importantly, a yarmulkah forces one to behave like a mensch
wherever he goes. God forbid
someone see a member of the tribe cut in line, utter a curse word or order treif
food. I even drive more nicely
now. Can't flip someone off and
risk desecrating God's name when they can see you're a Jew.
My oldest son's Bar Mitzvah portion was
Tetzaveh, about the clothing of the priests. It was a perfect match for my young  Max who is obsessed
about what he wears and has been since he was two years old. This portion coincided with my scholar
in residence weekend last week in New Jersey where I quoted the concept that
the priests' clothes were supposed to represent honor and glory, both on the
inside and outside. Similarly,
wearing a kippah (and tzitzit for that matter) serves as a constant reminder
that we are in a battle to make good choices and to try to have our internal
qualities match our outside appearances.
You have to maintain your "balance" to keep it on your head, literally
and figuratively. Just like you
put on a good suit for an interview and feel like a million bucks, so too can a
kippah make you feel like you are walking with God.
Allow me to share a few "stories from the
road" that only happened because I wore my kippah. The first happened when a flight to Youngstown, Ohio was
forced to land in Pittsburgh due to freezing rain. We sat at the gate for over an hour as the storm grew
worse. Eventually I saw the pilot
pick up and leave. I approached
the attendant and stated that I was a Sabbath-observant Jew and had to get to
Youngstown immediately to lead a Sabbath program....would she consider putting
all of us on a bus? She didn't
have the seniority to make such a decision but you'd better believe that I
found someone who did. The plan
was that we were to form groups of three or four and take cabs paid for by the
airline. I noticed that there was
an elderly couple on our flight that was moving very slowly. I opted to avoid them so that I
wouldn't be slowed down on the long walk back to the curb. Sure enough, they waddled over next to
me so that they would wind up in my cab.
I later learned that they saw my kippah and felt confident that I would
look after them.
Next thing you know I was pushing their
Smarte Carte through the airport at .5 miles per hour. I remember trying to deal with my
stress level by reframing: I thought to myself, "perhaps the whole reason God
put me in this mess was so I could help out these nice people." As soon as we boarded the cab I
introduced myself. "Oh, I used to
be a Glaser, I was in the glass business," the man replied. Then his diminutive wife added, "I was
a Glaser too!" "Oh really," I
said, "you were in the glass business?"
"No," she stated, "that was my maiden name." I then learned that she was from Glod, the hamlet in
Transylvania from which my ancestors hail. That's right.
We're cousins. And my Uncle
Max, for whom my son is named, helped them emigrate from Cuba to the States
after the war.
The next tale occurred at the America West
ticket counter at LAX. I was on my
way to do a Christmas day Chanukah party for Chabad of Scottsdale. The youthful Hispanic guy checking in
my luggage saw my kippah and asked if I had seen the movie Ushpizin. (If you haven't seen it, rent it!) He was confused by a few scenes and
asked if I minded clarifying things.
Like, why was the protagonist screaming at God in the forest, and why
was the old man carefully doing an accounting and then giving away his money. I
explained to the best of my ability and I remarked that this guy, Raul, seemed
to know a lot about Judaism. He
remarked that he was very curious and had learned much from Aish.com. I asked him which 
columnists he liked
best and he said, "Well, I bought the mp3 player." I then asked how many of the lectures he had listened to
(the Aish mp3 player comes stocked with 40 hours of lectures) and he replied,
"all of them!" I then responded
that he has learned more Torah than just about every Jew alive.
By now the line had grown behind me and I
realized we needed to end this conversation (remember that I'm the guy with the
kippah and want people to get the impression that Jews are courteous.) But Raul was in no hurry. He had many more questions and wasn't
going to let a live Jew out of his grasp so easily. At that point I was teaching my weekly Seasons of Joy
conversion class for the LA Beit Din.
I suggested that Raul sit on a class and to get more questions
answered. I handed him my card and
my Kol Bamidbar CD. His eyes
brimmed with tears as he said "You are Sam Glaser!? I listen to your music all the time with my daughter! You are the reason I started this
search!" No, he never showed up to
my class.
A final tale just happened a few weeks
ago. My boys and I played hooky
for the day to do some local skiing.
I felt a twinge of pain in my back when I was getting on my ski suit
upon arrival. Sure enough, on my
second turn my back went into spasm.
I haven't been through this since my twenties but I know the feeling and
I knew that my ski day had just ended. I limped down the slopes and spent the
day on a gurney in the ski patrol office, barely able to move. Now I had a dilemma. I was two hours away from home and
couldn't drive us back. I waited
until lunchtime when I knew there would be a crowd in the lodge. After a Cup-of-Soup with my concerned
kids I limped around the lodge with a handmade sign that said "need a driver to
take me to LA." People looked at
me like an alien and Max sneered, "Dad, you look homeless. This is never going to work!" I said, "Watch kid, we're going to find
an angel."
I then decided to abandon the sign and query
the tables where there were several adults. I asked each group if they were from LA, a simple yes or no
question that would at least get a conversation started. I had a good feeling with one
particular table. Yes, they were
going back to LA. I told them my
story, that I was a nice guy and had a nice car for them to drive...no monkey
business. They seemed unmoved by
my story and dismissed me by saying, "We'll think about it." Well, I was hurting and couldn't stand
anymore. I gave them my cell phone
number and sat on a nearby bench.
Just as my kids walked over to commiserate, one of these people
approached us and said, "I'll drive you home. I noticed your kippah.
How could I turn down a fellow member of the tribe?" To make our angel story even sweeter,
this unaffiliated Russian Jew moved to the States when he was two and is presently
in the business of helping people who have back injuries find ergonomic
solutions for their offices.
Passover is around the corner and we are
focusing once again on the saga of the Exodus from Egypt. We are supposed to read the Haggadah as
if it's actually happening to us now; it's not just a recounting of an ancient
tale. Therefore this period is
prime time to be asking those important questions about present state of the
Jewish People: do we merit redemption from the Diaspora, from worldwide
terrorism, from the renewed threat to the Jewish people coming again from the
Persian Empire. According to the
Midrash, the Jewish people were redeemed from Egypt for four reasons. Evidently we didn't completely
assimilate into their hedonistic culture and maintained our Hebrew names,
language and clothing. With this in mind I have appointed
a few friends to call me Shmuel to keep my soul name alive. I work on my Hebrew, both biblical and
conversational so that I can navigate our texts in the original tongue and
attempt conversations with my Israeli friends. FInally, I may love my t-shirts and blue jeans but I fly my freak
flag kippah and tzitzit for all to see.
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Passover in
Palm Springs!
You deserve a break today! Just think: no cooking, no cleaning, with great study sessions, food and entertainment in a 5 Diamond hotel! Yes, you can have your matzah-meal cake and eat it too! I'll be at the Riviera Hotel with World Wide Kosher all week, leading seders, services and giving a concert. It's the best priced Passover program out there and worth every penny. Tell them that Sam sent you!
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New Videos for March!
A beautiful portrayal of Oseh Shalom from A Day in the Life:
Oseh Shalom
A live in studio Passover song recorded with Mat Gurman:
Baruch Hamakom
An unauthorized but powerful version of Born to Remember:
Born to Remember
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SPECIAL NEWS BULLETIN:
Sam Does Simchas!
You want your wedding or Bar/Bat Mitzvah to ROCK! Sam specializes in customizing music for your event to ensure that it will be unforgettable! With top musicians, great vocals, pro sound and lights...there are few bands that can deliver the same impact nationwide. The band draws upon the deepest repertoire in the Jewish world combined with  authentic rock, jazz, motown, disco and standards. Many clients opt to supplement their private event with a Sam Glaser concert or Shabbaton for the whole community. Whatever your needs, visit the Sam Glaser Orchestra site to learn more.
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The Latest From CAJE!
The Coaliton for Advancement in Jewish Education is an international group of educators, rabbis, cantors musicians and artists that gather together over 1200 strong each summer. They have invited me to perform annually for the past sixteen years and those concerts and workshops are some of the most fulfilling of my tour. Just to give you an idea of the serious fun and true unity, here are highlights from my 2006 show at Duke University. Sadly, the organization declared bankruptcy last year but there is now a grassroots newCAJE that is picking up where CAJE left off. Please support this great organization and get involved. |
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Thank you!
Thank you for reading, for listening, for your support and friendship.
Glaser MusicWorks
800-972-6694
Outside of the US 310-204-6111
sam@samglaser.com
1941 Livonia Av.
Los Angeles, California 90034
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