Get my new Fatherhood CD while it's hot! Two years in the making, it features fifteen moving songs with lush production featuring my amazing LA-based musicians. My friends, this is how you show support for independent artists!  Take a chance!  Money back guarantee and through October you can take advantage of the 20% discount price!  Fatherhood is a great gift for all the dads (and moms) you know and please note that a portion of proceeds will benefit the American Diabetes Association.   

Here are some fresh reviews:

"Sam, you did it again.  The music is gorgeous.  So many layers and sensitive touches.  A total emotional journey.  Wow.  I'm blown away and so are my kids, who have requested it every day since it hit the stereo."  -Burt Schwartz

"Sam, Fatherhood is incredible.  We Are America is my favorite.  You have caught the resilient, diverse and irrepressible spirit of America. This song should be heard by everyone and should be played at Ground Zero, The Pentagon and White House. Yosher Koach!"    

-Gay Pascal Griffith

"Fatherhood is absolutely beautiful and touching.  Your God-given talent never ceases to amaze me.  I've already given copies to friends and family and received so much positive feedback.  You can hear how much work went into this project...thanks for the gift."  -Malka Baran

"I sat in my car and sobbed today.  I was already home, parked in the driveway and I just sat there, music blaring while I cried my eyes out. Anyone with a son or daughter will see their own lives in every number. This CD should ship with Kleenex."  -Leah Buehler

Get Your Free mp3!

Father's Day is the opening track on Sam's new Fatherhood CD.  Shouldn't every day be Father's Day?  Crank it up loud!

Can One Be Jewish Without Belief in God?

by Sam Glaser

I spent half my life agnostic and the balance, God-focused.  Growing up in a Los Angeles-based Conservative Jewish family, we never dabbled in theology but relished in our culture and peoplehood.  In the synagogue, our clergy and teachers presented everything other than belief, concentrating on what I like to call the four H's: Holy Land, Holocaust, Hebrew and Holidays.  I can testify that there is plenty within these parameters to fill a Jewish soul with meaning and substance; one can live a happy and very Jewish life, cradle to grave.

That said, I think there's a fifth "H" in the formula and that's Holiness.  I'm hard pressed to recommend a way to incorporate this core Jewish value without bringing God into the picture. Post-college I started asking fundamental questions, comparing my feelings of universal connectedness to the teachings of Judaism.  On a trip to Israel in 1985 my light was turned on.  I discovered that in Jerusalem, living a holy life with 24/7 belief in God was natural, normal, even fashionable.  I could have lived my whole life in the Southern California fast lane and never opened this can of worms. Many of my deepest intuitions about God were confirmed in that City of Gold and although I didn't realize it at the time, my Jewish "pilot light" was primed to explode.

After that trip I lived with a generous helping of cognitive dissonance since my life back in L.A. didn't flow with the rigorous lifestyle of believers.  However, try as I may, I could not go back to sleep, to return to my comfortable "unexamined life."  After a few years in limbo I decided to take a few proactive steps to get back on the holiness track. It seems that that this "fifth H" was free in Jerusalem but in L.A. I was going to have to work for it.  One crucial step was moving into a Jewish community.  Living close to a synagogue (or in my case forty of them) was essential to normalizing a God-focused consciousness.  I don't think I had the moral strength to make these spiritual strides in a vacuum.  Perhaps this is why God invented peer pressure.

The other change was my committing to Shabbat.  I think the Torah emphasizes this ritual over any other because it offers consistent physical, financial and emotional evidence that one is serious about the relationship.  You can't hope your marriage will last if you insist on flings on the side.  I remember my last gig on Shabbat: it was clear to me that the exponential growth that I was experiencing didn't jive with the driving, shlepping gear, plugging in and getting a paycheck.  Thanks to the infernal power of Commitment, just like my marriage has bloomed beyond my wildest expectations, so too has my love affair with the Creator of the universe.

I resonate with the popular parable of the miserable bird in the Garden of Eden.  The bird complains to God that all the other animals have arms and hands and it is stuck with burdensome appendages at its sides.  God then explains that those strange limbs are actually wings and with them the bird can FLY!  Of course, this story teaches us that the mitzvot are our wings, not the burden that we might have thought.  For me, the clumsy appendages were the dietary restrictions that I ignored, the day of rest on which I trampled and the idea of standing in a sanctuary singing words I didn't understand.  Like most Jews I was content to do it "My Way" and live with a vague, hibernating feeling of guilt.   

In the first half of my life, Judaism was relaxed and sweet; questions of belief in God rarely came up and that was fine.  I loved my Jewish summer camp memories, learned enough for my Bar Mitzvah that I didn't feel like an imbecile in the synagogue and could appreciate a good deli sandwich.  Then I was shown a path and eventually took a series of baby steps towards commitment.  God gives each of us permission to take the journey in Deuteronomy:  This commandment that I set before you today is neither remote nor inaccessable from you.  It is not in heaven, so that you should say, "Why shall ascend to the heavens and bring it down to us so that we can understand it and keep it?"  It is not beyond the sea, so that you should ask, "Who will cross the sea and bring it back for us so that we can understand and keep it?"  Indeed, it is very close to you - it is in your mouth and in your heart, so that you can keep it.   

Sure, one can be Jewish without belief in God.  But I believe the Jewish people were meant to fly.

This 28 song double album squeezed on one CD breathes new life into these classic "Greatest Hits of the Jewish People."  Get it TODAY!

"I am listening to this CD again and again.  Thank you for putting so many of my favorite songs from throughout my life in one place. It's a tremendous amount of music on one recording and a great gift to the Jewish People."  

-Jackie Land,Partnership for Jewish Life and Learning

"Listening to SWS2 is like coming home.  Sam's rich melodic voice on the songs we know and love feels so comfortable and familiar.  From singing in the kitchen, in the car and at school, we love The Songs We Sing!" -Lisa Soble Siegmann, Jewish Family Education Director

"As a Reform Cantor who has lived in Israel, I can hear the bridge built of voices of all Jews together regardless of religious backgrounds, and bonding us with our brethren in Israel.  Keep up the great work that you do so well!"

-Cantor Zev Sonnenstein

Tzedakah of the Month!

Global Kindness of Los Angeles 

With a base of 75 Los Angeles based Jewish families anonymously supported, one person at a time, Global Kindness' mission is to support and extend these services to as many as 300 needy Jewish families in the Los Angeles Jewish community. Through the charitable donations of our community they distribute clothes, food, money for rent, bills, moving costs, day school tuitions, car, clothing, furniture, toys, health and beauty supplies as well as a multiple of services to those in need. I know the Cohens personally and they are the real thing.