I was wondering if you could kind of just give our listeners a little bit of a understanding of what the doc's about and sort of maybe tie that into a two-part question of like why we ended up choosing Inside Llewyn Davis to discuss today on the podcast.

So the doc is about Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, who is some consider the foremost composer of liturgical Jewish music in the 20th century.

He composed such classics as Kiva Moed and Am Yisrael Chai and Basically, a lot of Kabbalah, Shabbat, Friday night prayers that you hear feature a lot of Shlomo's melodies in synagogues all over the world.

The film is really about his legacy, but specifically an aspect of his legacy that I think is a bit less talked about, which is allegations of sexual abuse that emerged four years after he died.

He died in 1994, and they first publicly emerged in Lilith Magazine in 1998.

And the film explores really the fallout, the debate, the controversy, the moves to cancel, the moves to saying to not talk about any of the dark, inconvenient stuff.

And it really just tries to present his legacy and present this conversation about his legacy.

And it's a famously debated question, and I don't expect any of us to give the definitive answer, but I do want to hear your thoughts about Specifically, what do both films say about the relationship between an artist's inner life and how that actually relates to their art and whether the two stand together or can live apart?

I don't know what his anti-materialistic view, uh, is, but it, it, I think he definitely practiced what he preached in that sense.

Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely.

And then, and then that's just another element of the, of what makes it such a difficult story, you know, because there are probably many, many, many people in the world who, like, deeply benefited from their, from their interactions with him, you know, whether, whether, like, like both financially and spiritually and, you know, and who really, like, you know, they say that they never saw this other side.

And, and whether or not that's true, or they never experienced this other side, and I, and I think that's what, you know, it, I, like, of course it doesn't, for me, it, it, it doesn't for a moment, you know, outweigh.

Like, that's, 'cause that's obviously something you hear too.

Like, like that's another bit of feedback I've gotten, like, you know, that the, the good he did, like, far outweighs this stuff.

Right.

What's the, uh, background story?

Yeah, so I grew up on the Upper West Side, Modern Orthodox family, feeling a little bit like the, the Judaism that was presented to me was a little bit more rule-based and kind of strict than I felt really comfortable with.

So I, I was always drawn to this kind of welcoming, open...

Also, especially the nigun, like, you know, you could really just hum along and feel really, really welcome and, and kind of a part of, a part of something that I, I think I struggled to feel in this kind of rule-based, strict Orthodoxy I was, I was raised in.

So I was always just really drawn to Shlomo, and I, I grew up going to Camp Moshavah and, um, a few other, you know, Jewish summer camps where there was something called Slow Shira.

[laughs]

It's, [laughs] no, it's, it's interesting, yeah.

Yeah.