Volume 67, Issue 8

What Jews do on Christmas:
David Broza Live in NYC
by Zev Nagel

Jews have nothing to do on Christmas Eve.  While Americans spend the evening with family members and Santa Claus, Jews can only watch and try to ignore them.

Until now.  Last Christmas eve, Israeli pop star David Broza catered to Jews with another sold-out performance at the 92nd St. Y in Manhattan, debuting his new CD, “It’s All or Nothing,” and showcasing his most popular songs of the past 20 years.

On this wholly un-Jewish night, the concert hall filled up with expatriate Israelis and American Jews who had come to discover the hype and legend. Broza’s fame is hardly precarious; aside from his appointment as an ambassador of goodwill to UNICEF, Broza has also headlined with the likes of Bob Dylan, Van Morrison, and Sting – not to mention his astonishing twenty-three albums.

Broza entered the stage to the sound of a thunderous applause from the 400-plus audience. Shouts of excitement in Hebrew, English, and Spanish – the languages of Broza’s songs – highlighted the diverse crowd of Jews who had shown up for the performance.

As the crowd calmed down, Broza whispered into the microphone, “Merry Christmas,” and the crowd went wild. There was a certain association among the audience that night, an almost tribal alliance that brought this group together. The performer himself generally sings to the tunes of many pipers; Broza’s unique sound resembles an intercontinental stew of cultural traditions, blending Spanish Flamenco guitar, American harmony, and dramatic Israeli poetry. This evening, though, Broza was all about the Jews.

Broza opened with an instrumental, “Sarabande,” from his newly released CD, which startled and exhilarated the crowd with elaborate rhythmic guitar patterns and complex finger picking. The song resonated back in forth from slow, lengthy intervals to fast paced techno beats of seismographic proportion. Broza also utilized his famous wailing technique, experimenting like a young child discovering his own echo, creating an emotional outpour of nonsensical lyric that accompanied the instrumental.

Throughout the rest of the evening, Broza promoted his new CD while delighting the audience with familiar songs. As the beginning chords of Broza’s magnum opus “Under the Sky” became recognizable, cheers from the audience flooded the room, drowning out even Broza’s powerful voice. The crowd sang along as if the song was a duet.  “Despite all the pain, I still love,” cried Broza. “And you still love,” retorted back the audience.

During each set the guitar chords continued their familiar reverberations, a proverbial Spanish sound Broza learned from his early days in Madrid. But despite the Spanish rhythm, Broza melded the musical fields into a creation that was uniquely his own. His powerful yet soothing voice reflected a passion that was distinctively Broza and characteristically Jewish.  Broza sang with a yearning, a desire for something that will ultimately be accessible but not yet within reach, and a hope for a return to the way things were.  Even Broza’s songs about the Land of Israel presented a longing for resolution – the cascading images of the Tel Aviv beach clashed violently with the gloomy descriptions of the Negev’s Bedouin towns. However, Broza also envisioned a glimmer of hope, the immaculate blue sky hidden behind every rain cloud.

Broza concluded the evening with an encore presentation of his anthem for peace and hope, “It will be Good.” Broza attributed his inspiration for the song to the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and Jordan and the hope he felt in its aftermath. Despite the current violence in the Middle East, Broza assured the audience that everything will turn out all right: The wars will end, he said, and one day children of all races will play together. Broza then proceeded to wish the audience well, eager to see them again next Christmas Eve. The crowd cheered accordingly with a faithful optimism that can only be found in a room full of Jews and only on a night that had, in its own way, become uniquely Jewish.

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