Welcome to a Jerusalem Lights special. I am so honored and delighted to welcome Peter Himlman. Peter is a rock star, a Grammy and Emmy nominated musician, composer, award-winning author, artist. He's written amazing books about the craft of writing and about um creativity and he is and he teaches writing and he's also an observant Jew, a sham shabist, a Sabbath observing Jew who unabashedly and consistently demonstrates such powerful commitment to Israel and to the Jewish people. His music has moved me and been a major part of my life for 40 years. Thank you so much for being with us today, Peter, and welcome. Thank you very much, K. Appreciate it. >> So, I don't know how to do this even. I'm like, I have this I have these these records of yours from when people used to buy CDs and you know what I when I when I first started to to follow you and I would see things like like BH, you know, or like Bet Hey, Bar Hashem in your records and I would listen to your lyrics. I was like so transfigured because I felt so many secrets of Torah coming through in your music. Like I really felt that you were completely plugged in to such a high source. And I don't know, is it me or or is that what you're doing? >> I think it's just you. Um, you know, I always write about what I'm feeling. A lot of it is, uh, to say that it's not intellectual is not exactly true. There's obviously intellect that goes into writing of songs or pros or whatever it is. But there's also uh something that transcends the intellect. call it spirituality, you know, if that's a word, if that's a better word. And sometimes these things uh they just kind of come just like in a conversation. We don't plan exactly what we're going to say. Some people do. They're generally not the most interesting. And for me, the the songs the songs of mine that I've written that I feel the closest to, they almost come as a gift. I know that sounds a little bit trickly to some, but I've talked to a lot of really great writers and songwriters, and we don't advertise this too much, but everybody knows what I'm talking about. It doesn't happen a lot. But those things that it wasn't that you had to sit and think about each word. It sort of was handed to you. And if the things that I got and received in that way are received by you in a in a positive way, then it's then it's all worthwhile. I think it's it's must be the same thing with um with all creativity and also like in terms of writing Torah like Torah Torah thoughts you know that in the Zohar there's this language Rabishim that an introduction to a piece is that is that Rabimon opened and the idea is that he opened like a like a conduit like it's here the the knowledge is here intuitively and it's waiting for for someone to be able to receive it. And then, you know, I think that this also touches upon the relationship between music specifically, all creativity really, but music specifically and prophecy. And this is something that I'm I'm very eager to talk to you about. You know, I always felt growing up that I don't come from a religious home myself, you know, and I felt like my earliest childhood memories of Hashem speaking to me was through rock and roll. You know, my earliest childhood memories are what was on the radio. And it was like a a spiritual experience when what when you turned on the radio and what you had always been waiting to hear came on, you know, with before live streaming and and all the platforms. And I and then as I grew older and I learned like in cabalistically that there's a very strong relationship between the gift of music and and prophecy. And I always felt that that um music in these waning end generations are like the last window of real prophecy in the world. >> Yeah. I mean music is I I don't remember if it was a midrash or whatever I was told. I I always like this idea that the angels were arguing with God. How can you give humankind music? It's so powerful. And they said, I think the analogy was it's like giving a sword to a child. Of course, God said, you know, hush before the world returns to, you know, dust and ashes. But it is true. I mean for good or ill music uh has a lot of power and in terms of let's say prophecy maybe it's small p prophecy you know things that that come to a writer or to an artist and they themselves are not sure exactly what it means. It's not something that's common for them. It's something that must have come from some very deep inner recesses of a person. Um, and then it appears and then you sort of look at it and wonder what it is as though it had not come from one's own self. >> You know, there's a there's a vidrash that tells us it speaks about the two different languages in Psalms. Sometimes it says mismoid and sometimes it says the Davidid mismo. Sometimes it says a mismo a song of David. And sometimes it says for David a song. And the midash talks about the idea that when it says mismoid that it's exactly as you're describing that it came to him. It overpowered him. But that when it's when it says the David Msort that that king for King David a song that it was something that he worked on >> that he kind of turned his It's great. >> Yeah, I can relate to that. I think as I move on and get uh grow as a person, as a Jew, as an artist, um I have a lot of trust and and a little uh betone that these things uh will come and I allow them. I think as you said that every human being is capable of this for let's say a musician or a poet or writer who spends all day long doing these kinds of things they develop a obviously a craft sort of a kaly for these ideas that other people don't necessarily engage in on a regular basis. So you you develop a pattern. My pattern as a young man, you know, young boy writing, which I did as a kid, was very outwardfacing. You know, this was an idea I wanted to prevail and I knew exactly what it was. And generally the ideas were, you know, at some time in my youth, just things that would be funny or highly, you know, sexualized as the radio would play and, you know, I could do that very well. And later uh I guess it was around the time when my dad got very ill. He got lymphoma when he was very young and I was young and it made me a more serious person and I started having the courage to write about things that I felt were very important. You know, I shed my vulnerability to one extent or another. And I found that I'm 66 now. I'm talking about when I was 14. And at various stages, I became more and more open or a little less afraid to dig into these depths and write something that I wasn't even sure of, that might not have been even mine. me's more lud Davided style >> and I found out a lot about myself in the world through that kind of writing those kind of songs and I I see how uh attractive they are to certain other people that feel I mean the highest compliment I could get would be you know I feel so much the things that you've written about and I thank you for for giving voice to them and I have a responsibility because this is what I've chosen to do. I've taken the time to do this. This is my life's work. >> Do you feel that you're bringing godliness into the world? >> I hope so. That's a good question. sometimes. >> Isn't everything really all about godliness, you know? >> Yeah, it is. You know, somebody, you know, I I wear my yarmaka in the store around. I'm in uh Los Angeles and, you know, don't live in exactly super Jewish part. So, when I go to the store, there's not a lot of people with yarmakas. And some guy came up to me and I could tell he was Jewish. We started talking and over the frozen food section by the by the frozen peas and sardines on the other side and he goes, you know, appropo of what you're you're saying. He goes, you know, what do you what's your point of view? What what do you think? I said it generally. He goes, yeah, that's a broad question. And I said, "Well, there's many layers to the things. I think, you know, some of them I wouldn't share, but if you're really asking me a serious question, this is again over the peas and the sardines behind me. I said that the majority of my thought these days and maybe post 107 because everybody had every Jew has had some sort of uh crossing over a transom of some sort. I said I said what I'm thinking about and trying to think about is simple. That God runs the world. That God is recreating reality and beyond what we can conceive of as real at every every moment. And the moments are so small they're not even considered moments. And that thinking which is aspirational. I don't have it most of the time. It's something that I work on is a helpful thing. I don't think that it's brought me into a fantastical place. I think it's brought me into a more tless real place. I think it's a better way of defining reality than what I suppose is the inverse, which is the way that I grew up and maybe you did as well. You take it for granted that everything is just random. You you heard about the big bang. You heard about, you know, evolution, which didn't include divinity because nobody believed really in God, anyone around me, at least not vocally. And I tried that experience for a long time and rejected it out of hand at every step. But it wasn't till later when I understood that Judaism contained in it something that I'd always searched for, none of it was truly novel. And this idea that the miraculous is everywhere. That certainly the way that we're speaking right now and thousands of miles apart on these things called microphones and there's this thing called electricity. All of that, but much more than that, our words that are formed by these, you know, our mouths, the mechanics of speech are transmitting thoughts in our head to each other and we understand it. And if you dig deeply into that, you'll see and maybe this is back to where we started about mis le Davided. You will find things that are not just at the forefront of your mind. you'll find things that are deeper and surprising and probably thought of as crazy by people, but you know, as a quote artist type, I'm expected to do that. And sometimes I'd like to say that that's not just for a quote artist. There's no such thing as an artist. Even quote artists are repeating themselves all the time. They're not in that place where they're literally creating new things. It's a very rare thing. By the way, there's a famous saxophone player called Brford Marcelis, one of the greats of the of the newer players, and he improvises for a living. That's what he does. That's what jazz consists of, using these musical elements and sort of composing on the spot in a way. And somebody asked him in a magazine article, how often are you improvising? Which was a, you know, seemingly ridiculous question because that's what he does. And he was transparent and it was beautiful what he said. He said, I'm only improvising. I've probably only done that 20 or so times. And the writer was like, what do you mean? He said, the majority of the time, and this is no small thing. It's still brilliant. I'm taking this catalog of material that I've amassed and grabbing it and reciting it. It's a it's a it's a brilliant thing that he can do. And we all sort of do that from our storehouse of experiences. but creating something completely novel in the moment that he said I've only done about 20 times. Like this guy knows exactly what he's talking about. You actually just wrote a beautiful blog uh like recently this week, a couple days ago about your process of writing and you were describing how kind of like other people's music also is something that you digest and that if it appeals to you, not the music itself, but a certain mood or a certain technique or a certain feeling and that that is something that you're able to translate into your own terms. I think it's all a process of rues, what our sages describe as divine inspiration. Everything is really is divine inspiration, isn't it? because we're all trying to to to deepen our relationship with the creator all the time and everything is a manifestation like you say of a miracle and it seems to me that music >> well what what you're saying makes me think about this idea that we let's say in popular culture and that's been going on for millennia and I'm not talking about modern popular culture Greek Roman whatever you want the idea of a secular world is the most fantastical thing of all. There isn't such thing something devoid of quote the miraculous or you know something that is beereft of wonderment. We've only impose that wall on ourselves. I was speaking to this woman, by the way, in Minneapolis who takes care of my mom who's 93. And the woman's probably in her late 30s, wonderful woman. She's Somali. She's Muslim. And we're talking about, you know, the lunar calendar. She's not like she by her own admission, she's not a scholar. But I asked her, "Do you know any Muslims, whether they're out partying at night or whatever they're doing that don't believe in God or Allah, however you define it." And she left. He goes, "No, there's no such thing. And somehow only a Jew with his or her wy brain can construct a secular world for themselves. You know, creating complexity, enormous layers of complexity to prevent themselves from seeing what is the most simple reality of all. That all is wonder. And wonder basically is the wonder of God, however you define it. I mean, God is a difficult word for a lot of people. And I think in America, >> Jews, you know, they they pull back from the word. >> And my thinking is is that >> they're pulling back in a sense from anthropomorphized ideas of God, Christian ideas. And in some sense they're good Jews for doing so. But nothing has replaced it. Nobody has sat and explained any kind of definition of God is completely wrong. We don't have a definition. That is the that is the point. And you can't even say it's beyond definition because that's also a narrow definition as well. And it's uh I think we re we are reluctant to surrender to the idea that we really don't know much at all. Even the greatest scientists and I've spoken to some very very well-known great scientists and the greatest of them say the same thing. We don't know anything. I think it's a life's a lifelong work just full-time just to wrap one's try to wrap one's mind around this reality and certainly this is the the the odyssey or the mission of the Jewish people and really all spiritual seekers to try and and really feel that this is real that we have a relationship with the source of all life eternal life that's that's who God is And like you say, this is this it all falls short any any attempt at definition. But music somehow is it speaks on the soul level and gives this kind of exhilarating hope of what the soul is really touching upon upon eternal life. It's like a window into >> somebody mentioned this to me. This is kind of it got me thinking about this as a question was posed is a friend of mine, Rabbi Simmon Jacobson. I don't know if you've heard of him. He wrote a book called Toward a Meaningful Life. And we're speaking and he goes, "You know, >> you might consider why music is the art form that's most popular." In other words, the iPhone was made to listen to music, not to look at pictures of sculpture or art, you know, visual art. >> Mhm. >> I mean, we we gravitate to music. We sing. We dance to music. It's part of everyone's ritual. And the reason that it's so popular I think Simmon posited was that let's say let's go from the back let's say architecture which is you know artful as can be and can be but it has within it a very you know gross material materialism. It is a temporal item that's its nature. Then you have sculpture which is more refined and I'm not you know bismerching architecture at all. I'm just explaining how it sort of narrows down. Then you have painting which for years was were were visual representations of real things in life and then it became abstract but it's still pointing to things in the physical world. Color, shape, form. Then you have let's say poetry or lyrics which are pointing to or perveying things in the physical world or emotions definable entities and then you have music itself without lyrics which I don't do that much of that has no form in actual fact there is no there's no tangibility ility to music. It's sound waves that are invisible that move air waves which are more uh I guess seeable or studyable and those waves move the hairs in our ears and it creates a whole emotion in our head. But the music itself is a nontemporal entity and it defines nothing about the temporal world or even closely the world in our head. But somehow it is the most spiritual of all the art forms. And in cases where music can make people dance, it can make people bring back their childlike natures. It can make them do all sorts of horrible things, too. And it's you can cry from music. That's a strange thing. I mean, I've been on stage and seen it happen. It's it's kind of an awesome thing. Serious musicians know that's a probability. It's a possibility. And the serious musicians have a lot of respect for the very idea of music and what it can do for people and for themselves. Maybe most of all, >> you're something of a polyglot really because you are so multi-talented. You're an incredible writer. You are a visual artist. We see some amazing things behind you. And you're a musician. Are you first and foremost a musician? Um, I think I'm first and foremost. They used to do this thing in kindergarten where the teacher I didn't she was not a good teacher and she would put a scribble on a paper and the kids were supposed to make something out of it. And I remember it was easy for me and I made a witch on a broom because I could see it just like somebody sees a figure figures in a cloud. And the teacher said, "You did you cheated somehow." I was like, "How am I I don't have the vocabulary to explain to you, uh, ma'am, how how wrong and how awful you are and how scurless this lie is that you're telling me. But first and foremost, I'm a person who desires to make order out of chaos. all the musical possibilities, all the paint possibilities, all the lyric possibilities. They're it's it's a bunch of chaos. And how ordering them must be some homeopathic infinite decimal degree of God creating from tohou vavohu and the pleasure that brings when you have made order out of something and then given that something as a gift to somebody and they were moved by it. You know that in the beta mikdash in the holy temple, the songs of the of the Levites is one of the most important features of the service. And the the whole daily service is is kind of like not doable, not valid without the song of the Levites. And that is like called in the in the cabalistic literature a sweetening, you know, sweetening of the harsh judgments because of the power of song in the world. Yeah. One thing that is true that we can feel very tangibly is galute. You don't have to look too far. And then you can extrapolate on the beautiful things that we have and never come close to what was going on at the height of the Beta Mikdash before it became, you know, defiled and bad kings and you know, you know, what would it be like to have the locust of the universe, the the the portal to the spiritual world to God in a crazy impossible to imagine paradoxical sense right there and it closed up and so we took our Judaism on the road we put two kalas on our shabas table to represent the showbreads and we was a brilliant thing a sad thing that that the exilic Jew is is like a child rem creating a world of memory and and existing in it and playing in it. There's a I think his name was DH Winnott. He's a child psychologist and he studied children and how they go into this state where when they're playing it's not funing games. They're they're half in the in the real world and they're half in this imaginary world and then they may be more completely in the imaginary world existing in this world of play. And that's something that adults have dismissed as childish. No utility, no efficacy in in that kind of state of mind. Now I found it to be very efficacious, very utilizable to be in the physical world but for moments at a time lost in it and this is where the music comes from. This is where the writing comes from and every person can access that. This the other thing to study let's say Torah and and become wiser than you were the day before or the year before. That's a great endeavor but the endeavor is incomplete. What is the transmission to someone else? Thinking about if it's real, why can't you tell it to a socalled secular person? >> Mhm. >> Why do you feel that it's not a responsibility in some way? And what are the limitations in creating those bridges? It could be that the one who is trying to prevail it is the one with the liability, not the one who's receiving it. A liability of knowledge. You sitting around thinking about this all day long. This is your work. Well, if you can't transmit it in a way that's joyous and uplifting and you know, I don't even want to word use the word non-judgmental because that's of course not. Then you have to go back to the drawing board. and you know thinking about Israel right now because we were just there as you know I saw you and gave you a hug. uh this is this is a duty of for people and I spent a lot of time in Israel speaking to I have you know enormous number of friends on in in every walk of life not only in Israel of course here and one thing that I heard which was understandable but surprising for the number of times I heard it from so-called secular people that after co and then you know a thousand times more after 107 they were felt bereft they asked my wife and I how how did you you know we look like a normal person on the street they wouldn't know that I was from except for a yarmaka you know how did you get your children to get married and have kids. What What did you do? And these some of these people didn't have that opportunity. Just going to shut this off one second. Um, you know, I wasn't going to go into the whole thing, but I let them do it. They said, "We were raised as people around, you know, our age, a little younger, a little older, some um on the idea of Zionism as a secular democratic idea. It was staunchly nondist. It was at times, you know, had antipathy for that." Well, this woman I'm just thinking of in particular was an artist or is an artist and was raised in a very secular Zionist home. And she said, "I think I've recognized that there's a big flaw. It's not supporting our young people. It does it does not It built the state. That's for sure. It did a wonderful thing. But it doesn't have an answer for today. And it doesn't mean that everyone has to go out and wear a gartle and put on raeno toms or whatever. You know, it could just be that they start thinking about the world as broader than they had assumed it to be. that this religion that we were given which said you know everything just happens by random it's random which is a horrifying way to live if that's the way that the dogma that you've embied it's it's terrifying and it's also as I said it's it's a created sophisticated fantasy it doesn't echo reality and though the this woman wasn't going didn't quite use this language. I knew she was saying the same thing. She was she was beerefted. There was a posity of something vital. Israel is in a tremendous state of upheaval. It's it's I I can't describe it in words what it's been like to, you know, to u navigate through these years. And here again, you you've come across as being so um defiant um sometimes it's almost like you seem like alone and against this wave of all these so-called great artists that that you know that are so outspoken against Israel. And the things that you've written have been so like evocative and and for me emotionally powerful. the tremendous defenses and the beauty that you've written about the people of Israel and and since since October 7th, you've been so prolific also in that in that regard. Has it been like a tremendously life-changing event for you? >> Yeah, without a doubt. I mean, 107 I'm not alone. I mean, it's funny maybe to some of your listeners that are in Israel. Well, what what's this guy in America like? what's his deal with this? But I know a lot of people, a lot of Jewish people in America that feel as I do. It it has it has to do with the Jewish state for sure what I'm writing about, but much more so it has to do with Jews. We're a family, a tribe. We're not a religion. As you know, there's no shorish in the Hebrew language for a religion, and that that's a telling idea. Were a family, a tribe, a peoplehood that has Torah as its terrairma as its fundamental basis. It's 15 million. It is tiny. It is it is numerically insignificant when you compare it to other religions. But the potency of the Jewish people which everyone recognizes our greatest haters recognize it perhaps the most and the lovers of Israel. There's it's a unique people as it says you people that stands alone. Now that doesn't mean that we don't need friends and allies but there is a singular aspect to the Jewish people. How did we survive intact for 27 almost 3,000 years in exile with our suitcases and our kala and our salt on the shabas table and all those little things and our toas that we took? What is that? It's a proactive thing. It's proactive. the Jewish people, the memories are proactive. Even the sad memories, the tragedies are meant to spur us on. You know, there's certain chemicals that have potencies different than others. There certain flavors. And when you talk about going up against the tide or the wave, it doesn't it doesn't affect me at all. First of all, you know, in the music world to when I started, I was already, you know, when I got my first record deal, it wasn't long after I started to keep shabas. And I told the record company president, this Italian guy who passed away. He was such a great champion of mine. I can't use the invective on this program that he used when I told him I'm going to keep Shabas. And he laughed. He's Italian, so he knew Jews. And he thought I was kidding. He I was turning down shows to open for different artists. And um and then he recognized that I was serious about it and he became serious about it and rather than backing off of me, he he supported it. He liked it. >> But in general, your your observance, your shabas, has it cost you? Does it continue? >> Are you talking about in in actual money? >> No. No. I mean in your in terms of your career you're in terms of >> Yeah. I mean it it it has a cost but you know people ask me that too but what did I buy with it? That's not what they ask. You know I bought a beautiful family. I bought time on my own where no one can sees it from me. I bought understanding. I bought deeper connection to a peoplehood. Whatever it was that I lost in terms of sales or what I got was in a positive sense unbelievably incommensurate to what I would have gained. I mean yeah I mean I I like what I do. I have a body of work that I stand behind. I have kids. canora and grandkids. I don't I don't regret it at all. >> When you were growing up in Minnesota, did you have Shabbat at home? >> No. No, we did. I shouldn't say no. We did have My mom would light Shabbat candles. Occasionally there would be some part times would be more regular. My grandma spoke Yiddish. We we we sometimes had a Shabbat dinner with a kdish and maybe a hala and we were we were so Jewish. Um there wasn't any talk about God. And I've said on other podcasts and things that had I been speaking about God, I'm sure my mom, not my dad, would have sought in a in a very kindly way therapy for me. You know, it wasn't it was never really talked about in our sh either, which made synagogue the most boring thing in the world. except for the people and the ways I would laugh during services. Um, we knew we were Jewish. I went to Israel. They took me, my family, and my cousins all went on moss to Israel in 1968, June of 68. You can imagine what Israel was like. And something was transmitted to me that made me care very much for Israel. And I've recently been thinking about what that was. And we met all these relatives that had gone east, you know, gone to Israel from Romania and other places. And we went to America. We just, you know, split. We went one way and they went the other. And we found those people. My mom did. She had like a sheet of paper with some phone numbers. And those people met us in cars in a caravan. They had one of the cars was a susittita. And they took us, we didn't know who they were, threw us in a back of a truck. And I was eight. I was eight years old. I mostly played with ants on that trip, except for the time when I stood in front of the hotel and cried as an eight-year-old boy, which is something that happens to me whenever I touch the coel. Now, I I go back many times and I like I hope it didn't wear off. I hope I didn't get used to it. But what I surmised on my reflection back, what was the turning point? What was the unique quality is that it was a kind of love I I I experienced in my own family was very loving but not in the culture. It was a kind of love for one another even with the fighting and the shring that was of course I didn't have language for it. It was just a feeling, but I felt so at home there. And I still feel that way when I go back. >> So, are you an American Jew or a Jew in America? >> The latter for sure. I mean, I'm a, you know, proud American, but but for sure a Jew. I mean, you know, what what are you a male? What what goes first? human being, you know. I said that would be first. Are you a man or a woman? Probably a man. Uh a Jew before a father before a husband. There's that's probably what it is. It's it it's up there with a the foundational definitions of a person. doesn't preclude me from being an American by any means. >> But you have a strong sense of of exile and you and your sense of Jewish identity is so overpowering that I I could wonder how you could navigate through the daily vicissitudes of the um the frustration of what's going on there. Now, just let me let me say this. You know, Paul Simon and Carol King are two Jewish people. I love their music. I grew up with it. It made so, you know, it meant so much to me. It still does. Paul Simon signed some kind of a letter, you know, about Israel. And then a couple weeks ago, two weeks ago, I read that Carol King, you know, joined this thing, you know, no music for genocide. She doesn't want her music distributed in in Israel. And I and it hurts me personally. Like I feel like >> what's wrong with you people? Like it I feel I felt like personally hurt by that kind of like betrayal. I just don't get it. Well, I mean, um, I think about it a lot and and maybe this is a very cynical way of looking at it. I mean, things are always multi-layered. They have many layers and, you know, based on our prejudice or our need, we'll pick on one particular layer and and unsee all the rest or refuse to see the the rest. One of the layers is they've seen all these horrific pictures and they feel for it, you know. Um the other layer where I'm being a little bit more cynical, but I believe it's a layer. Fame, huge fame is not something that most people know about. So they have no way to judge it. They they they literally lack the understanding of what it is to si to stand in front of an audience and have them cheer for you. It's it's an unnatural thing. It's like an elixir. It's a dopamine hit that is unbelievable. And it's very dangerous, too. Because if you don't have something higher than that, you'll never be satisfied. It is a kind of first every you know Maslo's human needs acknowledgement is I don't know it's way up there almost around food and water if you think of him as defining reality that Jew but acknowledgment is huge and here you're getting a dose of acknowledgement that is it's distorted it's not what you If you're looking for that, if you ever wonder, and I'm going to get back to Israel in a second, why so many marriages break up among quote famous people because they're not getting that acknowledgement from a partner. Well, how can a partner give them? It's unnatural acknowledgement. I used to come home from the road and my wife would just hand me the baby and like, "What do you want? applause thinking I I didn't say this, God forbid, but like I do like it's I need acknowledgement. Oh, that's a way to to instantly break up a relationship because you're you're you're needing something that's not true. You've injected into the relationship a falsehood, a false premise. when it comes to Israel, the idea of saying something and this is this layer that I think is somewhat sim cynical although I do understand it well. It's not popular to say the very least. It is unpopular. It is unpopular to the extent that it might even be dangerous and it's certainly dangerous to a career. It's probably lethal to a career. And you say to yourself, I am Jewish. I have allegiance in to some degree to the Jewish people in some cases. And I may not be married to a Jew. uh but there is some vestage of me some pintoid that exists but it's too hard to access because I have a need like an addiction that must be fed and it's understandable. I say this as a person with a certain kind of intimate knowledge. I mean, I've never been super famous, but like I've had a taste and I understand its power. And therefore, I understand. And it's the longest winded answer ever to your question. Why? Because in the absence of something more powerful, you will seed always to the less powerful, which is the protection of this career. And it may be good. Maybe the career is feeding a lot of people. Maybe it's feeding philanthropy. I I I I really don't know. I don't want to castigate it is completely wrong but this is one of the thoughts that comes to my mind. Um, look, I'm a product of the stories that I was told, the experiences that I had, which made me from a very young age a very proud and strong Jew, just like somebody born in Gaza has very strong feelings. I'm not judging either of mine or theirs, but they've heard a story where we might have had the a calendar with a JNF calendar with a picture of the cotel on it. They have all Aloxa. Maybe Carol King didn't get the kind of story that I got. She got a whole other story. She was super famous. That story was huge, much huger than anything I experienced. So in that sense, I judge her much more lightly. >> Yeah. And I didn't mean to make it a judgment call, you know. >> No, no, no. But it's it's something I >> I feel so strongly because we're like we're like it's this maelstrom, you know. We're like and we're like struggling to to survive really against this this machinery, this this incipid machinery that is based on falsehoods and and blood labels and and people just buy into it like useful idiots. This this media generated just slipping into them this m of diabolical misrepresentation and it hurts me when people can't take a stand. >> Well, look, I mean this is this is the Hanukkah story all over. I mean, it's, you know, the few against the many. You have billions and billions of dollars going into this enterprise. And it's an easy one to sell because fear and hatred sells. Judaism is trying to purvey a very delicate idea which is contrary to to our notion of physical reality. Every every Jew who's trying to observe mitzvah understands that they themselves, unless you're a sadic and even they have to work on it, understands that you know we live in a physical world. That's what we live in. You have to constantly press your intellect. If this is of interest to you, that has to be you have to have a desire to do that. And even with that, you're never quite there. This leads me into Messiah. And what I think nobody really knows what it is, right? Nobody, you know, it's it's not something that's jot and tit eluciated uh you know, elucidated on. It's something that if you're curious about you have to wonder. I think that let's say when you are in a traffic jam, maybe you have to go to the bathroom, the radio's on, you're hearing some horrible stuff, you know, and you just got to get where you got to go. I mean it just just in a very foul mood and your mind is in the cot state. It was very constricted and there you are. On the other hand, when you are holding your first child for the very first time, but you don't care about politics, you don't care about I mean, if you're a sensitive person, you don't care that somebody took your parking spot as you're going into the hospital. None of it matters. You are in a godloot state of mind. You're in an expanded consciousness to borrow that word, that phrase. Now, how can you expand on that idea of the expanded consciousness? How can you extrapolate upon that where every moment is like you're holding your first child and every moment is so beautiful. Even the garbage can, even an old shoe, something that exists that you understand is being put there by the constant word of God to exist. And then you won't want to go to war. You don't care about your parking spot. You don't care that somebody made more money than you or has more hair or more record sales. None of it matters to an extent that we can't even appreciate this expansion. And that's what I think it is. Now I only understand that from the basis of my constricted mind which is awfully constricted a lot of times. So the parallel I can see there's something on that side. Now how did it come to be? I have no idea. Some say it's a new song. And I love the I love that as a metaphor going back to Brford Marcellis. The 20 times that he improvised, it was new. What is a song that's totally new? What is a strand of words that has never been constructed before that has not been said? That is so powerful to make the constricted mind seem foolish. Just like Shiraalot, we will we will rise from our sleeping with laughter penu in our mouths. Why do we laugh? Because the nature of humor is the instant colliding of these paradoxes. On one hand, our assumptions about the world, the state of mind is cons is is contracted and all of a sudden it it gives way to this expanded thing and we laugh because it be the ultimate joke, the ultimate result of a of a new song, >> the ultimate relief. >> Yeah. This is exactly what the holy sages teach about the what does the expression there are nine songs throughout the history of the world and the 10th song is the song of the revelation of Msiah because it's like you say it's a liberated expanded consciousness that we can't don't even have the vessels to contain now it's completely different way of looking at things when all of creation will burst into song. >> Yeah. And I think, you know, those things of course are real and they're also metaphorical. >> Sure. >> I think they can exist at the same time. I guess you could say that I am I am anticipating that and I'm anticipating it because I've seen it in my own life in microcosmic ways extremely microcosmic. And if that microcosmic flicker of an idea uh it was real for me just the idea it gives me a sense of its possibility to play out more broadly. How does it happen? So that you could sit with enemies and understand the miracle of our of our mutual sentience. And war would not make sense at that point. and that 15 million tribe who has been trying to push this story again and again. Well, you know, they may have a special place at the table. Oh, I I see what you're saying. And the ones that are going to be most surprised about it are the people who have been thinking about it and praying for it because whatever ideas they've come up with, it's going to fall way short. They'll be laughing again at that. I feel that this is what you've been singing about all these years as and your music has evolved and matured as you've you've grown and and uh remember from the days of Susman Lawrence and all through the decades your your voice becoming so honed and and your themes becoming so perfected. You even you you have a new album coming out pretty soon, right? That you you shared with me. >> I don't know when it's going to Did I share it with you? Did I send you? Yeah. >> Yeah. You know, it's coming out whenever I feel like it. It's like when I have time to promote it and things, but it's it's in the can, as they say. >> So, you have such a body of work that you're still producing. And then there's your writing. I I mentioned I don't know if everyone's aware, but you have a subscriptionbased Substack uh almost daily. You've been writing um for quite some time now, a couple of years. Um amazing essays. And then I wanted to talk just a little bit about your book. So you have the first book is um let me out right which is about uh the whole creative uh capacity and then you have this beautiful book um suspended by no string which is basically focusing on I guess songwriting really but is so much personal biographical memory in it. It's it's you have a way of taking your the stuff of your own life and making it so accessible. Like I really wanted you to talk a little bit about your grandma Rose >> because it's like so so breathtaking your childhood memories that seem to be so universal that what you're feeling and how you've been able to to translate it into into life-giving music and into life-giving words. >> Yeah. I wish I had that book around. I just uh did a book event and sold them all out. Um, let me see if >> maybe you have a guitar around. >> Oh, yeah. I do have a guitar around. Hang on a second. Hang on. >> Let me see if anything's in tune around here. Yeah. Let me see if this Let's see if this old thing's in tune. Check. One, two. So yeah, the song I I or the story I tell about in my book, it's not quite about songwriting the book. It's more about it's about what we're talking about now, but not in overt terms. Let's put it that way. just through vignettes and stories and different things. Check. So we we didn't have like a observant house, but it was so Jewish, you know. My grandma Rose in particular, she spoke a lot of Yiddish and she was just so loving and she was always at the house. Somebody was always eating like schmaltz and an hala and you know like somebody was talking Yiddish and um and they would come over usually on like Sunday morning. All my cousins be white fish and a newspaper and bagels and locks. They'd come and my grandma used to sing this song to to us kids of four siblings. One of my sister died, but let's just say four. I keep it at that. And she'd sing this one song. She always sang it. It was called It's a It's a folk song. and she was born in a stle near Tolure, Romania. And she said to me that uh it had uh cow manure on the floor, doll. It was it it smelled sweet. It wasn't terrible, you know, like it was somehow they were poor. I I got the message and she was babysitting as it were for this neighbor woman whose child was sick and her husband had just died. And now it seemed that the child had the same illness as the father. And my grandma was, you know, nine or something, just a year or two before she set sail to America with her brother Saul, who was two years younger than her. Imagine two kids at that age sailing across the Atlantic. They stayed in Halifax for 6 months all alone. And the woman was singing this song, which I I don't know if I have all the words right, but when I was a kid, I was like in 8th grade, and I used a lot of herbal pharmarmacology at the time, and uh I thought, well, I need a special hookah pipe for such an endeavor. And I I commandeered tubes and things from the science class which I was failing out of. And I created this intended to create this hookah pipe. And I'm as I'm going downstairs, my grandma was often at my house, you know, making potlouel eggplant, Romanian eggplant with like red peppers and small cucumbers. And I make it now myself. I didn't like it as a kid, but I like it now. As a kid, I'd probably want a McDonald's hamburger, fish burger. And she says, "Oh, hey doll, you've won some puddle." I'm like, "No, grandma. I I got I got some work to do." I went downstairs and, you know, made the crafted the pipe and came back upstairs and in a different state of mind. I don't advocate pharmarmacology at this point in any way, but this what happened to me. And then I saw my grandma in a fully different light. She was old at the time. And all of a sudden, I just didn't take her for granted. I realized that she would soon be gone. And she just became so beautiful to me in a way that I hadn't thought of her before. and the memories of the stettle and it brought me somehow to a consciousness of being part of this chain of generations. Now mind you, I was 14 years old involved in all the 14-year-old pursuits and then some. And I said to my grandma all of a sudden, can you sing me that song? What? I said and she sang the song. I said, "Slow down. I'm going to get a pencil and paper." This was me in my inebriated state. Still, I was clear enough to seize the moment. And I took a transliteration of the lyrics. And here's her. This is sounds so much like her actual voice. King th and then I sang it back to her and she was, you know, pretty pleased. And then as she got older and sort of drifted away, her mind was like, you know, wherever it went, my mom would call me back and say, "Sing the song, you know, for grandma so she could like come back to the world." And she would then she'd sing this sing it a little bit. And then finally she didn't sing it at all. And that was that was kind of the end of of that. Let me see if I can remember the words. And if you're a Yiddishist, excuse excuse what I what I wrote when I was a kid. in me thine father. I'm monitoring in me for to give a bist give. So beautiful. >> Yeah. Now that's like a that's a legitimate folk tune that somebody in a house in pain just made up. Sleep my child, your eyes. That's the syntax of the Yiddish, which is such a beautiful idea. >> Wow. So beautiful. Brings her back to life. That whole world, Peter Helman. It is such a joy to talk to you. haim now that we're friends, you know, doesn't have to be a special, you know, invitationon thing. >> Thank you so much for joining us today. Give give our audience of uh true spiritual seekers all over the world, Jews, a lot of Gentiles who love the Torah, a lot of people that are wondering what it's all about and looking for something deep in their life. Give us something that we can live from. will give us some hope and encouragement in in the in these waning end days. Well, it's like this. There is a creative force as a capital C and a capital F creating in a literal way all our reality. And this creative force has the ability to change things based on our requests based on our actions. There's a idea in Judaism beton that is a little different from the word for faith which is amuna which is that things will be good things will work out well. I'm going to give you a a higher level which is things are already good. My plane was really late the other day. There's an easy way to practice. It's like it's already good. That's fine. I'm going to be late. This is taking me somewhere important doing something. and you constantly practice that all the time. And there's certain times when that is a lot more difficult to think about. But like anything that just the idea of practice, that's how God made us. We improve with practice. And my blessing would be first of all that in good health and happiness and joy and success and abundance spiritual and material you engage in this practice. You become more aligned with this creative force. Call it God if you will. The name isn't as important as the understanding that there's something far higher than all of us and of the material world. And may it be so and may you be happy right now. >> Amen. Amen. What a beautiful braha. What a beautiful blessing for everyone. And I want to bless you too. You amazing Jewish man. You are absolutely like I said a true poet warrior and you are like standing on the forefront of the spiritual revolution of of your people and of the whole world. What an amazing artist you are. Thank you so much for being with us. >> You got it. I am well. Right now I'm going to make some gourmasabsi for shabas tomorrow. Persian delight and gundi if anyone knows the foods of Persia. And uh that's what I'm going to do is Persian shabas tomorrow. >> Wow. Shabbat shalom to you Peter and to everyone. Shabbat shalom. Amen.