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Yonatan Razel: "I want to be a kind of prophet of comfort" | Israel today

2022-09-01T13:46:12.372Z


The month of mercy and forgiveness has arrived, and with it the musician's round of "Elul tunes" performances with the Ashdod Andalusian Orchestra • "Today there is a healthy process of understanding the complexity between secular and religious"


The background story of Yonatan Razel - who grew up in an American home, son of beautiful parents who attended the original Woodstock festival and heard John Baaz and James Taylor - is already known to quite a few.

But alongside his New York roots, a significant part of the musician's identity originates in the Nachalot neighborhood, a community of Persians and Kurds.

There he and his family went through the process of getting closer to religion.

"I had a pleasant childhood," he says.

"Today it is a very real estate area, but then it was a neighborhood of happy, simple, accepting and loving people.

There we repented in a very long, moderate and slow process and there I prayed.

I always like to tell the joke that my father took me into his room at the age of 15 and told me 'I have to tell you a secret - you are Ashkenazi'.

Until then I didn't even know there was such a thing.

I assumed at all that I was Kurdish."

This amusing anecdote is told by Razel to explain his connection to the show "Nigoni Elul" - his concert of forgiveness with the Israeli Andalusian Ashdod Orchestra.

As he did a few years ago with the same orchestra, this time Razel and the Andalusian poets will perform Salihot, which will include traditional melodies alongside new ones, as well as Yonatan's original materials, in Andalusian arrangements.

"As an American of Dutch origin, I was a cantor with the Persians for many years," he says.

"I wasn't in the section of Yiddish chants and Hungarian and Polish tunes, I was in the section of piyot. As a result, I feel very much at home in the areas of piyot and oriental music. Not in the section of folklore but in the real section, that's who I was. I would get up every morning at half past four to pray, that's what That's why when the Andalusian approached me, it seemed to me the most natural thing in the world."

Yonatan Razel (archive),

The interview with Razel takes place during an interesting, even stormy period, and it is not intended to be the one that precedes the terrible days.

Last week, during a performance in the Beit El settlement, Aviv Gefen, formerly one of the symbols of Israeli secularism, told the local audience that for years he acted and spoke out against him out of ignorance and that now his eyes have been opened.

Geffen did this with a bow on his head, as part of a process of getting closer to the audience he had attacked in the past in concerts and interviews.

For quite a few people from the left camp it was a cynical act.

But Razel chooses to believe in change.  

"I performed with Aviv about two weeks ago at the 'Briza' festival in Ashkelon, and I think it's exciting in many ways," he says.

"Not only because I say, 'Listen, how exciting that he also understands my side.' I really respect you.' Not only him."

between the polarization and the connection

you are optimistic

During the Corona period, it seemed that this nation was more polarized than ever.


"Exactly compared to all the voices of polarization and hatred and the things we suffered from in the days of the Corona virus, I feel that at the ground level and the human encounter there is a lot of this talk. Today I spoke with my friend in the ultra-Orthodox kollel. He is not able to understand it. He said, 'If he (Aviv) understands it So why isn't he religious?'. I said to him: 'No, it's not exactly that.' of polarization that also happens and is present and real and I experience it as well. At the same time there is a process of human, conceptual and even spiritual connections that create some kind of discourse. I want to be a kind of comforting prophet."

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Source: israelhayom

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