PHOTOGRAPH BY STEPHEN EPSTEIN

Rashi and the
Rolling Stones

Excerpt from a SermonSlam by Shira Dicker at Congregation Beth Elohim in Brooklyn, NY, earlier this year.

H ave you ever stood with one foot at Sinai and the other in Sin City?

What if your sanctuary was also your home and the ancient prayers pierced you to the core... like the music of Pink Floyd?

I’m Shira.

I was a rabbi’s kid during the wackiest, tackiest decade in American history — the 70’s — a Yeshiva Girl during the heyday of sex, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll.

Instructed to love God with all my heart and all my soul and all my might... while politely applauding the rock and roll revolution from my family pew...

Doing the Hustle... and the hora.

Stayin’ alive.

You see, I’d been to Day School on a horse with no name.

And heard laughter in the chrein.

As a Rabbi’s Girl in the 70s my life was a meshuggeneh mash-up I like to call Gefilte Groovy: (Play That Funky Music White Boy)

Rashi and the Rolling Stones
Shalom Aleichem and Sonny and Cher
Talmud and the Time Warp
Keeping kosher and kissing boys
Carlebach and Don Kirschner
Birkat Hamazon and Billy Joel
Star Trek and the State of Israel
Soviet Jews and the Family Stone
Abba and my Aba
Watergate and One God in Heaven
Gilligan’s Isle and Golda Meir
Monty Python, Moshe Dayan
Pink Floyd and Purim
Bowie and Babka! Hendrix and Halvah!
Getting wasted and going to shul
Rambam, Ratners and the Ramones
Davening and David Cassidy!

They’re COMING TO TAKE ME AWAY Ha Ha!!!

I didn’t need a funk band to tell me to freak out.

I was a brown-eyed girl in a psychedelic world.

Leah in the sky... with diamonds.

I wanted Hot Stuff but settled for hot pastrami.

I was Born to Run but shackled to the sanctuary.

My life was totally schizophrenic. One minute I was singing “Adom Olam,” and the next, “Love to Love You, Baby.”

On Friday night I blessed the Sabbath Queen but on Saturday night I worshipped the music of Queen... from my house in Queens. ■

A promoter of art and culture, Shira Dicker is a strategic thinker, master networker, activist and entrepreneur. She balances her writing life with teaching and performance art. Her Bungalow Babe in the Big City is literary and often irreverent, with a global readership.