Moshe Yess In Concert (clearer sound)

blemished or cracked or even a piece of a letter isn't there the entire Torah is considered lacking and cannot be used one little letter A Little Piece of a unit a little piece of an olive we the Jewish people are the same way it's even one brother one sister one friend one relative one Jew whose name we don't even know is missing then we as a people are lacking we're not complete so there are those that understand that and those that don't and those that are willing to put their lives every single day if I'm alone to go and find those Jews who are missing who are blemished who are not all there so that we can have a more complete Torah every year until America will come and there will be no lacking whatsoever [Music] in Markham I'd like to introduce you to two of the stars as I consider them of the Jewish people in Markham and then I'd like to introduce you to the real stars behind the Stars well the two stars of the two rabbis the people who have no hours they gotta work all hours people told me they only have two shifts from nine to nine and for nine to nine and they have to work both shifts and ladies and gentlemen let's face it they don't get too much recognition and we ought to take a minute out to recognize first of all Rabbi Abram Plotkin foreign [Applause] along with them especially out there in the world and Mark him twenty thousand Jews that's a lot of people that's a big big number to be responsible for to try and reach every single one and when they do a census like that that doesn't include every single child so it's really forty thousand or fifty thousand so Rabbi Patton was expanded this year and brought in from New York ladies and gentlemen Rabbi mayor kittlin [Applause] but uh what can I say the Stars Behind the Stars the Stars Behind the stars have to cook the food and raise the family and push their husbands to learn and push their husbands to dominant push their husbands onwards and onwards and maybe get even less recognition than their husbands except in the place where we really have to get recognition ladies and gentlemen the two rabbit sins who are really the light the spirit behind the miracle of Markham can we please recognize revitson Goldie Plotkin and Robertson Esther kitlin thank you I'll conclude for my remarks for this segment by saying we're still really within the spirit of Adam the spirit of Purim the spirit of shushan somebody not sure these small rodents it happens I'll take care [Music] okay it's someone whose mom didn't pick him up the uncle when she contacted him still time mom a show of us are there is a very important Mission you know really we're in the spirit of Celebration which is why we can joke and we're in the spirit of celebration of Purim as well and Purim celebrates the fact that the Jewish people we all know that the McGillis is Kimu the kibu the Jewish people got up and reaffirmed their Acceptance in the Torah but if for those of us who could follow in a Magilla it was spelled kibo not qiblu spelled in the singular not in the plural to teach us that we have to accept the Torah as one people that some are called upon to be a mortified the leader of the Jewish people some are called upon to be an Esther to sacrifice and step forward and be a leader of the Village People some of us are called upon to be as the a Dunham in the mishkah to be the supporters to be those to those who give financial support some to be the musicians some to be the rabbis so to be the printers and in the miracle in Markham there are so many people in fall and really that's part of the miracle so in that Spirit of Celebration I'd like to call upon a young Jewish fellow who I worked with for a long time hails from a small town in Canada but now from Montreal recently at a concert for disadvantaged children in New York he receives the most touching ovation that maybe I've ever heard anyone receive its first song he wrote called zadie which touched so many hearts ladies and gentlemen he's played from one core of the world to the other and soon may he married some make some music for mashiach ladies and gentlemen composer singer musician extraordinaire MOSI yes all right [Applause] [Music] okay now we're ready [Music] we should Harry just turned these monitors now I thought to do it okay thank you we should we should start this off with a little bit of Jewish history at the foot of Mount Sinai there were 12 tribes to the Jewish people later on in our history ten of those tribes became lost and the remaining two tribes have recently been discovered to be alive and well in New York City [Music] called Shimon and the other one is called the Garfunkel right now of the tribe of Garfunkel there is a descendant who lives next to the golf course on the outskirts of Orlando Florida and this first song is just about him if I can get a little bit more guitar level for more good sound man out there [Music] well we're waiting here one second [Music] you got some more guitar there for me Harry I'll just do it okay [Music] good five foot ten it is double knit slacks check out all the merchandise on his rack with an alligator sewed to his golf and shirt everybody knows you don't give nobody to Jack Schwartz every morning at dawn Suburbia saw he was cutting around 13th green and he knew how to slice he was golfing away his good Jewish life Jack Schwartz well I want to miss his beloved Soul lightning struck on the 14th hole his life was just a big sand trap because he never overcame his handicapped Lawrence [Music] and there's a tombstone now by the 18th hole where they buried his dearly departed soul and I guess it had to happen sooner or later he was buried in a tullus with an alligator Jack Schwartz foreign with your permission I would like to reintroduce myself to all of you my name is Moshe yes my last name is spelled y-e-s-s the second s is silent and whenever I tell people my names they usually ask me two questions the first one is because yes and the answer to that is yes my grandfather was born in Lodge Poland where the family name was yaish or yaich we're not certain and he immigrated to England as the immigration officer couldn't spell the name yishra Yates and so he wrote down y-e-s-s and that's how I'd have this ridiculous name the second question I'm always being asked by people is were you always religious and the answer to that is no people say what happened to you I kind of got tired of telling my story over and over and over again so I put myself this thing over and over good job in the city looking for the daughter every night and day this old Rabbi told me you want me to be holy get yourself a Bible son to see what it says instead of buying her summer rose I'm about to five a bit about creation the Garden of Eden and Adam and evil King slew Abel Noah was Ark was stable The more I've read well the more I believe the reason now we gotta be AST is the Bible learning from the first started praying princess that I covered my head I'm keeping Shabbos my dad bought me a Thomas it all came together with the Torah I read my children have big beating them in the Bible hey [Applause] ladies and gentlemen with your permission I would like to do something which is normally not done at a public concert like this I would like to uh share with all of you some very personal events from my life because it's from these events that the inspiration for many of the songs that I have written has come allow me to go back please about uh 11 years ago 11 years ago to put it very bluntly I did not appear at all the way I appear in front of all of you this evening I was in those days living in Hollywood California working as a recording studio at a nightclub musician and in those days I had very loud red pointed cowboy boots I had faded blue jeans with sparkly silver stuff down the side I did not have this massive undergrowth below my chin I had a very big leather cowboy hat with a gold chain around it and a big gold disc in the front that used to Jingle and every time I shook my head this was me 11 years ago in Hollywood California I and due to a very minimal Jewish Education as a child around the age of 28 or 29 I started to pick up a book here in a book there about the basics of our Jewish religion and after six months of study I pretty much fancied myself a world-class talmudic scholar on the topic of Judaism and I walked into a storefront synagogue on Fairfax Avenue in Los Angeles and met the first Rabbi that I had seen in many many years and the conversation between the two of us went something like this I approached the rabbi on his head uh excuse me rabbi I have been doing some research into the second temple period of our people's history you'll be kind enough to tell me please where did the Levites store the musical instruments in the second temple well first of all the rabbi looked at the pointed red cowboy boots he quickly glanced at The Faded blue jeans and he paid particular attention to this dangling participle of the front and other cowboy hat and he said two words to me I will never forget he said to me you Jewish and I said certainly [Music] you put on film today I didn't know he says come here you and he slaps me to the back of the show and he wraps me up in Phillip he's a little about your his name is Natalia estuda anyways to make a long story interminable [Music] since I've been in the show I'm feeling very Rusty as in true he says Ah come to Seoul every day he'll wear off the rust well to be honest it was awkward not knowing what was happening in the prayer book and the sitter and had done and everything and it was from that awkwardness that this next song found its inspiration we all was in the prayer of the Blues am I supposed to sit or stand in instead of God blue well I spoke sent me the haters I was just a child but instead I've learned an olive face I was out there running wild I got what prayer the guy right next to me he's taking snooze [Music] in Hebrew but to me the thing is great I've got my kid knows less than me in the prayer book blues and it's not too nice to see in a synagogue Blues so I got prayer with balloon sit or stand in the synagogue cause I'm going back to hater I've got the what the what major blue hangers uh allow me to go back eight years before I met Rabbi a student in Los Angeles I was still living in Hollywood and I had taken upon myself eight years before I met the rabbi the personal commitment to learn how to sing country music I did not realize I realized at the time that that would entail eight years of non-stop travel around the Western half of North America and if there's anybody in our audience tonight who has the secret fantasy to become the next Kenny Rogers or Dolly Parton can't imagine anyone [Music] I am going to save you eight years of non-stop travel and share with all of you the only three things you have to know if you want to successfully sing a country song in front of people lesson one pertains to the guitar every country song that has ever been written or will come to be written has the same first chord on the guitar it is Discord [Music] lesson number two every country song that has ever been written or will come to be written has the same first word is this one [Music] well now I hope you appreciate I'm saving you eight years of service but giving this all to you lesson number three is a little bit more subtle if you want to successfully do a country song in front of people you have to develop a certain amount of what I call dude I gotta Mosey on up to your microphone link he just got down from your horses you might get a weather-beating rough and tumbled life expression on your face you can accomplish accomplishially by squinting your eyes and increasing the ring the wrinkle of the happy facing just to show the people that you're a rough and tumble guy in the other you have a scenario of the people in the first couple of rows that's the psychology and to top it off for a dramatic effect you look up about 60 degrees to the right when you say the word well now [Music] the first time that I tried to do although let me show you how this goes in its most pristine form this is how it's hooked foreign [Music] was in a city called Minot North Dakota [Music] avoid it it's not exactly the cultural Hub of the Western Hemisphere and I was there at a place called the club 52. you and your Osprey should never know from such a place and there I was on stage in front of real-life Cowboys and Indians about to make my country music debut and little did I realized at that point in time that my Jewish Heritage was going to get in the way and cause me to stumble this is what transpired in Minot on that awesome well and the Cowboys started scratching their heads what's with the weirdo up on the stage I don't think he's one of us Chuck foreign [Music] that did not work so there I was struggling with the words of my rabbi are you going to be a Jew who happens to be a musician or are you going to be a musician this next song came along in the secular world with a very relevant message for me [Music] took us es knowing what the cars were worth by where the hell their eyes no my machine whiskey I want to give you some advice but you gotta know where we're not falling when you walked away money surviving with the throw away knowing what to change foreign [Applause] I was struggling with the lavavitch prayer book Julissa the English translation hadn't come up yet gives you an idea of how old I am and one day in the smarter asteroid [Music] the word Jerusalem [Music] and I ran to Rabbi Aston I said to him rabbit rabbi's real and he looked deep into my eyes and he said to me he's in your heart you're going to do it and sure enough three months later I was holding a one-way airplane ticket instead and I was quite fortunate because about four or five days after my arrival the yerushal lighting I found a very humble one bedroom air-conditioned apartment in a part of the city called the reason I refer to the air conditioning is because it consisted of a window with no glass in it it was one of these indoor outdoor veteran Factory schemes you read about I am not complaining about that little apartment my life turned around in that place the music I was playing the change from from Jewish music and more about what happened in the apartment later on but of all the songs that came into my life in that apartment to this day [Music] foreign he used to laugh he put me on his knee spoke about his life in Poland he spoke and he spoke about the soldiers who would beat him they laughed at him they tore his law [Music] his mom spoke about a synagogue that they burnt down and crying that was heard beneath the smoke but Sadie made us laugh Sadie made us Friday night so as Sadie used to teach me wrong from right his eyes lit up when he would teach me Torah and he taught me every line so carefully and he's and he spoke about our slavery in Egypt all right how about to make us free but winter went by my summer came along I went to camp and when I came back home they said Sadie's gone and stood away and I don't know how or why it came to be it happened slowly over many years just like being Jewish like my singing was oh and no one cared enough to shout out to you but see nothing nice and see oh my zadie how I am supposed to teach me wrong from right and many Winters went by and many Summers came along and now my children sit in front of me and who will be the sailing of my children [Music] who will be devastating it's not me who of our children Mercedes wrong from right [Music] um can I ask the lightning manager to turn the house up the house lights up just a little bit please because I want to ask a question of the audience okay now if you have been to a Jewish summer camp in North America one of the inevitable things that has happened to you is that you have learned this next song and you have learned it this way there's a certain technique to the song that's usually everybody gets together in a big group and they start to swing back and forth from the right to the left perspective from the left to the right and you get this mushy [Music] that comes over you with everybody gets all syrupy inside and spontaneous love for everybody they start to sing this song He name [Music] some of you are singing in Braille [Music] I want to thank the cam okay that's quite enough now the reason that I brought this song to your attention again is because it relates to my being in yerushalayim I met a Jewish musical historian who told me that an awful lot of the hit Jewish songs of about 50 60 years ago originally were folk songs that were taken from the hosts countries that we lived in over in Europe seems that what would happen as a Jewish individual would walk by an establishment and a local folk song would come out the window and he'd take it home and change the words a little bit and call it a Zone and turn it into a Jewish love [Music] this technique of borrowing someone else's core than melodic ideas changing the words and calling it your own In classical musical terminology this process is referred to as theft now it is not my intention here tonight to God forbid slander Jewish music but rather to to explain with all of you the The evolutionary process of our music we just did this North American email and I would like to show you how the local music has affected our Jewish music so specifically in South America to send Jewish kids to Jewish summer camps and they too sing him a tobuma Naim but this is how it's done in South America [Music] foreign all right [Music] foreign [Music] Legend in Jewish music who is about to do everybody hear a big favor with his talent a certain amount of time I've got time for one more song and I would like to ask all of you to help out on this next song [Music] going back to yerushalayim just for a second I checked into a Yeshiva and I finally started to learn some of the basics of Judaism what to do what not to do not drink the mahim acronym [Music] please help of the kindness of the laboratory Rabbi in Los Angeles today tonight Hora there are six little yeses running around my house and they are all learning in a Lubavitch School in Montreal he's the six little yeses they all have fears and Little Guitars singing the biggest blessing of my life is my wife Sharon and uh I need to connect all of this to the miracle in Markham because on a day-to-day basis doctors college students connect with lavagantua raveum all over the world who are doing the work of the registrita and they change lives and I know I know the forward to applaud Rabbi Plotkin in his organization could I ask you again let's give them a nice round of applause thank you one last story from the Yeshiva which explains why I appear the way I do in front of you this evening about three months after an about chubby Yeshiva that I was there one of my rabbis pulled me over I became quite friendly with him and he said to me Moshe and I said yes he said that Moshe why don't you grow a beard and I said what he said yeah I'm not into cry beers and I said what on Earth for he said well according to our kabbalistic wisdom our mystical wisdom if a man grows a beard it's supposed to bring some Divine Mercy from me into his life so I started to consider my financial situation and the cost of racer blades and shaving cream in Israel decided what can you lose and a few months later I was on 8th Avenue in New York City and in a window was this kind of a hat and I bought the Hat you know between the beard and the hat and experiences entered my life and I will probably have to bear I may have an S ring wherever I am in public at least four times an hour a total stranger will approach me and say anybody ever tell you to look at the guy from Fiddler on the Roof and I try to be polite you know and listen no no you're the first person's ever brought that to my attention sir in the last 12 minutes you're the first individual so you're part of this last song goes like this you've got two parts clap clap now when I point to everybody I want everyone to hear me a real good juicy here we go a big tall house just for sure that was fans I've been here spoiled some vast Eternal plan if I were I will be [Applause] all right ladies and gentlemen mostly yes [Applause] [Music] okay [Music] Hashem once made an angel and he gave him quite a chore foreign [Music] I cherish moose I'll let you back in heaven then you said the Lord of hosts [Laughter] [Music] to the twinkle caught his eyes it came from a golden box with that [Music] I'm a gate man see him yes you certainly is a treasure but a shell won't let you in and so the angel flew the world again and this time to a war I mean and he saw and have to bring me seen before [Music] Soldier jumped upon a bomb singing the lives of friends and when the first drop of the Soldier's Blood an angel flew again Jake told him we're at opportunity I'd let you in the right with that drug of what I see but the Lord of hosts has told me that I cannot let you in until the utmost precious cherished thing is brought back here to you Angel through the world again foreign [Music] open Ed up and light filled up the sky oh one himself took the teardrop they open says the mighty Lord of hosts and a teardrops of repentance is the thing [Music] I cherished [Applause] foreign