Hebrew Voices #232 – Jewish Devotional Musician: Part 1

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Mikey: It seems that we’re in a time of… if you even look at it like the climate change, the changes, the floods, the days of darkness, the fires, like, it seems like we’re in a period of time unlike any other, and I would say that we’re in a time of the Moshiach. Like, we’re in a time of “something’s happening”. Like, we don’t know… we obviously haven’t seen the Messiah, but I would say we’re in a messianic time. Something is definitely changing. And because of that, of course, we should be able to play music.

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Nehemia: Shalom, and welcome to Hebrew Voices. I’m here today with Mikey Pauker. He’s a devotional Jewish rock and reggae artist based in Orange County, California. He’s been described by Time magazine as one of “the ten stars of the new Jewish music.” Mikey creates spiritually infused music that blends rock, reggae, folk and hip hop with deep Jewish wisdom and prayer, sung in both English and Hebrew. Shalom, and welcome to the program, Mikey.

Mikey, your description here, your bio, says you’re a devotional Jewish musician, an artist. What is devotional Jewish music? And I ask that because, you know, I’ve been to a lot of churches and synagogues around the world, and one of the things I see is that in churches, they’ll sing a lot, and they really get into it. In Judaism, they generally don’t do that in the synagogue, although maybe in Reform temples they do more. Whereas, in churches they do that, and Jews, they’ll do that, but they’ll do it generally outside the synagogue, right? So, you’ll have like, Chabad will get the term levedik, right, which means “from the heart”. But they usually don’t do that in the synagogue as much, not with instruments anyway. So, what is a devotional Jewish artist? What does that mean?

Mikey: Well, first of all, I just want to say thanks for having me on your show.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Mikey: I’ve had the pleasure of listening to you, and I’m really enjoying what you put out.

So, devotional Jewish music. Devotional Jewish music is music that is based on Jewish Scripture. I’m talking about the Chumash, aka the Torah, the Tehilim, Psalms, Hasidic text, and also based on liturgy. So…

Nehemia: And liturgy is a fancy word, people, for prayer. Meaning, oral prayers that are in Jewish synagogues.

Mikey: Exactly. So, when I’m talking about liturgy, I’m talking about the actual prayers from either Shaharit, which is morning davening or prayer, Mincha, which is afternoon, or Maariv, which is the evening. And so, the music is based on that Scripture. And when you talk about worship music, Christian worship music, I would say, yes, it’s just like that, but without Jesus.

Nehemia: Why don’t we have more of that? Like, could I just be really honest? When I was a kid, my father would drag me to the Orthodox synagogue, and I was bored out of my mind. And I’ve been to some Reform temples, and I’m like, “Yeah, I can get into this.” And, you know, look, I’m not trying to knock Orthodox… So, here’s the real answer, historically, right? The Temple was destroyed, and they said, music’s only for the Temple. But then we were bored for 2,000 years, so, I mean…

Mikey: Well, I don’t necessarily know if they say music is just for the Temple. They’re…

Nehemia: Meaning, when it’s in a formal service. I think that was the excuse in the Middle Ages. Maybe it’s not today as well.

Mikey: I mean, I think the way the halakha has been… what I’ve learned is that… And first of all, so, something to understand about me is that I grew up Reform.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mikey: Then I became Hasidic.

Nehemia: Oh, wow!

Mikey: I went from the Reform world of growing up to then studying at a Chabad yeshiva, living in Jerusalem, and I was Hasidic. That was in 2000 and… uh, when I was living there, 2011, 2012. And now, I’m studying to be both a rabbi and a cantor.

Nehemia: Wow!

Mikey: And I’m…

Nehemia: An Orthodox rabbi, right? I like to put people in boxes. Is that what you’re…

Mikey: So, it’s nondenominational. It’s called pluralistic. Pluralistic basically means…

Nehemia: I don’t know what that is. I mean, I know the word pluralism, but what does that mean in Judaism?

Mikey: Pluralism in Judaism means that at my seminary you can get ordained in all denominations.

Nehemia: Really?

Mikey: We have Orthodox scholars, and historians, and teachers. We have Conservative. So, you know, conservative would be egalitarian. So, it’s the same as Orthodoxy, except, you know, men and women have equal roles. And then…

Nehemia: Let me explain that for the audience. In an Orthodox synagogue, a woman can’t read from the Torah.

Mikey: Right, that’s…

Nehemia: And women sit in different sections. In Conservative, do they sit together?

Mikey: In Conservative, they do sit together. So, there’s a mechitza in the Orthodox world. In the Conservative world, Halacha is almost identical, in some communities in Conservative, to Orthodoxy. However, it’s egalitarian, which means men and women, or people that identify however they identify, they are who they are, and there’s plenty of rabbis. My whole life I grew up… So, first of all, that’s the Conservative movement, right? If this is like one side or…

Nehemia: That’s Conservative with a big C.

Mikey: The big C.

Nehemia: Within Judaism, if you ask Orthodox, they’ll say, “Oh, the Conservatives, those are the liberals,” right? That’s where things are…

Mikey: Actually, Conservative would be considered way more, I would say, religious in their understanding and their living of the law and reading from the Torah, right? So, like, you go to most Conservative synagogues, they’re going to probably do a full Shaharit, a full Pesukei De’zimra, a full service, you know, a Torah service with… and Musaf. Like, they’re going to do it, right? And the thing too, about Conservative music is probably… I don’t know when it changed. I need to do my research because I want to do my thesis on, like, Jewish music.

Nehemia: Oh, I love it.

Mikey: But one of the things that changed is, they said they approved that you can have music on Shabbat. And so, actually, one of my teachers who… I used to be mentored by a man named Craig Taubman. He went to Temple Sinai, where… I’m actually leading services at Temple Sinai in Los Angeles there, this fall. I’m coming up. But Craig Taubman started something called Friday Night Live. Friday Night Live was like a Christian worship service. But this was like 20 years ago, something like that. And he started bringing in great musicians on a Friday night. And you have David Wolpe, who you all know. I don’t know if you’ve ever had him on your show.

Nehemia: I don’t know who that is.

Mikey: David Wolpe is like a really, really well known… he’s one of the most world-renowned Conservative rabbis who’s ever lived. He’s very prolific…

Nehemia: I’ve been to a Conservative service maybe a dozen times in my life, and there was never music. So, I apologize for not having enough experience with either Conservative or Reform, to be honest with you.

Mikey: Probably a good thing for your listeners too, you know?

Nehemia: So, let me ask you something; if there’s listeners in Los Angeles, can they come to the service, let’s say, even if they’re not Jewish? Or do you have to be Jewish? Do you have to be a member? How does that work? Like, I literally don’t know.

Mikey: Oh, no. It’s the same in Chabad too, in Orthodox circles. Anyone… you could walk into a shul, and if I go to Pico-Robertson and I go daven at the happy minyan, they’re not going to say, “Are you Jewish or not?” Like…

Nehemia: Okay.

Mikey: Any of these… it doesn’t matter if you’re Orthodox, Conservative, Reform. I’ve never been to a service where people say, “Hey, are you Jewish?” Like, usually people are just like, “Come in, be with us,” right? So, that’s the Conservative movement. It’s like they’re… And then the Reform world, it’s a little bit different, right? It’s a little more radical and different. It’s still egalitarian, people are still… but the halacha kind of changes depending on the movement. But that’s that.

And then you have the Reconstructionist movement, which came off the Conservative movement, and then you have the Renewal movement. So, there’s all these other liberal kind of branches that aren’t Orthodox, where you walk in and music is a part of the everyday service. But when you go to certain Orthodox circles, especially Haredi circles, and even, like, really Hasidic circles in some of the sects, you’re right, especially on Shabbat. There’s no using instruments, because… right? They say that if you break a string or… you’re fixing. Or you’re playing and you’re going to…

Nehemia: So, just to be clear, for the audience. In Orthodox, and certainly the ultra-Orthodox world, it’s actually forbidden to even hold an instrument or touch an instrument, let alone to use it on Shabbat. So, if they have music, it’s going to be entirely vocal.

Mikey: Right.

Nehemia: So, like, we had someone on the podcast who was doing… he was doing like rap… and he’s not a musician, he’s a scholar, right? But he was doing rap of ancient Hebrew poetry in an Orthodox service. But that’s extremely unusual, right? It was unusual enough where I’m like, “Let’s have this guy on because I’ve never heard anything like this.”

Mikey: And who was it?

Nehemia: Gabriel Wasserman. He is probably the top scholar in the world on ancient piyut, ancient liturgical poetry.

Mikey: Love piyut. Yeah. The world that I’m immersed in, right, the world that I’m immersed in, I see, because I daven, and I basically have been in rooms with either, you know, Litvak Jews, which are, you know, Litvak and Hasidic, who are very different… these are very different people. And Haredi rooms and Breslov, and Renewal, and like, I have seen it all. I’ve seen the game, I’ve been in the rooms and actually, my melodies that I’ve written are sung across denominations, like…

Nehemia: Wow. What’s an example of something? I once had on the program Rabbi Twerski. You know the song, “Hoshia et amekha…” He wrote that! Which, I’m like, “How is it you wrote that? I grew up singing that. That’s been around forever!” He’s like, “No, no, no, I wrote that.” And he sang it for us… or I don’t know if he sang it, or… it’s been a while. It’s before he passed away…

Mikey: You mean the “Hoshia, hoshia, hoshia”? No, that’s moshia.

Nehemia: No, that’s something else. Hoshia et amekha, u’varekh et nahaletekha, urem, urem, urem…

Mikey: Right.

Nehemia: Right? So, guys, you don’t want to hear me sing, we want to hear Mikey sing, believe me. But, yeah, he was an older rabbi, right? And he passed away, I think, in the last few years. And he actually was the author… So, what are some songs that are sung across denominations that… Can you play one for us?

Mikey: I can. Like I was saying, it’s a little challenging right now.

Nehemia: So, guys, I want to encourage… he’s going to sing something for us, hopefully in a little bit. Go and find his… I don’t know. Where do you get your music? I don’t listen to music, I’ll just be really honest with you. Where do you get music these days? Where can they…

Mikey: You can find me anywhere. You can Google me and you can get it on any major DSP, Spotify, Apple Music. Anywhere.

Nehemia: Beautiful. Guys, go buy his music and support what he’s doing, because we don’t have enough devotional Jewish music. I’ll just say it. In my view. I feel like we don’t have enough. Like, I mean, you could, I mean… Christian… And it’s interesting. So, I want to maybe talk about this for a minute. Like, in other words, I think that you could have some Orthodox who will hear this, maybe ultra-Orthodox, and say, “You Jews are being influenced by Christians because we don’t do devotional music.” And you drew the parallel… Look, this was something… when the Reform movement was founded in the 1800s, this was a big issue. They said, “We want to have music in our synagogues like the Christians do.” And they had, eventually, organs. Why organs? Because that’s what the Germans did. It was in Germany. That’s what the Lutherans were doing.

And the critique was, “No, that’s what Christians do.” And the response was, “What do you mean? Psalm 150 is a list of lots of different musical instruments!” Right? Praise God with the timbrel and the lyre, and I don’t even know how to pronounce all these words, right? And cymbals and… So, right, nevel and kinor in Hebrew, right?

So, there’s all these different musical instruments that they’re using, and why don’t we use that? There’s various historical reasons. Like I said, some people say it’s because the Temple was destroyed and we shouldn’t be happy when the Temple’s… Okay, but it’s been 2,000 years. Can we have devotional music where we worship God? I love that.

Mikey: And we’re also in a new time too. You know, I just was in Israel this summer. I was on a rabbinical trip, and Shavuot happened. Beautiful, beautiful, amazing holiday, doing it in Jerusalem. I had such an incredible evening. And we ended up in the morning at the Temple Mount. I was up there doing Shaharit.

Nehemia: Wow! You have to tell us about this.

Mikey: And I’ll tell you about this. You know, when I was there in 2012, and my rabbi said to me, “Mikey, don’t go up to the Mount,” you know, “it’s just not safe.” When we went up there a long, long, long time ago, they would not allow you to move your mouth. You couldn’t…

Nehemia: I remember. Someone was arrested for moving his lips silently.

Mikey: Yeah. That’s not what’s happening right now. I mean, we went up and we davened a full Shaharit up on the side… Like, we walked in and we did, like, a full 40 minutes. They let us pray there.

Nehemia: So, Shaharit, guys, is the morning prayer. And this is like in a formal minyan and like a formal, like what they call it, a quorum?

Mikey: There were probably 50 people screaming out to God.

Nehemia: Wow.

Mikey: We were prostrating ourselves on the ground. Prostrating ourselves! And it was like… the Shalosh Regalim service is a certain… Shalosh Regalim happen on these very specific holidays, and it’s a musical mode, when you know, like, it happens on very specific… Like things like Pesach and Shavuot. But it was like a really beautiful service that happened.

Nehemia: Wow.

Mikey: And I gotta say, like, because it seems to me things are changing up there; there’s something going on. And it’s funny, like, it’s not really talked on the media very much about what’s happening up there, but it seems that the governing forces up there are protecting the Jewish people to pray at one of our most holy, ancient, pilgrimage sites. It’s the place where, you know, Abraham bound Isaac. It’s like, this is Mount Moriah. This is, like, the place. And because of that, right, it seems that we’re in a time of, if you even look at it like, the climate change, the changes, the floods, the days of darkness, the fires. Like, it seems like we’re in a period of time unlike any other, and I would say that we’re in a time of the Moshiach. Like, we’re in a time of something’s happening. Like, we don’t know. We obviously haven’t seen the Messiah, but I would say we’re in a messianic time. Something is definitely changing. And because of that, of course we should be able to play music. I mean, we… this has been happening for a very long time, but I really do believe that, like, we are in a moment right now that historically we will look back at this and be like, you know, “This…” People will be saying to our kids, “Wow, you were alive…”

Nehemia: Wow.

Mikey: “…you were alive during this time? You were alive during October 7th,” first of all.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Mikey: You know, and so, I feel like historically things are shifting, and musically, I’ve seen it. There’s so much Jewish music. You say we need more devotional Jewish music?

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Mikey: I know hundreds of artists who are doing it now. But maybe the reason you don’t know about it is because we’re all in our echo chambers…

Nehemia: Wow.

Mikey: …but, you know, I’m trying to pass a Jewish music Grammy, and part of my life is listening to Jewish music in all the denominations.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Mikey: We have a lot of Jewish music. One of the highest contributors of Jewish music is obviously the Orthodox community. It’s mind boggling how much Jewish music is coming out of this movement.

Nehemia: So, and look, I grew up with Jewish music, but it was the Miami Boys Choir, which, look, I mean, there’s some people who like that. I’m not knocking it. But, yeah, I don’t know that I would call that devotional. Maybe it is, I don’t know. In a sense it is, right? And look, in the generation before me, my mother grew up with Shlomo Carlebach, who really revolutionized Orthodox Jewish music, and we have a lot of his songs that have just become part of the culture.

I want to tie some things together. So, you said you’re up for Shavuot on the Temple Mount doing a full morning prayer Shaharit service, and you mentioned Shalosh Regalim. So, guys, what that means is, that’s the Hebrew that means “the three times.” It’s a phrase from Exodus 23 and Exodus 34, and it refers to the three times of pilgrimage to the Temple, right? And the three pilgrimage feasts, or chag, meaning chag not in the modern sense, which is any holiday, but in the Torah sense is, Feast of Unleavened Bread, what we call Pesach, Shavuot, Feast of Weeks, and Sukkot. All three of those are called chag, and chag implies a pilgrimage in Biblical Hebrew. And regel is the three times of year that you go up to the Temple Mount. So, you’ve actually got to be on the Temple Mount at one of the regels, at one of the times of the year of pilgrimage, and did a prayer service. I mean, that probably hasn’t been done since before… You know, before the Crusades, there was actually a Jewish synagogue on the Temple Mount that the Muslims allowed. And then, after the Crusades, they came back and they didn’t allow it. So, this might be the first time in like a thousand years that this has been done. This is amazing! Say something about that. That’s historic.

Mikey: I mean, it was historic. And I think, you know, unfortunately, what you see on the news is like, the only thing that you see is Ben-Gvir up there giving a speech, you know. That’s what people’s context of the Temple Mount is. The media only likes to take a video of a politician and say, “This is what’s going on.” But apparently, when I went up there on Shavuot, it’s been happening for, like… it’s been getting more popular year after year after year. There are people on the Temple Mount who are standing up there and praying.

But honestly, I have to say, when I was there in 2012… I’ll tell you all a story, and this is something that I have kind of left out of most interviews. I went up to the Temple Mount in 2012. I was with a group of guys. We went up the bridge. We got an escort. We walked right up to the steps of the Temple Mount. And then, on the count of three, the guys who I was with, they said, “We’re going to chant the Shema.”

Nehemia: Wow!

Mikey: First of all, I didn’t know who I was with. I didn’t understand the context of the situation. I was honestly, at the moment, pretty ignorant about where I was, what I was doing. I mean, I was in yeshiva, studying at a Chabad yeshiva, and I was there, but I didn’t understand why we couldn’t do that. And then we started singing it, and all hell broke loose. I mean, the security forces were yelling at us, Palestinians started throwing rocks. It was…

Nehemia: Ah. And when you say security forces, you mean the Israeli security forces?

Mikey: At the time… I don’t know. There are Israeli security forces up there, but I thought… they were Druze, I thought.

Nehemia: Well, they probably are Druze. Meaning, they’re not Jewish. They choose Druze because they understand Arabic and they can know what’s going on.

Mikey: And they’re also an equal party. They’re a good referee, as you would say.

Nehemia: Right. They’re not Jewish, they’re not Muslim, they’re neutral. Right.

Mikey: That’s right. So, the security forces got very upset. They obviously escorted us out. It was, you know, at the time, during 2012 that was considered like a fringe activity. Now, it’s not so fringe. I mean, people are going like multiple times a day. They’re allowing Jews to go up to the Temple Mount. Now, you can go up… anyone could go up to the Temple Mount, like… You could go up, and you could stand at the Temple Mount and touch the Dome of the Rock. A Jew can’t go and stand up… We only get escorted there very specific times, and we do so with security, and there are very specific protocols. But like, anyone could go up there. A Buddhist could go up there. A Buddhist could go up there and chant, you know, whatever chant they want to chant. Or the Krishna, they can chant, you know, whatever is deep to them. But for us, a Jew, to go up there? Like, we want to talk about apartheid? Like, this is real apartheid.

Nehemia: So, there was discrimination against Jews openly worshiping on the Temple Mount, and now you’re saying they’re allowing it.

Mikey: Not this past weekend. The weekend prior, I put on a Jewish interfaith concert with Muslims and Jews.

Nehemia: Oh, I love it! So, talk about that. You know, we just talked about you going up to pray at the Temple Mount, and some people are thinking, “Here’s some radical Jew who’s Islamophobic, who’s going up there to offend the Muslims.” And actually, you’re involved in interfaith…

Mikey: Yeah.

Nehemia: …music with Muslims. So, tell us about that.

Mikey: Yeah. So, after October 7th, I’ve been sitting in different spiritual communities, and one of them is a community that’s out in California, out here, that’s, that puts on a really nice, beautiful, like, shabbaton, like, ceremonies. And I’m sitting there in this weekend and it’s…

Nehemia: Tell us what a shabbaton is, for those who don’t know.

Mikey: Yeah. A shabbaton is just like a weekend retreat where we come together for Shabbat, and then there’s, you know, different events happening. This weekend we were sitting in kind of like an interfaith ceremony, and when we say that… it’s called Path of the Moon, and we were looking at… Why is it called Path of the Moon? It’s because, like obviously, Abrahamic tradition shows that Judaism, and also Islam, we follow the moon, the lunar calendar, and we are people… There’s a lot of other reasons, but, you know, we are a people of the path of the moon, and we had this like interfaith gathering.

And over the weekend I started kind of connecting. Like, at the time when I was there, it was kind of challenging, obviously, to, you know, hear the Muslim call of prayer. This was like right after October 7th, to kind of hear that. And then, at the end of the weekend, we did a Havdalah that we led, and, you know, I think for them, some of these Muslims, it was challenging for them who… Some of them had obviously never been to a temple before, and so they felt afraid. And also, some of them were ignorant at the time, as I was ignorant, I would say. Not ignorant as a negative form, but like, we just didn’t understand why we would be afraid of hearing each other’s, you know, faiths, so, each other…

Nehemia: Try to explain to the audience. When you heard the Muslim call to prayer…

Mikey: Yeah.

Nehemia: …was there some kind of, like, visceral reaction in the pit of your stomach? Like, this is what was shouted when they killed Jews on October 7th. Or… what was the…

Mikey: It reminded me of when I was living in Jerusalem, and I’d wake up in the middle of the night and I’d hear the call to prayer at like, one, or whatever that was, two in the morning.

Nehemia: Around 4:00, 4:30 in the morning. I used to hear it all the time.

Mikey: And you’re trying to sleep, and, like, reminded me of this, like, visceral, like, feeling in my body that… You know, I’m trying to sleep, and why is this happening? And like, not understanding why, you know… At the time, I didn’t understand why at all times of the day. I just thought it was an annoyance. I didn’t understand that they prayed, I think, five times a day, like…

Nehemia: What neighborhood were you in, out of curiosity?

Mikey: I was living in the Old city.

Nehemia: Oh, okay. So, you’re definitely hearing it in the Old City.

Mikey: Yeah.

Nehemia: I lived in Baka, and if you had your windows open and it was really quiet, you could hear it between 4:00 and 4:30 coming from Abu Tor. But if you’re in the old City, you’re hearing it loud and clear. I once was in Amman, in Jordan, and there, they do things a little bit differently, I don’t know exactly why. But at midnight, full blast in the hotel room, the loudest thing you ever heard; the call to prayer.

Mikey: Right.

Nehemia: The actual prayers. Not just the call to prayer.

Mikey: And they’re beautiful. I mean, like, at the time, I just thought it was an annoyance, where I was in my life. I mean, this was like 15 years ago, and like, you know, then I moved… and then a few years later, I was up living in Nahla’ot, which is over near the Agripas shuk, which is like where people go shopping, and it’s like where my yeshiva was in… I was in Chabad yeshiva, and you maybe hear it a bit less because you’re not right in the center of Jerusalem.

Nehemia: Yeah.

Mikey: But at this ceremony, at this shabbaton, there was a lot of interfaith discussion, kind of conversations between Israelis, Palestinians, people that were Lebanese, some were Turkish Muslims.

Nehemia: Uh-huh.

Mikey: …and just American Jews. So, it was like a weekend of like connected prayer and community. And what happened was, at the end of the weekend, I went and sat down with a woman, a Muslim woman, and I was like, “Hey, like…” We just jumped in to October 7th. Like, we just went in, because we were like that all day. You know, it was like, for me, it was like a lot of, like… On a spiritual level, the weekend was a deep spiritual, prayerful weekend, but I wanted to know, like where we were at.

And we got into it, and it was honestly not the best conversation to have at like two in the morning. So, we were like, “Okay, let’s put a pause on this.” The next day we were ending the ceremony, and I’m sitting there in the temple, and I’m playing a song in Hebrew and Arabic that was originally written by Mosh Ben-Ari and a band called Shevet, called “Od Yavo Shalom”, which means “there will be peace”, there will be peace, peace will come for us and the world. And so, I started singing it in the temple, and the same woman started singing with me, and she was like, “Oh my God, I love this song. I lived in Israel. I was a Shalom Hartman fellow.” So, the Shalom Hartman Institute in Israel, they do a lot of peace work between Israelis and Jews, and people come from America and they come and learn there over the summer. So, she came, and she said, “Just a few months ago, after October 7th, they canceled the program because…”

Nehemia: Wait. She was the Shalom Hartman fellow, or you were?

Mikey: She was.

Nehemia: She was. The Muslim woman? Wow, okay.

Mikey: So, she said, “Actually, Mikey, many of us here were, in this room.” So, I said, “That’s interesting.” I said, “Why don’t we grab dinner?” And I said, “Where do you live?” And she goes, “Oh, I live in Orange County.” I’m like, “That’s where I live.” She lives 20 minutes from me.

Nehemia: Mm.

Mikey: So, we ended up getting together, having dinner. I came to her house; she made an amazing dinner. Awesome, beautiful. She came to my house, similar thing. And then, back and forth, we started opening… she would open up the Quran, and I’d open the Torah, and we would look at the similarities of our faiths. And we would talk about, “Oh, it says here, this angel.” “Oh, I have an angel here.” “Oh, it says, Abraham.” “Oh, we have Abraham here.” Like, we were basically trying to, like… regardless of what people are saying, we wanted to find our own connection points within the Scripture to see the similarities.

So, over time, that started happening, and what happened was, we eventually invited their… She’s a part of a community called the Pacific Institute, and they’re a Sufi Muslim community of Turkish descent, and they have, I guess, many different chapters, but one of their main chapters is out here. They ended up coming to our synagogue for an interfaith dinner. We went to them for an iftar event, a Ramadan event.

Nehemia: Tell the audience what iftar is. I know, but they probably don’t.

Mikey: I’m not exact…

Nehemia: It’s when they break the fast, right, on Ramadan, each day.

Mikey: It was a break the fast, yeah. So, I don’t speak Arabic fluently, but it was a break the fast event on Ramadan. During the day, they don’t apparently eat any food.

Nehemia: Or drink water.

Mikey: Water. And this happens for, you know… how long is Ramadan? It’s like…

Nehemia: It’s a month, which could be, I guess, 29 or 30 days. I’m not sure exactly. Meaning, I guess that varies, presumably.

Mikey: Yeah, so, it was about 29, 30 days and… But in the evenings when the sun goes down, it’s permissible to eat, and so, they had a big meal that, we came together and they…

Nehemia: What we call in Judaism a se’uda mafseket. It’s, you know, the meal that you eat at the end of Yom Kippur. But they do like 29 or 30 days in a row, yeah.

Mikey: Right, right. And to think about that practice, right, as a Jew, like, traditionally most people don’t do that unless it’s on very specific days. I know that I’ve heard of individuals like, say, like biblically, if there were people who fasted for certain periods. But the process of doing that every day, and who I was talking to, like my friend Brittany and my friend Daniel, who were there, and a bunch of other people, I could tell that they were on a different spiritual plane than when I met Solomon at the ceremony, months before.

Nehemia: You mean the Muslim? Brittany’s a Muslim?

Mikey: Yeah, Brittany’s a Muslim.

Nehemia: Okay.

Mikey: And, you know… so, after doing that back and forth, the rabbi… So, the rabbi that I pray with at the synagogue that I’m at, he told me that after October 7th, his local mosque, like, the imam cut off ties with him because he said it was such a tense moment. And when I told the rabbi about this, he started coming to events, and we started having these conversations, and now the rabbi’s like, we’re together, and he’s like, “Why don’t we put on, like, a night of music?” So, we ended up putting on this beautiful night of music. This was, two weekends ago, and it was called Shalom Salaam. We brought together their imam….

Nehemia: And shalom, guys, the Hebrew word for peace, and salaam is the Arabic word.

Mikey: Sorry, I should break the break things down. I’m…

Nehemia: No, that’s fine. That’s my job, to translate.

Mikey: Cool, cool, cool. So, it’s called Shalom Salaam, which is really interesting, because what we found out through the process of planning this concert is that there were many words that we say, obviously like shalom, salaam, peace be unto you, and hello, are almost the same words. They sound similar. But like, even the word ruach. Like, the word ruach, which means spirit, and the word Neshama, which means soul, they had… I don’t have the exact translation, but they had other words that were very similar in us planning this.

Nehemia: Right. So, in Arabic it’s ruch, and I don’t know what the Arabic word for neshama is, but I would imagine it’s something like nesam or… So, the Shin becomes a Sin, and the Sin becomes a Shin between Hebrew and Arabic, usually.

Mikey: Which, you know, people would think like, “Oh my God, we’re so different.” But we actually come from the same Abrahamic father, and we actually share a mutual… our self-determination. We, as Muslims and Jews, we have a tied-in self-determination. And what I learned from sitting…

Nehemia: What does that mean? A tied-in… I don’t know what that means.

Mikey: What I mean by that is that, like, our existence… we thrive, I think, personally, we thrive when we all thrive. I feel like there are too many echo chambers both in Jewish communities and in Muslim communities that say Jews are evil, right? Muslims might say Jews are evil, and the same Jews might say the same about Muslims. Or, you know, Muslims are colonizers, or something like that. Although Muslims would say Israelis are colonizers. Like, they’re the same arguments, but they’re based on… there aren’t enough conversations where we’re trying to figure out how can we both build bridges, work together, because we’re obviously… none of us are going anywhere. Like, if we think…

Nehemia: That’s a really interesting point. So, you know, my father, who was an Orthodox rabbi… I once was having doing an interfaith dialogue with Christians, and he did not approve of it. He said, “Look, we have our thing, they have their thing. Let’s leave it alone. There’s nothing good that can come out of an interfaith dialogue.” And, so, make the counterargument. What’s the argument of… because I know there’s some of my Christian listeners who are saying, “Well, Muslims worship,” you know, “a moon god named Hubal, and they, you know, and that’s who Allah is, and so, it’s a different god.” What would your response to that be? What good can come out of the interfaith dialogue with Muslims?

Mikey: I’ll put it another way. What would happen if we just stopped? We’ve stopped talking to each other. And because we stopped talking to each other, what has happened to the world? The world is broken. Like, we need to all be in conversation. That doesn’t mean that necessarily… So, for instance, over the course of the evening, they did their evening prayer, and we went and we… as a part of the concert, they went and they sat down and they did their prostrations. And we had the opportunity to observe, like in a temple. Like, when are you ever given that chance to get to observe and get to hear them talk about their own faith and their intimacy with their god? Why is it that we’re in a place now where people say, “Oh, let them do their thing?” Well, of course we’re going to have disagreement. If we don’t have transparency about, “This is what we’re up to. This is why we do it,” then that’s why stereotypes continue to form. Because we think we know what they’re doing, but we don’t really understand why they’re doing what they’re doing. And in those conversations of those nuances, we can therefore approach conversation and prayer in a place of curiosity rather than projection.

Nehemia: That was so well put, thank you. That was really well explained. You know, I once heard this interview where… it was something in American politics, and they were asking this guy to explain to the other side. He said, “I don’t want to explain to them. I just want them to be gone.” And it reminds me of this line in the series The Wire, where there’s this character… he says, “You want it that other way, but it ain’t that way, it’s this way.” Right? You might want them to all be gone, but that’s not going to happen. So, now, in the real world, how do we, in a very practical sense, how do we survive? How do we get along with each other? We could… The most dangerous thing we could do is not understand the other side.

On October 7th… on October 6th, let’s say, the heads of Israeli intelligence didn’t understand the other side. In contrast, the head of Hamas, Yahya Sinwar, was in an Israeli prison, and he spent years studying Jewish culture, and he used that against us on October 7th. And so, just in a very practical sense, not understanding the other side is… They said, actually, in the Israeli intelligence services, “We don’t need experts who know Arabic because we have computers that will translate everything for us.” And they got caught by surprise because they got rid of what they call… what is it called, humint, or something? Human intelligence? I don’t know.

So, not understanding the other side is extremely dangerous. It’s also not productive. Look, we have a lot of Arabs and Muslims who are Israeli citizens who serve in the Israeli army. There were Muslims killed on October 7th trying to save Jews. That happened, guys.

Mikey: And there are also, too, if you want to talk about, like, Muslims, but also even Palestinians, or people who identify, 2.8 million Arabs are living within Israel who have equal… you know, they’re able to serve even in the highest court, in the Supreme Court. And there’s over 400 mosques right now in Israel. Four hundred mosques. So, you’re telling me, like, as a person, I mean… As a day-to-day person living in Israel, I think it would be… if you’re in a neighborhood where there’s multiple mosques, I think walking over there and breaking bread and having a conversation could be one of the most holy things that we can do, right? We’re getting to know our neighbor; we’re understanding what they’re up to. It doesn’t necessarily mean that we’re praying with them. It doesn’t necessarily mean that like… When they were doing the prostrations, I’m not going to bow down to Allah. I’m going to observe and I’m going to be there; I’m going to be supportive.

And then, when it came to our Havdala, our invitation to them is, “Hey, you can join us or not.” And majority of them, they also were just curious, and they wanted to watch. But the night that was so special, what was so great about the evening, was, we had time for conversation. We had time for communal prayer. We had time for learning about our theology, and our liturgy and our philosophy. And we had music. They shared their songs, which I would say they were similar to piyutim, which would be like poetic Jewish music. And then we also shared ours. I led a Shema, which comes from Deuteronomy, and we say the Shema twice. It’s the central prayer for Judaism. We say it in the morning for Shaharit, and we also say it in the evening. It’s like the central prayer for Judaism.

I also led an Elohai Neshama, which means that, “God, the soul that You breathed into me is pure.” It’s all talking about the way God fashioned our soul. And we did a Havdalah, and we also sang nigunim. Nigunim is basically like Jewish… it’s gibberish, technically, but they are… it’s singing songs to a certain melody. So, yada-da, yada-da, whatever it may be, it’s a way that we can invoke communal singing without anyone knowing any Hebrew. And that happens in many different faiths; you do the same thing. So, we had this evening, and… wow!

Nehemia: Hmm.

Mikey: What came from it? What came from it? I would say that most of the people that came were… half the people were from their mosque. They’ve never been to a temple.

Nehemia: Mm-hmm.

Mikey: Half the people who came were from also our temple; never been to a mosque. They’ve never seen Muslims pray. And then you had a whole other group of people who were just stoked on the interfaith, you know, a bunch of my friends that came, my fans. That if you listen to Mikey Pauker, you’re obviously the… my fans are all different kinds of people. And I gotta say, people were very emotionally moved. There was one man that came, his name is Orly Israel. He’s a Jewish man who I’ve known since he was a very young kid, and he lost his house due to the wildfire in Pacific Palisades.

Nehemia: Mmm.

Mikey: And he’s a Jewish man who came out, and he came out and spoke about why speaking, why listening… why listening to people solves all the issues in the world. He started a table called The Listening Table, where he goes out to the streets of Los Angeles and he opens up his bag, puts a table on the ground, and he just listens to people. Without any sort of giving any advice. And what he found from the process of doing that is that, one, we find out that, like, across each table, regardless of what we’re wearing, our regalia, we are human souls here on a human journey, and we’re all facing similar battles. And through the process of listening, as he spoke on Saturday, he said, “This is such an incredible event. I want to do a Shabbat dinner. Can we get Shabbat dinners going? Like, can we get an event next week where we come and do an interfaith dialogue?” Like, “Who wants to do it next week?” And everyone in the whole room raised their hands. This one man raised his hand. He was like… he’s a Muslim man. He’s like, “You could come to my house anytime.”

Mikey: Wow.

Nehemia: Now we’re going to have a meal at this person’s house. We’re going to invite Jews and Muslims, and we’re going to have these conversations. I honestly think that if the world did more of this, we would have less war.

Nehemia: It’s a lot easier to demonize someone when you’ve never had a conversation with them.

Mikey: Easy. Easy.

Nehemia: That’s… I think the takeaway here. Or maybe that’s the principle behind this. So, experience has shown that, right? Meaning, when you live in the world of conspiracy theories that Jews are, you know, eating the… I mean, literally in the Muslim world, in the Arabic world in particular, they report in the newspaper that, you know, such and such Christian child was sacrificed by the Jews to use the blood in their matzah. And when you actually have a conversation with people, you’re like, “Wait, they remove blood from their meat, so, what are you talking about? They’re going to eat blood in their matzah? It doesn’t even make sense.” Right? So, it’s easier to demonize someone when you’ve never had a conversation with them.

Yeah. So, I love this. This is fascinating stuff you’re sharing with us, Mikey. Can we talk about the lawsuit?

Mikey: Yeah, let’s talk about the lawsuit.

Nehemia: Tell me about the lawsuit.

Mikey: Last December, I was booked to perform at a hot spring music venue where I performed in the past, and a couple days before the performance, I got an email from the venue that said that they needed to cancel because they got negative feedback. And during the same day, I ended up getting on Facebook, and online through email, death threats; hate mail from people that were calling me a terrorist lover and a Palestinian killer.

So, essentially what happened was, I was going to perform at this hot spring, and I was targeted by a cancel campaign. It’s not my first, but it’s one of them. And so, what happened is, through, you know, conversation with the community and trying to figure everything out, they made a choice to cancel the concert. And I ended up speaking with them, and they said it had to do with my Zionist views. And I was like, I mean, that I believe Israel has a right to exist, that I believe that Jews have a right for self-determination. And they said that they needed to postpone it to a later date. So, I ended up kind of like posting about this online, and I got all these messages. And after getting the death threats, I had to call the FBI and I had to like, essentially like, let them know what’s going on. I had to make all these claims with the law enforcement, and contacted all the different civil rights organizations, even the ADL, you know?

I was contacted by, a few days later, the National Jewish Advocacy Center with Dr. Rabbi Mark Goldfeder, who started this law firm, and we are suing… They ended up taking me as a client, and we’re suing the music venue. We actually filed the suit in April. It’s a federal lawsuit in northern California. We’re suing the venue and the people that came after me for this cancel campaign, and we’re saying that the cases that they’re trying to argue, Harbin’s trying to argue that… they’re trying to argue that Zionism is a political belief, and it has nothing to do with our faith and our people. And that’s what this is. So…

Mikey: Wow.

Nehemia: …right now in society, we live in a time on college campuses and around the world where people are able to call you a Zionist and they’re able to discriminate against you, and it has nothing to do with Judaism, they say, which is not true. And so, this court case, they’re seeing this as a historical court case, like a Brown v. Education lawsuit in America unlike any in the music industry. And they’re hoping that this case will, you know, if we win, they’re hoping that this will make sure that if a music venue cancels a concert because someone’s a Zionist, or you’re a director and, you know, in Los Angeles you have a film, and someone decides to discriminate against you, that it will actually be illegal to do so. And it’s going to expand, in civil law, sections 2 and 6 of civil law.

And, yeah, so, that’s what I’m fighting right now. We’re going to have an oral argument with the judge on September 26th, so people can, at 10 a.m. Pacific time, people can log in and see this conversation. We’ve been going back and forth with, you know, my law firm and Harbin back and forth through like, you know, obviously like…

Nehemia: What is Harbin? Is that the other…

Mikey: Yeah, Harbin Hot Springs is the name of the music venue that canceled me. And so, we’ve been going back and forth with our teams through, like, legal arguments, and they’re trying… right now, they’re trying to like, dismiss the case. And we’re hoping that the judge will, at this meeting, book the case to actually happen. And if it doesn’t actually happen with this, we’re going to appeal it to appellate, and if not, we’ll take it to the Supreme Court. But they say that if, you know, we win this case, it’s going to change protection of Jews in America. Across…

Nehemia: So, I want to explain for the non-American audience, because there’s people like in Australia who are like, “What are you guys talking about?” And correct me if I’m wrong here, because I’m not a legal expert. But my understanding is that in America, discriminating based on religious views is forbidden, but based on political views is permissible. With the exception within Washington DC, I believe. And so, if they can categorize your Zionism as a political view, which… You explained, it’s clearly religious, right? Then they are allowed to discriminate against you. But if it’s part of your religious identity, which it clearly is an expression of your religious identity, then it would be like saying, “We’re going to cancel you because we found out you’re a Catholic. Or we’re going to cancel you because we found out that you pray towards Mecca, you know, if you’re a Muslim, you know, that…” Wow. So, this is historic!

Mikey: It is historic, and yeah… I mean, I would say, unfortunately, it, like, breaks my heart that I had to even do such a thing, because I used to perform at this place, and…

Nehemia: Yeah.

Mikey: …this venue is a place where a lot of musicians in, like, the festival world that I used to play in a lot, all go to. Because, you know, I wasn’t just playing in synagogues, I was playing music festivals, like, for instance… like, I played, you know, Red Rocks with Stephen Marley singing Jewish music. So, it wasn’t like I was just singing devotional music in a synagogue, I was playing a lot of, like, transformational music festivals, where a lot of these artists who I thought were, you know, my friends, people that I broke bread with, essentially just like… As soon as the war started, I think based out of ignorance, they started posting, I would say pro-Hamas propaganda, saying that Israel has been lying, that it was a false flag operation. Like, I’m talking about people saying that October 7th didn’t even happen.

Nehemia: Wow.

Mikey: A lot of individuals in these transformational circles are, like, coming out with not just criticism of Israel, but, like, saying Israel doesn’t even have a right to exist. That, like, Israel needs to be destroyed. And one of the main arguments in this case… we were able to do some research, and we found out that there were multiple artists that performed at Harbin that were on their social media showing the burning of the Israeli flag and praising Sinwar like he’s a god. Sinwar, who conducted the October 7th attacks, and calling for the death and destruction of Jews.

Like, there’s been artists that they booked, multiple people who are sharing this content. But they said that me being a Zionist, saying that I support Israel’s right to exist and for us to protect ourselves, that I’m considered a terrorist. When in fact, you have artists who are literally calling for the killing of Jews and Israelis who are performing at the venue, who they’re supporting. But not me.

Nehemia: I mean, this is so deeply problematic, because asking a believing Jew, let’s say, which you clearly are, to deny Zionism would be like… Meaning, like, you described the religious dimension here; it’s the center of the Jewish faith, would be like asking a Christian to deny the resurrection of Jesus, or a Muslim to deny the divinity of the Quran. Right? So, imagine if there was a Muslim artist who was performing, and they say, “Well, you believe the Quran came from Allah. You’re not allowed to perform.” What are you talking about? Like, how is that permissible? That’s crazy.

Mikey: Well, the thing is, most people don’t understand that, like, what I see in polls, is like 80 percent of the world population who are Jews have a deep connection to Israel, and who have a deep connection to, not just the modern state, but the biblical state. So, when we’re talking about the Jewish people in America that are really loud on social media, or the bots that are, you know, cosplaying to be Jews like, or organizations like Jewish Voice for Peace that don’t represent the Jewish people, it’s problematic.

Nehemia: Well, look, and there are Christians, people who call themselves Christians, who deny the resurrection of Jesus.

Mikey: Right.

Nehemia: So, there might be Jews who say, “Oh, you know, that has nothing to do with the Jewish faith.” And you talked before about the halutzim, the pioneers who went to Israel to work the land, and they were completely secular. A lot of them were communists who didn’t believe in God. But in a sense, it was a religious action. Like, why did they want to work the Land of Israel and not the land of Poland? Because they have this deep, even… I don’t know what the word is… spiritual connection to this land, which Jews have had for thousands of years.

You know, you brought before your lulav, and you talked about the citron, and those are two things that… And I think back like a hundred years ago, when there were Jews in Lithuania, where my great-grandparents and great-great-grandparents came from, and they would import this lemon, this citron from the Land of Israel, because it doesn’t grow in Lithuania. And they would risk life and limb 500 years ago as merchants to bring… and we have descriptions of this in the literature; merchants would violate Shabbat to bring the citron to places where it didn’t grow, because they’re like, “We are connected to this land! We can’t exist without this land!”

Mikey: Hundred percent. So, what I’m hoping, and my prayer, too, is that more Jews will have it, like, especially the ones that are feeling completely disconnected from Israel, that they go and they visit. Like, I just went this summer. The place is… people, I’ve never seen it like this. We’re standing there, there’s a bomb shelter where… all of a sudden, there’s a rocket attack coming from Yemen because of the Houthis. They haven’t learned their lesson yet. They shoot a rocket into Israel, we all run to a bomb shelter. We’re in our bomb shelter for a few minutes, and we go back outside, and the streets are packed.

Like, people are living their lives like it’s… like it’s their last. It doesn’t matter to them. I mean, unfortunately, people are still traumatized about what happened on October 7th. How could you not be? The morale of the country is in a tender place. But at the same time, people are dedicated, they’re excited. And my hope is that more Jews, even if you don’t agree with what the Israeli government’s doing, that you go and you visit and you put yourself on the land. And even if you’re not Jewish, go to Israel, see what we’re talking about with our intrinsic connection to the land and experience what it’s like to be there. It’s magnificent. So… I leave you with that today.

Nehemia: Thank you so much. That’s been amazing.

Mikey: Yeah.

Nehemia: Shalom.

—

Mikey: Can I just share one thing I think that a lot of people don’t understand? And this is a point of contention in myself, okay? I believe that the center of the whole conflict of Israel is the Temple Mount when we get to the center of everything. People might ask, “Well, how could you be sitting with Muslims if you are praying at the Temple Mount?” And I believe that there hopefully will be a Third Temple.

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