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(h/t Alan Jacobs)

From the Globe and Mail

SR: I was brought up a secular, Reform Jew, which means I didn't know Aleph from Bet. I knew nothing, and therefore I cared nothing. My father cared culturally, but that's all. So when I came home from Africa, I thought to myself, there's this incredible oral tradition in Ghana, passed on from father to son, mother to daughter, for thousands of years. Don't I have something like that? I'm a member of the oldest group of human beings still known as a group that managed to cohere enough to survive – and I know nothing about it. So I started studying at Lincoln Square Synagogue in midtown Manhattan, an Orthodox temple, that had an incredible adult-education program for the likes of me – and I asked whether they would teach a course in biblical Hebrew, and they said sure, and they brought a professor down from Yeshiva University to teach that, and I studied the weekly portion – I didn't even know there was such a thing as a weekly portion and commentaries thereon.

So this whole world opened up for me – it was 1975, at about the same time as I met my wife, Beryl, and so all of this sort of came together and it did occur to me – isn't it curious that I had to go to Ghana to go back to my own traditions because I think if you understand any historical group, or any other religion for that matter, in any detail, then you'll be able to approach another one with more understanding. So the answer to your question is yes. The longest yes you've ever heard.

WB: So has that influenced your personal life as well as your musical life?

SR: Well, sure.

WB: But I've read a lot about you, and your Jewishness is not the first thing that comes across. I'm not saying you're not a religious person …

SR: But I am. Guilty as charged. This is my yarmulke [pointing to his baseball cap]. This is my way of dealing with the non-Jewish world.

WB: Are you serious? Because I wondered about that – why you're always seen wearing a baseball cap.

SR: Yeah. This is my kipa – this is my way of squaring the circle, of being able to be comfortable in the various worlds in which I find myself. In synagogue I have a regular yarmulke on, but outside, I wear the hat. I wear it on stage and I feel good that I can do that – that I've found a solution, a way of maintaining a couple of 1,000-year-old traditions while still not trying to force myself on people. If people see Steve Reich in a yarmulke, all of a sudden it changes the way they perceive me – it's very powerful. I had to find a way to be comfortable in my own skin and my own skin is complicated – I live in at least two or three worlds. I've always believed in understatement and a certain amount of reticence. That's a big part of my character. So that's what I've done. I don't carry a sandwich board. Now you're going to blow my cover!

🎵And here's something lovely to listen to.

tags: USJews