Singer Debbie Friedman Enthralls Jewish Audiences

It was practically a “kumsitz” at Carnegie Hall. As everyone stood swaying arm in arm, singing along with Debbie Friedman, the warmth and sense of community – even as the snows of the worst blizzard in decades swirled outside – was more like a summer evening’s campfire than a singer’s debut at the famed venue.

Not every performer can turn the tension of her first appearance in the august concert hall into a cozy and intimate experience.

Friedman’s ability to draw people in seems to be one of her great gifts as a performer and at the hart of her success at attracting a growing audience to her prayerful music.

She is “by far the most popular” Jewish recording artist sold today, according to Velvel Pasternak, a prominent national Jewish music publisher and seller, and has “crossed over” denominational lines in a way that no one else but the late Shlomo Carlebach has been able to do.

“She seems to have hit a chord in those looking for a sense of spirituality which they are not getting from conventional Jewish sources,” Pasternak said. “Some people are not `turned on,’ prayerwise, by the Eastern European modality, and she seems to talk to them.”

The lyrics and folk-tinged melodies of her songs, many of which are both in Hebrew and English and are based on Jewish blessings and stories, are as sweet and uncomplicated as her voice.

The songs – on 13 albums produced since 1972 – seem to be as accessible to people with little Jewish literacy as those with a broad background.

Friedman’s music is especially popular in the Reform movement, where she got her religious education as well as her musical start.

But she is finding a large and growing audience among other Jews, including the Orthodox.

Even some Protestant and Catholic churches have integrated her music into their services.

At the constantly on tour, playing to audiences at synagogues, Jewish community centers, conventions and retreats.

At the convention of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations in December in Atlanta, she was welcomed with roars of approval and dancing in the aisles by the 4,000 Reform Jews attending the concert.

And after hearing Friedman perform at the Conference on Alternatives in Jewish Education over the summer in Amherst, Mass., an Orthodox woman wearing a wig said, “I’ve been davening (praying) all my life, but today was the first time I felt like I was really davening.”

Friedman is one of dozens of well-known composers and performers of Jewish popular and folk music today.

Why is she so popular?

“She comes from a Jewish place, rather than being a New Age performer who later decides to do some Jewish songs,” said Irwin Rubinschneider, a mental health administrator who braved the blizzard with his family. They came to midtown Manhattan from the Flatbush section of Brooklyn to see Friedman perform at the sold-out Jan. 7 concert at Carnegie Hall.

“She appeals to all ages – the parents of the ’60s and the kids of the ’90s,” he said.

Despite the blizzard, the concert hall was almost 80 percent full.

Friedman, who does not herself have any children and looks a bit like folk singer Joan Baez, has written a lot of kid-friendly material.

“Galim Gal Galim,” or “The Wheels Go ‘Round,” is just for kids, and her music provides most of the score to the “Tales ‘n’ Tunes Chanukah” video.

The popular purple dinosaur Barney also sings her up-tempo version of the Aleph Bet song on his “Barney in Concert” video.

Friedman, 44, last year packed up her guitar and her faithful companion Farfel, a large dog of indeterminate ancestry, and moved from San Diego to New York City.

“I feel like I’ve come home,” she said happily, ensconced on a white couch in her airy Upper West Side apartment.

She spends time at the Conservative synagogue Ansche Chesed, where she attends services. She also is active in feminist circles and, with Rabbi Michael Strassfeld, leads a service of healing once a month.

In addition to a basket of Farfel’s toys, her apartment boasts a baby grand piano and a recording studio complete with sound board and complex computerized technology.

A job playing in New York last spring at the feminist Passover seders run by the group Ma’ayan reconnected her with old friends and new, and led her to want to stay.

“I want to be around Jews” in a way that can only be accomplished in New York, she said. “It’s the way I live my life.”

Many of Friedman’s songs from the past several years relate in one way or another to healing, a direction which has grown out of a battle she has been waging with her own illness.

Eight years ago she was given a bad combination of medications to treat an illness and was left with permanent neurological and kidney damage.

She never knows when the camera’s flash or some other trigger will leave her aphasic or unable to move her legs, but she looks upon it pragmatically and even, in optimistic moments, as one of God’s more challenging blessings.

Her strong, pure rendition of the traditional prayer for healing known as “Mi Shebeyrach” has been integrated into synagogue liturgy and has become a staple of Jewish healing services across North America.

Her most recent album, “Renewal of Spirit,” is devoted to contemplative melodies related to healing and connection with God.

She has become known, in some circles, as “the high priestess of Jewish healing.”

“In many ways it’s given me a gift,” she said. “Healing is about what the illness teaches us. I’ve never had more clarity or understanding.”

“I’ve really been forced to feel illness, and life, and death,” she said. “I’ve learned that I can be damaged or impaired and still have those spiritual experiences.”