Life on Mars with Lady Gaga and Pirchei New York

There was a recent show on ABC called “Life on Mars”, the premise of which is that a modern day NYPD detective wakes up one day and finds to his surprise that its 1973, with hilarious consequences. He’s still a detective with the NYPD, but of course interrogation methods in 1973 make for much more exciting TV (CSI style DNA testing in the crime lab gets kinda boring after a while). There’s lot of cute contrasts between modern day attitudes with those of the ancient past. It also turns out that the entire show is a rip-off (err I mean trans-Atlantic transplant) of a similar show from the BBC set in Manchester, England.

As I age however, I increasingly feel like I’m a transplant from the ancient past to today. Maybe not 1973, but certainly 1983. The world keeps changing but, apart from maybe better cell-phones and digital cameras, I sometimes wish it wouldn’t. At least not so much.

Take rock/pop music for example. I’ve always prided myself on being Modern Orthodox (ha!), and as my Rabbi says, Modern Orthodoxy is Lechatchilah. (actually it isn’t. Chareidi Reconstructionist is Lechatchilah, everything else is bdieved. But that’s a whole ‘nother blog). I grew up listening to Pirchei Miami/New York/London AND Elton John/Michael Jackson (Supertramp and Pink Floyd came in Yeshivah). But the songs nowadays are unbelievable. Maybe I sound like an old fogey, but I really don’t want my kids listening to the disgusting lyrics that passes for mainstream music these days.

When the Beatles first came out, there was a lot of opposition. But “I wanna hold your hand”, despite being a problem of Negiah, sounds positively tame compared to “I kissed a girl” (not that there’s anything wrong with that for consenting adults yadda yadda) or some of Lady Gaga’s lyrics.

My wife thinks I’m nuts. She says that forcing my carpool to listen to Pirchei will mark my kids as nebuch cases amongst their friends, and kill their social status. But I refuse to listen to Lady Gaga in my van. So what happened this morning? I tried to compromise, and put on some Raya Mehemnah instead. But that didn’t go down too well either.

And maybe I’m completely out of touch with today’s Jewish Music scene anyways. Do the yeshiva kids of today even listen to Pirchei any more? Or even MBD? Perhaps now it’s all Lipa and who knows what. The lyrics I am sure are still 100% kosher (probably 110% kosher), but maybe the “beat” isn’t what it used to be.

Oh well, back to Mars.