![]() Sitting outside his Seagate home, waves of the Atlantic Ocean lapping at white sand in his backyard, Yossi Green thinks back to that encounter. “When I was a child in Hungary, we were among the first families to have a telephone installed,” he explained, “and my mother was worried I would forget the phone number, so she had it printed it on my arm.” Yossi approached the gentleman with his innocent question. Finally, he asked his father why a certain Jew had a number in blue ink tattooed on his arm, and his father, taking the question seriously, suggested that his little Yossel, his ben yachid, ask the man himself. He recalls the many numbered arms in the Satmar beis medrash of his youth and his complete, blissful oblivion about what they represented. “It started before the pain,” he tells me. ![]() Yossi Green never delivered a lecture or authored a dissertation on the subject, but instead, he took the range of emotions - pain and surprised triumph, loss, and joy of rebuilding - and created a new type of music, essentially writing the soundtrack to the coming-of-age story of a nation in this particular galus outpost, at this juncture in history. Many words have been spoken and books written on what it means to be a child of survivors. The composer is looking at the words his way, from his place, and sharing what he sees.” “The previous Lubavitcher Rebbe said, ‘Better to look in from the outside then to look out from inside.’ That means it’s better to feel the words, even from the outside, then to be inside and take them for granted. I admit at a certain point it grew on me, and I heard something powerful there. Yossi Green listens politely to my take, and asks a question. ![]() The words are sacred, their nusach sacred, recited at the most sacred time of year - is it fodder for artistic expression? I comment that when I first heard it, I found it a bit offensive. Photos: Jeff Zorabedian, Personal archivesĮven before Yossi Green and I get to talking about Yossi Green, we’re talking about Ishay Ribo, whom the veteran composer admires - and his song “Seder Ha’avodah” in particular. For nearly five decades, Yossi Green’s tunes have been background music as we’ve moved through life
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