Yiddish-music kings The Klezmatics will perform at the United Synagogue of Hoboken this month, kicking off a yearlong events calendar to mark the synagogue’s centennial.
The concert, to be held on Thursday, Oct. 28, will bring the Jewish roots-music act to a venue much smaller and off the beaten path than its usual stops, which include Lincoln Center, Carnegie Hall, and similar theaters worldwide.
The reason: USH’s Centennial Events Committee was able to convince the New York-based band that the synagogue’s 100-year survival, and Hoboken’s now-thriving Jewish community, are part of a unique story – one in which it would be worth taking part.
For Jorge Fernandez, a member of the USH events committee who helped land the Klezmatics show, the upcoming events season has an even broader significance for Hoboken.
A new venue for Hoboken
“I feel that there’s a vacuum in Hoboken of acts that are culturally relevant,” Fernandez said. Explaining that Hoboken’s music scene tends to revolve around pop and rock acts, Fernandez said he sees the USH events calendar may evolve the synagogue into a venue to showcase a whole array of music and performing arts, from various cultures.
“This is part of my dream,” he said. “I feel that Hoboken needs a performing arts space. We need a calendar not only for Jewish performers, but for something at a broader level. I think we are ready for that. So now, we have the Centennial, we have 150 years of the City of Hoboken, we have 100 years of the synagogue, and to bring in an act like the Klezmatics, I think we’re very lucky.”
Fernandez has many other acts in mind to bring to the synagogue, including several Brazilian percussionists. He sees the Klezmatics, whose latest album, “Rise Up! Shteyt Oyf!,” came out last year, as a perfect example of entertainment for the young and old that is also culturally enlightening.
“The Klezmatics are musical historians,” he said. “They are part of Jewish history. They dig. Those guys are pretty much trying to keep alive all the culture behind klezmer music.”
The group is known for recreating klezmer – a tradition of Jewish folk music with deep German and Eastern European roots, often built around violin and clarinet arrangements – in a way that combines Jewish identity and mysticism with a contemporary perspective and a postmodern aesthetic. Since starting up in 1986 in the East Village, The Klezmatics have revived and celebrated the ecstatic nature of Yiddish music with works that are by turns wild, spiritual, provocative, reflective and danceable.
“My vision is, this should be the beginning,” Fernandez said. “It shouldn’t stop there. This should be the door to an annual calendar. Maybe United Synagogue of Hoboken will become the performance center that I’ve been dreaming of for years.”
The synagogue was also able to land an appearance by Israeli folk-rock star David Broza slated for March 13, a stellar Sunday-brunch lecture series featuring former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky, and a six-installment film series to run from January through June of next year.
A town to call home for a hundred years
The centennial, celebrating the Oct. 10, 1905, establishment of the city’s only surviving congregation from its early days, is focused around restoring the 115 Park Ave. building – a project for which they are trying to raise roughly $1.5 million.
Temple members trace today’s thriving synagogue community to a turning point in the early 1970s, when the local Jewish community was dwindling to the point that it lacked funds to maintain its cherished Star of Israel building at 115 Park Ave., and kept it shuttered except for the High Holy Days.
When a real estate consultant recommended selling the building to ease the financial strain, community leaders rejected the idea. Their foresight and faith enabled the remarkable revival that was about to begin.
Over the following 35 years, newcomers and a diminishing number of longtime members worked hard to reinvigorate Jewish life in Hoboken. In the early 1980s, a few parents, a part-time rabbi and a recent college graduate began a learning center to educate a handful of children.
Today, the learning center is overflowing with more than 150 children, run by a director working with the rabbi and a full staff of teachers.
In the late 1990s, motivated by a dramatic increase of young families interested in early Jewish education, the congregation established a pre-school. In just four years, pre-school enrollment has grown to 80 children and a long waiting list. To provide classrooms for the learning center and pre-school, the congregation in 2000 constructed a building adjacent to the Star of Israel, relying on funds from the sale of its only other significant asset, a townhouse, and the beneficence of member families.
As a result, the congregation has managed to maintain a 100-year endurance in Hoboken, with its Star of Israel building having had uninterrupted use as a synagogue since its construction in 1915, avoiding the fate of synagogues in many other urban centers, which were often reincarnated as houses of worship for other faiths or as condominium conversions.
The Kaplan Learning Center construction was the beginning of a “Welcoming the Future” program that may lead to further property expansion and the construction of a day school.