From
W
at do the bands Foreigner and Queen, the
sexy musical Hair, Hollywood and the most
Jewishly observant communities in Israel
have in common?
Rabbi Yaakov Asher Sinclair.
The 47-year-old British-born and bred ba'al teshuvah
found that successful theatrical and musical careers did
not fulfill him spiritually. And he will share his memories,
along with some information about the role of song in Ju-
daism, in a lunch-and-learn lecture titled "Stairway to
Heaven," Thursday, June 19, at the Max M. Fisher Jew-
ish Federation Building in Bloomfield
Hills.
"I played in bands as a kid, and I also
acted while I was at school," Sinclair re-
calls. In 1972, he landed a role in the
London-based touring troupe of the mu-
sical Hair.
On the road, Sinclair paired up with
a friend in the cast to
view "every film in
town." We had three
things in common:
We both liked rock
and roll, especially
from the '50s; both of
us were interested in
musicals; and we
both enjoyed science
fiction movies of the
'50s: the ones you
could go and see at
midnight, with large
blobs of rubber chas-
ing people around,
[the kind] where you
scream more in laugh-
ter than in fright —
bad, B-movie, science
fiction films."
One day the two de-
cided to write their
own science fiction,
rock 'n' roll musical.
Years later, the rab-
bi's friend completed
the project on his own
— the Rocky Horror
`Hair'
Halachah
Picture Show.
Rabbi Yaakov
Asher Sinclair:
"I'm having steak
for lunch and
steak for
breakfast, and I
suddenly sort of
feel this
tremendous
emptiness. I think
to myself, 'Is this
all there is? —
British-born Rabbi Yaakov
Asher Sinclair trades in an
entertainment career for
rabbinic ordination.
84
LYNNE MEREDITH COHN STAFF WRITER
His friend had to go
it alone because in
1973, Sinclair was
snapped up by a
nascent recording stu-
dio, Sarm Studios,
"the first 24-track stu-
dio in Europe. Proba-
bly the biggest hit to
come out of it was
Queen's `Bohemian
Rhapsody,'" Sinclair
recalls.
Sinclair socialized
with the likes of Elton
John and later took an
offer from Foreigner to produce what became a four-times-
over platinum debut album, Foreigner. It sold 4 million
copies, he says.
In the midst of Sinclair's musical success, his friend fin-
ished Rocky Horror, so the two opened a musical publish-
ing company. But something was missing.
`Tm having steak for lunch and steak for breakfast, and
I suddenly sort of feel this tremendous emptiness," Sin-
clair says. "I think to myself, `Is this all there is?'
"I've got my platinum record on my mother's living room
wall, and what am I going to do? Plaster the rest of the
walls with platinum records? Buy a Ferrari? I felt this lack
of content."
What he was feeling then, although he didn't know it,
was "the pintle yid, the little Jewish point of light that
glows in the soul of a Jew and never goes out, no mat-
ter how far he gets from yiddishkeit, from Judaism," Sin-
clair says.
So he decided to "throw out my career as a producer
and go back to acting, which everybody thought I was
crazy to do."
He left London for Hollywood, and later won roles in
the soap opera "Days of Our Lives"; the TV movie John
and Yoko: A Love Story, in which he played music pro-
ducer George Martin; and in the TV series "Moonlight-
ing."
He also starred in his own award-winning one-man
show, Lord Buckley's Finest Hour. It was a biographi-
cal piece about an American comedian of the 1950s.
But as his acting career took off in a successful direc-
tion, Sinclair still felt a nagging. "This time I didn't have
any answers," he remembers.
So he headed for Cabo San Lucas in Baja, Calif , and
read a book that "had lain on my shelves gathering dust
for about a year." That book mentioned "a classic work
ofJewish philosophy called The Path of the Just, by Rab-
bi Moshe Chaim Luzzatto.
"[The book] describes how a person can elevate [him-
self] spiritually in this world, and I'd never read anything
like it. It really opened my eyes. At the time I just used
it as my bedtime reading, but even on the most superfi-
cial of levels, it had some impact on me."
Next came a trip to Copenhagen, to play the lead in an
English-language comedy version ofDracula. Something
drew Sinclair to the synagogue there, and he was called
to the bimah for his first aliyah.
"I was taken home to lunch by one of the members of
the synagogue," he says. After the meal, the family's
young son "benched, by heart, and I thought `Wow. Here
[I am], somebody who has all the sophistication. But can
[I] do this? This is part of [my] world, but [I] don't know
anything about it.' "
In the presence of what he calls "authentic Judaism,"
Sinclair remembers feeling "a tremendous sense of ig-
norance."
He attributes that lack ofJewish knowledge to his par-
ents' generation. The message that we got was bagels
and lox.
But "gastronomic Judaism is not something that can
be passed on to your children," he says. "I never realized
what the Torah was because I never really had any [in-
troduction] to it, except on the most facile level."
In secular Judaism, individuals attain a high level of
academic and social sophistication, he says, but retain
the Jewish knowledge of a young child. "The decisions of
how I wanted to be were based on a monumental igno-
rance ofJudaism. I decided I had to [revisit] that."
So he went to Jerusalem and began learning in the
Ohr Somayach yeshiva. For the last decade, he says, he's
been catching up, Jewishly.
Sinclair married seven years ago; he and his wife now
have "several children. And I'm now in the position where
I can not only learn, but teach other people."
He operates a home page on the Internet and says,
"I've become a `virtual' rabbi."
On Thursday, June 19, Sinclair will talk to Detroit
area Jews "about music through the lens ofJudaism. But
it's not going to be a history ofJewish music," he says.
"What does song mean in Judaism? How does the con-
cept of song, shira, reflect in our lives? [The talk won't
be] just dry and historical, because I don't think people
are interested in that. We'll look at how one can look at
the world through the lens of song and what that means
in Judaism."
❑
e
Rabbi Sinclair will speak 12:30-1:30 p.m. Thurs-
day, June 19, at the Max M. Fisher Jewish Federation
Building, 6735 Telegraph Road, in Bloomfield Hills.
For information about the Ohr Somayach-sponsored
lunch-and-learn, call (810) 352-4870.