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.