INNOCENCE SURROUNDED BY MOUNTAINS
Apparently, I am very late to the party. This may be a good thing! I pride myself on keeping a safe distance from popular culture. But somehow, as I was going down a rabbit hole of searching for things related to Jerusalem, which tonight has gone ablaze, I came about the Miami Boys Choir.
It appears that everybody but me has watched this video and commented on it somehow:
The song’s name is Yerushalayim, meaning Jerusalem in Hebrew. As is relatively common in Hasidic music, the singers repeat one line, sourced from the psalms, then make variations on it. In this case, the line is from psalm 125: “As the mountains surround Jerusalem, so the Lord surrounds his people both now and forevermore.”
The song, performed by adolescent Jewish boys that range from geeky to geekier, has by now garnered more than 1.4M views on YouTube and a slew of strange spin-off videos both on YouTube and on something called TikTok.
Somebody made a weird anime opening of it here. And here‘s an odd TikTok compilation.
The whole thing apparently is rather old – from 15 years ago or so, yet it has recently surfaced to much enthusiasm. One day we may fully understand the chaotic-mimetic algorithm of things suddenly becoming a “thing!” Why isolated birds suddenly swarm, why hammerhead sharks congregate in the middle of the Atlantic, and why an old video of Jewish boys becomes a hit.
My hunch though, is that this thing has become a thing because it is wholesome. It’s wholesome in an enviable and undeniable way – a fellowship of boys, taking their performance seriously, singing with passion, seemingly with no concerns about appearing “cool.” The music itself is simple but wholesome, like a devotional hymn – easy on the ears and free of the noise, vulgarity, and desecration of a Lady Gaga tune.
And then the boys are visibly religious, they sing a religious song and it clearly means something to them.
In short, this is like the opening of the Lord of the Rings movie when one is introduced to the Shire. We are provided a window into a world of innocence and know that we ourselves cannot enter. Like Yerushalayim, it is surrounded by mountains.
The mountains are there because, well, we may not be 14 anymore; but also because we are not Orthodox Jews. Only a few confessions have managed to retain a natural preserve of wholesome innocence – Mormonism, traditional Catholicism, a few Protestant denominations, and Orthodox Jews.
You may not understand Orthodox customs – the wigs, the diet, the constant blessings of gratitude – but such are the Elven Rings preserving the world as it once was. Mormon families often make the same happy and wistful impression – that of innocence that once lost cannot be regained.
The Orthodox lifestyle came under attack recently by an unpleasant “expose” in the NYT. Some Orthodox Jewish schools, the NYT claimed, do not teach enough secular studies and do not meet the lofty standards of the State of New York. The “expose” seemed like the anger that unwholesome types feel when looking into a wholesome scene. The “standards” of NY are obviously something that does not exist. The state’s schools are a retardation machine that mows down excellence and sacrifices it on the altar of “equity” and “multi-racial representation.” Yet it is the Jewish Yeshivas, not the drug and gang-infested public schools that became the focus of the NYT’s ire.
There are those who take an issue with wholesomeness – those who call stable homes “white supremacy” or even a good night’s sleep a sign of racism. Usually, people who work for the New York Times. A month ago they published an “expose” of Jewish religious schools, denouncing them for not teaching enough secular subjects. The Babylonian dens of drugs and gang activity that are NYC’s public schools, where nothing of any kind it taught, had failed to draw the attention of the NYT. Yet schools untouched by Wokery, transgenderism, and the accursed cult of “diversity,” were a natural target.
No amount of wholesomeness will ever soothe the frenzied minds of such types. And so I advise all free and wholesome people – keep them out and raise your mountains ever high!
P.S. I wrote more about the Anne of Green Gables world of the Orthodox before. Somehow they still like to block me on Twitter and call me a “goy.” The mountains are high indeed!
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