- Playing
- It's Not About You
- From
- Julie Subrin
When he first began preparing for his son Erez's bar mitzvah, Jesse Green struggled with the fact that he doesn't actually believe in God. Unable to remove that obstacle, he bypassed it, instead giving himself over to more earthly concerns - whom to include on the guest list, how to best help Erez memorize his Torah portion, and when to give in to his partner Andy's insistence that they go with tuna salad rather than making it a frisee with raspberry vinaigrette type luncheon affair.
This piece is a sound-rich wrap-up of what, in the end, the big day was all about for Jesse and his family. It includes scenes from the bar mitzvah service, the luncheon, the kids-only boy-girl dance party, and one last probing chat with Erez's rabbi.
The piece was produced as a podcast for Nextbook.org, the online Jewish culture magazine, but it speaks to universal questions about faith, and about the challenges of watching our children take their first big steps away from us, and toward adulthood.
The piece can easily be reformatted as a stand-alone, without the Nextbook host intro and outro, and to run at a shorter length.
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Piece Description
When he first began preparing for his son Erez's bar mitzvah, Jesse Green struggled with the fact that he doesn't actually believe in God. Unable to remove that obstacle, he bypassed it, instead giving himself over to more earthly concerns - whom to include on the guest list, how to best help Erez memorize his Torah portion, and when to give in to his partner Andy's insistence that they go with tuna salad rather than making it a frisee with raspberry vinaigrette type luncheon affair. This piece is a sound-rich wrap-up of what, in the end, the big day was all about for Jesse and his family. It includes scenes from the bar mitzvah service, the luncheon, the kids-only boy-girl dance party, and one last probing chat with Erez's rabbi. The piece was produced as a podcast for Nextbook.org, the online Jewish culture magazine, but it speaks to universal questions about faith, and about the challenges of watching our children take their first big steps away from us, and toward adulthood. The piece can easily be reformatted as a stand-alone, without the Nextbook host intro and outro, and to run at a shorter length.
Broadcast History
Posted as podcast on May 21, 2007. Never been broadcast on air.
Related Website
Phil Corriveau
Posted on July 22, 2007 at 11:56 AM | Permalink
Review of It's Not About You
This piece is very well produced technically with lots of sound elements, and it's fun to listen to, but very difficult to follow if you haven't read the written description. I understand that this is part of a podcast series, and if you had been listening to the series you might be more familiar with the characters...otherwise it just sort of washes over you, and you wish you could go back and listen to parts of it over again. Which you can do with a podcast, but (usually) not with a radio. It is a nice, well-mixed audio piece, but it might not translate so well for radio.