From "Also Sprach Zarathustra" to Parshat Vayigash

How is this classical composition by Richard Strauss, inspired by a Friedrich Nietzsche poem, and brought to its colloquial nickname "2001" by Stanley Kubrick's film 2001:  A Space Odyssey at all related to the Whole Phamily?

As kids, we didn't realize at the time, but we were inculcated with its beauty through short animated films, and spoofs on the original film, on the ground-breaking children's literacy show the Electric Company.  Check out of one of these shorts.



 We saw countless clips like that, teaching us the beauty of  "ai," "oo," "sh," and the like.



As adults, we enjoyed skillful live performances of the song by Phish, one of the best live bands currently out there.  It only hit us yesterday (while our children were watching the Electric Company DVD), why we loved this song as children.

If you click to 5:40 on this performance (from 12/12/97...by the way, look at that date...weren't we just talking about the 11:11 Phenomenon a few posts ago?  For one of the first followers of the Whole Phamily, this number is surely significant), you start to get to the pinnacle of Phish's rendition.







Then we started thinking, does the significance of the name of this song mean anything?

We do not claim to understand much about the events of 9/11, but indeed it occurred during the year 2001.

Just a few posts ago, weren't we talking about Jewish geography and summer camp?

Earlier this December we were chatting, in person, with two friends of  Camp Haze, a one-week summer camp for children of 9/11 and those who have lost a loved one to illness or tragedy, at a Phish show.  What great work these folks are doing.  Dedicated to the memory of Scott Hazelcorn, who was a bond trader at Cantor Fitzgerald, and from other online coverage, Scott seemed like the kind of Jewish guy we would have met at summer camp.  We were interested in his name.


Hazelcorn?  Haven't known any others.  But, Korn, Kornfield, Korngold, Kornblit, Kornreich all ring a bell.  They all have the word corn/korn in it, which, for Jewish names translates as "grain."  Not a very uncommon word to have in an Ashkenazic Jewish name.  As everyone knows, grain is needed for sustenance and survival.

Which leads us to this week's Torah parsha, or weekly portion read in synagogue, entitled Vayigash, which concludes with our patriarch Jacob and seventy family members moving down to Egypt due to famine (lack of sustenance or grain) in the land of Israel (called Canaan back then) where the family had been residing (this is before the Jews became slaves, during a time when we were on good terms with Pharoah.  Yes, we were all friends at one point!)  We like Rachel Farbiarz's d'var torah on this torah portion.

In the parsha, due to the grains that Jacob's son Joseph stored up, the family as well as the Egyptians in the land will survive. Here's another explanation of Vayigash that sheds light on the story.

Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom.  Do you think Stanley Kubrick would be able to make any sense of this?