You had me at shalom.

This past Sunday night, "Christmas Eve" as the goyim like to say, I took a leap of faith and intentionally walked into a room full of jewish folk. JDub Records held a number of holiday parties around the country over the last couple of weeks - VodkaLatka and Jewltide parties. After working with them on email campaigns for the shows, I decided I had to go check out the one at Southpaw.

As soon as I walked in the door, I felt a stiffness in my chest. Sort of like that feeling that you'd have walking into a restaurant to meet a blind date set up by your Aunt Sophie. After hanging up my coat and walking gingerly over to the bar, I thankfully ran into two friends that I knew so I had some teammates now to ease each other's anxiety. Tequila helped, too. It was definitely time to get drunk.

My grandparents must have been doing cartwheels in their graves knowing that I was in Brooklyn at such a function. Long noses and curly hair, sarcasm and self-effacement, latkas and egg rolls, and a t-shirt that said "You had me at shalom"... It was all there. The house DJ (JDub's founder, Aaron Bisman aka DJ Annan) was spinning and mixing choice tunes between sets full of stuff from the 80's like Salt-n-Pepa's "Push It" sending everyone back to their Bar Mitzvah party days. Man, did we use to party. Coke and pepsi, anyone?

The first live act was this fella called SoCalled who said, "Thanks for coming everyone! My name is Matisyahu!" What a comedian! This accordion wielding freaker was actually rapping in Yiddish. He did a little magic trick for us too. He made everyone feel right at home by yelling at everyone to "shut up!" He was a lot of fun... a real mentsh. The headliner was Golem who's tagline is "Where Eastern Europe meets the Lower East Side." What ensued was a full-on klezmer frenzy that was pretty effin' awesome. Somehow they got most of the crowd to participate in a hora which I realized was the jewish version of a mosh pit. This meshugine on tamborine and vocals looked like he was on acid and was a wonderful spectacle. Oh yeah, and the violinist had on some hannukah panties. Yeah, things were a little nuts in there.

In conclusion, good times all around. Klezmer music really touches a nerve in my soul - makes me feel very connected to my history and ancestors. Call me a sap, I don't care. I got the chills when their guest clarinetist did his thing. And I made it out of there alive and I didn't have to play seven minutes in heaven with anyone. Whew!