The usual Balkan Night complaint
Yup. It's an annual complaint. Every year I go to Balkan night and Judy and I hear several great bands, see many of our favorite friends (especially Jewish ones), get some dynamite dance instruction and dance until we're ready to go home. This year we came home early—a combination of me being exhausted and having to get up early, handicapped by this new Daylight Savings time thing. Sheesh.
I won't go into the longer litany. I won't belabor the very different events that the Irish community celebrates each year (including, I've noticed lately, a whole commercial "Irish food and culture" thing around St. Purim's, er, St. Patrick's day). And I am far too overcommitted to do something useful about this in Boston soon, but there must be events where local bands perform, people learn to dance, and we sing, dance, and jam together. And if that event covered more than one Jewish culture, so much the better. But if we can only do Ashkenazic culture for now, that too, would be a nice first step. But someone has to help organize it and help raise money and keep it together. I did it poorly last year, and have had no time recently. Instead, I whine on my blog and hope someone will put me out of my misery by making this happen.
But, really, if people can pull together singing and dancing and music from several balkan cultures that have been estranged in their native territories recently, surely we Jews can do the same.