Sharon's Sharing Memories

Joy, Of course you have my permission to write anything I said or will say about Reb Yosef to your beautiful heartfelt website. 

- Sharon Alexander, Director, Shir Ecstasy

I expect that there must be recordings of the "Moshiach's Nigun" somewhere.  It would be nice to have his compositions playing or being sung on the website. I also suspect that Yehudit and Reuven Goldfarb have photos of Reb Yosef from his days of involvement with the Joys of Jewishing.  If it is possible for you to access archival photos from Moment magazine, you should be able to find the one that sent me to him in the first place: his blessing of the sun in 1982(?) in which I saw my first Yid wearing a rainbow yarmulke and knew that I needed to find other folks doing the same.

So the story of how I was "found" goes like this.  I found that picture that I mention above in my Moment magazine.  Since it mentioned that he was director of the Martin Steinberg Center, I was able to find a way to write to him (even pre-internet).  He put me on the mailing list for his newsletter, in which he promptly wrote that I was starting a Jewish community in Boulder.  (Did I mention that he was clearly psychic--clairvoyant!  I have other proof!)  Anyway, I was aghast, as that idea had not occurred to me and indeed did not occur to me until some time later, after my attempts to create a Jewish choir began to morph into a group desire for spiritual community.  So, there I was living in my little apartment in Boulder.  I had just finished my master's thesis and my time was pretty much my own.  One day my doorbell rings and standing on my porch are two young men, named Jeffrey and Zarus; their quintessential old VW van parked at the curb. Jeff Oboler sent us, they said, as if that should explain all.  We're on our way to California for the Joy of Jewishing gathering and we need a place to stay for the night.  OK, I said, I have room to put you up.  

That began the longest overnight visit I have ever hosted.  They stayed and stayed and stayed; two weeks to be precise.  And every day they did their best to convince me to come along with them to the Joys of Jewishing.  What, you mean just hop into your van and take off?  Do you think I have nothing else to do, do you expect me to just drop everything and travel across the country on a whim? But these guys could not be dissuaded from their assigned task.  So, sure enough, after two weeks, they had convinced me and I did simply jump into their van and take off for California--finding myself in an unimaginable Jewish world that changed my life forever.

~

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