RASHI, RAMBAM and RAMALAMADINGDONG
A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun
A Quizbook of Jewish Trivia Facts & Fun
Sinéad O’Connor died last week at the age of 56. She was a highly successful performer, as well as an activist in support of women’s rights and opposed to racism and child abuse. During a 1992 appearance on Saturday Night Live she performed a moving version of Bob Marley’s song War and then she tore up a picture of Pope John Paul II and stated “fight the real enemy” in reference to the child sexual abuse scandals of the Catholic church. In what O’Connor called her “Jewish Period,” she studied Kabbalah with a rabbi in England, and she later dedicated her 1997 EP, Gospel Oak, to the people of “Israel, Rwanda, and Northern Ireland.” Her memoir, Rememberings, includes a chapter titled “Shevti Adonai L’Negdi Tamid,” a phrase from the Book of Psalms, which translates as “I place God before me always.” She performed two concerts in the amphitheater in Caesarea in Israel in 1995. What is another Jewish connection in Sinéad O’Connor’s life?
Sinead O'Connor (3833775149) by Rob D is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0 via Wikimedia Commons
A. In 1984, Sinéad O’Connor spent five months in Israel as a volunteer on Kibbutz Hulata, where she picked citrus fruit and began developing her songwriting skills.
B. O’Connor was scheduled to perform in a peace concert arranged by Israeli and Palestinian women’s groups in Jerusalem in 1997 at a festival called “Two Capitals, Two States,” but she canceled after receiving death threats from members of (now Israeli Minister of National Security) Itamar Ben-Gvir’s Kahanist organization The Ideological Front.
C. Sinéad O’Connor named one of her sons Ne’viim, the Hebrew word for “prophets.”
D. O’Connor’s father John Oliver “Seán” O’Connor was a barrister in Dublin. He worked for a law firm that was headed by a nephew of Israeli president Chaim Herzog, who was was born in Ireland.
E. Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky was a respected rabbi in Springfield, Illinois. But when his son Herschel decided to become a clown the rabbi was angry, as this was not what he considered a proper profession for a Jewish boy, leading the rabbi to disown his son, now known as Krusty. Sinéad O’Connor was in college at the time, and she once performed on campus, singing the song Tears of a Clown, after which she raised a picture of Rabbi Hyman Krustofsky and tore it into many pieces as she uttered the words, “Oy vey, Rabbi. So he’s a clown. Is that such a shonde?”
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