My wife sent me a link to a
review of a new CD. It's a collection of Jewish songs as performed by black singers. You can hear some clips from the CD, or buy it, from Amazon:
Black Sabbath: The Secret Musical History of Black-Jewish Relations. My wife was not terribly impressed. She likes to hear Hebrew spoken (or sung) like someone who knows Hebrew.
I thought the name for the CD was a bit odd. Perhaps more than a little. I mean, the two words individually kind of fit, although I am never sure whether "black" is PC, and the songs on the CD are not all songs for the sabbath. I guess "sabbath" could make one think about Jews, so maybe that's ok.
On the other hand, when you put the two words together, there are a lot of connotations that don't really fit with the CD.
Naturally, the title first made me think of
the band Black Sabbath. Ozzy Osbourne was one of the founders of the group. I just don't recognize much of the music. I never was all that into heavy metal. The black-Jewish CD is not heavy metal, by the way.
But, now I gotta know where the band got their name from, cuz that's just part of my schtick, as shown by a few previous posts:
Where did AC/DC get their name?
Which came first, the doobie or the brother?
The band was formerly known as quite simply as "Earth". No wind. No fire. Just Earth. When they heard of another group by the simple name, they realized they had to change the name. As it turns out, the theater across the street from their practice space was running a Boris Karloff film called "Black Sabbath" when this all came out.
Osbourne wrote a song called Black Sabbath, and they later took on that name. This is just a technicality, but it sounds like the band was named after the song.
So, what about
the film called Black Sabbath? The film is a collection of three unrelated horror stories starring Boris Karloff, closely following the Italian film
The Three Faces of Fear. Neither Karloff nor the director of the original Italian film were Jewish, so where did the name of the film come from?
The director of the Italian version of the film, Mario Bava, had previously produced a popular movie called "
Black Sunday". The directors chose "Black Sabbath" so as to ride on the coat tails of the previous movie. Other than the director, the two movies had nothing in common. I am guessing that there was a Jew in the studio who came up with the phrase Black Sabbath. Imagine that. A Jew in Hollywood.
Where did the phrase Black Sunday come from? Why do I say that the phrase probably came from someone who was Jewish?
Shabbat is the Jewish day of rest, the day of sabbath. It starts at sundown on Friday and continues until Saturday at sundown. Certain of these Shabbats are the special, such as
Shabbat Chazon, also called Black Sunday. This Shabbat precedes a period of mourning called Tisha B'Av, which commemorates the day of the year that saw the destruction of two temples. This has been called the saddest day in Jewish history.
The Torah verse for that day (
Isaiah 1:1-27) is particularly gloomy.
People laden with iniquity!
Brood of evildoers!
Depraved children!
...
And every heart is sick.
From head to foot
No spot is sound:
All bruises, and welts,
And festering sores —
God does not sound all that pleased with Israel at this time.
Your new moons and fixed seasons
Fill Me with loathing;
They are become a burden to Me,
I cannot endure them.
And when you lift up your hands,
I will turn My eyes away from you;
Though you pray at length,
I will not listen.
Wow. Heavy stuff.
But... to summarize my story.
The band heavy metal band Black Sabbath was named after the song
Black Sabbath. This song was in turn named after the horror movie
Black Sabbath. This movie was name after another horror flick,
Black Sunday, to tie it to this previous money maker. The movie name
Black Sabbath was also a reference to the gloomiest day in Jewish history.
I think if the folks who put together this CD would have done a little bit of research, they might have chosen a different name.
