Men With Babies

“May 15th is an auspicious night for Men With Babies to perform,” long-bearded Shaul Ellenbogen smiles sagely. The Chassidic frontman and songwriter is chatting about his not-so-wryly-named, roots/rock band’s upcoming gig at Toronto’s Cadillac Lounge. “The eve of May 15th is ‘Lag B’Omer,’” Ellenbogen continues, explaining that, although the holiday is not as widely observed as, say, Chanukah or Passover, Lag B’Omer is the Jewish equivalent to Mardi Gras: A day when the faithful take a welcome break from a 49-day period of sobriety, between Pesach and Shavuot, to get down and party.

“Hollywood stars, like Madonna and Demi Moore, should be really into Lag B’Omer,” adds Men With Babies’ co-founder, Menachem Feuer. “The holiday is most important for its commemoration of the death of Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai—the famous author of the Zohar, the central work of the Kabbalah, Jewish mysticism.”

The arcane revelations of the Kabbalah—as well as more familiar themes, such as love—have served to inspire Men With Babies. The band has blown onto Toronto’s indie rock-band scene with a messianic sound. Devotees who’ve caught their recent gigs at the Cadillac Lounge, the Gladstone, the Rocket, the Reverb and Queen Street’s most sacred of venues, Holy Joes, have grooved to an original alt/rock mix, spiced with 60’s psychedelia, early Bob Marley and Gimme-Shelter Stones. Their dizzying influences are bound by MWB’s bitingly ironic, politically incorrect, “New Jew” sensibility—with a mystical Orthodox twist.

Feuer and Ellenbogen formed the band in 2004. They take their cue from L.A.’s hip Heeb magazine and Sarah Silverman’s comedy. Their song, “Find It There,” for example, has a tuneful chorus that rings “Shmueli’s got an appetite for love.” “Manny’s Manic Mandates” opens with the line, “Sometime in 1970 in Las Vegas, Elvis discovered he was a Jew.” “Everybody Go To War,” the title song of their demo CD, puts their twisted spin on a peace-and-love number.

In MWB, it’s New York meets Jo’burg in T.O. (well, in Thornhill, to be exact). Feuer hails from the small town of Gloversville in New York State’s Adirondack mountains. He began playing guitar and singing in bands in high school, driven by a mix of teenage anger, angst and rambunctious creativity—which, in Feuer’s case, was heightened by his difficult relationship with a brilliant, and psychotic, father. “My dad changed identities the way that other people change clothes. He also made a habit of walking naked through the streets and crashing cars,” he says, matter-of-factly.
While Feuer was dealing with personal devils, Ellenbogen was witnessing the more external political evils of South Africa’s apartheid. He recalls, “When the Afrikaner Resistance Front, a white supremacist group, began to parade through the streets, waving a flag decorated with a stylized swastika, my parents thought that they better get out.” His family moved to Toronto when he was eight.
The two Chassidic rockers met when Feuer moved to Toronto in order to marry. His wife, Kinneret—a Lubavitche Jew and yoga teacher—happened to be a good friend of Ellenbogen. Yes, both men are married, and, yes, both have babies: Feuer has two, and Ellenbogen, six. They also have day jobs to support their broods. Ellenbogen is a social worker who deals with troubled teens and Feuer has a doctorate in comparative literature and is teaching community college.
Neither Feuer nor Ellenbogen grew up in Orthodox Jewish homes. As young adults, questing for life’s grander meaning, they each came to the traditional observance of Jewish laws and customs on their own—influenced by the teachings of Jerusalem-based Meir Abeserah, a macrobiotic, new-age, Lubavitche rabbi. And it was Abeserah who advised them to spread the word of G-d through rock. Explains Shaul Ellenbogen, with only the sliest hint of irony, “Menachem and I are poets and we only speak the truth – that is G-d's word with a little bit of madness and joy.”

But, you don’t have to be Jewish to get off on Men With Babies. On stage, these boys are hot. The two front vocalists – Feuer sings lead and Ellenbogen, backup – are supported by a fiesty, talented bunch of tribesmen, showcasing Jeremy Otto on lead guitar, Ari Shapero on acoustic guitar, Aaron Lightstone on bass and Byron Gaum on drums. Their numbers range from punk, alt-country, reggae, honky-tonk and the blues.

As performers, Ellenbogen plays straight man to the charismatic Feuer. Feuer loves to dance as much as he loves to sing—and, when he shakes his booty, the fringes of his prayer shawl shiver like a wacky 60’s go-go girl’s. “Once you know G-d, or the text, or at least think you do,” he says, “you look for a means of enacting the text, through a demonstration, a performance, an intoxication of sorts.”

Men With Babies has earthly, as well as heavenly, aspirations. As well as cutting a demo CD – which features on its cover a photo of one of Ellenbogen’s young sons in yarmulke and peyous – the band has a put up a website. They’ve also nabbed an executive producer and attracted Chad Derrik, a producer from Vision TV, who has been filming and interviewing them for over a year.

A true mystic, the great Kabbalist, Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai, told his followers to rejoice, rather than mourn, his loss. On Lag B’Omer, the anniversary of his death, traditional Jews celebrate with picnics, ballgames, bonfires, weddings, song and dance. On May 15th (which, as fate would have it, happens to be bandleader Ellenbogen’s birthday), the Men With Babies are heading down to Queen Street West’s funky Cadillac Lounge, ready to rock the house.



- The Jewish Tribune