The success, and zombie, shambling, un-killable second life of American Idol proved that people love singing competitions. Because apparently there just isn’t enough music out there? So of course it got exported to a zillion other countries, so that Armenia, Denmark and Estonia, among others found themselves inundated by amateur singers trying to hit the big time. But what about closer to home? Anything going down in our backyard? Funny you should ask, because ethnic singing competition A Jewish Star stopped in at the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center to look for contestants. And the resulting video is…well, it’s certainly a video!
As you can see , the competition exists in the same weird, hilarious, earnest alternate dimension as stadiums full of goyim waving their arms along to praise music. From the strange lyrics of the theme song to the fact that all of the songs seem to have a religious bent or are sung in Hebrew, so we can’t understand them, the entire production is a peek into a world that’s usually overlooked by the wider world. But someone out there is paying attention to it. Why else would a British contestant (17 minute mark) mention that he’d waited four hours to audition?
And did they make a Harlem Shake video? And does it have klezmer music? A doy.