David Berman’s dog has a strange obsession. He has a toy shaped like a Hannukiah that he takes with him everywhere and he does not let Berman take it from him. "He must be Jewish,” says Berman in a phone conversation from his home in Nashville, Tennessee. Berman himself doesn’t actually have a Hannukiah, but he was born Jewish and leads a wonderful rock band by the name of Silver Jews. He also tells that he has recently felt bummed out that he never had a Bar Mitzvah.
Berman explained that ‘Silver Jew’ is a person like him. He is someone who wants to be Jewish but never had a Bar Mitzvah, and feels like a loser. "It is something that I've been thinking about for quite a lot in the past couple of weeks, ahead of my visit to Israel ,"he says.
When I offer him the possibility of a quick Bar Mitzvah, he explains in excitement that he was never been more excited about getting to a place like he is excited about arriving in Israel.
It is important to note: the fact that Berman is excited now about coming to Israel, or excited in general about something, is not self evident. To be able to become as excited, he was forced, one crazy night two years ago, to mix Crack with Cocaine and alcohol in a failed attempt to commit suicide.
In the aftermath of this attempt, he garnered enough energy to come out with his Silver Jews for a grand tour, which will reach the Mayumana House in Jaffa on July 10th and the Patiphone in Tel Aviv on the next day.
He even managed to be pleased that Pavement, the band led by Stephen Malkmus, his good friend from the University of Virginia (Berman got a degree in English) who was once his band mate in Silver Jews, is no longer watching him from above and is helping Silver Jews sell records without performing.
When Berman talks about the suicide attempt, he knows that he was lucky. "Sometimes I think that I died on that day as I tried to commit suicide, and because of that, since then my life has been so good," he says. "Maybe now I am in heaven. On the other hand, when I look at myself in the mirror and see my rotten teeth, I ask myself - ‘hold on a minute, if this is paradise, I am supposed to have more beautiful teeth than these!”