Jews on Vinyl’ opens with party at the Contemporary Jewish Museum
By Bruce Bellingham


This is the sort of event that makes me pine for my long-lost Allan Sherman records.

The Contemporary Jewish Museum in downtown San Francisco has put together a show based on a new book by Roger Bennett and Josh Kun – And You Shall Know Us by the Trail of Our Vinyl: The Jewish Past as Told by the Records We Have Loved and Lost.

An opening night party on Thursday, Feb. 5 will feature comments by the two authors, as well as live music and comedy.

The show itself will run from Feb. 6–June 9.  It’s an exhibition of Jewish recorded music from the 1940s to the 1980s. Bennett and Kun started out by collecting kitschy album covers – such as the ones that featured Neil Diamond’s chest hair and Barbara Streisand in hot pants, which turned into a serious exploration of identity and cultural history. They collected thousands of vinyl LPs from garage sales, musty attics, dusty basements, and from arcane archives. Their goal: to tell the story of Jews in America through recorded music. What started out as a fun avocation became a serious piece of sociology.

I’m counting on finding some old Allan Sherman records in the exhibition.

Jews on Vinyl: Contemporary Jewish Museum, 736 Mission Street (near 3rd); opening night party, Thursday, Feb. 5, 7-10 p.m.; tickets $8–$12; 415-655-7881, www.thecjm.org