Eiyn Sof

Hey, I'm in NYC again.

This time I came down for a reading of a play that my friend David has been working on. David Oei used to be my running parter, but more importantly, he's a classical piano player who has worked with Richard Foreman on a bunch of his plays, this time, on the play Yiddisher Teddy Bears, as musical director. So the play got put on once, several years ago, at the Sundance Festival and the Public Theater is thinking about doing it again. In order to decide they have a reading, with all the actors but no staging, props, costumes or lighting. They get 28 hours or less to rehearse. This is particularly difficult in this case, because the play is basically an opera (music by Stewart WAllace) and the vocal parts are extremely difficult. But anyway, I went this afternoon, and it was pretty amazing...I hope they get to put the play on for real.

Meanwhile, Dusted has run another of my reviews, this one by an artist who calls herself Eiyn Sof (when she is not going by her real name, which is Melissa Borawski).


The term “Ein Sof” comes out of Jewish mystic theology. It’s a phrase for the unphraseable, a pair of words that stands in for the infinite-ness of god. It’s something that, almost by definition, no one can get a handle on. The harder you try to force it into words or thought, the more it slips away. Eiyn Sof with a “y” is a musical project that is likewise hard to pin down. It employs the simplest sort of instruments, the most fragile kinds of melodies to reach for the ineffable.

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Borawski also did a listed for us a while back.