It's Middle Of Nowhere, America and Asher Krell, former Brandeis student and friends Sam Rosenbaum and Sam Rotenberg pull up to a gas station between destinations to refill their rickety Toyota Sienna that they affectionately named Ginger. The average traveler with reactions ranging from nostalgia to condescension, might assume them to be three best friends taking their inaugural post-adolescent road trip. They would be right of course, but this road trip has a twist.
Krell, who intended to attend Columbia University's medical engineering program this fall, set out in early September on a 16-week journey to various cities across the country to explore the world of Jewish music along with two of his close friends from summer camp. "We've been on the road for 11 weeks and 25 states so far," said Krell. "One of the greatest things about this trip has been being in the car with them."
The project is called Rock Shabbat, a title that originated from the project's Facebook description. The end date of the trip is Dec. 22-the supposed end of the Mayan Calendar. The original Rock Shabbat Facebook description said, "this isn't the end of the world, it's only Shabbat," the word rock meaning "only" in Hebrew.
The trip is documented in the form of a 20-minute webisode released every Saturday night on their website www.rockshabbat.com. These episodes document the journey and include conversations and performances by Jewish musicians, as well as other interesting occurrences on their travels.
Krell's involvement in the project started during the summer of 2012 when Rotenberg and Rosenbaum, fellow staff members at Camp Ramah Darom in Georgia, asked him if he would come along as their videographer and video editor. Krell had been head of the video and photography program at the camp and was getting positive feedback on the short clips of the camp activities that he had created there.
"The first thing I told them was no," Krell admitted. He spent his first three years of undergraduate study at Brandeis as a Biology major and had planned on attending the Columbia University medical engineering program beginning this fall. "They continued to push. Three weeks later I got back to them and told them I could do it. How often in life do you get to do something like this?" said Krell.
He explained, "The trip was a chance to learn about something that is very much a part of the Jewish community that I didn't know that much about coming into it."
The media component of the project however, was nothing new for him, as Krell has always enjoyed sharing his experiences through social media.
"What's really fun about this project is it's not like we're making a film where we're going to ask people to sit down for an hour and a half and go get a big picture of what we've done. It's very live, very real time. ... We put up [the episodes] as we go. It's an experience that we're having on the road, and we're trying to share that same experience," Krell said.
He did similar videographer work at Brandeis, including working on the video "Sh*t Science Majors Don't Say," as well as holding the posts of photography editor and associate editor of the Justice.
Krell's ability to be both a Biology major and be involved in journalism and film is, in his opinion, one of Brandeis' greatest strengths as a university. "What I really miss and love about Brandeis is the community. It is never like you're in this clique and you do this and you are this," Krell said.
The inclusive nature of the Brandeis community is something Krell feels as he travels to meet with various Jewish musicians across the States. "We have stayed in a few hotels, but it's only been three times. Wherever we go, people are always very welcoming and offer us a place to stay," Krell said.
The most recent of their adventures took place in Los Angeles, which Krell said has been his favorite stop thus far because he found himself immersed in a part of the L.A. community that did not fit his stereotypes of the city. "I always thought of L.A. as very Hollywood, and it ended up being a lot more outdoorsy and friendly," he said.
L.A. also allowed him to meet a wide breadth of musicians-from Sam Glaser, one of the Moment Magazine's top 10 Jewish artists in the United States, to Craig Taubman, a Jewish singer/songwriter who has been featured on the Disney channel. Taubman's name is one that "most people who are involved in reform or conservative Judaism through summer camps have heard of," according to Krell.
Other notable musicians included Mikey Pauker, an up-and-coming artist with a sound reminiscent of modern folk bands, as well as Michael Isaacson, a Jewish composer and originator of the Jewish Camp Song movement.
Rosenbaum and Rotenburg, "the Sams," as Krell referred to them, spent over a year planning the project. They are both musicians with a passion for Jewish music and envisioned that the trip would be a "serious unifying factor for Jewish musicians," according to Rotenberg.
Speaking about the vision that sets this road trip apart, Rosenbaum said, "I think the way [our trip] is different is that this project is about people. We're traveling the country to meet people and play music with them, hear what they do and hear why they're involved in making Jewish music. ... Physical structures are nice, but if you want to really feel a part of a town, you really need to meet the people in that community."
Regarding Krell's contributions to the project, Rosenbaum and Rotenburg expressed, with a couple good-natured jokes at his expense, how invaluable Krell is to the project.
"Asher is incredibly organized. He is a technical genius with a knack for visuals and knows what it takes to make a video look good both behind the camera and in front of a computer," said Rotenberg.
"Asher knows how to capture the moment," added Rosenbaum.
The trip will culminate in a Havdalah service, the service that marks the end of Shabbat, that will be held on Dec. 22.
The group is asking that the musicians in all the cities they've visited each hold their own Havdalah service while keeping the entire American Jewish music community in mind.
"We as American Jews are a large community around the country," said Krell. "Although we cannot all do Havdalah together, we can all be together in spirit as each of us does our own service around the country."