Kol Ami News

(JTA) — A few years ago, Rachel Picado attended a Utah Jazz game in Salt Lake City with Israeli diplomat Eitan Na’eh, who was visiting from Los Angeles. During the closing seconds of the game, which the Jazz won, the two heard a familiar song coming from the speakers in Vivint Arena.

“We were both looking at each other like, why on earth are they playing ‘Hava Nagila’?” Picado recalled. 

She asked the Jazz employees who were hosting her group about the musical choice, and “they were confused that we were confused,” Picado said.

“They said, ‘Well, isn’t it a celebratory song? We’re celebrating the win. Isn’t that what it’s for?’” Picado added.

Many professional sports teams play the same song after each win in their home stadiums. The Yankees use “New York, New York” by Frank Sinatra. The Los Angeles Dodgers and Lakers serenade fans with Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.,” while the Clippers blast Tupac Shakur’s “California Love.” 

And, for more than a decade, the Jazz have celebrated home victories by playing “Hava Nagila,” the Hebrew staple of Jewish weddings and bar and bat mitzvah parties that seemingly has nothing to do with Utah — or jazz, for that matter.

“It’s a bit different, I’ll say that much,” said Rabbi Samuel Spector, who leads Utah’s largest synagogue, Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City. “Hopefully it gives people a good association with Judaism and the Jewish community, if they associate our music with fun and winning.”

There are eight synagogues and approximately 6,500 Jews living in Utah today; about a quarter of them belong to Kol Ami, which is affiliated with both the Conservative and Reform movements. By contrast, more than 2 million residents — or two-thirds of the population — belong to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, commonly known as the Mormon Church, according to Church statistics. (There are also small numbers of “Jewish Mormons,” Latter-day Saints who take pride in having Jewish heritage.) 

Spector characterized relations between Jews and Latter-day Saints in Utah as close. 

“They have been very generous to us, are always happy to help and have been great friends,” he said. “Even when we have differences, those are not great enough to overcome our friendship.”

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