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When I was growing up in Israel, Cantorial music was something I heard over and over on the radio, so it wasn't at all strange to me. I was very familiar with the music.

I grew up in Synagogue in the boys' choir. We didn't listen to music in the house; only at temple. Then I went to a mostly African American high school on the South Side of Chicago and joined a gospel choir.

When have you ever heard of a cantor or any artist turning anyone down when he is strongly urged to perform?

I loved music since the Seth Ward Baptist Church outside of Plainview.

Hearing my songs in public freaks me out a bit. There was one restaurant I really liked in L.A., but I had to stop going there when they started playing my music. It felt kinda awkward.

In a jazz atmosphere, the audience members were so quiet and respectful of the musicians that you felt you were almost part of a meeting at a church or a temple, where everyone was completely in tune with the sermon and what the whole event was about.

Listen to any cantor, any good hazan, sing and you can hear a little bit of Ray Charles going on.

I'm all about unity and loving your neighbor... If somebody told me when I was growing up that the music I was listening to was stupid, and I listened to them, I wouldn't be where I am today.

During the ten years I lived in the U.K., I frequently attended an Anglican church just outside of London. I enjoyed the energetic singing and the thoughtful homilies. And yet, I found it easy to be a pew warmer, a consumer, a back row critic.

I grew up in a suburb of Baltimore with an extremely high concentration of Jewish families - where the Levys and Cohens in the high school yearbook went on for pages, where I could count far more temples than I ever could churches. Anti-Semitism, in our cultural biodome, was mostly an abstract concept.