Promoting the golden rule through music

In Aliza Hava’s song “Dr. Martin Luther King,” the Teaneck-born singer/songwriter uses her full-bodied delivery to recapitulate the late Dr. King’s message — as well as her own. Cued to play on the landing page of her Website, www.alizahava.com, the song’s ethos is stated simply about midway through. Speaking of King, Hava announces, “He said, let the golden rule be the rule of thumb, to love each other, everyone.”

Hava, whose tumultuous journey through North Jersey’s yeshiva and public education systems ended with the eventual decision to make aliyah after college, has made it her life’s work to promote the golden rule. Beginning with a childhood affinity for the anti-war classic rock of the 60s and 70s, Hava steadily grew into something of a seminal pro-peace figure, with a hand in peace initiatives all over the world.

À propos of her position as the Middle East Regional Coordinator for the Culture of Peace Initiative — a project spawned by the NGO Pathways to Peace — Hava is in our area for two related occasions. The first was a massive celebration of Sept. 21, consecrated by Pathways to Peace as the International Day of Peace, at the United Nations; the second, a tour behind her 2006 album, RISE, in Nashville, Las Vegas, Iowa, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C.

Her last show before returning to Israel will take place in Manhattan tomorrow at 8 p.m. at The Pink (199 Bowery at Crash Mansion). For more information, check myspace.com/alizahava.

“I think writers and radio interviewers have found it refreshing to speak to an artist with a unique perspective who is using her work and music to promote peace rather than interviewing another talking head that focuses only on the problems in the region,” said Hava, addressing whether the media are generally supportive of her explicitly pro-peace stance.

Said Hava, “I haven’t had a hard time booking gigs, and the most common question I am asked in Jerusalem is, ‘When is your next show?’ Thank God, people dig what they hear and I am building a steady following.”

Hava attended “a few different North Jersey yeshivas” and the Teaneck public school system before graduating from New Milford High School.

“My family wasn’t the typical religious family, so we didn’t really fit into the Jewish day school scene,” she said.

After high school, Hava’s musical and activist ambitions found solid footing. She picked up the guitar at around age 16, just before heading off to SUNY New Paltz to gain a degree in music theory and composition with a concentration in music therapy.

At the same time, Hava was involved with Free Tibet, Jewish initiatives, and environmental causes.

“As a college student, I was very much involved in Students for a Free Tibet and the Jewish Action Movement, an organization I created out of what was the Jewish Student Union,” said Hava. “I turned an otherwise non-active JSU into a Tikkun Olam organization my junior year of college after my first trip to Israel.

“About a year after I graduated college, I was part of a team of social and environmental activists that overtook our local government in New Paltz in order to save the threatened woods and wetlands.”

Hava moved to Israel shortly thereafter, attributing the decision to a “deeper spiritual calling.”

“I am the type of person who has learned time and time again to listen to my intuition,” said Hava, “and my soul was saying for a long time that Israel is my home. I just had to take that step and go for it.”

In 2006, Hava self-produced and released RISE, a collection of activist-minded tracks — most notably the title track, which chants, “We will rise / stand up right / We will burn / like candles in the night.” Songs not on RISE include the tribute to Martin Luther King and a song she performed with Spiritchild called “I Vote!”

Hava’s thickset, honeyed vocals might soon be committed to record again.

“I have at least two more albums’ worth of material that is as yet unrecorded,” she said. The subject matter is sure to be similar to what Hava has produced thus far, as her music typically ties into her ideology. In addition to RISE’s call to action, Hava performed at Independent Music Festivals at Madison Square Garden in 2002 and 2003, and also alongside Matisyahu at a benefit concert in New York City.

“I don’t consider myself a ‘Jewish artist,’ though others have a tendency to think of me in that vein because I live in Israel and have a distinctly Hebrew name,” said Hava. “My music is primarily inspired by my spiritual beliefs, which are essentially Jewish, but even more so, universal.”