Word: berges
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...especially those influenced by the wildly creative Jewish renewal guru Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, tailor their teachings to the spiritual aspirations of liberal Jews, rather than revive the Orthodox devotion that was the Kabbalah's original context. Another thing entirely is the empire of Kabbalah Learning Center leader Rabbi Philip Berg, which claims to serve 10,000 students through programs in eight countries. Berg offers a profitable self-help program featuring a regimen of personal "corrections"; devotees like Hollywood producer Sandy Gallin admit its basics are similar to those offered by Deepak Chopra or Marianne Williamson. Yet the center seems simultaneously...
...program...does support students going to the upper tier institutions," said Russell E. Berg, dean for admissions and financial aid in the GSAS...
...last month's Country Music Awards, Matraca Berg picked up a Song of the Year trophy for Strawberry Wine, co-written with Gary Harrison. That was a ho-hum: the Nashville scribe has penned prime bedroom and barroom laments for Reba McEntire (Last One to Know), Trisha Yearwood (XXX's and OOO's), Martina McBride (Wild Angels), Patty Loveless (You Can Feel Bad) and other country thrushes. But that same night, Berg sang Back When We Were Beautiful, about a widow recalling her one and only love, and put so much ache and age into it you could hear...
Everybody knows that country is the last lair of sophisticated songwriting: character sketches, Ozark melodramas and, for the female singers, three-minute nervous breakdowns. Berg, 34, works expertly in all these genres and, like a backwoods Bruegel, portrays solitary figures going down in flames in teeming small-town landscapes. She peoples her sorority with the hopeful (Along for the Ride), the horny (Back in the Saddle--just try not to sing along) and a fine assortment of wistful waitresses. They commandeer the later songs on the album (Good Ol' Girl, If I Were an Angel, The Resurrection), toying with desperation...
...Berg's best tone is retrospective: a voice from the grave, or rehab, or the front-porch rocker of memory. That ode to loss, Back When We Were Beautiful, finds its power in the pain it evokes. Tough sentiment, gorgeous song, terrific scrapbook of an album...