Who knew? Springsteen does Hava Nagila

News you can use: there is a brief clip of Bruce Springsteen dancing the hora while his band plays "Hava Nagila" now making the rounds of the blogosphere.

The video (above, with "Hava Nagila" starting at the two minute mark) shows Springsteen (who was raised Catholic) ripping through a typically burning take on "Little Latin Lupe Lu" and then holding up a large sign with "HAVANAGILA" scrawled on it. The crowd roars as pianist Roy Bittan plays a jazzy open into the familiar lilting riff of the Hebrew folk song and the Boss, holding the sign aloft, dances a tentative hora while his wife, backup vocalist Patti Scialfa, claps in time. The digression ends after about a minute, as Springsteen holds up a new sign and the E Street Band kicks into its classic, "Blinded By the Light."

Jeffrey Goldberg, of the Atlantic, was at the May 18 concert at the Verizon Center, and broke the news the next morning. But that's when the story gets really incredible -- Goldberg then discovers that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel facilitated the moment. Goldblog has the full story; here's an excerpt:

"Goldblog reader Clifford Mendelson, who made the now-famous 'Hava Nagila' sign, was seated two rows behind Emanuel (and near David Brooks and Andrea Mitchell and other such luminaries in an apparently all-Jewish section of the Verizon Center), courtesy of Bruce himself, who met Mendelson at the Arizona Biltmore hotel a few weeks back (I'm omitting some of the shaggy-dog qualities of Mendelson's story in order to get to the heart of the matter). In any case, Mendelson, a Springsteen fanatic, knew that Bruce would probably play Stump the Band, and, like many other concert-goers, he decided to bring a sign with him. 'Hava Nagila' was chosen in deference to his daughter, a 14-year-old student at the Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School in Rockville, Md.

...He went on with his tale: 'I didn't have the sign up when Bruce came to our side of the stage, but I held it up and Patti (Bruce's wife) sees it, and Roy Bittan sees it - he's Jewish - and he gives me a fist pump. But I've got to get it up to the stage. Bruce then looked our way and saw it and he points at me. Rahm Emanuel turns around and sees it and he loves it and grabs the sign. He hands it to a Secret Service agent who handed it up to Bruce and then they played it.'"

Needless to say, the world of Jewish bloggery is talking. Failed Messiah calls the event "a brief but memorable moment in Rock history." And the National Jewish Democratic Council calls Goldberg's tale "the scoop of the century,'' and NJDC blogger Joshua Rolnick observes, "I’ve been to a dozen or more Springsteen shows, and can safely attest to the fact that normally, people show up with “Rosalita” or “Murder Incorporated” or “Jungleland” signs. This might have been a first."