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The Aaron Cohen Nonet, Live at Katz's 12/22/08

 

 

Last night was the 2nd night of Hannukah, and fittingly, a fascinating socio-cultural experiment of the Jewish kind occurred at Katz’s Deli–that immortal palace of pastrami–on the lower east side of Manhattan. The occasion was a meeting of nine people named Aaron Cohen, part of first-time film maker and entrepreneur Aaron Cohen’s foray into the world of people who share his name.

It was a strange and somehow exhilarating time, with a truly diverse group of Aarons, mostly recruited using Facebook (Aaron the filmmaker has 100 friends named Aaron Cohen on Facebook alone), showing up to see what would happen. 

Expectations for the evening had ranged from complete paranoia (one Aaron admitted taking his credit card out of his wallet before coming in case he was mugged) to skepticism, but all the participants, doubtless, shared some sense of anticipation about meeting a number of namesakes.

There was a rapper Aaron, a Doctor Aaron, a writer Aaron, 2 Aarons who keep kosher, and nine Aarons who have a unique relationship with their mothers. There was a septuagenerian Aaron Cohen from Baghdad who lives in Manhattan but was too concerned about any number of things to show up.

Aaron Cohen the filmmaker ultimately wants to get 100 Aaron Cohens together in a room for a kind of Aaron Cohen “festival” which he will film for posterity, and hopefully for commercial release. The project is an ambitious one, but also one with great potential to be, by turns, hilarious, probing, and culturally significant.

Being at Katz’s last night and feeling the rather ephemeral, but definitely palpable vibe in the air while hanging out with only nine Aaron Cohens, one can only imagine the strange synergies that could occur if 100 Aaron Cohens were present.

Filmmaker Aaron Cohen, if he can tap into this difficult to categorize zeitgeist–nomenclature, family dynamics, the Jewish diaspora, and the sociological implications of these intersections–will have, at the very least, a very interesting movie indeed.