Starting a DIY Klezmer Group with the Hava Nagila Principle

By Miri Verona December 6, 2022

Klezmer is all the rage. The New Voices Disorientation Guide is here to show you how to start the Jewish band of your dreams.

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Billy Joel Is Only Human

By Jay Wells March 7, 2022

The Jewish songwriter’s lifelong struggle with depression led him to become a public mental health advocate, even in the face of media-wide ableism.

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Shabbat Shira: My Kind of Judaism

By Iliana Eber August 17, 2020

“Still, the images—Portland tweens and Seattle teens and Polish and British and American and Israeli and Hungarian and Canadian staff singing their hearts out in languages familiar and foreign, skipping around with friends and strangers turned best friends, busting moves in sync or at random without blinking an eye—remains starkly etched in the crevices of my mind. Finding my place in this global network of people and identities reminds me just how much room there is under the umbrella of Judaism.”

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‘Neo-Klezmer’ Rock Band Adds a Twist to Tradition

By David Klein April 5, 2017

Dozens donned tacky pink yarmulkes, danced the hora, and had a l’chaim at Drom in Lower Manhattan on Thursday, March 23 to celebrate the nuptials of the band Golem – and, well, it’s not really clear what that means. The event, titled Golem Gets Married was an irreverent, gender-bending riff on an old Catskills tradition,…

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Q&A: Author Michael Croland on Jews and Punk Rock

By Sara Weissman October 10, 2016

“Punk rock?” your bubbe might say. “Funny, it doesn’t look Jewish.” But according to author Michael Croland, Jews and the punk movement go way back. In April 2016, Croland published Oy Oy Oy Gevalt! Jews and Punk, a book detailing Jews’ historic role in the punk movement and the ways in which Jewish artists use…

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Reanalyzing That Damn Survey Again…Again

By Amram Altzman May 18, 2015

  “American [Jew]s are fleeing organized religion.” This was the big takeaway from the Pew Report in 2013 (I feel a not insignificant embarrassment that we are still quoting it) and another report released last week on the state of American religion in general, both of which found that many Americans are affiliating less and…

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Interview With an Accordion-Playing Golem

By Michele Amira April 29, 2015

As apart of the 2015 Washington Jewish Music Festival, the Gypsy, Yiddish, klezmer, funk, fusion band, Golem, will grace Sixth and I Historic Synagogue on May 14th. I talked with the founder of Golem, Annette Ezekiel Kogan, to kibbitz about everything from the dance club vibe of their upcoming set at Sixth and I performance…

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Let’s Make Yom HaAtzmaut About the People

By Amram Altzman April 27, 2015

Every year, even if I celebrate it differently and even as my perceptions of Zionism and the Jewish State become evermore complicated, Yom HaAtzmaut always evokes in me a certain special nostalgia. It was only once I was no longer forced to celebrate the holiday like I did in elementary and high school—with Israeli dancing,…

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Not Your Safta’s Ukrainian Folk Music

By Michele Amira April 15, 2015

As I sat in Sixth & I Historic Synagogue the night before the start of Passover, I was surrounded by a sea of hipsters swagging SovJew, or Soviet Jewish. They were clamoring around, speaking in fast- paced Russian, to hear the self-proclaimed “ethno-chaos” of the Ukrainian folk fusion band DahkaBrahka. All around me, I heard…

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Romancing the Sephardi

By Max Daniel February 25, 2014

There’s been a bit of news about Sephardim lately. Although the  attempt began a few years ago, the Spanish government recently announced a more concerned effort at paving the way for Sephardim – ancestors of those Jews expelled in the Inquisition of the 15th century – to acquire Spanish citizenship. The ways of determining who…

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Jewish Musical Dreams

By Dani Plung February 12, 2014

Every night, I fall asleep to a playlist titled “Jewish Sleep Music.”  Once upon a time, as a child, it consisted of mainly Kol B’seder’s covers of melodies that I’d learned in Hebrew School, like Shalom Rav and Oseh Shalom. At the time, before I really knew what their lyrics meant, the songs relaxed me because…

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Women of the Words: Finding my Voice as an Orthodox Feminist

By Talia Weisberg December 18, 2013

When I walked into the 2010 Jewish Orthodox Feminist Alliance (JOFA) conference, I was 14, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, and a newcomer to the feminist movement. Although I am now 18, slightly jaded, and been an active feminist for a few years, I was still extremely excited to attend the 2013 JOFA conference on December 8….

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Seattle’s Rap Miracle: How D Black Saw the Light

By Eric Steitz December 17, 2013

To the Jewish world, the name Damian Black means very little. He was a rapper from outside of Seattle, with his own music label and growing popularity. Unfortunately, as many can attest, success can make others feel threatened and force a response. Another rapper in the community did just that. He threatened D Black, as…

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On Why I Take Yiddish

By Dani Plung November 27, 2013

Several weeks ago, I attended a screening of the classic 1937 Yiddish language film, The Dybbuk, open to the University of Chicago community.  For me, the appeal was in the Yiddish language; the film was a natural compliment to my Yiddish 101 class, and, in fact, my professor highly encouraged my class to attend.  There…

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Jazzy Jew York

By lcuen June 15, 2011

It was almost two years ago now that I first saw Dida Pelled strumming her guitar as part of a jazz trio in a Jerusalem café. Her eyes squeezed shut as her fingers danced across the instrument. Her sound was understated but unapologetically passionate. Pelled has been playing guitar since she was 11 years old…

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