Noah Aronson
Composer, New York City
Age: 31
Nominated by: Cantor Joshua Breitzer
Song: “Adonai S’fatai,” Noah Aronson
I used to think I knew what Jewish music was. It held a very specific place in my heart — mostly in the form of nostalgia and collective memory. But since it has become my life’s work, I now find it much harder to pinpoint exactly what Jewish music is.
At this point in my life, anything can be seen through a Jewish lens. Judaism is at the core of who I am and where I come from, and music is my most intimate mode of expression. When my heart yearns for another person, is it not also yearning for a deeper connection with God? When I look out at our world and want so badly for there to be peace, is that not the same desire that our ancestors turned into liturgy? To me, Jewish music is simply music written by a Jewish soul reaching out to the world, offering up more than 2,000 years of stories and wisdom into the multitude of possible pathways leading us toward a better and more peaceful future. — Noah Aronson
INFLUENCES: If Shlomo Carlebach, Paul Simon, James Taylor and Debbie Friedman all lived on a moshav together, I would’ve been the product of their cultivation.
A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.
If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.
Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO