A Jewish Brooklyn artist has plastered the borough with “I Sit With Kaepernick” posters backing the now-famous protest of football superstar Colin Kaepernick. The San Francisco 49ers quarterback became part of a nation-wide controversy with his refusal to stand during the national anthem to protest racism and the oppression of black people in America. Designer…
Wilmette, Illinois Age: 44 Song: “Ana Dodi” Cantor Pavel Roytman is a native of Nikolaev, Ukraine. At the age of seven, he was accepted as a piano student to a specialized music school for gifted children. He continued his studies in piano and conducting at the Kaliningrad Rachmaninov Music College in Russia and later at…
Rockville, MD Age: 32 Song: “Elohai N’shama” Hazzan Matthew Klein has been with Congregation Beth El since 2011. He is a graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary of America (JTS), where he received a master’s degree in sacred music and investiture as a hazzan. He concentrated in pastoral care, and spent one summer as a…
New York, NY Age: 25 Song: “Ki Eshmera Shabbat” Jacob Spike Kraus is an up and coming singer-songwriter from Boston. He released his first secular studio EP, The King’s Beanie EP, in the spring of 2013, and his first full-length studio album, Shake Off The Dust, in April 2015. Currently based out of Astoria, NY,…
Alford, MA Age: 40 Song: “Komo Vas a Ser?” Sarah Aroeste, inspired by her family’s Sephardic roots in Greece and Macedonia, has spent the last 15 years bringing her contemporary style of original and traditional Ladino music to audiences around the world. Aroeste writes and sings in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish dialect that originated by Spanish…
Atlanta, Georgia Age: 35 Song: “Flip” Reuben Formey, known by his stage name Prodezra, is an American Jewish rapper and producer based in Savannah, Georgia. He has released two albums, Until When (2009) and Connection Revealed (2011). He is an African-American Orthodox Jewish rapper.
Bend the Arc, a Jewish justice organization, is demanding Donald Trump return contributions from white nationalists. The Republican presidential nominee has continuously collected money from notable figures in the alt-right, including Michael Polignano, editor of a white supremacist, anti-Semitic and anti-immigrant website, Counter-Currents. Polignano donated $214.12 this election cycle. According to Media Matters, the editor…
A former senior Trump Organization executive who now backs Hillary Clinton in the presidential race alleged on Twitter today that Donald Trump “joked about gas chambers and ovens” years ago. The tweets came amid a growing furor over comments by Trump’s son, Donald Trump Jr., who made reference on a Philadelphia radio show to the…
A Jewish man who confessed to an arson attack on a Florida mosque posted videos on his Facebook page produced by mainstream pro-Israel advocacy groups. Florida police charged Joseph M. Schreiber with the September 11 arson of the Islamic Center of Fort Pierce, a mosque attended by Omar Mateen, the man who killed 49 people…
A high-level editor of Newsweek Middle East evoked what some called anti-Semitic tropes in a lengthy Twitter exchange on September 6. In responding to a flurry of online criticism of a piece published by Newsweek Middle East titled “Where is Palestine?” Leila Hatoum alluded to the notion that Eastern-European Jews have no ancestral or historic…
Evanston, Illinois Age: 53 Song: “Beggar’s Niggun” Billy may have been known in the late 1980s by teens and folkies hanging out in Washington Square Park in New York City as Mr. Tambourine Man, but now he is a singer/songwriter known for catchy melodies and rich harmonies. Billy plays the baritone ukulele, percussion and keyboards….
