Billy Joel Breaks With Tradition, Wears Yellow Star Of David At Madison Square Garden Concert
Monday night at a sold out concert at Madison Square Garden, Billy Joel made a rock and roll statement with just a piece of cloth: a yellow star, pinned to his lapel.
Without referencing that star, or the one pinned to his back, Joel quietly announced his public opposition to the rising tides of neo-Nazi and white supremacist sentiment. This was a departure for Joel who has stated to “Rolling Stone” before that “haranguing the audience about what’s going on politically” is annoying to concert-goers, and that Joel himself tries “to stay out of politics.”
But Joel, whose yellow stars echo the stars Jews were forced to wear as identification during the Holocaust, has clearly made an exception for an issue that is close to his heart. The 68-year-old’s grandfather escaped Nazi Germany in 1938. The singer also had relatives who were murdered during the Holocaust. During the concert, Joel serenaded the audience with “Goodbye To You” while pictures of former Trump staffers, among them Steve Bannon, were projected behind him.
Joel’s actions seem to echo the famous story of King Christian of Denmark, who wore a yellow star and encouraged all of his fellow citizens to do so in defiance of the instructions of Nazi occupiers. A cursory look into this historical episode reveals it as a legend based on King Christian’s actions rather than a true story.
But Billy Joel, a music legend born to two Jewish parents, donning a yellow star at a sold out Madison Square Garden concert: that’s a true story.
Jenny Singer is a writer for the Forward. You can reach her at [email protected] or on Twitter @jeanvaljenny
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