Welcome to the Forward’s coverage of Jewish music, including klezmer and other traditions.
Music
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Opinion Our Reform leaders sinned. Should we still sing songs they wrote?
Reform synagogues across the nation are struggling to make sense of the damning report released earlier this month showing nearly unfettered patterns of unwanted sexual contact between male faculty and female students at Hebrew Union College over five decades. Released on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, the report, conducted by an independent law firm, showed that…
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Yiddish World VIDEO: Polina Shepherd sings a new Yiddish song, ‘The Tempest Breakers’
This week, a video of a new Yiddish song, Di Veln (The Tempest Breakers), was posted on YouTube, performed by singer-songwriter Polina Shepherd, with piano accompaniment. The lyrics are by the late expressionist poet, Abraham Nahum Stencl, and the melody and arrangement – by Shepherd herself. The video was produced by the Forverts. Abraham Nahum…
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Culture The 10 most terrifying (Jewish) songs for Halloween
Due to Halloween’s pagan origins, Rabbinic law prohibits the Jewish celebration of the popular autumn holiday, which might explain why there’s usually a notable scarcity of “slutty rabbi” costumes at your typical All Hallows’ Eve bacchanal. But the dark allure of haunted houses, jack-o’-lanterns and (let’s be honest here) candy corn is often too powerful…
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News These New Yorkers were annoyed by anti-vaccine Holocaust comparisons. So they wrote a song.
(JTA) — It was a quiet Shabbat afternoon when the frustration that had been building up inside Michal Schick spilled out in a song. For months, Schick had been keeping a tally in her head — and sometimes on Twitter, where the New York City screenwriter is active — of pandemic-related Holocaust comparisons that, to her…
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Yiddish World After 67 years, ‘The Black Cantor’ finally gets a gravestone
Read this article in Yiddish. Musician and music archivist Hank Sapoznik has announced that he has raised enough money from private donations to put up a gravestone for the remarkable African-American cantor, Thomas LaRue Jones. The in-person unveiling ceremony will take place on Sunday, August 29th, at 11:00 am, 67 years after Jones’ death,…
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News For 35 years, this mother-daughter duo has run a radio show on Ladino and Sephardic Jewish culture from Madrid
MADRID (JTA) — Matilde Gini de Barnatán and her daughter Viviana Rajel Barnatán didn’t set out to make Jewish history in Spain. In the 1960s and ’70s, Matilde, now 85, established herself in Argentina as a prominent researcher, teacher and scholar of the history of Sephardic culture and the Spanish Inquisition in Ibero-America. Her extensive…
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Culture Oregon has finally scrapped its racist state song — thanks to a Jewish music teacher
Most of us think of Oregon as a liberal bastion, home to hipster baristas and organic farmers, a conception encouraged by shows like “Portlandia.” But much of Oregon is truer to its historical roots as a “whites-only utopia” that forbade Black residents and displaced its native tribes. It’s therefore unsurprising that the Oregon state song’s…
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Fast Forward Rappers invest in dating app for ‘Jews with ridiculously high standards’
Rappers Bhad Bhabie and Lil Yachty are teaming up with the Lox Club, a dating app for “Jews with ridiculously high standards.” The Lox Club is a private, membership-based app, meant to be an online version of the original 20th century Lox Club – a hidden speakeasy inside a New York City deli. Bhabie and…
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Fast Forward Why neo-Nazis marched in Ohio this weekend, and almost every weekend in the US
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Opinion The group behind Project 2025 has a plan to protect Jews. It will do the opposite.
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Opinion Just about every interpretation of Trump’s narrow election victory is wrong
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News Texas schools want to add Queen Esther to the curriculum. Here’s why Jews (and many Christians) are opposed.
In Case You Missed It
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Fast Forward Rep. Ritchie Torres, outspoken pro-Israel advocate, is dropping hints that he could run for NY governor
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Fast Forward Ursula Haverbeck, infamous German Holocaust denier known as ‘Nazi grandma,’ dies at 96
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Fast Forward A Jewish museum in Tulsa held a funeral for remains of Holocaust victims it kept for years
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Sports Texas A&M’s Sam Salz cherishes his first taste of DI college football — and the opportunity to inspire fellow Orthodox Jews
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