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How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’
(New York Jewish Week) — Some of the greatest talents in Jewish music have strolled Midwood’s lettered avenues, including the klezmer musician Pete Sokolow and the Hasidic composer Ben Zion Shenker. Both have left us — Sokolow in 2022, Shenker in 2016 — but the Modzitzer synagogue on Avenue L, where Shenker once lead prayers, is a spiritual home for klezmer virtuoso and Midwood denizen Andy Statman, 73. He’s davened (prayed) there for more than 30 years.
Now, a younger group of klezmer musicians joins Statman in making the quiet, south-central Brooklyn neighborhood their home, due to the (relatively) affordable rents, low density and greenery, as well as its proximity to Jewish communal life spread across the borough.
“We needed more room than Park Slope could provide on our budget,” Pete Rushefsky, who has played a hammered dulcimer known as the tsimbl in the city’s klezmer scene for more than 30 years, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s been a great neighborhood to raise a family.” That’s especially true for a culturally active family: Rushefsky’s wife, Madeline Solomon, sings, plays accordion and runs the Brooklyn Workers Circle School in Park Slope; their 12-year-old daughter, Mathilda, plays in a children’s fiddle band in the neighborhood.
Midwood looms so large over the present-day Jewish music scene that there’s even a klezmer rock band named for it: Midwood, the band, was founded in 2015 by the fiddler Jake Shulman-Ment. The 39-year-old veteran klezmer violinist lives in the same apartment building on Ocean Avenue as Jeremiah Lockwood, a blues performer and a scholar of cantorial music.
“I call it the ‘Klezmer Shtetl,’” said Midwood’s vocalist, Eleonore Weill, who is also a multi-instrumentalist. (Weill used to reside in Midwood but now lives in next-door Ditmas Park, which is also home to Sarah Gordon, lead singer of the rock band Yiddish Princess. Nearby Kensington counts among its klezmer-making residents D. Zisl Slepovitch and the klezmer couple Ilya Shneyveys and Sarah Myerson.)
Another Midwood musician is Michael Winograd, 40, who many consider to be the best klezmer clarinetist of his generation. As a teenager, he went to Statman’s home for lessons; last summer he moved to the neighborhood.
Midwood musicians Jeremiah Lockwood, left, and Pete Rushefsky. (Courtesy)
Elsewhere in Midwood resides guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, founder of Pitom, which the Tzadik record label called “a shredding Jewish instrumental band.” Fruchter has performed with Jon Madof’s Zion80, which plays Shlomo Carlebach tunes in an Afrobeat style, and Mazal Tov Cocktail Party, the latest klezmer/dance music project led by David Krakauer and Kathleen Tagg.
“I didn’t choose Midwood, particularly,” Shulman-Ment told New York Jewish Week. “It sort of fell into my life.” The fiddler decided to rent his Midwood one-bedroom in the summer of 2021 while he was on tour in the Pacific Northwest. After seeing the place online and sending a couple of friends to check it out in person, Shulman-Ment signed a lease while he was still on the road.
As it happens, Lockwood — who lives with his two sons, ages 14 and 16, on the floor below Shulman-Ment — also rented his apartment sight unseen that same summer.
The two neighbors credit Ivona Hertz, co-owner of Ocean Empire Management, with helping them find a home. Her company manages a pair of buildings across from Prospect Park that are home to so many jazz musicians, they came to be known as “the jazz dorms.”
“When the tenants are happy they always recommend their friends,” Hertz said, describing how she came to rent Midwood apartments to so many musicians. “That’s how the ‘jazz dorms’ were created and that’s how the Midwood buildings are now getting more musicians. The apartments are larger, up to three bedrooms, including the square footage, and more affordable in Midwood.”
According to the available rentals on the real estate website StreetEasy, the median rent in Midwood is $2,566. (Hertz, the property manager known for helping musicians, says she typically charges between $1,500 and $1,750 a month for one-bedroom rentals.) The median sale price in the nabe for the first quarter of this year was $644,000, according to the real estate website PropertyShark — that’s substantially less than the Brooklyn borough-wide median of $755,000.
In addition to relatively low housing costs, Midwood is also known for being home to a very large — and mostly Orthodox — Jewish community. Traditionally Ashkenazi, the southern reaches of the neighborhood have also seen steady growth of its longtime Sephardic Jewish community. “Sephardic Jews dominate from [an area known as the] Avenue H cut to Avenue Z,” Sarina Roffe, CEO of the The Brooklyn Jewish Historical Initiative and president of the Sephardic Heritage Project, told the New York Jewish Week. “The Sephardic community in Brooklyn has been growing for more than 100 years.”
Most of these newer, klezmer residents identify as secular Jews, and not Orthodox. But many of them said they enjoy living among their Orthodox brethren. Clarinetist Winograd lives in part of Midwood that’s “very Jewish,” as he described it. “I kind of like being a secular Jew who gets to experience the benefit of a quiet Shabbes. I enjoy being a culturally-engaged Jew living in a Jewish neighborhood even if I’m not partaking in the more religious activities.”
Shulman-Ment — who identifies as a secular Jew who is committed to Jewish culture — spent a year living in Crown Heights, so he was familiar with the feeling of living in an Orthodox neighborhood and feeling like a bit of an outsider. He said he’s noticed, though, that if he’s in his “gig costume” — a suit and fedora — some of his Orthodox co-religionists offer a friendly greeting.
Lockwood described his (and Shulman-Ment’s) section of Midwood, along Ocean Avenue, as “rough-hewn and unlovely. It is a hard-working and threadbare place.” And yet, “I like it here fine,” he told the New York Jewish Week, adding: “I just don’t want to encourage out-of-towners to move in.”
Fruchter — who moved to Midwood last December with his wife, Jewish cookbook author Leah Koenig, and their two kids, aged 4 and 9 — said his area of Midwood has a lot of Pakistani residents, but on Saturday his family can often hear zemiros, hymns sung at the Sabbath table, coming from the homes of Orthodox neighbors down the block. “I really like how you see people from so many different places, cultures, religions and backgrounds all sharing the same sidewalks,” Fruchter told the New York Jewish Week via email. “I love walking by businesses with signs in different languages and restaurants where I have no idea what to order… I love that it’s a ‘quiet’ neighborhood but with a lot of bustle in it.”
Klezmer virtuoso Andy Statman, left, has lived in the neighborhood more than 30 years, while guitarist Yoshie Fruchter, right, is a more recent resident. (Courtesy)
The family is involved in the Flatbush Jewish Center, a Conservative egalitarian synagogue in the neighboring Kensington section of Brooklyn where Fruchter has served as cantor on the High Holy Days and organized a concert series.
Fruchter is also a member of Shulman-Ment’s band Midwood — whose recording of their live performance at the “Klezmer On Ice” festival in Minneapolis last winter will be released in the coming months. Midwood the band’s next gig is at the National Yiddish Book Center’s annual Yidstock festival in Amherst, Massachusetts on July 16.
Shulman-Ment will also be performing with the actor and musician Daniel Kahn on June 15 at the East Village world music venue Drom. The performance is timed to the release of the duo’s first album, “The Building & Other Songs,” which features Yiddish versions of songs by Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Tom Waits and Woody Guthrie.
The other Midwood klezmer musicians with gigs to look forward to are Rushefsky — who is also the executive director of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance — and Statman, who will both be playing with the violinist Itzhak Perlman in the coming months.
In addition, Statman plays in two trios: The Andy Statman Trio, which has performed at the Greenwich Village Synagogue in Manhattan regularly for 20 years, and another with the Eddy Brothers, two young West Virginia bluegrass musicians. More recently, Statman started playing with a traditional bluegrass quartet that’s comprised of players he’s known since he was a teenager. That band is now known as Andy’s Ramble, not to be confused with the 1994 Statman album of the same name.
Statman grew up in Queens and was in his mid-20s when he first moved to Brooklyn in 1976. After a series of apartments, he and his wife Basha moved to Avenue L in Midwood in 1987, where they raised their four children. “Our kids needed to be here. We needed to be here,” Statman said. “There is sky and trees and grass here. There are birds chirping all over. The neighborhood was incredibly vibrant.”
When he first arrived, Statman took a break from his music career for a year to study Jewish holy texts full time. In the 35 years since, he’s seen real estate values soar to a level he calls “ridiculous.” Statman said that since the early 2000s, he’s watched kids who grew up on his block move to Lakewood, New Jersey or Monsey in Rockland County — both home to sizable Orthodox Jewish communities — because they couldn’t afford to buy homes in Midwood. Now their parents are leaving, he added, because they want to be near their grandchildren.
It’s a fate the clarinetist is personally familiar with: None of his four children, now grown, live in the area. With two daughters and their grandchildren living near Lakewood, the Statmans are considering relocating there themselves.
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The post How this Brooklyn neighborhood became the ‘Klezmer Shtetl’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Trump Says US Will Intervene if Iran Kills Protesters Amid Regime Crackdown: ‘Locked and Loaded’
US President Donald Trump attends a press conference, as he makes an announcement about the Navy’s “Golden Fleet” at Mar-a-lago in Palm Beach, Florida, US, Dec. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jessica Koscielniak
US President Donald Trump threatened on Friday to come to the aid of protesters in Iran if security forces fire on them, days into unrest that has left several dead and posed the biggest internal threat to Iranian authorities in years.
“If Iran shoots and violently kills peaceful protesters, which is their custom, the United States of America will come to their rescue, he said in a social media post. “We are locked and loaded and ready to go.”
The United States bombed Iranian nuclear facilities in June, joining an Israeli air campaign that targeted Tehran’s atomic program and military leadership.
Responding to Trump’s comments, top Iranian official Ali Larijani warned that US interference in domestic Iranian issues would amount to a destabilization of the entire Middle East. Iran backs proxy terrorist forces in Gaza, Iraq, Yemen, and Lebanon, among other places.
“Trump must realize that US intervention in this internal matter will lead to destabilizing the entire region and destroying American interests,” Larijani posted on X. “The American people must know that Trump is the one who started this adventure, and they should pay attention to the safety of their soldiers.”
Ali Shamkhani, a senior adviser to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, similarly warned on social media that Iran’s national security was a “red line, not material for adventurist tweets.”
“Every hand of intervention that approaches Iranian security under any pretext will be cut off with a regrettable response before it arrives,” he posted.
The comments came as a local official in western Iran where several deaths were reported was cited by state media as warning that any unrest or illegal gatherings would be met “decisively and without leniency,” raising the likelihood of escalation.
TRUMP COMMENTS
This week’s protests, sparked by soaring inflation and other economic hardships, are so far smaller than some previous bouts of unrest in Iran but have spread across the country, with deadly confrontations between demonstrators and security forces focused in western provinces.
State-affiliated media and rights groups have reported at least six deaths since Wednesday, including one man who authorities said was a member of the Basij paramilitary affiliated with the elite Revolutionary Guards.
The Islamic Republic’s clerical leadership has seen off repeated eruptions of unrest in recent decades, often quelling protests with heavy security measures and mass arrests. But economic problems may leave authorities more vulnerable now.
This week’s protests are the biggest since nationwide demonstrations triggered by the death of a young woman in custody in 2022 paralyzed Iran for weeks, with rights groups reporting hundreds killed.
Trump did not specify what sort of action the US could take in support of the protests.
Washington has long imposed broad financial sanctions on Tehran, in particular since Trump’s first term when, in 2018, he pulled the US out of Iran‘s nuclear deal with world powers and declared a “maximum pressure” campaign against Tehran.
US presidents have been wary of engaging militarily in Iran, but in June, Trump ordered airstrikes against Iranian nuclear facilities. Trump at the time ruled out sending any ground force into the Islamic Republic.
GUNSHOTS, PROTEST CHANTS
Video verified by Reuters showed dozens of people gathered in front of a burning police station overnight, as gunshots sporadically rang out and people shouted “shameless, shameless” at the authorities.
In the southern city of Zahedan, where Iran‘s Baluch minority predominates, the human rights news group Hengaw reported that protesters had chanted slogans including “Death to the dictator.”
Hengaw has reported 29 arrests so far over the unrest, mostly in the west, and including 14 members of Iran‘s Kurdish minority.
State television also reported the arrest of an unspecified number of people in another western city, Kermanshah, accused of manufacturing petrol bombs and homemade pistols.
The deaths acknowledged by official or semi-official Iranian media have been in the small western cities of Lordegan and Kuhdasht. Hengaw also reported that a man was killed in Fars province in central Iran, though state news sites denied this.
Reuters could not verify all the reports of unrest, arrests or deaths.
MAXIMUM US PRESSURE
Trump spoke a few days after he met Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a longtime advocate of military action against Iran, and warned of fresh strikes if Tehran resumed nuclear or ballistic work.
A spokesperson for the US State Department said Washington would “continue to put maximum pressure on the regime” in Iran, accusing Iranian authorities of “squandering billions on terrorist proxies and nuclear weapons research.”
The Israeli and US strikes in June last year have cranked up the pressure on Iranian authorities, as have the ousting of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad, a close Tehran ally, and the Israeli pounding of its main regional partner, Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
Iran continues to support groups in Iraq that have previously fired rockets at US forces in the country, as well as the Houthi group that controls much of northern Yemen.
IRAN‘S PRESIDENT ACKNOWLEDGES FAILINGS
During the latest unrest, Iran‘s elected President Masoud Pezeshkian has struck a conciliatory tone, pledging dialogue with protest leaders over the cost-of-living crisis, even as rights groups said security forces had fired on demonstrators.
Speaking on Thursday, before Trump threatened US action, Pezeshkian acknowledged that failings by the authorities were behind the crisis.
“We are to blame … Do not look for America or anyone else to blame. We must serve properly so that people are satisfied with us … It is us who have to find a solution to these problems,” he said.
Pezeshkian’s government is trying a program of economic liberalization, but one of its measures, deregulating some currency exchange, has contributed to a sharp decline in the value of Iran‘s rial on the unofficial market.
The sliding currency has compounded inflation, which has hovered above 36% since March even by official estimates, in an economy battered by Western sanctions.
Conservative cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Alamolhoda said protests over the economy were legitimate, but warned demonstrators they “should not be used as a pretext by the enemy to incite sedition.”
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Yemen’s Southern Separatists Call for Path to Independence Amid Fighting Over Key Region
A flag of the UAE-backed separatist Southern Transitional Council (STC) flutters on a military patrol truck, at the site of a rally by STC supporters in Aden, Yemen, Jan. 1, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Fawaz Salman
Yemen’s southern separatist movement said on Friday it aimed to hold a referendum on independence from the north in two years, following its seizure of swathes of the country last month in a move that triggered a major feud between Gulf powers.
Southern Transitional Council leader Aidarous al-Zubaidi called on the international community to sponsor talks between concerned parties in the south and north on a path and mechanisms that “guarantee rights of the people of the south.”
The announcement comes as the Saudi-backed internationally recognized government moved to recapture the crucial region of Hadramout from the STC, which is backed by the United Arab Emirates.
RIFT BETWEEN SAUDI ARABIA AND UAE
The STC’s sudden seizure of swathes of southern and eastern Yemen from the government in early December revealed a bitter rift between Saudi Arabia and the UAE and caused a major fracture in the coalition fighting the Iran-backed Houthi movement, which holds Yemen’s capital Sanaa and the heavily populated northwest.
Earlier on Friday, the Hadramout governor under the internationally recognized government said he had launched a “peaceful” operation to restore control over the area.
Saudi airstrikes hit an airport in Hadramout, according to a spokesperson for the province’s tribes, and the governor said his forces had taken control of the most important military base in the area.
Oil-producing Hadramout borders Saudi Arabia and many prominent Saudis trace their origins to the province, lending it cultural and historical significance for the kingdom. Its capture by the STC last month was regarded by the Saudis as a threat.
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What’s funny about living next to a Nazi?
This article contains spoilers for the film My Neighbor Adolf.
In the oddball fiction film My Neighbor Adolf, a Holocaust survivor living in 1960s South America believes his new neighbor is Adolf Hitler; in fact he’s so sure, he sets out to prove it. As he researches and compares notes, we learn a lot about Hitler — his aversion to drinking and smoking, his short temper, his love for chess. Yet somehow, the film has little to say about the Holocaust itself.
The film, directed by Leon Prudovsky, opens in 1934; title cards tell us, vaguely, that we are in Eastern Europe, but savvy audiences will be able to recognize it is Poland from the language. There, our protagonist, Marek Polsky (David Hayman), is a champion chess player with a big loving family. Then, the film flashes forward to 1960; now, he lives alone in South America — exactly where is unclear — the sole survivor of his family.
The film’s writers have an aversion to specifics. Most of Marek’s experience during the war is obscured, with the exception of a few small hints. When he’s in the shower, a number tattooed on his arm is visible. He asks his neighbor Hermann Herzog (Udo Kier) to keep his dog — a German Shepherd, of course — under control, because, he says, “I don’t like dogs,” an allusion to guard dogs in concentration camps. That’s about it.
Not all Holocaust films go into graphic details about the horrors their characters experienced. But they generally provide enough basic details to give the story some substance, like what camps they were at, when they were separated from their family, how they ended up in their new country or what kinds of emotional scars they now bear. My Neighbor Adolf skips all of this, making the Holocaust more of a rushed plot point than a source of emotional depth. Even Marek’s Jewish identity feels sidelined; it’s primarily limited to his visits to the Israeli embassy — where he is trying to convince officials that Hermann is Hitler — his penchant for homemade pickles and a few books he owns in Hebrew.
Still, whatever unspecified horror Marek went through in the Holocaust, it made him bitter and paranoid. He decides Hermann must be Hitler after seeing the man’s eyes, which he usually hides behind sunglasses; Marek believes he met Hitler at a 1934 chess tournament and tells the Israeli embassy he could never forget those eyes. While doing intensive research on Hitler — including buying a copy of Mein Kampf — Marek also notes that Hermann shares other qualities with Hitler, such as being left-handed and enjoying painting.
In order to get closer to Hermann and prove he is Hitler, Marek strikes up a friendship with his neighbor. In a series of events that feel more fitting for a buddy comedy than a film about Hitler, the two play chess, share pickles and even spy on an undressing woman together (coincidentally). For the sake of finding the truth, it makes sense that Marek would be willing to play a chess game or two with the person he believes is responsible for the Holocaust. But it seems improbable that it would go as far as sharing heartwarming conversations.
The film’s eventual big reveal is as underdeveloped as the rest of the film: Hermann tells Marek that he was forced to be a Hitler impersonator and now makes money from Nazi fanatics around the world. But he doesn’t quite explain how or to what end. Did the Nazi government force him? Did a non-governmental Nazi fan club see a way to market Hitler?
If the premise wasn’t already confusing enough, Hermann also reveals it was actually him, not Hitler, at Marek’s long-ago chess tournament. Is the film suggesting Hitler died before 1945, and a body double was used to keep the Reich alive? Or was Hermann just a stand-in for Hitler at events the Fuhrer didn’t want to actually attend?
Either way, this implies Hermann was cooperating with the Nazis. Yet for some reason, this revelation seems to win Marek over. Though at the beginning of the film Marek mutters “Bloody Krauts” under his breath multiple times every time he sees his neighbor, even before suspecting he is Hitler, by the end, Marek has become fond of Hermann, even going so far as to warn him that the Israeli Embassy is sending officials to his house.
It seems as though the movie wants us to think that, in the end, both men are victims of the Third Reich in their own ways. They have more in common than they have differences. It’s a lesson in empathy and humanity.
Except for one problem: Hermann is an antisemite.
In what is apparently meant to be a heartwarming moment, he tells Marek: “You may be a Jew, Mr. Polsky, but you are a good neighbor.” But, of course, this indicates that Hermann shares the prejudices that led to the slaughter of Marek’s family. Yes, he’s not the Fuhrer, but how much does that actually matter when the ideology is the same? Even Hitler had Jewish friends — that doesn’t negate his actions. Perhaps Hermann is meant to be the embodiment of the culpability of every German, that they all could be Hitler no matter how congenial they are. But even if that’s the case, it’s unclear how Marek, after losing his whole family due to the culpability of everyday citizens, is able to ignore the man’s prejudices and continue the friendship.
The expectation that Marek would ignore Hermann’s antisemitism trivializes the harm such beliefs can cause. An antisemite that likes homemade pickles is still an antisemite.
My Neighbor Adolf opens in theaters on January 9.
The post What’s funny about living next to a Nazi? appeared first on The Forward.