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A Brazilian, Moroccan and Israeli singer brings her unique North African sound to NYC
(New York Jewish Week) — Though she grew up in Israel, Tamar Bloch’s childhood was a mishmash of cultures. With a Moroccan mother and Brazilian father, Bloch often heard Portuguese and Arabic alongside Hebrew, and felt connected with the music from all three cultures.
It wasn’t until she was in her early 20s, however, that Bloch discovered the language and culture of “Haketia,” a Romance language once spoken by Sephardic Jews in North Africa. Haketia has elements of Darija (Moroccan Arabic), Spanish and Ladino.
“I was hooked immediately,” Bloch, 33, told the New York Jewish Week. She could only find ethnographic recordings of Haketian songs at the Israel State Archives and at Hebrew University in Jerusalem, which she painstakingly transcribed and re-recorded herself — becoming the first modern artist to record an album in Haketia.
Over the last decade, Bloch — who goes by the stage name Lala Tamar; Lala is a Moroccan honorific meaning “Lady” or “Miss” — has traveled the world touring her music, working with bands and promoting the language and sound of Haketia.
This weekend, Bloch is traveling to New York from her home in Essouria, Morocco to perform several concerts at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts. The New York Jewish Week caught up with her to talk about her performances in the United States and what Haketia means to her.
New York Jewish Week: How did you become aware of Haketía and then decide to pursue it in your music?
Bloch: I did not know it as a kid. I grew up with a mom who did speak Darija, which is Moroccan Arabic, which integrated and mixed inside Haketia, and with a dad who was born in Brazil, so there was Portuguese and a lot of Latin music in the house.
So I grew up with the basics of Haketia at home — the words and the Latin languages and the Arabic languages surrounding me. But I never really spoke it because they were speaking it with the older generations, with my grandparents and not with us, the kids.
When I grew up a bit I fell in love with Moroccan music. I happened to hear Haketia music. Immediately, I was hooked. For me, it was a very condensed cultural combination of my background, of the way I grew up. Not only literally, with the words and the language, but also musically because it has this combination of Spanish and Andalusian music and North African music. It’s all fused together in Haketia. I decided that I needed to investigate and to search for more of this music. These songs were never really recorded in an artistically contemporary way. If anything, they were recorded for the sake of preservation as a part of ethnographic research for universities. But it was not out there as music for everybody. I felt that this music deserves to be heard and to be served to everybody. It doesn’t have to be a part of a long forgotten tradition that’s lost in the archives.
What has been like the most meaningful part of the last decade of bringing Haketia back into the modern world and of touring your music around the globe?
I think that the biggest moment was when I got into the playlist of Galgalatz in Israel, which is one of the country’s most popular radio stations. One of the singles got into a playlist, and it was the first time that Haketia was played on contemporary, popular radio. That was really exciting. Also when we released our album. Even though it was in the middle of COVID, so it did not get any of the attention we were expecting for it, it was still exciting to to release an album in this in this lost language, and to hear people play it at parties and to have people sending me videos in restaurants. It’s always exciting to hear it.
I didn’t feel like I had a mission to make Haketia or this music more mainstream. It just happened because I felt that this music was relevant for me. I felt very much connected to it in a way that made me just release it as if there was nothing different about it, as if I would be singing anything else.
Why did you decide to move to Morocco from Israel during the pandemic?
I started performing in Morocco and realized that it’s always been the source of my inspiration, the fountain of my creation. At one of the festivals that I did there, I met Maalem (Master) Seddik, a Muslim musician that teaches Gnawa, a specific style of religious Moroccan music that I was fascinated by and, also, I was fascinated by the connection with the Jewish history in Morocco. I was waiting for the opportunity to go and study with him and then COVID struck and I had no job, of course.
Also, my inspiration and everything in my life that I create comes from Morocco. (During the 18th and 19th centuries, Jews made up nearly half of the population of Essouira — then called Mogador.) So when I was not singing I felt that my fountain was being dried out, so I already had this dream of going to study with him and I managed to find a way to get into Morocco which was really complicated at the time. He [Seddik] was waiting for me and welcomed me in. I started studying with him and he really adopted me, almost as a daughter, cooking for me, making me all these Jewish foods that he knows how to make from his neighbors and all his Jewish friends, and I just stayed. I have a lot of followers and an audience in Morocco as well as a lot of musicians that I work with so for me, it really felt like home from the beginning.
How does it feel to be performing in New York for the first time?
I have been doing online shows for Lincoln Center, but I’ve never performed physically in New York. It’s really exciting. I can’t describe how blissful we feel to come all this way. It’s a really big honor for my band’s first live performance in the United States to be at Lincoln Center.
I can only imagine how it will be because I don’t know. I can say I perform around the world, more than in Israel these past few years. I feel that this music has something that just can reach people from whatever background they come from. I hope that’s going to be the case as well, here in New York and New Yorkers are very open minded, very aware of what’s happening around the globe culturally.
Lala Tamar will perform a series of five concerts between May 5-7 at Lincoln Center for Performing Arts (113 West 60th St.). To find concert times and purchase tickets (choose-what-you-pay), visit their website.
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The post A Brazilian, Moroccan and Israeli singer brings her unique North African sound to NYC appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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He reconnected with Judaism as an adult. With his art, he hopes others do the same.
Bruce David’s magnum opus is a psychedelic lithograph depicting practically the entire Torah. Over eight months, David filled it with a plethora of hidden symbols: If you look closely, you can see Joshua blowing a shofar, which hugs the Israeli flag. Squint even more and you’ll notice Joshua’s face is the flared end of an even bigger shofar that encompasses the Ten Commandments, a shofar made up of dozens of small people, seven of whom hold flames as if making a human menorah.
To understand every hidden image in just this one painting would take more words than I have space for. David gave me the “short version” of the piece’s story on Zoom — it still took six minutes.
Although David has now spent decades making Jewish art — prints, mosaics, stained glass and metal works — and exhibiting it across the country, it wasn’t what he had anticipated doing with his life. David doesn’t have any formal art training and for several years, he lost touch with his Judaism.
“Oftentimes I’ll refer to myself as a deeply flawed holy man wannabe,” David told me over Zoom from his house in Bloomington, Indiana. “But I always had this spiritual pull.”
David grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, with a Reform father and a mother from an Orthodox family. His Orthodox grandmother, Bess Harris — who he described as a force to be reckoned with — was a particular influence on him.
“I really learned my Jewish heart from her and her love of God,” David said. “She was involved with starting a Jewish day school, a Jewish nursing home, the synagogue, and she would lead trips to Israel.”
But traditional religious practice didn’t speak to him when he was a kid. He told me that one time he even climbed out of the window during Hebrew school to go play basketball.
Years later, his wife Diane was the one who helped him find new ways to connect with Judaism. Although she was raised Catholic, Diane was curious about Judaism. David needed to refresh himself on the answers.
“We started looking at the different aspects of Judaism and different things started to make sense,” David told me. “Shabbat made sense — you know, everybody needs a time to rest, recharge. Yom Kippur makes sense as a time to forgive and be forgiven. Rosh Hashanah to start again. Sukkot to get out and celebrate and get close to nature.”
When the couple met, David’s job was making deliveries for his grandfather’s wholesale store in Louisville. For David’s 30th birthday, Diane gave him a set of pigment pencils and the art started flowing out of him. Many of his pieces are concerned with biblical stories — like his mosaic of Jonah emerging onto the shores of Nineveh or his rainbow colored print of Balaam and his donkey — and he refers to them as “visual midrash.”
Unsure what to do with his art, David went to the Hillel at Indiana University Bloomington to see if the rabbi had any ideas. The rabbi connected him with art professor Mazelle Van Buskirk who was taken with David’s work. She arranged for an exhibit at IU’s School of Fine Arts, making him the first community artist to be given such an honor and kicking off his career.
He has presented his art at Jewish schools and exhibited it at events like the National Hadassah Conference, the Cincinnati Jewish Folk Festival, and the Coalition for Alternatives to Jewish Education. His work has been on the cover of books and Jewish publications. Many of the events that have had the greatest impact on David’s life were unplanned.
“We’ve always lived our lives on miracles,” David told me.
Among these, David said, was Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, “the Singing Rabbi” who wrote hundreds of liturgical melodies in the 20th century, conducting a (planned) conversion for Diane and an (unplanned) wedding ceremony for the couple in the 80s.
“We went to the mikvah for the conversion,” David told me. “And then he tells us ‘Oh by the way we’re going to marry you Saturday night after Shabbat.’”
Another miracle happened when David met a couple looking for someone to manage 29 acres in Bloomington overlooking Monroe Lake. Nature lovers, the couple quickly took the opportunity to live somewhere they could connect with the earth. David’s admiration for natural forms can also be found in much of his art; the shapes tend to flow and bend.
Over the 46 years that the couple has lived on their property, they’ve turned it into a home base for their Jewish worship and educational group Light of the Nations, which conducts lessons at various synagogues and JCCs through art and music. They host parties for Sukkot and the solar eclipse on their huge lawn, welcoming dozens of visitors.
David said they wanted their home to be a “place where people come out and get close to nature in life and slow down.”
Seventy-five years old and battling blood cancer, David is now spending his time focusing on helping people connect to Judaism in a holistic way and see the beauty that brought him back to religion. He’s slowed down on exhibiting his art, instead working on making sure Light of the Nations’ mission can continue once he is gone and that his art will find a home.
David hopes that people recognize in his art “that there’s this amazing, incredible life force influencing all creation.”
The post He reconnected with Judaism as an adult. With his art, he hopes others do the same. appeared first on The Forward.
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Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride
(JTA) — London’s Metropolitan Police launched an investigation Monday into antisemitic abuse at a Pride parade after videos and pictures circulated on social media showed Jewish participants enduring taunts at Saturday’s event.
The police department said in a statement that officers were “aware of videos circulating online that show antisemitic verbal abuse directed towards attendees” at the parade in central London and that footage was being reviewed to assess whether criminal offenses had been committed. The department added that it “continues to work hard to tackle hate crimes of all types.”
Videos shared online show people carrying rainbow flags incorporating the Star of David being confronted by individuals shouting “Free Palestine.” The harassment escalated with attendees shouting, “Go back to your Zionist homeland,” “You kill Arab children, you kill gay children,” “F*** you, Jew,” and “How many babies did you kill?”
The Jewish Telegraphic Agency reached out to Pride in London for comment. The group had not replied by press time.
The incident comes amid heightened concern over antisemitism in Britain since Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, with a record number of antisemitic incidents reported over the past two years. It also comes as Pride celebrations around the world have been roiled by tensions over Israel and antisemitism.
Pride in London drew tens of thousands of participants and visitors to the Soho neighborhood in the British capital. Some Jewish LGBTQ+ organizations have in recent years chosen not to participate in Pride, citing hostility towards Zionist Jews. But this year, around 150 people marched as part of a Jewish bloc at the event.
Organizers said the return this year followed discussions with Pride in London over Jewish inclusion and commitments that organizers would undertake antisemitism awareness training in partnership with the Community Security Trust, the main security consultant to the Jewish community. Jewish LGBTQ group Keshet UK stated earlier this year that the measures were intended to help ensure Jewish LGBTQ+ participants could march “safely and openly” following concerns raised after Oct. 7.
It was not clear whether the Jewish marchers who endured the abuse were part of the official Jewish bloc – accounts from marchers who stayed with the Jewish bloc were generally positive.
“A few people came and chanted ‘free, free, Palestine,’” Israeli author and LGBTQ+ activist Hen Mazzig told JTA. “They were passing through. And there was another person who was at a cafe and then they came by and they were just staring at us.”
Mazzig shared footage from the event on X, writing, ”My pride is not affected by the opinions of others. I am gay, I am Jewish, and I’m here to stay. Am Yisrael chai.”
Mazzig splits his time between London and Tel Aviv, because his husband is British. He told JTA in a phone interview that Saturday’s incidents “were scary, especially when a Pride parade is supposed to be inclusive.”
Mazzig said that since Oct, 7, circumstances have been exceptionally challenging for the British Jewish community “but specifically for LGBTQ youth that are being forced to choose between their Jewish identity and their queer identity.”
Mazzig claimed that Jewish marchers are not accepted unless they specify that they are anti-Zionist. “Every statement of solidarity with LGBTQ Jews seems to come with a ‘but,’” he said. ‘We support you, but not if you’re physically Jewish, not if you’re supporting Israel. You have to renounce half of your identity first.’ That’s not equality.”
In advance of Saturday’s event, some 650 Met police officers were deployed to enforce “zero tolerance” on hate crimes and to ensure that attendees could “safely and securely” enjoy the parade.
When JTA asked the Metropolitan police why at least two policemen appeared to stand by as Jews were subject to abuse, the Met requested that JTA provide the video in question. After being supplied with the video, the Met later told JTA that it had nothing further to add at this stage but would provide an update if it did.
Mazzig said the Met police should consider the abuse at the parade “shameful and it should alarm everyone.”
He added, “I hope that we stop debating whether or not antisemitism is real and accept it. And that communities that are supposed to be inclusive and pluralistic start taking action.”
The post Metropolitan Police investigating abuse of Jewish attendees at London Pride appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’
(JTA) — Israel’s Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli compared Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan to Adolf Hitler and slain Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar in a post on X on Monday.
“We all know how narcissistic power-obsessed fanatics like you begin and how they end. The Jewish people have never feared mere flesh and blood, from Pharaoh until today,” Chikli wrote. “You are nothing but a pathetic blood soaked zero who history will soon forget.”
In the post, Chikli accused the Turkish leader of being a “patron of Hamas and ISIS” and described him as a “grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar” alongside an AI image of Erdogan in front of a Nazi flag.
Chikli’s post was in response to an address by Erdogan last month, in which the Turkish leader called Zionism a “genocidal occupying expansionist ideology” and said the “struggle” against Zionism was for the “collective survival of ourselves and our nation.”
Long-standing tensions between Turkey and Israel stoked by the war in Gaza have escalated in recent weeks, amid increasing Israeli concerns over the tight ties between Ankara and Washington and the possible sale of advanced American F-35 fighter jets to Turkey. Erdogan, who has consistently voiced support for Hamas, has been one of Israel’s most outspoken international critics.
Chikli’s post followed Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s blistering attack against Erdogan during an interview on “Fox & Friends” on Fox News Monday. Netanyahu said Turkey was “governed by a man who calls openly for the annihilation of Israel…and talks openly about conquering Jerusalem.”
The Israeli leader warned against the sale of weaponry to Ankara, portraying Turkey as an aggressive country that didn’t help the U.S. battle Iran. He spoke in advance of U.S. President Donald Trump’s trip to Ankara late Tuesday for a two-day summit of NATO.
“For a regime infected by the Muslim Brotherhood, an extreme movement that hates America and chants ‘death to America’ from that side of the spectrum, I don’t think they should be given F-35’s or the engines for their fighter jets,” Netanyahu told Fox News.
Such a sale would “upset the power balance in the Middle East, which is ultimately guaranteed by Israeli air superiority and … by America’s posture in the Middle East,” Netanyahu said.
Relations between the two regional powers have also been aggravated by the Israeli government’s June 28 decision to recognize the Armenian genocide by the Ottoman Empire during and immediately after World War I.
Turkey has condemned Israel’s recognition of the Armenian genocide. It’s a move so diplomatically controversial that to date, only some 33 countries, aside from Israel, have taken this step, including the U.S. in 2021.
According to Politico, Erdogan said in a public address last week, “We do not give the slightest heed to the slanders about our country from the murder network that has the blood of 73,000 innocent Gazans, most of them children and women, on its hands.”
Israel’s Minister of Foreign Affairs, Gideon Saar, also took aim at Turkey’s foreign minister, Hakan Fidan, during a press conference in Jerusalem Monday, decrying Fidan’s comments to CNN Türk on Friday in which he said that Israel had become a “burden that humanity can no longer bear.”
“The remarks by Turkey’s Foreign Minister are a clear call for genocide,” Saar said. “The Jewish people know all too well what happens when such words are allowed to go unanswered. The first step on the road to genocide is dehumanization.”
The post Israel’s diaspora minister calls Erdogan a ‘grotesque hybrid of Hitler and Sinwar’ appeared first on The Forward.
