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A Yiddish rock supergroup will reunite for one Manhattan show on Dec. 25
(New York Jewish Week) — On the evening of Dec. 25 — yes, Christmas — influential aughties Yiddish rock band Yiddish Princess will take the stage in Manhattan for a one-night-only reunion show.
Billing itself “the world’s favorite Yiddish rock band,” Yiddish Princess was founded in New York City circa 2006 by vocalist Sarah Mina Gordon and Michael Winograd, who is best known as a klezmer clarinetist but plays synthesizer in this band. Over the course of a few years, Yiddish Princess played numerous gigs in the city and abroad and released one eponymous EP in 2010 before going on, as Gordon calls it, “a semi-permanent hiatus.”
Now, for the first time in more than a decade, the group — which also features guitarists Avi Fox-Rosen and Yoshie Fruchter and bassist Ari Folman-Cohen — will reunite for a show at Bowery Electric (327 Bowery) as part of the wide-ranging Yiddish New York festival taking place throughout the city from from Saturday, Dec. 23 through Thursday, Dec. 28.
“They’re a supergroup,” said Aaron Bendich, the founder of Borscht Beat, an independent Jewish cultural project focused on Yiddish music, who was instrumental in booking the reunion show. “Each of them, in their own right, and in sub-configurations, are super-active in the Yiddish music scene or klezmer music scene and have their own other albums and projects.”
Gordon, whom Bendich describes as a “major figure” in New York’s Yiddish music scene, is a native New Yorker who grew up steeped in Yiddish culture — her mother, Adrienne Cooper, who died in 2011, was considered “the mother of the Yiddish revival movement.” Gordon appeared on her mother’s albums, and she also collaborates with modern-day klezmer greats like Frank London and Daniel Kahn. But she initially formed Yiddish Princess — with its raucous, ’80s glam-rock style — as a way to forge her own path.
“It was really kind of a playful thing,” Gordon, 44, told the New York Jewish Week about the band’s origins. “I was really trying to find something that was mine. It really came out of a sense of play and fun.”
Co-founder Sarah Gordon playing a Yiddish Princess gig in NYC in 2013. (Tinker Coalescing)
Gordon, who resides in Brooklyn near the “klezmer shtetl” of Midwood and is also a teacher at Brooklyn Friends School, describes Yiddish Princess as having “big rock sounds that are very influenced by the music of our childhoods in the 80s and 90s,” citing personal heroes like Kate Bush, Pat Benatar and Cyndi Lauper.
“Real powerhouses,” she added.
Yiddish Princess’ website, which was last updated in 2013, describes the band’s sound this way: “Double guitar onslaught. Drums beating you into submission. Precious analog synths beckoning. And a voice that can shatter ice and coo you into mellifluous bliss.”
For Gordon, who sings in Yiddish, the band “was a way of inviting people into Yiddish in a different way,” she said. “There was real freedom in being like, ‘This is a rock show, we’re not going to translate.’ It’s unapologetic. If you don’t get this, that’s OK, this is for us.”
Many fans, of course, “get” what Yiddish Princess is doing — and what sets the band apart from other Jewish “fusion” acts out there isn’t just their musicianship.
“You can’t do genre-melding without genuine investment in both genres being melded,” Bendich said. “And it is an all-too-common, particularly in Jewish music, phenomenon where people only really buy into the Jewish half of the puzzle, and then they make a disingenuous rock album or something. But Yiddish Princess is pretty much all-in on both halves. That’s the magic of it.”
The reunion, said Gordon, is intended to be a one-time thing. Though there was no official breakup of the band — nor scandals or huge dramas a la VH1’s “Behind the Music” — its members, while remaining close friends and collaborators, have simply grown up and moved on to other things.
“I feel very honored to continue to be part of that [Yiddish music] tradition,” Gordon said. “I think that there’s a lot of space to play, and I think that Yiddish Princess is an exercise in that. And it’s really nice that it has brought joy to people and continues to.”
As for Monday night’s show, Gordon said the audience can expect to hear all the songs on Yiddish Princess’ EP and more. “I think it’s gonna be a lot of fun,” she said. “And loud.”
Yiddish Princess will play Dec. 25 at 9 p.m. at Bowery Electric (327 Bowery). For additional information on Yiddish New York, click here.
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The post A Yiddish rock supergroup will reunite for one Manhattan show on Dec. 25 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.