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Andrea Pancur, singer who bridged German and Yiddish song traditions, dies at 54
(JTA) — Andrea Pancur, a Munich-based singer, teacher and activist who helped bridge the worlds of German and Yiddish song culture — and who served as role model for women in the world of klezmer music — died last week at her home. She was 54.
Her unexpected death due to what a friend said was a brain aneurysm drew an outpouring of grief from the tight-knit world of klezmer musicians, many of whom collaborated with her on recordings and music festivals throughout Europe and North America.
“Impossible to believe this — a huge loss of someone who was such a living, alive part of the Yiddish music community, and a friend I was really happy to reconnect with,” Abigail Wood, author of a book on contemporary Yiddish song, wrote on Facebook.
Although raised Catholic, Pancur (pronounced pan-CHUR) felt an affinity with the Yiddish musical culture that thrived for centuries across Europe before its devastation by the Holocaust. In 2014 she won the main prize from the TFF Rudolstadt music festival for her “Alpen Klezmer” project, a fusion of Yiddish and Bavarian musical traditions. She and her collaborator, Ilya Shneyveys, explored the linguistic and musical motifs shared by the two traditions, finding points of connection between cultures that seemed irreconcilable after the genocide.
On the song “Rhaynlender,” for example, Pancur — accompanied by Lorin Sklamberg, the frontman of the Klezmatics — combined a Jewish polka lyric with a Bavarian folk melody.
Der Neue Tag, a German daily, once called her “the most important representative of Yiddish culture in Germany.”
Alan Bern, founding artistic director of Yiddish Summer Weimar, suggested that growing up with Slovenian roots in southern Germany spurred Pancur’s interest in what he called “transculturalism.”
“Yiddish culture is the transcultural culture of Europe,” said Bern. “If you go in one door in Yiddish culture, you see hundreds of doors that connect to every other culture in Europe. As a result, Yiddish connects to a community of those who are themselves cultural identity seekers.”
Yiddish Summer Weimar, an annual festival of concerts and classes in the German city, is a pilgrimage site for such seekers. Pancur, a student of Bern’s, and Shneyveys, a Latvian-born musician now living in Brooklyn, met in 2011 at Weimar, which at the time was focusing on the German-Jewish cultures known historically as Ashkenaz.
Pancur had been singing in Yiddish for 25 years at that point, having been inspired in the mid-1980s by a recording by Chava Alberstein, the Polish-Israeli singer. But, as she explained in a video, “I also felt that something was missing. I felt that I would like to express myself in my own folk music tradition.”
She and Shneyveys went on to collaborate on three albums, including two “Alpen Klezmer” recordings, and numerous concerts.
“She was a really charismatic performer, activist, a great singer and a great interpreter of Yiddish music,” said Shneyveys.
Until 2017, Pancur served on the board of Other Music E.V., the nonprofit behind Yiddish Summer Weimar. She also organized the biennial Kunstdünger klezmer festival in Munich. Since January 2018 she had been the artistic manager of Musik.vor.Ort, a project that brings musicians from Munich to play with and for clients of a local food bank.
Pancur’s concert tours and teaching took her to Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, France, Great Britain, Liechtenstein, the Netherlands, Israel, Italy, Switzerland and the United States. Shneyveys said his first visit to New York was on a concert tour that included a stop in the city.
Pancur toured with her own modern klezmer quartet and as a guest with the trio A Tickle in the Heart. Her solo program, “Federmenth,” featured Yiddish music after 1945. On her 2019 album “Weihnukka,” she combined music from a Bavarian Christmas with Hanukkah melodies.
In July 2022, she performed in and wrote the music for a play, “The Troglauer: Robber, Horse Thief, Revolutionary,” at the Vilseck Castle Festival in Bavaria. She collaborated with the Ukrainian-born DJ Yuriy Gurzhy on “Pumpkin Machine,” a project combining folk music and electronic dance music.
In addition to her music, Pancur was active in social justice, gender equality and refugee resettlement projects. According to Bern, she led a community choir for low-income people. During the pandemic, she offered group singing lessons over the phone, connecting people unable to leave their homes.
Pancur was also a strong advocate for women’s recognition in music. With “Alpen Klezmer,” Bern noted, she was a leader of a project that otherwise featured mostly men. She also managed her own career and founded her own music label. In 2020 she organized the first International Network Meeting for Women and Non-binary People in Yiddish Culture in Nuremberg.
In a 2013 interview with the Jüdische Allgemeine, Pancur said her goal in finding common cultural ground between German and Yiddish was not to erase the memory of the Holocaust but to “put the joy of life in the foreground and avoid dismaying music…. No one is just a victim.”
Pancur’s website explained that German and Yiddish folk music feature “songs that are so old that even the ancient Bavarian and the old Klezmer musicians back in the day had no idea they were both playing the same thing.”
Pancur imagined both peoples dancing together, “spinning around up to the summit until the Alps are glowing with the sounds of Klezmer.”
Pancur was divorced. Information about survivors was not immediately available.
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The post Andrea Pancur, singer who bridged German and Yiddish song traditions, dies at 54 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ilhan Omar Slapped With Ethics Complaint From Conservative Watchdog Over Holding Rally With Ex-Somali PM
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) participates in a news conference, outside the US Capitol in Washington, DC, April 10, 2019. Photo: Reuters / Jim Bourg
US Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) has been slapped with an ethics complaint by the American Accountability Foundation (AAF), a conservative watchdog group, for holding an event with former Somali Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire.
Last weekend, Khaire took the stage with Omar in support of her reelection campaign. AAF argued Khaire’s presence at Omar’s campaign rally constituted a violation of the US Federal Election Campaign Act and demanded the congresswoman step down from office.
“We are deeply concerned by Ilhan Omar’s illegal campaign rally with the former prime minister of Somalia. Omar already has a long history of statements indicating her disdain for America and allegiance to Somalia, but this goes beyond statements,” the AAF wrote.
“Now her campaign has taken action to involve a foreign leader in an American election. She must resign immediately and return every dollar raised for her at this disgraceful rally,” the watchdog continued.
The organization argued Omar potentially committed two infractions against the Federal Election Campaign Act.
First, AAF alleged that the congresswoman “knowingly accepted former Somalia Prime Minister Hassan Ali Khaire’s services at her campaign events.” They asserted this action exceeded the “limited volunteer services permitted by a foreign national and involves impermissible decision-making.”
Second, the watchdog claimed that Khaire was possibly “compensated by a prohibited source.” The organization suggested that Ka Joog, a Minneapolis-based nonprofit that focuses on “empowering Somali American youth,” organized and funded Khaire’s trip to America. AAF argued that Omar likely “knowingly accepted a corporate contribution associated with Mr. Khaire’s travel and lodging costs” with the goal of boosting voter turnout among Minnesota’s Somali-American community.
During Omar’s campaign rally in Minnesota last weekend, Khaire gave an impassioned speech, urging the audience to vote for the congresswoman.
“Support her with your votes, tell your neighbors and friends, and anyone you know to come out and support Ilhan Omar,” Khaire said. “And knock on every door you can so that she can be re-elected.”
Khaire then added, “Ilhan’s interests aren’t those of Minnesota or the American people but those of Somalia.”
“No one is above the law — even members of the Squad” of far-left lawmakers in the US House, AAF president Thomas Jones wrote in a statement. “Not only were Khaire’s comments about Omar deeply disturbing, but the rally was also a blatant violation of US election laws. Omar must resign immediately and return every dollar raised by Khaire for her campaign.”
Omar’s campaign counsel David Mitrani denied that the congresswoman violated any elections laws.
“This ethics complaint is another attempt by the far-right to smear the congresswoman,” Mitrani told the New York Post.
“Congresswoman Omar’s campaign had absolutely no involvement in requesting, coordinating, or facilitating Mr Khaire’s appearance or his comments, and accordingly there was no violation of law,” he continued.
Khaire’s claim that Omar’s “interests” are with Somalia rather than the American people raised eyebrows, with critics pointing out that she has previously criticized the American Jewish community for supposedly maintaining “allegiance” to the government of Israel.
“I want to talk about the political influence in this country that says it is OK for people to push for allegiance to a foreign country,” Omar said during a 2019 speech in reference to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a lobbying organization aimed at fostering a closer US-Israel relationship.
“Accusing Jews of harboring dual loyalty has a long, violent, sordid history,” said Steve Hunegs, executive director of the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas, in response to Omar’s comments.
During her five-year stretch as a US representative, Omar has emerged as one of Israel’s fiercest critics, repeatedly accusing the Jewish state of enacting “apartheid” and “ethnic cleansing” against Palestinians. She has supported the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, an initiative which seeks to economically punish and isolate the Jewish state as the first step toward its elimination.
The congresswoman came under fire after waiting a whole two days to comment on Hamas’ Oct. 7 slaughter of over 1200 people across southern Israel. Despite slow-walking a condemnation of Hamas’ atrocities, she was one of the first congresspeople to call for Israel to implement a “ceasefire” in the Gaza strip.
Omar enraged both Democratic and Republican lawmakers after she referred to Jewish college students as being either “pro-genocide or anti-genocide” while visiting Columbia University in April.
The post Ilhan Omar Slapped With Ethics Complaint From Conservative Watchdog Over Holding Rally With Ex-Somali PM first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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California Jury Convicts Neo-Nazi Who Brutally Murdered Gay Jewish Teenager
Samuel Woodward, recently convicted of the hate crime murder of 19-year-old Blaze Bernstein, a gay Jewish teenager from California. Photo: Orange County Sheriff’s Office
A jury in Orange County, California on Wednesday convicted a neo-Nazi of the hate-crime murder of a gay Jewish teenager he lured to the woods under the false pretense of a furtive hook-up.
According to court documents, Samuel Woodward — a member of the Neo-Nazi group the Atomwaffen Division — stabbed 19-year-old University of Pennsylvania student Blaze Bernstein over two dozen times in 2018 after pretending in a series of Tinder messages to be interested in a first-time homosexual encounter.
Bernstein was unaware of Woodward’s paranoiac and hateful far-right ideology, however. The now 26-year-old Woodward had withdrawn from college to join the Atomwaffen Division — whose members have been linked to several other murders, including a young man who killed his ex-girlfriend’s parents — idolized Adolf Hitler, and would spend hours on Grindr searching for gay men to humiliate and “ghost,” ceasing all contact with them after posing as a coquettish “bicurious” Catholic.
“I tell sodomites that I’m bi-curious, which makes them want to ‘convert’ me,” Woodward said in his diary quoted by The Los Angeles Times. “Get them hooked by acting coy, maybe then send them a pic or two, beat around the bus and pretend to tell them that I like them and then kabam, I either un-friend them or tell them they have been pranked, ha ha.”
In another entry, Woodward wrote, “They think they are going to get hate crimed [sic] and it scares the s— out of them.”
On the day of the killing, Woodward agreed to drive Bernstein to Borrego Park in Foothill Ranch, where he stabbed him as many as 30 times and buried him in a “shallow grave,” according to various reports. He never denied his guilt, but in court his attorneys resorted to blaming the crime on his being diagnosed with Asperger’s Syndrome and feeling conflicted about his sexuality, LA Times reported. As the trial progressed, his attorneys also made multiple attempts to decouple Woodward’s Nazism from the murder, arguing that it was not a hate crime and that no mention of his trove of fascist paraphernalia and antisemitic and homophobic views should be uttered in court.
“No verdict can bring back Blaze. He was an amazing human and humanitarian and a person we were greatly looking forward to having in our lives, seeing wondrous things from him as his young life unfolded” the family of the victim, who has been described by all who knew him as amiable and talented, said in a statement shared by ABC News. “From this funny, articulate, kind, intelligent, caring, and brilliant scientist, artist, writer, chef, and son, there will never be anyone quite like him. His gifts will never be realized or shared now.”
With Wednesday’s guilty verdict, Woodward may never be free again. He faces life in prison without parole at his sentencing on Oct. 25.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post California Jury Convicts Neo-Nazi Who Brutally Murdered Gay Jewish Teenager first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Opinion: The folly of pro-Palestinian protesters screaming at Jewish teenage girls playing softball in Surrey, B.C.
Did the protesters even realize who would be on the field when they showed up?
The post Opinion: The folly of pro-Palestinian protesters screaming at Jewish teenage girls playing softball in Surrey, B.C. appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.