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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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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.