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Crop tops, kippahs and klezmer: A ‘Jewish rave’ scene takes hold in NYC
(New York Jewish Week) — On a recent Thursday in Ridgewood, the Queens neighborhood that straddles the border of uber-hip Bushwick, Brooklyn, a crowd of music fans filled the room at Trans-Pecos, an all-ages music and events venue.
It’s a scene that’s pretty familiar to anyone who’s been to an outer-borough club in recent years: A homey, DIY kind of space with creaky wood floors and plants as decoration; a limited menu of pricey drinks; a young, casual and queer-leaning crowd, albeit with a smattering of “elders” along the sidelines.
But on this particular July evening, the event was celebrating the unique intersection of klezmer music and rave culture. The room was packed with Jewish ravers, for the third New York installment of “Kleztronica,” a burgeoning Jewish music scene that’s becoming a “movement,” according to its 22-year-old creator, Upper West Side native Kaia Berman-Peters.
A singer and a musician, Berman-Peters performs original Jewish songs over the electronic beats of house music and snippets of klezmer, resulting in something akin to Yiddish hip-hop or Jewish techno. With these mashups, she’s building upon a decades-old crossover tradition pioneered in the 1990s and early 2000s by rapper-producer Josh Dolgin, aka Socalled, who created hip-hop songs from samples of Jewish records.
Berman-Peters, who also goes by Chaia, is aiming for something bigger than a danceable tune or a fun night out. “I see Kleztronica as a movement,” she told the New York Jewish Week ahead of the show. “It represents a certain type of diasporism; of recentering Judaism in the Diaspora. I do see it as a movement, a community, but primarily a set of ideas and ways of practicing those ideas.”
The first of these ideas, she said, is a deeply rooted respect for Yiddish tradition and Jewish ancestry. The second honors “the Black and radical lineage of electronic music: Chicago house music, dub in Jamaica, house in Detroit.”
The third is a commitment to “rave space as safe space,” she said, referring to a welcoming, queer-friendly, non-judgmental environment. And the fourth, she said, is Diaspora, specifically “Diaspora without a desire to return” — reflecting the function that Yiddish can play for Jews who do not want to root their identity or engagement in Israel.
“These little raves are just one part of living an exuberant Jewish life centered in the Diaspora,” Berman-Peters said, “centered in learning and in ancestral respect.”
UWS native Kaia Berman-Peters, the founder of Kleztronica, performs a set at Trans-Pecos on July 20, 2023. (Julian Voloj)
At the Trans-Pecos event last month, the scene was a respectful, haimish one that Berman-Peters lovingly described as “super weird” and “so cool.” The enthusiastic, intimate crowd — some wearing kippahs, others crop tops — seemed up for anything, including Slavic squat dancing, which happened later in the evening.
Berman-Peters — who also sings with with Boston-based klezmer group Mama Liga, and is a vocalist and accordionist for the klezmer-folk trio Levyosn — played a set of original songs over Jewish-inflected electronic beats. Sam Slate and Abbie Goldberg, who as drag performers Diva Nigun and Chava GoodTime, had the crowd roaring during a musical skit that had the former dressed as the captain of a cardboard ship and the latter as a shark. (“There are some things I just don’t understand,” a puzzled onlooker quipped to me.)
A highlight was a set from Eleanore Weill, a France-born Brooklyn musician who plays a hand-cranked string instrument called the hurdy-gurdy. “It’s very raw and intense,” Weill recently told the Forward about her instrument, which was wired for the Kleztronica performance. “It’s like a stringed bagpipe. A lot of people can’t handle it.”
Berman-Peters had organized the evening in partnership with Clear the Floor, a rave collective from Boston that centers Black and Indigenous people and other people of color. “The idea is that electronic dance music and techno and house is Black music,” she said of the collaboration. “And it’s music that was created by people of color and continues to be traditional music of people of color. And that we’re part of that lineage standing in solidarity with them.”
Unfortunately, a series of travel snafus meant that only one Clear the Floor rep made it to Ridgewood that evening. It didn’t seem to matter: Most of the tight-knit crowd were entwined in New York’s klezmer scene and were there to see Berman-Peters and company. The audience included klezmer luminaries like Lorin Sklamberg and Frank London — who, as founders of the Klezmatics, kicked off the klezmer revival in the 1980s — as well as representatives of the next generation, like clarinetist Michael Winograd and his Yiddish Princess cofounder, vocalist Sarah Gordon.
Performers at the Kleztronica event included a P1no, left, a DJ from Clear the Floor, a Boston-based BIPOC rave collective, and a drag performance from Diva Nigun. (Jess O’Donoghue)
But don’t mistake Kleztronica as Yiddish Revival 3.0. “I wouldn’t go so far as to say this is what klezmer is becoming, or that this is the new mainstream of klezmer, because of the diversity of genre expression within the scene,” said Aaron Bendich, the founder of Jewish music label Borscht Beat. “I think it would be misconstruing what’s going on there.”
Bendich, who has attended every New York Kleztronica event thus far, noted that past Kleztronica performers included more traditional klezmer musicians who have used their sets to experiment with new forms.
“Kaia is definitely of the new generation of klezmer performers, there’s no doubt in my mind about that,” said Bendich, who released Levyosn’s album in May. “But Kleztronica is its own thing. I don’t think it’s the son of what Michael Winograd is doing, or the grandchild of the Klezmatics.”
“It’s really exciting,” said musician Slate about this new shoot on the klezmer family tree, who was cooling off in Trans-Pecos’ expansive backyard ahead of his set. (Slate uses he/they pronouns in day-to-day life and she/her as Diva Nigun.) “There’s such a cultural shift among young Jews to explore, to reinvigorate, for Ashkenazi Jews, Yiddish culture and yiddishkeit.”
Slate and Berman-Peters met about a year ago at an anarchist havdalah in Prospect Par. Incredibly, it turned out that they both lived in Boston and made electronic Jewish music but had never crossed paths before.
Since then, Slate has collaborated with Berman-Peters on Kleztronica events in both cities. “It was only a matter of time because the music is so rich, and has so much to offer,” Slate said. “I grew up secular but it’s so deep in my bones still.”
“We wanted to make electronic music that wasn’t just kitschy — it wasn’t just a joke or a punchline,” he said of Kleztronica’s evolution. “There are very few artists who have been able to balance that, and it felt really exciting that there were a bunch of us [doing this] at the same time.”
Revelers get down to the sounds of Kleztronica at Trans-Pecos on July 20, 2023. (Jessica O’Donoghue)
Berman-Peters grew up in an academic, Jewish and musical home in Manhattan. Her mother, Julie Stone Peters, is a professor of literature and theater at Columbia University; her father, Nathaniel Berman, is a professor at Brown University specializing in Kabbalah and Jewish mysticism. Not only did she “grow up on campus” at Columbia, “I grew up sort of with a stream of rabbis, cantors and Jewish musicians sort of coming in and out of our house to hear my dad teach,” she said. “And that was really cool.”
One of her father’s students was Basya Schecter, founder of the Jewish world music/folk band Pharaoh’s Daughter, who became a close family friend and “a mentor to me, musically,” Berman-Peters said. Her interest in klezmer began in high school when she took up the accordion and joined the Columbia Klezmer Ensemble — which was open to anyone, not just Columbia students — led by renowned klezmer musician, cantor and educator Jeff Warschauer.
At Warschauer’s urging, as she was set to graduate from the Heschel School, Berman-Peters applied to the New England Conservatory of Music, which is nicknamed the “Klezmer Conservatory” because it is home to the Klezmer Conservatory Band, led by Hankus Netsky.
“I didn’t have that rigorous of a musical background; I didn’t really think I could get in,” she said. But “get in” she did, and Berman-Peters began a joint bachelor’s and master’s degree program in partnership with Harvard University in 2019.
In college, while studying accordion and klezmer music, Berman-Peters began to get serious about DJing and electronic music. “I started feeling really inspired by a lot of different artists who make electronic music that expresses their cultural roots,” she said, pointing to artists like Sofia Kourtesis, whose music draws upon Peruvian culture and protest tradition. “And I thought I could do that, too.”
At the moment, Berman-Peters is taking time off from completing her degree to pursue Kleztronica full-time. She just completed recording her first Kleztronica album — her dream, she said, is to release it on London-based indie label Ninja Tune — and the next Kleztronica events in New York are slated for October and December.
Currently living with her parents on the Upper West Side, she expresses wonder at how rapidly her burgeoning vision is catching on, considering that the first-ever Kleztronica event happened just this past December, when she proposed the idea to Pete Rushefsky, a founder of the Yiddish New York festival, who was enthusiastically all-in.
“I expected it to just be people from the klezmer scene that I knew, and maybe people interested in music, but it’s all people from all walks of Jewish life that I totally didn’t expect,” she said of her fans, pointing specifically to Jewish hippies and ex-haredi party people.
She said that while attendees have mostly been Jews so far, she doesn’t think the audience ends there.
“I hope that more non-Jews start coming because I really think being culturally rooted and making dance music is what dance music was all about in the first place,” she said. “So I really hope that more people who are not Jewish come to this, and see our version of it, and our version of what Judaism looks like, too.”
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Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities
Marco Rubio speaks after he is sworn in as Secretary of State by US Vice President JD Vance at the Eisenhower Executive Office Building in Washington, DC, Jan. 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Lamarque
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Sunday denounced the mass killing of more than 1,000 people, mostly civilians from the Alawite minority group, in Syria, calling on the newly installed Syrian government to hold the perpetrators “accountable” for the massacres.
“The United States condemns the radical Islamist terrorists, including foreign jihadis, that murdered people in western Syria in recent days,” Rubio said in a statement. “The United States stands with Syria’s religious and ethnic minorities, including its Christian, Druze, Alawite, and Kurdish communities, and offers its condolences to the victims and their families. Syria’s interim authorities must hold the perpetrators of these massacres against Syria’s minority communities accountable.”
In a series of clashes beginning on Thursday, fighters allied with the new Syrian government carried out mass executions of Alawite Muslim civilians in the coastal towns of Latakia and Tartus. According to Syria’s interior ministry, the pro-government fighters conducted “sweeping operations” in the towns to dismantle the remaining “remnants” of the regime of former President Bashaar al-Assad, targeting primarily adult men.
According to Syrian officials, the fighting started when a group of Alawite fighters loyal to Assad killed their forces in a premeditated attack.
The ensuing mass killing of Alawites, who comprise roughly 10 percent of the Syrian population, highlights growing concerns over the safety of minority groups in the country.
Syria’s interim President Ahmed Sharaa decried the massacres, claiming they undermined his efforts to unite the country and vowing to seek retribution for the violence.
“Syria is a state of law. The law will take its course on all,” Sharaa told Reuters. “We fought to defend the oppressed, and we won’t accept that any blood be shed unjustly, or goes without punishment or accountability, even among those closest to us.”
In late January, Sharaa became Syria’s transitional president after leading a rebel campaign that ousted Assad, whose decades-long Iran-backed rule had strained ties with the Arab world during the nearly 14-year Syrian war.
The collapse of Assad’s regime was the result of an offensive spearheaded by Sharaa’s Sunni Islamist Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) group, a former al-Qaeda affiliate.
Israeli Defense Minister Israel Katz denounced the Syrian president as a “terrorist” who “switched his robe for a suit and presented a moderate face.”
“Now he’s taken off the mask and exposed his true face: A jihadist terrorist of the al-Qaeda school who is committing horrifying acts against a civilian population,” Katz said in a statement. “Israel will defend itself against any threat from Syria.”
Following Assad’s fall in December, Israel moved troops into a buffer zone along the Syrian border to secure a military position to prevent terrorists from launching attacks against the Jewish state. The previously demilitarized zone in the Golan Heights was established under the 1974 Disengagement of Forces Agreement between Damascus and Jerusalem that ended the Yom Kippur War. However, Israel considered the agreement void after the collapse of Assad’s regime.
Syria’s new government has called for Israel to withdraw its forces.
Alawite leaders in Syria have also issued a statement to Israel, calling on the Jewish state to deploy forces in the country to protect its minority civilians.
“Following the fall of Assad’s regime, and after the massacres that took place in Alawite areas against our people, we call on the Israeli government to provide protection, assistance, and support,” the leaders wrote, according to i24 News.
The leaders lamented that “the world is silent about the massacres happening in Syria” and that if the Jewish state offered help, the Alawite Muslims “will be your most loyal and good friends.”
The post Rubio Condemns Mass Killings of Alawites in Syria, Says US Stands With Country’s Minority Communities first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism
Anti-Israel protesters set up camp on the UCLA campus in Los Angeles, CA on April 25, 2024. Photo: Alberto Sibaja via Reuters Connect.
The University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) announced on Monday an “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism,” a move that follows a series of incidents which have fueled allegations that the campus has become a hub of anti-Jewish discrimination.
“With honest reflection, it is clear that while we have made progress in addressing antisemitism, we have more to do in our shared goal of eradicating it in its entirety,” UCLA chancellor Julio Frenk said in a statement. “Through this initiative, UCLA will implement recommendations of the Task Force to Combat Antisemitism and Anti-Israeli Bias.”
He continued, “These recommendations include: enhancing relevant training and education, improving the complaint system, assuring enforcement of current and new laws and polices, and cooperating with stakeholders.”
“This is an opportunity for UCLA to rise to the challenge of being an exemplary university,” Frenk concluded.
The Initiative to Combat Antisemitism is the second stage of a process begun by UCLA when it created an antisemitism task force in February 2024. Commissioned to study the problem and issue recommendations, the task force last year issued a report which noted, among other things, that two-thirds of Jewish UCLA students believe that antisemitism on the campus “is a problem or a serious problem,” and a higher share of them, 70 percent, attributed the atmosphere of hatred to the university’s decision to allow a “Gaza encampment” protest during the final days of the 2023-2024 spring semester.
That decision proved fateful, as it prompted a lawsuit accusing UCLA of fostering a discriminatory learning environment. Filed by several students, the complaint argued that the encampment was a source of antisemitism from the moment pro-Hamas agitators installed it. Students there chanted “death to the Jews,” the complaint recounted, set up illegal checkpoints through which no one could pass unless they denounced Israel, and ordered campus security assigned there by the university to ensure that no Jews entered it.
Alleging that UCLA refused to clear the encampment despite knowing what was happening there, the complaint charged that administrators put on a “remarkable display of cowardice, appeasement, and illegality,” and in doing so, allowed a “Jewish Exclusion Zone” on its property, violating its own policies as well as “the basic guarantee of equal access to educational facilities that receive federal funding” and other equal protection laws.
In addition to students, university officials have also been targeted by pro-Hamas activists — as The Algemeiner has previously reported.
On Feb. 5 some 50 members of Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) and the allied campus group Graduate Students for Justice in Palestine amassed on the property of Jay Sures — a Jewish member of the Board of Regents, the governing body for the University of California (UC) system — and threatened that he must “divest now or pay.” As part of the demonstration, the students imprinted their hands, which had been submerged in red paint to symbolize the spilling of blood, all over Sures’ garage door and cordoned the area with caution tape.
The behavior crossed the line, Frenk said in an email sent to the entire student body, and he suspended both groups while commissioning the school’s Office of Student Conduct to complete a thorough investigation into the incident. Defying the disciplinary measures, an estimated 150 people — including members of Faculty for Justice in Palestine (FJP), among other anti-Israel groups — the next day marched through the campus demanding that SJP’s punishment be repealed while arguing it is they and not Sures who are victims of racism.
“If you look at who actually experienced violence, it’s overwhelming our own students, and that was the fault of our university administration” Michael Chwe, a professor of political science and member of FJP, was quoted by The Daily Bruin as saying. “For them to be claiming that our students are violent is completely backward.”
That same month, a Jewish faculty group at the university issued an open letter calling attention to a slew of indignities to which they have been subjected in recent months. The missive enumerated a litany of falsehoods spread about Jews by a task force created to study anti-Arab bigotry on the campus — including that Jewish faculty have conspired to undermine academic freedom with “coordinated repression,” promoted the interests of conservative groups, and harmed minority students by opposing “racial justice.”
The group added that discrimination at the David Geffen School of Medicine (DGSOM) has wreaked demonstrable harm on Jewish students and faculty. Student clubs, it said, are denied recognition for arbitrary reasons; Jewish faculty whose ethnic backgrounds were previously unknown are purged from the payrolls upon being identified as Jews; and anyone who refuses to participate in anti-Zionist events is “intimidated” and pressured.
In Monday’s announcement, Frenk called for reforming UCLA’s culture to ensure that all are accepted, regardless of race, ethnicity, and creed.
“UCLA is at an inflection point,” he said. “Building on past efforts and lessons, we must now push ourselves to extinguish antisemitism, completely and definitively. The principles on which UCLA was founded — and which we continue to advance — point us toward a clear course of action: We must persevere in our fight to end hate, however it manifests itself.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post ‘Inflection Point’: UCLA Announces Initiative to Combat Antisemitism first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah
Illustrative: A menorah knocked to the ground by an antisemitic vandal who attacked a Jewish educational center in eastern Moscow. Photo: SHAMIR.
Police in Guilford, Connecticut have arrested and charged Steven Prinz Jr., 25, and Troy Prinz, 22, for allegedly vandalizing a menorah set up for public display.
The menorah’s owner reported the damage to law enforcement on Jan. 13 and provided surveillance video of the Jan. 5 crime. The suspects hid their faces, one with a gas mask and the other with fabric, and knocked over the menorah before stomping it on the ground, breaking multiple parts. Before discovering the footage, the owner had originally reported that wind had knocked down the menorah.
The two brothers, who were arrested on Wednesday, face charges of second-degree intimidation based on bigotry or bias, second-degree conspiracy to commit intimidation based on bigotry or bias, first-degree criminal mischief, and first-degree conspiracy to commit criminal mischief. Police released both men after they posted $25,000 court-set bonds.
The Guilford Police Department’s Lt. Martina Jakober said in a statement that the investigation “involved significant cooperation between the police and members of our community in order to locate and preserve the essential evidence needed to properly identify these suspects.”
Jakober added that “the men and women of the Guilford Police Department wish to extend our deepest appreciation to all who live and work in the community” and that “our collective efforts, as the police and the community, ultimately resulted in their identification and arrest.”
Rabbi Yossi Yaffe, director for Chabad-Lubavitch of the Shoreline which had set up the menorah, released a statement following the arrests.
“This aberration does not represent the Guilford community. For 25 years, Chabad of the Shoreline’s menorah has illuminated Guilford without incident,” Yaffe stated. “Throughout the years, many residents from different faith communities and from across the political spectrum have expressed their appreciation and pride in having a menorah on the Guilford town green. With G-d’s help, we will continue to share the menorah’s light for many years to come!”
Yaffe announced that the hate crime targeting the menorah had inspired the community to increase its efforts to promote the holiday, with plans to increase displays and distribution of menorahs next Hanukkah.
Jakober said that the police department intends “to reflect on this incident and continuously work to figure out an ever-strengthening partnership with the community.” She added that “together, we can be sure that acts of hate or bias have no place in Guilford.”
Last week, the legal system made further efforts to counter alleged hate crimes in New York and Florida.
In Manhattan on Thursday, prosecutors said that Utah man Luis Ramirez, 23, allegedly proclaimed himself “Hitler reincarnated,” threatened to kill “as many Jews as I killed in [World War II],” and targeted New York City’s Central Synagogue. The judge denied bail for Ramirez and required him to undergo a psychological evaluation.
Prosecutors said that Ramirez had shown signs of paranoia and delusion which included calling himself by the names of “biblical characters.” Court documents stated that Ramirez had been diagnosed as “schizophrenic, suffering from hallucinations, delusions, and not being connected to reality.” A military officer cadet training school had reportedly discharged Ramirez for psychological reasons. Photos from Ramirez’s court appearance show him grinning.
Ramirez faces as much as 15 years’ imprisonment for a terrorism charge. “He is now charged with significant terrorism and hate crime charges and was remanded into custody,” Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said. “Any form of antisemitism is despicable, and I want Manhattan’s Jewish community to know we are remaining extremely vigilant.”
The judge scheduled Ramirez’s next court appearance for March 20.
Meanwhile, in Florida on Wednesday, the Boynton Beach Police Department arrested Adam Elshazly, charging him with allegedly targeting his former employer with violent and antisemitic threats via texts on July 2, 2024. The messages included antisemitic images and threats of violent sexual abuse against the victim’s wife and daughter. The victim told police that he had hired Elshazly 10 years ago for a job and fired him three days later for poor performance, not to hear from him again until receiving the text messages.
Police charged Elshazly with a count of intimidation with prejudice while committing an offense and released him the next day following the posting of a $30,000 bond. A judge scheduled his arraignment for Thursday.
The post Connecticut Men Charged With Hate Crime for Vandalizing Menorah first appeared on Algemeiner.com.