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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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Harvard Faculty Oppose Deal With Trump, Distancing From Hamas Apologists: Crimson Poll
Harvard University president Alan Garber attending the 373rd Commencement Exercises at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, US, May 23, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Brian Snyder
A recently published Harvard Crimson poll of over 1,400 Harvard faculty revealed sweeping opposition to interim university President Alan Garber’s efforts to strike a deal with the federal government to restore $3 billion in research grants and contracts it froze during the first 100 days of the second Trump administration.
In the survey, conducted from April 23 to May 12, 71 percent of arts and sciences faculty oppose negotiating a settlement with the administration, which may include concessions conservatives have long sought from elite higher education, such as meritocratic admissions, viewpoint diversity, and severe disciplinary sanctions imposed on students who stage unauthorized protests that disrupt academic life.
Additionally, 64 percent “strongly disagree” with shuttering diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs, 73 percent oppose rejecting foreign applicants who hold anti-American beliefs which are “hostile to the American values and institutions inscribed in the US Constitution and Declaration of Independence,” and 70 percent strongly disagree with revoking school recognition from pro-Hamas groups such as the Palestine Solidarity Committee (PSC).
“More than 98 percent of faculty who responded to the survey supported the university’s decision to sue the White House,” The Crimson reported. “The same percentage backed Harvard’s public rejection of the sweeping conditions that the administration set for maintaining the funds — terms that included external audits of Harvard’s hiring practices and the disciplining of student protesters.”
Alyza Lewin of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law told The Algemeiner that the poll results indicate that Harvard University will continue to struggle to address campus antisemitism on campus, as there is now data showing that its faculty reject the notion of excising intellectualized antisemitism from the university.
“If you, for example, have faculty teaching courses that are regularly denying that the Jews are a people and erasing the Jewish people’s history in the land of Israel, that’s going to undermine your efforts to address the antisemitism on your campus,” Lewin explained. “When Israel is being treated as the ‘collective Jew,’ when the conversation is not about Israel’s policies, when the criticism is not what the [International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism] would call criticism of Israel similar to that against any other country, they have to understand that it is the demonization, delegitimization, and applying a double standard to Jews as individuals or to Israel.”
She added, “Faculty must recognize … the demonization, vilification, the shunning, and the marginalizing of Israelis, Jews, and Zionists, when it happens, as violations of the anti-discrimination policies they are legally and contractually obligated to observe.”
The Crimson survey results were published amid reports that Garber was working to reach a deal with the Trump administration that is palatable to all interested parties, including the university’s left-wing social milieu.
According to a June 26 report published by The Crimson, Garber held a phone call with major donors in which he “confirmed in response to a question from [Harvard Corporation Fellow David M. Rubenstein] that talks had resumed” but “declined to share specifics of how Harvard expected to settle with the White House.”
On June 30, the Trump administration issued Harvard a “notice of violation” of civil rights law following an investigation which examined how it responded to dozens of antisemitic incidents reported by Jewish students since the 2023-2024 academic year.
The correspondence, sent by the Joint Task Force to Combat Antisemitism, charged that Harvard willfully exposed Jewish students to a torrent of racist and antisemitic abuse following the Hamas-led Oct. 7 massacre, which precipitated a surge in anti-Zionist activity on the campus, both in the classroom and out of it.
“Failure to institute adequate changes immediately will result in the loss of all federal financial resources and continue to affect Harvard’s relationship with the federal government,” wrote the four federal officials comprising the multiagency Task Force. “Harvard may of course continue to operate free of federal privileges, and perhaps such an opportunity will spur a commitment to excellence that will help Harvard thrive once again.”
The Trump administration ratcheted up pressure on Harvard again on Wednesday, reporting the institution to its accreditor for alleged civil rights violations resulting from its weak response to reports of antisemitic bullying, discrimination, and harassment following the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre.
Citing Harvard’s failure to treat antisemitism as seriously as it treated other forms of hatred in the past, The US Department of Educationthe called on the New England Commission of Higher Education to review and, potentially, revoke its accreditation — a designation which qualifies Harvard for federal funding and attests to the quality of the educational services its provides.
“Accrediting bodies play a significant role in preserving academic integrity and a campus culture conducive to truth seeking and learning,” said Secretary of Education Linda McMahon. “Part of that is ensuring students are safe on campus and abiding by federal laws that guarantee educational opportunities to all students. By allowing anti-Semitic harassment and discrimination to persist unchecked on its campus, Harvard University has failed in its obligation to students, educators, and American taxpayers.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Balancing Act: Lebanese President Aoun Affirms Hope for Peace with Israel, Balks At Normalization
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun attends a joint press conference with French President Emmanuel Macron at the Elysee Palace in Paris, France, March 28, 2025. REUTERS/Sarah Meyssonnier/Pool
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun on Friday carefully affirmed his country’s desire for peace with Israel while cautioning that Beirut is not ready to normalize relations with its southern neighbor.
Aoun called for a full Israeli withdrawal from Lebanese territory, according to a statement from his office, while reaffirming his government’s efforts to uphold a state monopoly on arms amid mounting international pressure on the Iran-backed terror group Hezbollah to disarm.
“The decision to restrict arms is final and there is no turning back on it,” Aoun said.
The Lebanese leader drew a clear distinction between pursuing peace and establishing formal normalization in his country’s relationship with the Jewish state.
“Peace is the lack of a state of war, and this is what matters to us in Lebanon at the moment,” Aoun said in a statement. “As for the issue of normalization, it is not currently part of Lebanese foreign policy.”
Aoun’s latest comments come after Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Saar expressed interest last month in normalizing ties with Lebanon and Syria — an effort Jerusalem says cannot proceed until Hezbollah is fully disarmed.
Earlier this week, Aoun sent his government’s response to a US-backed disarmament proposal as Washington and Jerusalem increased pressure on Lebanon to neutralize the terror group.
While the details remain confidential, US Special Envoy Thomas Barrack said he was “unbelievably satisfied” with their response.
This latest proposal, presented to Lebanese officials during Barrack’s visit on June 19, calls for Hezbollah to be fully disarmed within four months in exchange for Israel halting airstrikes and withdrawing troops from its five occupied posts in southern Lebanon.
However, Hezbollah chief Sheikh Naim Qassem vowed in a televised speech to keep the group’s weapons, rejecting Washington’s disarmament proposal.
“How can you expect us not to stand firm while the Israeli enemy continues its aggression, continues to occupy the five points, and continues to enter our territories and kill?” said Qassem, who succeeded longtime terrorist leader Hassan Nasrallah after Israel killed him last year.
“We will not be part of legitimizing the occupation in Lebanon and the region,” the terrorist leader continued. “We will not accept normalization [with Israel].”
Last fall, Israel decimated Hezbollah’s leadership and military capabilities with an air and ground offensive, following the group’s attacks on Jerusalem — which they claimed were a show of solidarity with the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas amid the war in Gaza.
In November, Lebanon and Israel reached a US-brokered ceasefire agreement that ended a year of fighting between the Jewish state and Hezbollah.
Under the agreement, Israel was given 60 days to withdraw from southern Lebanon, allowing the Lebanese army and UN forces to take over security as Hezbollah disarms and moves away from Israel’s northern border.
However, Israel maintained troops at several posts in southern Lebanon beyond the ceasefire deadline, as its leaders aimed to reassure northern residents that it was safe to return home.
Jerusalem has continued carrying out strikes targeting remaining Hezbollah activity, with Israeli leaders accusing the group of maintaining combat infrastructure, including rocket launchers — calling this “blatant violations of understandings between Israel and Lebanon.”
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Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide
Chef and head of World Central Kitchen Jose Andres attends the Milken Institute Global Conference 2025 in Beverly Hills, California, US, May 5, 2025. Photo: Reuters/Mike Blake.
Renowned Spanish chef and World Central Kitchen (WCK) founder José Andrés called the Oct. 7 attack “horrendous” in an interview Wednesday and shared his hopes for reconciliation between the “vast majority” on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian divide who are “good people that very often are not served well by their leaders”
WCK is a US-based, nonprofit organization that provides fresh meals to people in conflict zones around the world. The charity has been actively serving Palestinians in the Gaza Strip and the West Bank since the Oct. 7 massacre in southern Israel. Since the Hamas attack, WCK has served more than 133 million meals across Gaza, according to its website.
The restaurateur and humanitarian has been quoted saying in past interviews that “sometimes very big problems have very simple solutions.” On Wednesday’s episode of the Wall Street Journal podcast “Bold Names,” he was asked to elaborate on that thought. He responded by saying he believes good meals and good leaders can help resolve issues between Israelis and Palestinians, who, he believes, genuinely want to live harmoniously with each other.
“I had people in Gaza, mothers, women making bread,” he said. “Moments that you had of closeness they were telling you: ‘What Hamas did was wrong. I wouldn’t [want] anybody to do this to my children.’ And I had Israelis that even lost family members. They say, ‘I would love to go to Gaza to be next to the people to show them that we respect them …’ And this to me is very fascinating because it’s the reality.
“Maybe some people call me naive. [But] the vast majority of the people are good people that very often are not served well by their leaders. And the simple reality of recognizing that many truths can be true at the same time in the same phrase that what happened on October 7th was horrendous and was never supposed to happen. And that’s why World Central Kitchen was there next to the people in Israel feeding in the kibbutz from day one, and at the same time that I defended obviously the right of Israel to defend itself and to try to bring back the hostages. Equally, what is happening in Gaza is not supposed to be happening either.”
Andres noted that he supports Israel’s efforts to target Hamas terrorists but then seemingly accused Israel of “continuously” targeting children and civilians during its military operations against the terror group.
“We need leaders that believe in that, that believe in longer tables,” he concluded. “It’s so simple to invest in peace … It’s so simple to do good. It’s so simple to invest in a better tomorrow. Food is a solution to many of the issues we’re facing. Let’s hope that … one day in the Middle East it’ll be people just celebrating the cultures that sometimes if you look at what they eat, they seem all to eat exactly the same.”
In 2024, WCK fired at least 62 of its staff members in Gaza after Israel said they had ties to terrorist groups. In one case, Israel discovered that a WCK employee named Ahed Azmi Qdeih took part in the deadly Hamas rampage across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Qdeih was killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza in November 2024.
In April 2024, the Israel Defense Forces received backlash for carrying out airstrikes on a WCK vehicle convoy which killed seven of the charity’s employees. Israel’s military chief, Lt. Gen. Herzi Halevi, said the airstrikes were “a mistake that followed a misidentification,” and Israel dismissed two senior officers as a result of the mishandled military operation.
The strikes “were not just some unfortunate mistake in the fog of war,” Andrés alleged.
“It was a direct attack on clearly marked vehicles whose movements were known by” the Israeli military, he claimed in an op-ed published by Israeli newspaper Yediot Aharonot. “It was also the direct result of [the Israeli] government’s policy to squeeze humanitarian aid to desperate levels.”
In a statement on X, Andres accused Israel of “indiscriminate killing,” saying the Jewish state “needs to stop restricting humanitarian aid, stop killing civilians and aid workers, and stop using food as a weapon.”
The post Peace Meals: Chef José Andrés Says ‘Good People’ On Both Sides of Gaza Conflict Ill-Served By Leaders, Food Can Bridge Divide first appeared on Algemeiner.com.