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How HaZamir youth choir serves as ‘an on-ramp to Jewish life’
(New York Jewish Week) — All across the country, groups of Jewish teenagers meet each week to rehearse as a choir. In groups as small as two and as large as 18, they gather in synagogue basements, Jewish community centers, senior centers and even churches to sing together. For many, it’s their only involvement with Jewish life.
These 450 young people, who range in age from 13 to 18, are members of HaZamir, an international choir for Jewish high school students. With 26 chapters in the United States and 10 in Israel, they convene each year for a spring concert in New York City.
But this coming concert — to be held on Sunday, March 19, at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall — will be different than most years. This weekend’s celebration, which includes more than 300 student and alumni singers, will commemorate HaZamir’s 30th birthday as well as the 75th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
“The idea behind the creation of HaZamir was to give Jewish teenagers the opportunity to have a high-level music experience and to express their Jewish selves and their music selves,” said Mati Lazar, HaZamir’s conductor and founder. “At that point, and even now, [that] is not really a given.”
Sunday’s concert will include performances by the entire ensemble, as well as songs performed by the Israeli cohort and members of the Chamber Choir, an elite group of HaZamir singers. (Students have to audition to join HaZamir, and select singers are invited to audition for the Chamber Choir.) The highlight is always the “senior song” — “Yachad Na’Amod” (“Together We Stand”) — that closes out the concert, said Vivian Lazar, Mati’s wife and the director of HaZamir.
“This is a problem with any high school teacher — you fall in love with your 12th graders,” Vivian told the New York Jewish Week. “They’re adults already. They’re smart, and they’re intuitive and then they leave you. For the last verse, they put their arms around each other. Some of them don’t sing because they’re crying so hard.”
HaZamir singers at the 2013 Gala Concert. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Mati Lazar, who declined to provide his age, founded HaZamir in 1993 as the high school arm of the Zamir Chorale, a professional Hebrew-language choir and Jewish choral performance group in North America that was established in 1960. A native of Brooklyn, he had been a member of Zamir Chorale as a teenager, and wanted to create an opportunity for other young people to have the same experience.
Starting with just one small chapter in New York — which Mati personally ran — he watched it grow, and grow, over the next three decades. “I knew it would be important — I knew it would evolve into what it has evolved into,” Mati said. “The surprise for me was how successful it would be in Israel.” The first Israeli chapter was founded in 2006.
He is also the founder and director of Zamir Choral Foundation, the umbrella organization that operates HaZamir and Zamir Chorale, as well as a choir for middle schoolers and a choir for young adults in their 20s and 30s.
Though HaZamir is an extracurricular activity for these high schoolers, the Lazars place serious demands on their members. “We empower these teenagers,” Vivian Lazar said. “When they go and have free time together, they’re kids. When they’re sitting in rehearsal, we treat them like professionals, and so they behave that way.”
As a result, participating in the choir can often become a lifelong commitment — and sometimes even a family affair. Sophie Lee Landau grew up in New York listening to her mother perform as a member of Zamir Chorale. Landau joined HaZamir in seventh grade and stayed with the group throughout high school. In college, she became a member of Zamir Chorale for a number of years until she moved out of New York in 2015.
For the past six years, Landau, 29, has been the conductor for the Houston-based chapter of HaZamir. “It’s an opportunity to connect with your peers who have come from a similar faith and to connect more to Jewish text,” Landau told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s really special to be able to give [students] an outlet to connect to their heritage and to find peers and friendships with similar interests and similar backgrounds. It’s about not feeling like you’re alone.”
HaZamir singers performed a concert at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to commemorate the one year anniversary of the deadly shooting that took the lives of 11 synagogue members. (Courtesy HaZamir)
The Lazars see the choir as “an on-ramp to Jewish life” with an emphasis on pluralism, community and Zionism. HaZamir is not designed to be religious, Vivian explained, though she suggested that singing together in harmony is often a spiritual experience.
However, “to be Jewish is to be literate,” Vivian said, adding part of being in the choir and learning to sing the Hebrew music includes learning the texts and their meanings.
“The more you know about your history and your tradition and your culture, the better human being you can be,” Vivian said she tells her students.
For participants, these principles culminate during “Festival,” a Shabbat sleepover that takes place in the days leading up to the annual concert. This year, the group will congregate at the Sleepy Hollow Hotel in Tarrytown, New York.
“Festival” is the first time chapters from around the world meet after having rehearsed the same songs as individual groups throughout the year. “It is a spiritual kind of experience singing music together: You’re breathing together, you’re thinking about the same text at the same time, and you’re making harmony,” Mati Lazar said. “All differences really subside.”
According to Landau, the weekend is especially rewarding for participants who hail from smaller Jewish communities. “This is the one opportunity for the kids to all get together,” she said. “Once you get together and you sing with 300 other kids, the sound is overwhelming. It’s the thing that they look forward to most, after working hard all year they finally get to put it all together and hear what the music can do.”
Over 400 students attended HaZamir’s “Festival” in 2019. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Though it’s meant to be a rehearsal boot camp for the teenagers, Festival also aims to nurture the cross-country and international friendships that are made on Zoom throughout the year. Activities include a Thursday-night jam session, hours of rehearsals during the day and a range of Shabbat services on Friday night and Saturday morning — egalitarian, Orthodox, Reform, and all-women services are among the options. For many participants, Vivian said, it’s the first time they can explore these different types of Jewish religious expression.
For Milo Shaklan, a senior in HaZamir’s Brooklyn chapter, whose ninth and tenth grade concerts were canceled due to COVID-19, going to Festival and the Gala concert for the first time last year was “a moment of understanding,” he said.
“I got to connect with all these other Jews,” Shaklan said. “I had no idea how big the community was. When I’m interacting with people in my synagogue community, I am interacting with people who more or less observe like me. At HaZamir, I’m interacting with Americans who are less observant than me and Americans who are more observant than me, and then Israelis who are both more and less observant than me.”
Landau concurs. “To be able to establish such a network is really incredible, and that’s why this weekend is so important,” she said.
For the Lazars, it’s alumni like Landau — who has maintained a long-term relationship with the choir — who are the biggest reward for the efforts. This year, 14 HaZamir alumni are now conductors of their own chapters, and all HaZamir alumni will be invited on stage to sing during the second half of the two-hour concert.
“It’ll be a very, very beautiful moment,” said Vivian.
The HaZamir 30th Anniversary Concert will take place on March 19 at 3:00 pm. Buy tickets here.
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Saudi, French, US Officials Push Hezbollah Disarmament Plan
Lebanese army members stand on a military vehicle during a Lebanese army media tour, to review the army’s operations in the southern Litani sector, in Alma Al-Shaab, near the border with Israel, southern Lebanon, Nov. 28, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Aziz Taher
French, Saudi Arabian, and American officials held talks with the head of the Lebanese army on Thursday in Paris aimed at finalizing a roadmap to enable a mechanism for the disarmament of the Hezbollah terrorist group, diplomats said.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024, ending more than a year of fighting between Israel and Hezbollah that severely weakened the Iran-backed terrorists.
Since then, the sides have traded accusations over violations with Israel questioning the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah. Israeli warplanes have increasingly targeted Hezbollah in southern Lebanon and even in the capital.
Speaking after the meeting, France’s foreign ministry spokesperson Pascal Confavreux said the talks had agreed to document seriously with evidence the Lebanese army’s efforts to disarm Hezbollah as well as strengthening the existing ceasefire mechanism.
CEASEFIRE AT RISK
With growing fear the ceasefire could unravel, the Paris meeting aimed to create more robust conditions to identify, support, and verify the disarmament process and dissuade Israel from escalation, four European and Lebanese diplomats and officials told Reuters.
With legislative elections due in Lebanon in 2026, there are fears political paralysis and party politics will further fuel instability and make President Joseph Aoun less likely to press disarmament, the diplomats and officials said.
“The situation is extremely precarious, full of contradictions and it won’t take much to light the powder keg,” said one senior official speaking on condition of anonymity.
“Aoun doesn’t want to make the disarming process too public because he fears it will antagonize and provoke tensions with the Shi’ite community in the south of the country.”
With the Lebanese army lacking capacity to disarm Hezbollah, the idea would be to reinforce the existing ceasefire mechanism with French, US, and possibly other military experts along with UN peacekeeping forces, the diplomats and officials said.
The parties agreed to hold a conference in February to reinforce the Lebanese army, Confavreux said.
ISRAELI STRIKES
As officials convened for the talks, multiple Israeli strikes hit towns in southern Lebanon and areas of the Bekaa Valley on Thursday, Lebanon’s state news agency NNA reported.
The Israeli military said it struck Hezbollah targets across several areas, including a military compound used for training, weapons storage, and artillery launches, saying the activity violated understandings between Israel and Lebanon and posed a threat to Israel. It also said it struck a Hezbollah militant in the area of Taybeh in southern Lebanon.
Commenting on the attacks, parliament speaker and Hezbollah-allied Amal Movement leader Nabih Berri said the strikes were an “Israeli message” to the Paris conference, NNA added.
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Israel, Germany Sign $3.1 Billion Contract Expansion for Arrow Air Defense System
Flags flutter in front of a radom of the “Arrow Weapon System for Germany” pictured in Annaburg, Germany, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
Israel and Germany signed a contract worth around $3.1 billion to expand the Arrow-3 air and missile defense system manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries, Israel‘s defense ministry said on Thursday.
Germany first purchased the Arrow system in 2023, as it sees Russia’s intermediate-range missiles as the primary threat to its population and critical infrastructure.
“Combined, the two agreements total approximately $6.7 billion, representing the largest defense export deal in Israel’s history,” the ministry said.
Germany in December became the first European nation to deploy the Arrow air defense system, built to intercept intermediate-range ballistic missiles such as Russia’s Oreshnik, as it seeks to counter what it views as a growing threat from Moscow.
The system, developed by IAI in cooperation with the US Missile Defense Agency, is used as the upper layer of Israel‘s missile defenses, together with the Iron Dome, which takes out short-range threats.
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Trump Administration Imposes Sanctions on Two More ICC Judges for ‘Politicized Actions Targeting Israel’
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio speaks during a US-Paraguay Status of Forces agreement signing ceremony at the State Department in Washington, DC, US, Dec. 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Kevin Mohatt
US President Donald Trump’s administration on Thursday imposed sanctions on two more judges from the International Criminal Court over their involvement in the court’s case against Israel, ratcheting up Washington’s pressure campaign against the war tribunal.
In November 2024, ICC judges issued arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and former Israeli defense chief Yoav Gallant for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity during the Gaza conflict.
Israel has adamantly denied war crimes in Gaza, where it has waged a military campaign to eliminate Hamas following the terrorist group’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.
The Trump administration has already imposed sanctions on nine ICC judges and prosecutors and threatened to designate the court in its entirety – a move that would be detrimental to its operations – if the ICC did not drop its charges against the Israeli leaders.
Washington’s other demands on the court are that it formally end an earlier probe of US troops over their actions in Afghanistan and change its founding statute to ensure that it would not pursue a prosecution of Trump and his top officials, a Trump administration official told Reuters last week.
“The ICC has continued to engage in politicized actions targeting Israel, which set a dangerous precedent for all nations. We will not tolerate ICC abuses of power that violate the sovereignty of the United States and Israel and wrongly subject US and Israeli persons to the ICC’s jurisdiction,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said in a statement.
Rubio said the United States was designating ICC judge Gocha Lordkipanidze from Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin from Mongolia and said they had “directly engaged in efforts by the ICC to investigate, arrest, detain, or prosecute Israeli nationals, without Israel‘s consent.”
Earlier this year the US administration sanctioned six other judges and the court’s prosecutor Karim Khan and his two deputies.
The measures mean the judges cannot travel to the United States or hold any assets there, but they also make it virtually impossible for them to hold credit cards, making everyday financial transactions and online purchases difficult.
‘FLAGRANT ATTACK’
Rubio referred to the magistrates’ involvement in voting to reject one of several Israeli legal challenges against the ICC probe into its conduct of the Gaza war earlier this week.
The judges named were part of a panel that refused to overturn a lower court decision that the prosecution’s investigation into alleged crimes under its jurisdiction could include events following Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, which included the murder of 1,200 people and kidnapping of 251 hostages during the Palestinian terrorists’ rampage across southern Israel.
The ICC said it deplored the new round of sanctions, which is the fourth round of measures this year.
“These sanctions are a flagrant attack against the independence of an impartial judicial institution,” it said in a statement, adding that the measures put the international legal order at risk.
The ICC was founded in 2002 under a treaty giving it jurisdiction to prosecute genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes that were either committed by a citizen of a member state or had taken place on a member state’s territory.
The ICC has no jurisdiction over Israel as it is not a signatory to the Rome Statute, which established the court. Other countries including the US have similarly not signed the ICC charter. However, the ICC has asserted jurisdiction by accepting “Palestine” as a signatory in 2015, despite no such state being recognized under international law.
Th Netherlands, which hosts the ICC in The Hague, also condemned the sanctions and said international courts should be able to work without interference.
“International courts and tribunals must be able to carry out their mandates unhindered,” Dutch Foreign Minister David van Weel said on social media platform X.
The ICC’s decision to seek the arrest of Netanyahu has received widespread backlash.
Khan initially made his surprise demand for arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant on the same day in May that he suddenly canceled a long-planned visit to both Gaza and Israel to collect evidence of alleged war crimes. The last-second cancellation reportedly infuriated US and British leaders, as the trip would have offered Israeli leaders a first opportunity to present their position and outline any action they were taking to respond to the allegations.
However, the ICC said there were reasonable grounds to believe Netanyahu and Gallant were criminally responsible for starvation in Gaza and the persecution of Palestinians — charges vehemently denied by Israel, which has provided significant humanitarian aid into the enclave during the war.
Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, despite Hamas’s widely acknowledged military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.
US and Israeli officials have issued blistering condemnations of the ICC move, decrying the court for drawing a moral equivalence between Israel’s democratically elected leaders and the heads of Hamas, which launched the war in Gaza with its Oct. 7 atrocities.