“When I do feel that I’m right, I’m not much bothered by criticism,” she added. “Who has ever stood up against injustice without being criticized? If that’s all I have to endure, then it’s very little.”
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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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The post How HaZamir youth choir serves as ‘an on-ramp to Jewish life’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Sally Rooney to Publish Hebrew Translation of Latest Book With Pro-BDS Israeli Publisher
Author Sally Rooney in an interview with “PBS NewsHour.” Photo: Screenshot.
Award-winning Irish author Sally Rooney will publish a Hebrew translation of her latest novel, Intermezzo, through an independent Israeli publishing house that supports the boycott, divestment, and sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel, it was announced on Tuesday.
According to its website, November Books aims to “promote the full realization of human rights … and in particular for Palestinians living under all forms of Israeli oppression including the military occupation.” The Israeli publishing house said it is also “committed to the idea, in line with Palestinian and democratic voices in Israel, that Israel should not be a Jewish state but rather a state of all its citizens and recognize the right of return as it was accepted by the UN. We strongly oppose any form of inequality and apartheid.”
November Books will publish the Hebrew translation of Intermezzo in collaboration with +972 Magazine and Local Call, two independent Israeli news outlets. Translated by Debbie Eylon and edited by Asaf Schurr, it will be published in June “in a way that honors the principles of the boycott and stands in solidarity with the Palestinian demand for freedom, equality, and justice,” +972 Magazine executive director Haggai Matar wrote on Tuesday in an op-ed announcing the news. The novel, published in 2024, focuses on two brothers following the death of their father, and it explores themes of grief, love, and family.
In 2021, Rooney announced she would only allow her third book, Beautiful World, Where Are You, to be translated to Hebrew through a publishing house that complies with the BDS movement’s “institutional boycott guidelines” against Israel. The 35-year-old author said she does not want to partner with an Israeli company “that does not publicly distance itself from apartheid and support the UN-stipulated rights of the Palestinian people.”
At the time, Rooney had already published Hebrew translations of two of her novels — 2017’s Conversations With Friends and 2018’s Normal People – with the Israeli publishing house Modan, but refused to let them translate Beautiful World, Where Are You.
BDS seeks to isolate Israel from the international community as a step toward its eventual elimination. Leaders of the movement have repeatedly stated their goal is to destroy the world’s only Jewish state.
Rooney spoke this week to The Guardian and attempted to explain her position.
“For me, the act of translation is in itself a beautiful ideal,” she said. “Though my refusal to work with complicit Israeli publishing houses made the contractual side of things more complex, I was, of course, never boycotting the Hebrew language or any language.”
Last year, Rooney said she would give proceeds from her books and BBC adaptations of them to support Palestine Action, an anti-Israel group designated as a terrorist organization in the United Kingdom.
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For Israel, the Accusation Itself Becomes Proof
People attend the annual al-Quds Day (Jerusalem Day) rally in London, Britain, March 23, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jaimi Joy
A dangerous shift happens when people stop feeling responsible for verifying what they believe. The accusation itself becomes enough. Once institutions repeat something with enough confidence, many decent people hand over their judgment completely. They assume somebody else has already checked the facts.
That is where real danger begins.
A case is being built against Israel in international courts, and much of the public discussion around it already feels emotionally settled long before most people have examined a single document, testimony, or legal standard for themselves.
The International Court of Justice has no meaningful conflict-of-interest mechanism comparable to what people would expect in many domestic legal systems. UN reports and secondary claims enter public discourse carrying the weight of institutional authority, even when the underlying sources were never cross-examined or independently verified in a courtroom setting.
At a certain point, the accusation itself becomes proof.
That pattern extends far beyond a courtroom. Perception gets taken over before a person realizes his or her thinking has been outsourced. Repetition creates familiarity. Familiarity creates emotional certainty. Eventually people stop asking where the information came from in the first place.
Jewish history carries enough experience with this pattern to recognize it early. A claim repeated often enough starts feeling like an established truth even before evidence exists to support it.
Once institutions absorb the accusation, the public no longer experiences skepticism as responsibility. Skepticism starts feeling like disobedience.
Artificial intelligence is about to accelerate this problem even further. AI systems absorb dominant narratives faster than human beings can examine them critically. Once a version of events becomes widely indexed, cited, repeated, and emotionally reinforced, it enters the system as background truth. The next generation encounters conclusions first and context later.
That matters because most people do not independently investigate history, legal claims, or war. They inherit understanding socially. Search engines shape it. Institutions shape it. Algorithms shape it. Repetition shapes it.
The responsibility for your own safety begins before the threat fully arrives. Physical self-defense taught me that years ago. Cognitive self-defense follows the same principle. A society that loses the ability to question emotionally satisfying accusations becomes vulnerable to manipulation at a scale far larger than any courtroom.
People once understood that serious accusations required serious proof. Today, institutional confidence often replaces evidence in the public mind. That shift should concern anyone who still believes good intentions alone are enough to protect people from participating in injustice.
Tsahi Shemesh is an Israeli-American IDF veteran and the founder of Krav Maga Experts in NYC. A father and educator, he writes about Jewish identity, resilience, moral courage, and the ethics of strength in a time of rising antisemitism.
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Fatah Turned 388 Terrorists Into Its Leaders at Its 8th General Conference
A meeting of the Fatah Revolutionary Council at the Bedouin village of Khan al-Ahmar in the West Bank, July 12, 2018. Photo: Reuters / Mohamad Torokman.
The Eighth Fatah Conference continued to glorify past Palestinian terrorist murderers while building the next generation of terrorist leadership.
PA and Fatah leader Mahmoud Abbas decided that all prisoners who were incarcerated for more than 20 years — meaning those who were guilty of murder or attempted murder — automatically would become part of the Palestinian leadership and thus were able to participate and vote at the conference, which took place this past weekend.
The consequence of this is that a total of 388 Palestinians, who as prisoners were presented as role models, just transitioned into becoming PA leaders.
A senior Fatah youth leader described the importance: “We have a great opportunity as Fatah youth … to learn from them.”
Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has shown repeatedly exactly how the PA and Fatah, as policy, portray murderers of Jews as role models for all Palestinians, and especially youth:
Official PA TV newsreader: “The prisoners [i.e., terrorists] will also have prominent representation in the [Eighth Fatah] Conference, there will be participation of more than 388 prisoners who have served more than 20 years in the occupation’s [i.e., Israeli] prisons…”
Fatah Shabiba Youth Movement Secretariat member Tasami Ramadan: “The participation of the [released] prisoners this time in this conference… is a very qualitative addition... seeing this qualitative and special addition that our released prisoners will contribute, as they are not just released prisoners and we cannot summarize them only as such.
They are also [figures] of national stature and national pillars who have outlined the characteristics of Fatah’s path, and they are also spiritual and organizational pillars. We have a great opportunity as Fatah youth … to learn from them and to be their partners in building Fatah’s political decision.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV News, May 8, 2026]
A Fatah spokesman further legitimized the participation of released terrorists in Fatah’s leadership conference as they “precede everything” and are held “in highest regard:”
Fatah Spokesman and Eighth Fatah Conference preparatory committee member Iyad Abu Zneit: “The composition of the [Eighth Fatah] Conference is diverse and rich … Of course, the released prisoners [are also represented], as they precede everything.
I will emphasize that the leadership insisted on there being broad representation for the [released] prisoners at this conference… The group of prisoners that these ones represent from among those in the Fatah Movement also constitutes a significant number [of members], a large number, who have their own role, and we hold them in the highest regard. They have the right to be partners in Fatah, in the [Fatah] Revolutionary Council, in the leadership of the [Fatah] Central Committee, and in any place they can reach.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Topic of the Day, May 6, 2026]
PMW exposed last week that among the Fatah members at the Eighth General Conference and those running for Fatah leadership positions are released prisoners responsible for the murder of 75 people while some of the most venerated figures at the conference included arch-terrorist murderers Abu Iyad, who planned the Munich Olympics massacre, and Abu Jihad, who was responsible for the murder of 125 people.
The author is the Founder and Director of Palestinian Media Watch, where a version of this article first appeared.