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Low Cut Connie’s Adam Weiner chronicles his Jewish evolution on new single ‘King of the Jews’
(JTA) — Adam Weiner, leader of the rock band Low Cut Connie, says he can find inspiration in just about anything.
“I could be sitting at a salad bar at a mall, and that gives me everything I need to know,” he said on a video call from a house in New Mexico, where he was taking a short break from his summer touring schedule.
But in recent years, Weiner has been pulling from what he calls his “Jewy-ness” in his songwriting. On Tuesday, the process of exploring that side of his identity hits a peak, as he releases a single titled “King of the Jews,” which will feature on the band’s next album, “Art Dealers,” out Sept. 8.
The soulful piano ballad doesn’t break distinctly new ground for Low Cut Connie, which for over a decade has churned out several albums of bluesy, bar-soaked rock and roll with just a slight contemporary garnish. Weiner’s retro style has earned him fans from Elton John to Barack Obama and a devoted following who closely follow his boisterous live act.
But lyrically, the song gathers up several bits and pieces of the Jewish theme that has been more hidden in his previous work: the feeling of being an outsider, of feeling uncool, of being at the end of a “millennia-long anxiety about what’s coming.” (It also contains what seems to be his favorite Yiddish word, schmuck, which he has used several times in other songs.)
He said in the past he has downplayed those feelings and his Jewish identity, especially on the road. These days, he often wears a Star of David necklace; he recalled tucking it under his shirt while playing to a bar crowd in rural Illinois, where he could see swastika tattoos on some people in the crowd.
“When you’re a touring artist like me, and you play in Kansas and Iowa and overseas, I’ve been in so many situations for the last 15-plus years, where I, consciously or unconsciously, obscured talking about being a Jew,” Weiner said. “I’ve run into very ropey situations out there.”
The music video for “King of the Jews,” which is premiering a day early on the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, shows Weiner slowly wrap tefillin around his arm (something he does not do regularly as a mainly secular Jew). Some of the non-Jews who watched the video in its early stages thought the ritual phylacteries were part of an S&M object.
“They thought it was some sort of like Robert Mapplethorpe kind of kinky thing,” he said, referring to the photographer known for his erotic black and white photographs from the 1960s and 1970s.
The song and video position Weiner as one of the most outwardly Jewish personalities in contemporary rock. Ezra Koenig, the leader of Vampire Weekend, has hinted at his Jewish identity in lyrics and a music video that includes a staged Passover seder. The sisters of Haim often make Jewish references on their social media accounts (and talk about how they earned matzah ball soup as payment for their first gig). Pop producer Jack Antonoff made headlines for wearing a Star of David necklace. And Sabrina Teitelbaum, aka up-and-coming rocker Blondshell, is a recent example of a new voice mining her secular Jewish identity in her music.
Weiner said he has been putting his Jewish identity — and neuroses, the fear that something bad is coming — at the heart of his project for a while now, even as it might not always have been detectable to all his listeners.
“In this culture and in the politics, you think you’re on safe ground, and you might not be. And delivering that message with a lot of humor and levity is very Jewish,” he said.
In an interview, Weiner, 43, argued that being Jewish was more “cool” in the 1970s, and explained how being a Jew in a completely different time has affected him.
“There were so many Jewish entertainers and musicians who were very Jewy, whether it was Barbra Streisand or Neil Diamond or Lou Reed or Bob Dylan. Then in acting you had like Dustin Hoffman and Elliott Gould,” he said. “There was a real Jewish sensibility in that era.”
He said he thought the times had changed.
“It’s not particularly cool to be Jewish at this time,” he said. “The models of beauty and popularity … I realized that I kind of had internalized certain things about how I should look, talk and present myself that were very unflattering for myself. And luckily, over the years, my Jewy-ness asserted itself so much that I shed a lot of those things.”
Adam Weiner wraps tefillin on tour. (Jacob Blickenstaff)
Weiner grew up in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, in what he called a “traditional Conservative” household — on the dial between Conservative and Orthodox.
“It was not fun,” he said. “I had friends who went to Reform synagogues with a hippie vibe, with acoustic guitars and secular popular songs and stuff. And that wasn’t how I grew up, mine was very strict, and very, very stone-faced.”
Weiner felt alienated from religion in his 20s, throughout which he worked several jobs — including at a mall as a perfume spritzer, a word he pronounces in its Yiddish version, as shpritzer — before his music career took off in his 30s. He steadily gained a following, and in 2020 earned his biggest wave of press coverage for his “Tough Cookies” series of quarantine shows he live-streamed from his apartment with his Low Cut Connie guitarist. He started many of those streams with a greeting of “Mazel tov, motherf—ers,” and occasionally talked about Yiddish words — in his view, he got “outrageously Jewy.”
“People really responded to it,” he said. “And it was a nice moment for me because I realized that I had been obscuring a lot of that, and trying to be cool in a way. And I was like, I am extremely Jewy. Just gotta embrace it. And that is cool.”
Low Cut Connie, shown here at the SXSW festival in Austin, March 18, 2023, has been known to play hundreds of shows per year. (Salihah Saadiq Barnett/Rolling Stone via Getty Images)
He did something else after the start of the pandemic that he had never wanted to do before: perform at his hometown Jewish community center. He had long been the pride of the Cherry Hill Jewish community, and the JCC had asked him to perform multiple times over the previous decade. He had always thought his rowdy, sometimes profanity-laced show wasn’t a good fit.
But in 2021, he agreed and performed at a fall festival there.
In the end, he described it as a career highlight — mostly because he could lean into a sense of humor he felt doesn’t translate everywhere. The following night’s headliner, after Low Cut Connie’s night, was going to be Jake Tapper, in discussion with an interviewer.
“Before the show, they were like ‘We’ll take each of you to your dressing room,’ and they took me into the men’s locker room at the JCC, literally with like 85-year-old men with sweaty balls, putting talcum powder on themselves,” he said. “And they’re like, ‘We know you’re gluten-free. So we got you a gluten-free meal.’ They brought me a plate with five microwaved chicken nuggets on it and a couple ketchup packets.
“So I come out on stage, and I was like ‘Jake Tapper is here tomorrow night — I want to know if Jake Tapper is going to be in the locker room with all the sweaty balls. And are you going to give him five gluten-free chicken nuggets?’ …It really worked well.”
His Jewish-tinged humor hasn’t worked everywhere. He recalled a performance at Jack White’s hip Nashville record label and small venue, Third Man Records, that bombed. When he made a Jewish joke and one person laughed, Weiner pointed at the man and yelled “Jew!” A local paper called the routine antisemitic the following day.
Weiner is excited for what is next for the band and his unabashed in leaning into his Jewish side on stage. He pointed out that he sometimes wears a jacket covered in Stars of David.
“I realized that even though I don’t have religious faith, even though I don’t keep kosher, and I don’t pray, I’m one of the most Jewish people that I know,” he said.
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The post Low Cut Connie’s Adam Weiner chronicles his Jewish evolution on new single ‘King of the Jews’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Police Officers Injured as Violent Clashes Erupt at Anti-Israel Nakba Day Rally in Berlin
A Pro-Palestinian demonstrator speaks to a police officer during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba,” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
Anti-Israel demonstrators clashed violently with Berlin police officers during a march on Thursday, resulting in injuries and heightened tensions throughout the German capital city.
More than 600 police officers were dispatched to contain the “Nakba Day” protest in Berlin’s central Kreuzberg district, where over 50 arrests were made. The demonstrators were recognizing the 77th anniversary of the “nakba,” the Arabic term for “catastrophe” used by Palestinians and anti-Israel activists to refer to the establishment of the modern state of Israel in 1948.
According to local law enforcement, approximately 1,100 people took part in the pro-Hamas rally, which also protested against Israel’s military campaign against the Palestinian terrorist group in the Gaza Strip.
Demonstrators initially intended to march from Südstern Square in the southern part of the capital to the adjacent Neukölln district, but local authorities only allowed the protest to remain stationary.
Even though a local court had ruled that the anti-Israel protest couldn’t move through the city, demonstrators repeatedly attempted to march through the neighborhood. When police intervened to stop them, they were met with insults and violent attacks from the crowd.
Police officers stand guard in front of Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Axel Schmidt
During the protest, one of the organizers addressed the crowd, declaring, “The nakba is a continuing campaign of ethnic cleansing that has never stopped.”
The demonstration was also marked by antisemitic rhetoric and inflammatory chants, including accusations that the Israeli government and military are “child murderers, women murderers, baby murderers,” as well as the use of the banned slogan, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The slogan is popular among anti-Israel activists and has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.
When police intervened to stop the inflammatory rhetoric, they were met with significant violence from the crowd, who reportedly threw bottles, stones, and other objects, and sprayed officers with red paint.
After the incidents, police reported that one officer was pulled into the crowd, forced to the ground, and trampled until he lost consciousness. The 36-year-old officer sustained severe upper body injuries, including a broken arm, and remains hospitalized.
“The attack on a police officer at the demonstration in Kreuzberg is nothing but a cowardly, brutal act of violence,” Berlin Mayor Kai Wegner said in a statement. “Attacks against officers are attacks on law and order and therefore against all of us.”
“Those who misuse the right to demonstrate to spread hate, antisemitic incitement, or violence will face the full force of the law,” the German leader added.
Pro-Palestinian demonstrators during a protest against Israel to mark the 77th anniversary of the “Nakba” or catastrophe, in Berlin, Germany, May 15, 2025. Photo: Screenshot
Local authorities reported that 11 officers and an unspecified number of protesters were injured during the incidents, with the injured demonstrators receiving treatment from the Berlin fire department.
The German-Israeli Society (DIG) condemned the violence and hateful rhetoric, urging authorities to reconsider granting permission for such demonstrations.
“Often, these events are not demonstrations for the rights and the legitimate concerns of Palestinians but merely express outright hatred of Israel,” the group said in a statement.
Germany has experienced a sharp spike in antisemitism amid the war in Gaza. In just the first six months of 2024 alone, the number of antisemitic incidents in Berlin surpassed the total for all of the prior year and reached the highest annual count on record, according to Germany’s Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS).
The figures compiled by RIAS were the highest count for a single year since the federally-funded body began monitoring antisemitic incidents in 2015, showing the German capital averaged nearly eight anti-Jewish outrages a day from January to June last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), police registered 5,154 antisemitic incidents in Germany in 2023, a 95 percent increase compared to the previous year.
The post Police Officers Injured as Violent Clashes Erupt at Anti-Israel Nakba Day Rally in Berlin first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Trump Signals Support for Future Iran Trade Deal if Regime Dismantles Nuclear Program
US President Donald speaking in the Roosevelt Room at the White House in Washington, DC on March 3, 2025. Photo: Leah Millis via Reuters Connect
US President Donald Trump on Thursday seemed to signal openness to striking a trade deal with Iran if the Islamist theocracy agrees to dismantle its entire nuclear program.
“Iran wants to trade with us. Okay? If you can believe that. And I’m okay with it. I’m using trade to settle scores and to make peace,” Trump said while speaking to Fox News anchor Bret Baier. “But I’ve told Iran, ‘We make a deal, you’re gonna be really happy.”
However, Trump underscored the urgency in finalizing a nuclear deal with Iran, saying there’s “not plenty of time” to secure an agreement which would dismantle Tehran’s nuclear capabilities.
“There’s not plenty of time. You feel urgency? Well, they’re not gonna have a nuclear weapon. And eventually, they’ll have a nuclear weapon, and then the discussion becomes a much different one,” Trump said.
The US and other Western countries say Iran’s nuclear program is ultimately meant to build nuclear weapons — a claim denied by Tehran, which asserts the program is only geared for peaceful nuclear energy.
Trump on Friday said Iran had a US proposal about its nuclear program and knows it needs to move quickly to resolve the dispute.
“They have a proposal. More importantly, they know they have to move quickly or something bad — something bad’s going to happen,” Trump told reporters aboard Air Force One, according to an audio recording of the remarks.
However, Tehran denied receiving a US proposal yet. According to some reports, Oman, which has been mediating US-Iran nuclear talks in recent weeks, has the proposal and will soon give to the Iranians.
US lawmakers and some Trump administration officials have repeatedly stressed the importance of dismantling Iran’s nuclear program, arguing that Tehran could use a nuclear bomb to permanently entrench its regime and potentially launch a strike at Israel. Some experts also fear Iran could eventually use its expanding ballistic missile program to launch a nuclear warhead at the US.
However, the administration has sent conflicting messages regarding its ongoing nuclear talks with Iran, oscillating between demands for “complete dismantlement” of Tehran’s nuclear program and signaling support for allowing a limited degree of uranium enrichment for “civilian purposes.” Many Republicans and hawkish foreign policy analysts have lamented what they described as similarities between the framework of the Trump administration’s negotiations with Iran and the controversial Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), a 2015 deal negotiated by the former Obama administration which placed temporary restrictions on Iran’s nuclear program in exchange for the lifting of major international sanctions. Trump withdrew the US from the deal during his first term, arguing its terms were bad for American national security.
Trump indicated last Wednesday during a radio interview that he is seeking to “blow up” Iran’s nuclear centrifuges “nicely” through an agreement with Tehran but is also prepared to do so “viciously” in an attack if necessary. That same day, however, when asked by a reporter in the White House whether his administration would allow Iran to maintain an enrichment program as long as it doesn’t enrich uranium to weapons-grade levels, Trump said his team had not decided.
Furthermore, US Special Envoy to the Middle East Steve Witkoff drew backlash last month when, during a Fox News interview, he suggested that Iran would be allowed to pursue a nuclear program for so-called civilian purposes, saying that Iran “does not need to enrich past 3.67 percent.” The next day, Witkoff backtracked on these remarks, writing on X/Twitter that Tehran must “stop and eliminate its nuclear enrichment and weaponization program.”
Iran has claimed that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes rather than building weapons. However, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN’s nuclear watchdog, reported last year that Iran had greatly accelerated uranium enrichment to close to weapons grade at its Fordow site dug into a mountain.
The UK, France, and Germany said in a statement at the time that there is no “credible civilian justification” for Iran’s recent nuclear activity, arguing it “gives Iran the capability to rapidly produce sufficient fissile material for multiple nuclear weapons.”
While speaking to Qatari Emir Sheikh Tamim al-Thani on Wednesday, Trump reportedly said that he would like to avoid war with Iran, “because things like that get started and they get out of control. I’ve seen it over and over again … we’re not going to let that happen.”
Trump has threatened Iran with military action and more sanctions if the regime does not agree to a nuclear deal with Washington.
The post Trump Signals Support for Future Iran Trade Deal if Regime Dismantles Nuclear Program first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Harvard, Jewish Activist ‘Shabbos’ Kestenbaum Settle Antisemitism Lawsuit
Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum makes remarks during the fourth annual Countering Antisemitism Summit at the Four Seasons, Feb. 26, 2025. Photo: USA Today Network via Reuters Connect.
Harvard University and Alexander “Shabbos” Kestenbaum have settled a lawsuit in which the former student turned widely known pro-Israel activist accused the institution of violating the US Civil Rights Act of 1964 by permitting antisemitic discrimination and harassment.
The confidential agreement ends what Kestenbaum, an Orthodox Jews, had promised would be a protracted, scorched-earth legal battle revealing alleged malfeasance at the highest levels of Harvard’s administration. So determined was Kestenbaum to discomfit the storied institution and force it to enact long overdue reforms that he declined to participate in an earlier settlement it reached last year with a group of Jewish plaintiffs, of which he was a member, who sued the university in 2024.
Charging ahead, Kestenbaum vowed never to settle and proclaimed that the discovery phase of the case would be so damning to Harvard’s defense that no judge or jury would render a verdict in its favor. Harvard turned that logic against him, requesting a trove of documents containing his communications with advocacy groups, politicians, and US President Donald Trump’s 2024 campaign staff during a period of time which saw Kestenbaum’s star rise to meteoric heights as he became a national poster-child for pro-Israel activism.
Harvard argued that the materials are “relevant to his allegations that he experienced harassment and discrimination to which Harvard was deliberately indifferent in violation of Title VI.” Additionally, it sought information related to other groups which have raised awareness of the antisemitism crisis since Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, demanding to know, the Harvard Crimson reported, “the ownership, funding, financial backing, management, and structure” of the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, Students Against Antisemitism (SAA), and Jewish Americans for Fairness in Education (JAFE).
Without the materials, Harvard claimed, it would be unable to depose witnesses.
According to the Crimson, the university and Kestenbaum failed to agree on a timeframe for producing the requested documents, prompting it to file in May a motion that would have extracted them via court order. Meanwhile, two anonymous plaintiffs who also declined to be a party to 2024’s settlement came forward to join Kestenbaum’s complaint, which necessitated its being amended at the approval of the judge presiding over the case, Richard Stearns. In filing the motion to modify the suit, the Crimson reported, Kestenbaum’s attorneys asked Stearns to “extend the discovery deadline by at least six months” in the event that he “rejects the motion.”
On April 2, Stearns — who was appointed to the bench in 1993 by former US President Bill Clinton (D) and served as a political operative for and special assistant to Israel critic and former Democratic presidential nominee George McGovern — spurned the amended complaint and granted Harvard its discovery motion, which Kestenbaum’s attorneys had opposed in part by arguing that Harvard too had withheld key documents. Kestenbaum was given five days to submit the contents of correspondence.
On Wednesday, both parties lauded the settlement — which, according to the Crimson, included dismissing Kestenbaum’s case with prejudice — as a step toward eradicating antisemitism at Harvard University, an issue that has cost it billions of dollars in federal funding and undermined its reputation for being a beacon of enlightenment and the standard against which all other higher education institutions are judged.
“Harvard and Mr. Kestenbaum acknowledge each other’s steadfast and important efforts to combat antisemitism at Harvard and elsewhere,” Harvard University spokesman Jason Newton said in a statement.
In a lengthy statement of his own, Kestenbaum expressed gratitude for having helped “lead the student effort combating antisemitism” while accusing Harvard of resorting to duplicitous and intrusive tactics to fend off his allegations.
“Harvard opposed the anonymity of two of its current Jewish students who sought to vindicate their legal rights, and the Harvard Crimson outed them, even before the court could rule on their motion for anonymity. Harvard also issued a 999-page subpoena against Aish Hatorah, my Yeshiva in Israel that has been deeply critical of the university,” he said. “Remarkably, while Harvard sought personal and non-relevant documents between me and my friends, family, and others in the Jewish community, they simultaneously refused to produce virtually any relevant, internal communication that we had asked for during discovery.”
He continued, “I am comforted knowing that as we have now resoled our lawsuit, the Trump administration will carry the baton forward.”
Harvard’s legal troubles continue.
As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the university sued the Trump administration in April to request an injunction that would halt the government’s impounding of $2.26 billion of its federal grants and contracts and an additional $450 billion that was confiscated earlier this week.
In the complaint, shared by interim university president Alan Garber, Harvard says the Trump administration bypassed key procedural steps it must, by law, take before sequestering any federal funds. It also charges that the Trump administration does not aim, as it has publicly pledged, to combat campus antisemitism at Harvard but to impose “viewpoint-based conditions on Harvard’s funding.”
The administration has proposed that Harvard reform in ways that conservatives have long argued will make higher education more meritocratic and less welcoming to anti-Zionists and far-left extremists. Its “demands,” contained in a letter the administration sent to Garber — who subsequently released it to the public — called for “viewpoint diversity in hiring and admissions,” the “discontinuation of [diversity, equity, and inclusion, or DEI, initiatives],” and “reducing forms of governance bloat.” They also implore Harvard to begin “reforming programs with egregious records of antisemitism” and to recalibrate its approach to “student discipline.”
Harvard rejects the Trump administration’s coupling of campus antisemitism with longstanding grievances regarding elite higher education’s alleged “wokeness,” elitism, and overwhelming bias against conservative ideas. Republican lawmakers, for their part, have maintained that it is futile to address campus antisemitism while ignoring the context in which it emerged.
On April 28, a Massachusetts district court judge, appointed to the bench by former US President Barack Obama, granted Harvard its request for the speedy processing of its case and a summary judgement in lieu of a trial, scheduling a hearing for July 21.
The following day, Harvard released its long anticipated report on campus antisemitism and along with it an apology from Garber which acknowledged that school officials failed in key ways to address the hatred to which Jewish students were subjected following the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre
The over 300-page document provided a complete account of antisemitic incidents which transpired on Harvard’s campus in recent years — from the Harvard Palestine Solidarity Committee’s (PSC) endorsement of the Oct. 7 terrorist atrocities to an anti-Zionist faculty group’s sharing an antisemitic cartoon which depicted Jews as murderers of people of color — and said that one source of the problem is the institution’s past refusal to afford Jews the same protections against discrimination enjoyed by other minority groups. It also issued recommendations for improving Jewish life on campus going forward.
“I am sorry for the moments when we failed to meet the high expectations we rightfully set for our community. The grave, extensive impact of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas assault on Israel and its aftermath had serious repercussions on campus,” Garber said in a statement accompanying the report. “Harvard cannot — and will not — abide bigotry. We will continue to provide for the safety and security of all members of our community and safeguard their freedom from harassment. We will redouble our efforts to ensure that the university is a place where ideas are welcomed, entertained, and contested in the spirt of seeking truth; where argument proceeds without sacrificing dignity; and where mutual respect is the norm.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Harvard, Jewish Activist ‘Shabbos’ Kestenbaum Settle Antisemitism Lawsuit first appeared on Algemeiner.com.