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March comes in with a roar of new Yiddish music
(New York Jewish Week) — As they say in the mameloshn (mother tongue), “Dos Yidish lid iz umetum.” In other words, “Yiddish song is in the air.”
This month a collection of new Yiddish songs will be performed for the first time in America at a Manhattan museum; two Brooklyn blues musicians will release their recordings of old Yiddish folk songs and a new web site preserving the work of a couple who played a pivotal role in promoting Yiddish song is set to debut.
If all that weren’t enough, the stars of the Yiddish stage will also appear at an event celebrating the woman who was dubbed “the Sherlock Holmes of Yiddish song.”
“Because we all have this weird relationship with Yiddish, every project that people do takes it to a different place,” Alex Weiser, director of public programs at YIVO, told the New York Jewish Week. “Interesting, weird things are currently happening with Yiddish song.”
Read on for ways to get your Yiddish on.
Sister act
As part of Carnegie Hall’s multi-venue celebration of women in music, on Sunday, March 5, the Paul Shapiro Quartet takes the stage at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Battery Park to perform “Di Shvester: The Sisters.” The sisters (by another mother, anyway) in this concert of Jewish and Yiddish music are Eleanor Reissa, the singer/director/actress who is fluent in Yiddish, and Cilla Owens, the superb jazz vocalist who teaches at Hunter College and can sing in Yiddish as well.
Reissa and Owens will perform some songs by the Barry Sisters, the Bronx-born trio of the mid-20th century who brought Yiddish songs into the mainstream. One of the songs they will perform is based on a poem by the Yiddish poet Aliza Greenblatt, aka Woody Guthrie’s mother-in-law. In a cross-genre segue, Reissa and Owens will follow “Zumer Bay Nakht Oyf Dekher” (“Summer At Night On The Roof”) with “Up On the Roof,” the Carole King/Gerry Goffin sung memorably by Laura Nyro.
Shapiro, whose albums for John Zorn’s Radical Jewish Culture series were critically acclaimed, has worked with Owens, who has spent most of her life in Crown Heights, since 1990. Shapiro first started collaborating with Reissa, who grew up in Brownsville, at Yiddish New York in 2017.
“To me they’re both Brooklyn royalty,” said Shapiro, who hangs his fedora in the Lower East Side’s Grand Street Co-ops.
“When I sing with Cilla, I feel like I’m home,” Reissa said
The two vocalists have appeared together several times in Shapiro’s Ribs and Brisket Revue, which began at the now-shuttered Cornelia Street Café.
Percussionist Ricky Gordon, right, and Jeremiah Lockwood, the front man for The Sway Machinery, form the duet Gordon Lockwood. (Courtesy)
A right to sing the blues
For the entire month of March a free five-song EP titled “Once Upon a Time the Fire Burned Brighter: Ballads from the Yiddish Gothic” is available for download. Created by the Brooklyn-based blues performers Gordon Lockwood, these are re-interpretations of Yiddish folk songs, three of them by Lifshe Schaecter Widman, a Yiddish folksinger who begot the Yiddish poet Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, who begot the Yiddish scholar and former newspaper editor Itzik Gottesman, now a senior lecturer in Yiddish language and culture at the University of Texas at Austin whose Yiddish Song of the Week blog is an important source for lovers of Yiddish song.
The EP will be accompanied by videos of the five songs, plus additional multimedia that will be viewable online. Gordon Lockwood may sound like a Canadian folk singer, but it is actually a duo comprised of percussionist Ricky Gordon, who performs with Wynton Marsalis and has collaborated with Spike Lee, and Jeremiah Lockwood, the front man for The Sway Machinery, a brass-heavy world music band. Lockwood, a card-carrying ethnomusicologist with a PhD from Stanford, recently produced an album of music that features several Hasidic cantors from Brooklyn. In April, Gordon Lockwood will perform their “Once Upon A Time” repertoire in New Haven and New York.
Yiddish royalty
On March 23, the life of Chana Mlotek — the late, great musicologist, folklorist and archivist, who curated the Yiddish music collection at the vaunted YIVO archives — will be celebrated at YIVO’s West 16th St. headquarters. Nine descendants of the Mlotek clan will participate, along with actors Reissa and Steven Skybell, who played Tevye in the Yiddish production of “Fiddler On The Roof.”
Singers will include Lorin Sklamberg of The Klezmatics and Sarah Gordon of the Brooklyn Yiddish rock band Yiddish Princess. Gordon is the daughter of the late Adrienne Cooper, often referred to as the “mother of the Yiddish revival.” The evening’s musical director will be Zalmen Mlotek, Chana and Yosl’s son and artistic director of the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
On March 20, the Workers Circle is expected to launch The Yosl and Chana Mlotek Collection of Yiddish Song, a website that turns the Mloteks’ three-volume “Pearls of Yiddish Song” anthology into a searchable multimedia resource. Consisting of more than 400 Yiddish songs, the web site will include content curated from YouTube and TikTok, according to an email from the publicist.
The Mlotek collection adds another important resource to a field that includes YIVO’s collection of 4,000-plus Yiddish songs, a project directed by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and featuring the field recordings of the late musicologist Ruth Rubin, and many in the Yiddish song scene are looking forward to it.
“We’ve been waiting for this for many, many years,” said Linda Gritz, a retired molecular biologist active in the monthly sing at the Workers Circle in Brookline, Massachusetts. The group has been meeting online during the pandemic and unable to use the couple dozen copies of each Mlotek book, so it has had to create PDFs of 30 songs for its monthly virtual gatherings.
“When it’s online, people could request any song from any book and we could put the URL in the chat and go to it,” said Gritz. “That’ll be an amazing resource.”
Songs for and about refugees
On March 26, “Pleytem Tsuzamen” (“Refugees Together”) will be performed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust. Two performances of Josh Waletzky’s Yiddish song cycle will mark the American debut of the work, which was first performed in 2019 at the Weimar Republic of Yiddishland gathering in Germany. Performers will come from Latvia, Germany, England and Canada, and Brooklyn violinists Jake Shulman-Ment and Deborah Strauss are part of the cast.
“It’s fitting that we’re doing it a couple of weeks before Pesach [Passover] because there’s a Pesach theme that goes through a lot of the songs,” said singer Daniel Kahn, who lives on a houseboat in Hamburg and plays accordion in the production. “It’s incredible how prescient and universal Josh’s song cycle has proven to be…. Those songs and their themes of displacement and upheaval resonate with the liberational traditions within Yiddishkayt [secular Yiddish culture] and Jewish practice.”
English and Ukrainian supertitles will make the two-hour concert, co-sponsored by National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, accessible to non-Yiddish speakers.
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The post March comes in with a roar of new Yiddish music appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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I’m a Student at UChicago — I See Antisemitism Thrive Among Young Chinese Students
Chinese Foreign Minister Wag Yi stands with Russian Deputy Foreign Minister Sergey Ryabkov and Iranian Deputy Foreign Minister Kazeem Gharibabadi before a meeting regarding the Iranian nuclear issue at Diaoyutai State Guest House on March 14, 2025 in Beijing, China. Photo: Pool via REUTERS
Recently, a popular AI meme has begun circulating in Chinese online discourse in the Chicago area. The image features a stereotypical Jewish-looking man with a beard, a long nose, and a Star of David necklace, holding the K visa and standing next to a model of China.
While many laughed at the surreal sarcasm, others took it seriously and warned, “Watch out! They will come in masses and take over China!”
The meme’s spread reveals how casual humor has disguised deeper prejudice and how misinformation about China’s K-visa policy is feeding new antisemitic narratives among young Chinese students.
The antisemitism of China may seem like a tree without roots, since the Chinese people do not have a relatively long history of engaging with large Jewish populations.
The fact that Jews as foreigners explains the emergence and manifestations of the “International Jewish Conspiracy Theory,” which positions Jews as symbols of capitalism who will bring foreign capitalist influence into China and degrade China to a miserable state.
Clearly the origins of this modern Chinese antisemitism are influenced by Western culture, as can be seen every time voices in Chinese discourse accuse Jews as a collective of controlling the banks. This, coupled with stereotypes about Jews being global capitalists that have survived within China’s rich tradition of Communism — and the Chinese people’s concern about foreign influence — has been the main vehicle for Chinese antisemitism.
This fusion of foreign conspiracy and local economic fear doesn’t just misinform — it risks normalizing hatred among a generation that should know better.
The current rumor making the rounds centers on China’s so-called “K-visa,” a new policy intended to attract highly skilled young foreign professionals and scholars with advanced STEM degrees or professional experience.
The program is open to any applicant who meets China’s professional criteria, regardless of religion or ethnicity. But the lack of clear, accessible explanations in Chinese-language media has left a vacuum that rumors eagerly fill. These rumors are particularly antisemitic, pointing directly at Jews for implementing the K visa.
Online, however, interpretations of this visa have been twisted into baseless conspiracy theories. The comment sections of various posts from WeChat and RedNotes are filled with outcries from Chinese students all around the world, claiming that the visa was “designed for Jews to penetrate, corrupt, and eventually control China” and that “Jews abroad are cheering over this victory,” evidence, they say, of a secret plan for mass immigration.
This opinion is fundamentally wrong. Not only is the conspiracy fundamentally irrational, but this kind of antisemitic scapegoating has been used to manipulate the public. There is a long history of Western and Middle Eastern leaders blaming their failures on the Jews instead of acting responsibly. If the K-Visa program does not strengthen the country as hoped, what benefit is there to waste time blaming the Jews instead of learning from the experience and improving the program?
Additionally, what exactly is the harm they imagine will occur if a small influx of Jewish scientists choose to bring their knowledge and energy to benefit the people of China? The last time China was introduced to Jewish innovation, we gained the drip irrigation system, an innovative method of agricultural science that has helped feed China’s 1.4 billion people.
Unfortunately, merely debunking these myths is not enough to combat antisemitism in mainstream Chinese culture.
What is needed is dialogue and more opportunities for fact-based education. Firstly, UChicago and the local Chinese Students and Scholars Association chapters should organize and support events that facilitate cross-cultural conversations and host more intellectually and culturally diverse speaker events where scholars, religious figures, and students can openly discuss intersections of Jewish and Chinese culture and history.
My hope in writing this piece is not to condemn the Chinese overseas population, but to help my peers understand that antisemitism is not unique to the West; it comes in all shapes and forms, and from many cultures.
Many who share or believe antisemitic narratives do so without realizing the harm they perpetuate. As a Chinese person myself, I used to have very stereotypical views of the Jewish people, but my curiosity to learn more about Jewish life and culture led me to attend Shabbat dinners where I experienced first hand what it’s like to face hostility and aggression for no other reason than expressing someone’s identity. Only through awareness and self-reflection can we all refrain from falling into the traps of hatred.
Angella Tang is a UChicago Biology student and a CAMERA fellow passionate about fostering cross-cultural and interfaith understanding.
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The Palestinian Authority Vowed to Liberate Jerusalem Long Before Hamas
PLO leader leader Yasser Arafat. Photo: World Economic Forum.
When Hamas named its October 7 massacre the Al-Aqsa Flood, it framed its atrocities as an Islamic holy mission to liberate Jerusalem from the Jews. The message was clear: rape and kill Jews for the sake of Al-Aqsa and Jerusalem.
What is less understood is that the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its ruling Fatah movement have been preaching that same message — long before Hamas.
In honor of the anniversary of Yasser Arafat’s death, Fatah’s Information and Culture Commission posted a famous Arafat slogan: “Don’t call out for me, rather call out for Palestine and Jerusalem: With spirit, with blood, we will redeem you, Palestine. Millions of Martyrs are marching to Jerusalem!”
Two days later, also marking the anniversary of Arafat’s death, the PA Ministry of Education published photos of children — with one holding a sign with the identical Arafat slogan.
For all the diplomatic illusions of a “moderate” Fatah that should replace “extremist” Hamas, the truth is simple: both teach the same strategy — Martyrdom to destroy Israel and liberate Jerusalem. The Al-Aqsa Flood is Hamas’ battlefield expression of the same fundamental ideology that the PA constantly feeds its children in its classrooms, streets, and cultural events.
The cult of Martyrdom and violence against Israel long predated Hamas and was spearheaded by Yasser Arafat, as memorialized at this PA school in honor of the anniversary of his death:
Text on sign on left: “They want me dead, exiled, or imprisoned, and I tell them: Martyr, Martyr, Martyr” [an infamous quote from Yasser Arafat]
Text on sign on right: “I am the youngest soldier in Palestine”
The culture of Martyrdom and terror-glorification is still proudly upheld by both the PA and Hamas today, with the message remaining the same: dying for Jerusalem and killing Jews is the highest calling.
As long as Palestinian leaders continue to sanctify this death cult, both the PA and Hamas will be planning the next October 7 “Al-Aqsa Flood.”
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is the Founder and Director of PMW, where a version of this article first appeared.
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In Denver, a Jewish day school happily copes with a surge in new students
(JTA) — This article was produced as part of JTA’s Teen Journalism Fellowship, a program that works with Jewish teens around the world to report on issues that affect their lives. Author Drew Kaplan is a student at Denver Jewish Day School.
Denver Jewish Day School’s principal never thought he would spend so much time looking at school furniture catalogs.
Jeremy Golubcow-Teglasi needed to turn a former workspace into a classroom for a middle school math class and occasional Hebrew classes. Between this and needing to increase the capacity in a few other rooms, he was in the market for new desks, chairs, and tables to serve the 37 new students who have joined DJDS over the past two years.
Enrollment in DJDS’ upper division, which is middle and high school, is 19% higher than it was two years ago.
“Space has suddenly become a real constraint,” said Golubcow-Teglasi, who leads the upper school. “When you put 70 more people in a building that normally houses 120, you have to get creative about space.” Currently, the upper division has 189 students, an all-time high.
He and others describe the growth as a reflection of the rise in antisemitism and increase in Jewish identity following the war in Israel, causing many families to seek a larger Jewish community for their children. As a result, enrollment in Jewish schools like DJDS has increased since Oct. 7, following a similar nationwide trend. Now Jewish schools across the country are having to suddenly adapt to surges in enrollment, causing schools like DJDS—where this reporter has been a student for the past 12 years—to hire more teachers, buy more furniture, and adapt their class offerings.
Across the country, more than half of surveyed U.S. schools have seen an increase in students or families considering enrollment since Oct. 7, according to Prizmah, a network of Jewish day schools and yeshivas.
Additionally, 60% of the 72 schools it surveyed last school year, “identified new students who enrolled in Jewish day schools this school year as a result of the change in climate post Oct. 7,” according to a “Trends Update” released in February.
Donna Klein High School in Palm Beach County, Florida, saw an increase of 177 students the year following Oct. 7. Of those students, 35 families said they made the switch due to antisemitism or anti-Zionism.
Similar to Donna Klein, 80% of families joined DJDS since the 2023-24 school year, citing Jewish Identity & Environment as influencing their decision to transfer. Additionally 67% cited school-wide community as a reason, 61% cited Physical Safety, and 53% cited social-emotional safety. These same reasons, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, also contributed to the higher retention rates seen at DJDS.
Few families cited antisemitism explicitly as a factor for transferring to DJDS, according to Golubcow-Teglasi, who said it was sometimes mentioned as a factor, but he was never entirely sold that Oct. 7 alone is driving DJDS’s enrollment growth. “But I think it’s a reasonable hypothesis.”
Enrollment has increased in two distinct “surges,” Golubcow-Teglasi said. The first was after the Covid-19 pandemic, and the subsequent school year, when families were drawn to a small, largely in-person school. But that accelerated pattern of enrollment flattened out until the second “surge” hit following the Oct. 7 attacks.
The school year after the Oct. 7 attacks in Israel, 21 new students joined the Upper Division. Annabelle Dennis and Hailey Lutz were among the new transfers.
Dennis, a junior, transferred from a private Catholic school. “I really wanted a smaller school and community,” she said, “the kids were questionable — really just antisemitic.”
Dennis struggled as many students came up to her and made hateful comments. “People have asked me why I don’t have horns, and people have told me I killed their Lord and Savior, and they can never forgive me,” she said.
The school’s administration “could have done a better job,” Dennis said. She said that regarding most cases of antisemitism, the administration looked the other way, “sometimes it was handled, but most of the time, they did not handle anything.”
Lutz, a senior at DJDS, transferred the school year after Oct. 7 because she was tired of her schoolmates constantly bringing up the situation in Israel and Gaza. As one of the only Jews at her school, she looked to transfer to a school where she could be herself.
Students at her school “had a lot of questions on what was going on, especially with all the misinformation being spread on social media,” she said. “People weren’t necessarily antisemitic or anti-Jewish, but they were asking questions. She said she felt as if classmates were trying to get her to say that Israel was committing a genocide in Gaza or agree with other assertions that Lutz described as “propaganda or misinformation.”
Holden Demain spent his first semester of 11th grade away from DJDS, the school he’s attended since Kindergarten, attending school in Washington, D.C. as part of the U.S. Senate Page Program.
After returning to DJDS in the middle of the 2024-2025 school year, Demain noticed the changes at the school.
“The hallways are damn crowded, which is great,” Demain said. “There is so much more opportunity to create different kinds of clubs.”
Demain leads one such club, Zemirot, where students sing traditional Jewish songs. This year at DJDS, there is also a new baking club, a Hacky Sack club, and a financial literacy club.
Similar to Golubcow-Teglasi, Demain does not fully attribute the surge in enrollment to Oct. 7; he also credits the population growth in Denver and students switching from other Jewish schools in the area.
“I think it’s been really good. There are a bunch of new opportunities, like you can make new friends that you never would have met before,” said Kaitlin Schatz, a junior entering her fifth year at DJDS. Schatz explains how it has been fun to see new students with different backgrounds.
But at the same time, more students being in the building means that there are space constraints. “We do not have enough gym space,” Golubcow-Teglasi said, to allow both high schoolers and middle schoolers to use the gym during lunch. There has been so much demand for the Advanced Placement United States History class this year that it is being offered in two different periods, whereas before it ran every other year. Last year, AP European History was also offered in two different periods for the first time.
Jerry Rotenberg, an upper-division Judaics teacher and student council advisor, said that teacher workload has definitely increased. “There’s more work to do — more tests and assignments to grade, and preparations take longer,” Rotenberg noted that it isn’t necessarily an added stress, just more on his plate.
Meanwhile, during particularly busy periods, some classes meet in the hallways.
“It’s probably the worst place to have a class,” said Hannah Gruenwald, a senior who is taking her yearbook editor class in the DJDS lobby. It makes sense that the two-student class would be put in this situation, Gruenwald says, “but it isn’t conducive to learning. Having a table would be nice.”
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