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Performing hasidic music, these women are transcending gender and the Orthodox-liberal divide
(JTA) — As a child growing up in the Chabad hasidic community of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, Chana Raskin was immersed in a male soundscape. Her father brought her with him to synagogue on Shabbat and holidays, where men would sing the melodies, passed from generation to generation, known as nigunim. Those sonic memories tap into family tradition and a spiritual community beyond herself. Yet these sounds were missing from her adult experience of conventional Orthodoxy. Following a minor traumatic brain injury, Raskin began a personal healing journey and found comfort in these melodies.
During this process, she felt the need to share her knowledge with women who, like her, did not have access to the restorative communal potential of the nigun. The often wordless songs are traditionally sung exclusively by men, and are central to the synagogue experience — itself a primarily male domain in the Orthodox tradition.
“A few years into his journey, during a particularly dark week in December 2017, three different women reached out to me about bringing women together to sing,” Raskin recalls in an essay. “I remember thinking: Yes. (Pause, breath.) Yes, let’s do it.”
The result was the RAZA circle and the the album “Kapelya,” the first recording of hasidic nigunim performed exclusively by women. On Thursday, Aug. 10, Raskin and the RAZA ensemble will have their premiere in New York City at the JCC Manhattan to celebrate “Kapelya,” which was released in February.
Produced by Hadar’s Rising Song Records, “Kapelya” is a collaboration among Raskin, women artists from non-Orthodox Jewish backgrounds and the musician Joey Weisenberg, the founder and director of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute. With this project, Raskin proposes a new meaning and aesthetic for hasidic nigunim. She breaks many barriers, exploding audience expectations of these traditional melodies and using them as a vehicle to transcend gender divisions, Jewish denominations and musical genres.
Although the album contains only women’s voices, contrary to convention, Raskin did not label it, nor her performances, as gender specific, contrary to the norm in the Orthodox female art scene I researched for my forthcoming book, “For Women and Girls Only” (NYU Press, 2024). She wanted the music to be available to anyone who wanted to connect with it.
The nigunim that the RAZA ensemble recorded and will perform belong to Chabad-Lubavitch’s sacred soundscape. While they can be sung, separately, by both genders, nigunim are associated with men because of their centrality to their collective spiritual practice. These old Jewish melodies have come to exemplify masculinity, tradition, mysticism and ecstasy, all elements of hasidism’s roots.
Because of the religious injunctions of tzniut (sexual modesty) and kol isha (prohibiting Orthodox men from hearing women singing), hasidic women traditionally sing in still more strictly gender-segregated spaces, only for other women. They have developed a distinctive soundscape, different from that of their male counterparts, and one in which nigunim have not played a major spiritual role.
In this context, women performing and recording nigunim for a mixed audience is both an innovation and a provocation.
While the media coverage of the album’s release emphasized the innovation of “giving voice to women,” I argue that by celebrating the voice of women in the male tradition of nigunim, Raskin’s project transcends both gender boundaries and the divide between Orthodox and liberal Judaism. At the concert, even if women lead on-stage, all genders and denominations can participate in belonging to Jewishness through sound infused with spirituality, healing and tradition. To emphasize the spiritual aspect of the project, the album’s booklet offers a short description of the origin and meaning of each nigun, a dedication and transliterations and translations of the prayers. The project puts hasidic music in the hands of women and bridges the divide between Orthodox and liberal Jews, who can meet in a shared domain of song, representing both rebellion and connection.
The album’s originality resides both in the new meanings it gives to hasidic music, and in the novel aesthetic it provides for nigunim. Listeners are treated to collective improvisation and refined vocal and instrumental arrangements, accompanied by instruments or sung a capella. The album surprises in its vocal and instrumental colors, with percussion, guitar, flute, cello, shruti box, kaval, mandolin and octave mandolin. With these unusual instruments, the performers create unique relations with place, time and sound unprecedented in the nigun genre.
The success of RAZA Circle’s album (Thursday’s show is sold out) points to the growing number of North American Jews, both observant and secular, who are searching for new ways to connect with Jewish tradition, prayer and spirituality while transcending conventional norms, expectations, and processes in their very different circles. This project showcases not only women’s voices, but the yearning of both Jewish men and women for opportunities to satisfy their thirst for community, something that their respective religious authorities have failed to provide.
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Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land
This 1 V. postage revenue stamp from West Refaim was postmarked in Virikoso in South Giantsland 100 years ago. Problem is—none of these places ever existed. There is a second […]
The post Treasure Trove explores the curious case of a stamp from an imaginary land appeared first on The Canadian Jewish News.
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Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and then-Defense Minister Yoav Gallant during a press conference in the Kirya military base in Tel Aviv, Israel, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: ABIR SULTAN POOL/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has informed the International Criminal Court that it will contest arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defense minister Yoav Gallant over their conduct of the Gaza war, Netanyahu’s office said on Wednesday.
The office also said that US Republican Senator Lindsey Graham had updated Netanyahu “on a series of measures he is promoting in the US Congress against the International Criminal Court and against countries that would cooperate with it.”
The ICC issued arrest warrants last Thursday for Netanyahu, Gallant, and Hamas leader Ibrahim Al-Masri, known as Mohammed Deif, for alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity in the Gaza conflict.
The move comes after the ICC prosecutor Karim Khan announced on May 20 that he was seeking arrest warrants for alleged crimes connected to the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel by Hamas and the Israeli military response in Gaza.
Israel has rejected the jurisdiction of the Hague-based court and denies war crimes in Gaza.
“Israel today submitted a notice to the International Criminal Court of its intention to appeal to the court, along with a demand to delay the execution of the arrest warrants,” Netanyahu’s office said.
Court spokesperson Fadi El Abdallah told journalists that if requests for an appeal were submitted it would be up to the judges to decide
The court’s rules allow for the UN Security Council to adopt a resolution that would pause or defer an investigation or a prosecution for a year, with the possibility of renewing that annually.
After a warrant is issued the country involved or a person named in an arrest warrant can also issue a challenge to the jurisdiction of the court or the admissibility of the case.
The post Israel Has Told ICC It Will Contest Arrest Warrants, Netanyahu Says first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage
Shomrim officers at the scene of a hate crime in London in which Jewish girls were struck with glass bottles. Photo: Shomrim Stamford Hill/Screenshot
A group of young Jewish girls were the victims of an “abhorrent hate crime” when a man hurled glass bottles at them from a balcony as they were walking through the Stamford Hill section of London on Monday evening.
One of the girls was struck in the head and rushed to the hospital with serious but non-life threatening injuries, according to local law enforcement.
A spokesperson for London’s Metropolitan Police said officers were called to the Woodberry Down Estate in the city’s borough of Hackney following reports of an assault on Monday evening at 7:44 pm local time.
“A group of schoolgirls had been walking through the estate when a bottle was thrown from the upper floor of a building,” the spokesperson said. “A 16-year-old girl was struck on the head and was taken to hospital. Her injuries have since been assessed as non-life changing.”
Police noted they were unable to locate the suspect and an investigation is ongoing before adding, “The incident is being treated as a potential antisemitic hate crime.”
Following the incident, Shomrim, a Jewish organization that monitors antisemitism and serves as a neighborhood watch group, reported that the girls were en route to a rehearsal for an upcoming event. The community, the group added, was “shocked” by the attack on “innocent young Jewish girls,” calling it an “abhorrent hate crime.”
14-year-old girl rushed to Hospital with head & facial injuries following an attack in #StamfordHill.
Young Jewish girls on their way to a rehearsal were pelted with glass bottles by a male on a balcony at Woodberry Down Estate N4.
This… pic.twitter.com/MzHPHusgyX
— Shomrim (London North & East) (@Shomrim) November 26, 2024
Since then, another Jewish girl, age 14, has reported being pelted with a hard object which caused her to be “knocked unconscious, and left feeling dizzy and with a bump on her head,” according to Shomrim.
Monday’s crime was one among many which have targeted London Jews in recent years, an issue The Algemeiner has reported on extensively.
Last December, an Orthodox Jewish man was assaulted by a man riding a bicycle on the sidewalk, two attackers brutally mauled a Jewish woman, and a group of Jewish children was berated by a woman who screamed “I’ll kill all of you Jews. You are murderers!” A similar incident occurred when a man confronted a Jewish shopper and shouted, “You f—king Jew, I will kill you!”
Months prior, a perpetrator stalked and assaulted an Orthodox Jewish woman. He followed her, shouting “dirty Jew” before snatching her shopping bag and “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.” That incident followed a woman wielding a wooden stick approaching a Jewish woman near the Seven Sisters area and declaring “I am doing it because you are Jew,” while striking her over the head and pouring liquid on her. The next day, the same woman — described by an eyewitness as a “serial racist” — chased a mother and her baby with a wooden stick after spraying liquid on the baby. That same week, three people accosted a Jewish teenager and knocked his hat off his head while yelling “f—king Jew.”
According to an Algemeiner review of Metropolitan Police Service data, 2,383 antisemitic hate crimes occurred in London between October 2023 and October 2024, eclipsing the full-year totals of 550 in 2022 and 845 in 2021. The problem is so serious that city officials created a new bus route to help Jewish residents “feel safe” when they travel.
“Jewish Londoners have felt scared to leave their homes,” London Mayor Sadiq Khan told The Jewish Chronicle in a statement about the policy decision earlier this year. “So, this direct bus link between these two significant communities [Stamford Hill in Hackney and Golders Green in Barnet, areas with two of the biggest Jewish communities in London] means you can travel on the 310, not need to change, and be safe and feel safer. I hope that will lead to more Londoners from these communities using public transport safely.”
Khan added that the route “connects communities, connects congregations” and would reassure Jewish Londoners they would be “safe when they travel between these two communities.”
However, it doesn’t solve the problem at hand — an explosion of antisemitism unlike anything seen in the Western world since World War II. Just this week, according to a story by GB News, an unknown group scattered leaflets across the streets of London which threatened that “every Zionist needs to leave Britain or be slaughtered.”
Responding to this latest incident, the director of the Jewish civil rights group StandWithUs UK Isaaz Zarfati told GB News that the comments should be taken “seriously.”
“We are witnessing a troubling trend of red lines being repeatedly crossed,” he said. “This is not just another wave that will pass if we remain passive. We must take those threats and statement seriously because they will one day turn into actions, and decisive steps are needed to combat this alarming phenomenon.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post Jewish Girls Attacked in London With Glass Bottles in Antisemitic Outrage first appeared on Algemeiner.com.