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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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Israel to Send Delegation to Qatar for Gaza Ceasefire Talks
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speaks during a news conference in Jerusalem, Sept. 2, 2024. Photo: Ohad Zwigenberg/Pool via REUTERS
Israel has decided to send a delegation to Qatar for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal, an Israeli official said, reviving hopes of a breakthrough in negotiations to end the almost 21-month war.
Palestinian group Hamas said on Friday it had responded to a US-backed Gaza ceasefire proposal in a “positive spirit,” a few days after US President Donald Trump said Israel had agreed “to the necessary conditions to finalize” a 60-day truce.
The Israeli negotiation delegation will fly to Qatar on Sunday, the Israeli official, who declined to be named due to the sensitivity of the matter, told Reuters.
But in a sign of the potential challenges still facing the two sides, a Palestinian official from a militant group allied with Hamas said concerns remained over humanitarian aid, passage through the Rafah crossing in southern Israel to Egypt and clarity over a timetable for Israeli troop withdrawals.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who is due to meet Trump in Washington on Monday, has yet to comment on Trump’s announcement, and in their public statements Hamas and Israel remain far apart.
Netanyahu has repeatedly said Hamas must be disarmed, a position the terrorist group, which is thought to be holding 20 living hostages, has so far refused to discuss.
Israeli media said on Friday that Israel had received and was reviewing Hamas’ response to the ceasefire proposal.
The post Israel to Send Delegation to Qatar for Gaza Ceasefire Talks first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Tucker Carlson Says to Air Interview with President of Iran
Tucker Carlson speaks on July 18, 2024 during the final day of the Republican National Convention at the Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Photo: Jasper Colt-USA TODAY via Reuters Connect
US conservative talk show host Tucker Carlson said in an online post on Saturday that he had conducted an interview with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian, which would air in the next day or two.
Carlson said the interview was conducted remotely through a translator, and would be published as soon as it was edited, which “should be in a day or two.”
Carlson said he had stuck to simple questions in the interview, such as, “What is your goal? Do you seek war with the United States? Do you seek war with Israel?”
“There are all kinds of questions that I didn’t ask the president of Iran, particularly questions to which I knew I could get an not get an honest answer, such as, ‘was your nuclear program totally disabled by the bombing campaign by the US government a week and a half ago?’” he said.
Carlson also said he had made a third request in the past several months to interview Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who will be visiting Washington next week for talks with US President Donald Trump.
Trump said on Friday he would discuss Iran with Netanyahu at the White House on Monday.
Trump said he believed Tehran’s nuclear program had been set back permanently by recent US strikes that followed Israel’s attacks on the country last month, although Iran could restart it at a different location.
Trump also said Iran had not agreed to inspections of its nuclear program or to give up enriching uranium. He said he would not allow Tehran to resume its nuclear program, adding that Iran did want to meet with him.
Pezeshkian said last month Iran does not intend to develop nuclear weapons but will pursue its right to nuclear energy and research.
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Hostage Families Reject Partial Gaza Seal, Demand Release of All Hostages
Demonstrators hold signs and pictures of hostages, as relatives and supporters of Israeli hostages kidnapped during the Oct. 7, 2023 attack by Hamas protest demanding the release of all hostages in Tel Aviv, Israel, Feb. 13, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Itai Ron
i24 News – As Israeli leaders weigh the contours of a possible partial ceasefire deal with Hamas, the families of the 50 hostages still held in Gaza issued an impassioned public statement this weekend, condemning any agreement that would return only some of the abductees.
In a powerful message released Saturday, the Families Forum for the Return of Hostages denounced what they call the “beating system” and “cruel selection process,” which, they say, has left families trapped in unbearable uncertainty for 638 days—not knowing whether to hope for reunion or prepare for mourning.
The group warned that a phased or selective deal—rumored to be under discussion—would deepen their suffering and perpetuate injustice. Among the 50 hostages, 22 are believed to be alive, and 28 are presumed dead.
“Every family deserves answers and closure,” the Forum said. “Whether it is a return to embrace or a grave to mourn over—each is sacred.”
They accused the Israeli government of allowing political considerations to prevent a full agreement that could have brought all hostages—living and fallen—home long ago. “It is forbidden to conform to the dictates of Schindler-style lists,” the statement read, invoking a painful historical parallel.
“All of the abductees could have returned for rehabilitation or burial months ago, had the government chosen to act with courage.”
The call for a comprehensive deal comes just as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu prepares for high-stakes talks in Washington and as indirect negotiations between Israel and Hamas are expected to resume in Doha within the next 24 hours, according to regional media reports.
Hamas, for its part, issued a statement Friday confirming its readiness to begin immediate negotiations on the implementation of a ceasefire and hostage release framework.
The Forum emphasized that every day in captivity poses a mortal risk to the living hostages, and for the deceased, a danger of being lost forever. “The horror of selection does not spare any of us,” the statement said. “Enough with the separation and categories that deepen the pain of the families.”
In a planned public address near Begin Gate in Tel Aviv, families are gathering Saturday evening to demand that the Israeli government accept a full-release deal—what they describe as the only “moral and Zionist” path forward.
“We will return. We will avenge,” the Forum concluded. “This is the time to complete the mission.”
As of now, the Israeli government has not formally responded to Hamas’s latest statement.
The post Hostage Families Reject Partial Gaza Seal, Demand Release of All Hostages first appeared on Algemeiner.com.