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Seymour Stein, Jewish music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones, dies at 80
(JTA) — Seymour Stein, one of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, who frequently throughout his career referred to his Jewish Brooklynite roots, died at 80 on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles.
The cause was an unspecified form of cancer, according to reports.
Stein, born Seymour Steinbigle in 1942 and raised near Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, signed artists to his Sire record label ranging from pop superstars like Madonna to punk rockers like The Ramones to New Wave pioneers like the Talking Heads. He also helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early 1980s and was inducted with a lifetime achievement award in 2005.
As he details in his 2018 autobiography, Stein’s father became closer to Orthodox Judaism in his 30s and 40s, regularly bringing his family to a nearby synagogue, where he was a vice president. Stein wrote that his father stopped by the synagogue at 6 a.m. before working in Manhattan’s Garment District and then again after work on his way home every day.
He described the Jews of 1940s Brooklyn in detail in “Siren Song: My Life in Music”:
We had every flavor of Ashkenazim — Russian, Polish, Baltic, Romanian, Austrian, Hungarian, German, and Czech Jews, including about fifty thousand survivors from the concentration camps. We had lost tribes you didn’t even know existed — Syrian, Iraqi, Persian, Yemeni, Ethiopian, even some Sephardic Jews whose family trees had curled through Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and South America…. [E]ach Jewish community was distinct, often with its own native food and language.
In 1966, Stein — who shortened his last name on advice from an early mentor, the Jewish executive Syd Nathan — co-founded Sire Records, which would go on to sign and promote artists from a range of burgeoning genres in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: British indie rockers like The Smiths and The Cure, electronic innovator Aphex Twin, the rapper Ice-T.
“He knows all the lyrics to every song you’ve ever heard,” said Chrissie Hynde, the famed leader of The Pretenders, another Sire band.
Along the way, Stein wrote and mentioned in interviews how he found camaraderie with other Jewish executives and stars, after having grown up in an era when Jews were implicitly banned from some professions in the United States but found a haven in the entertainment industry. In his autobiography, for instance, he calls Lou Reed and New Wave electro-rocker Alan Vega fellow Brooklyn Jews.
“It’s amazing now that so many doctors and lawyers are Jewish,” he said in a 2013 interview with Tablet magazine. “Jews in America weren’t allowed in those professions 120 years ago. Music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show-business.”
Stein signed Madonna from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from an open-heart surgery in 1982. She would release three top-of-the-charts albums with Sire before creating her own imprint in 1992.
In 1975, his wife, Linda, encouraged him to look into The Ramones, a group of scrappy punks in ripped jeans from Queens (two of whom were Jewish). She would co-manage the band for a time before becoming a real estate agent.
Stein, who later came out as gay, wrote that “the roles were a little confused” in his marriage and that he felt pressured to hide his attraction to men in part because of his traditional Jewish upbringing. “Just because I may have been gay didn’t mean I wasn’t Jewish,” he wrote. He and Linda had two children but eventually divorced.
In the Tablet interview, Stein mentioned that he stayed observant, though not Orthodox, throughout his life. He visited Israel several times and worked with Israeli pop star Ofra Haza on multiple albums. In the 1990s, he visited the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman, Ukraine, a small town where thousands of Orthodox Jews gather each year on Rosh Hashanah.
“I feel a strong attachment to Nachman’s teachings,” he said.
Linda Stein was murdered by her assistant in 2007, and their daughter Samantha died in 2013 from brain cancer. Stein is survived by their other daughter Mandy, a sister and three grandchildren.
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As the Bible and the news from the Strait of Hormuz tells us, our world is in dire straits
The most important traffic reports these days usually come from the Strait of Hormuz.
“Traffic through the Strait of Hormuz dropped significantly over the weekend, The New York Times reported, “as a four-day exchange of attacks between Iran and the United States left some shipowners deciding it was too risky to transit.”
What’s going on with the Strait of Hormuz affects gas prices, stock prices, Americans’ moods — and the world economy.
But what does “strait” mean, anyway?
The word has been with us for a long time, and intriguingly, it appears in many famous translations of the Torah. It also pops up in translations of the New Testament.
“Strait” comes from the Latin for “strict.” It first appeared in English in the 14th century, when, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, it referred to clothing — “a garment, etc.: Tight-fitting, narrow.”
Over time, the meaning changed a bit, but it always had something to do with narrowness. From 1561 to 1725, it meant: “Of bonds, a knot: Tightly drawn.”
As the centuries passed, it attracted the attention of poets.
”It matters not how strait the gate,” wrote William Ernest Henley in his poem “Invictus.” “How charged with punishments the scroll, I am the master of my fate; I am the captain of my soul.”
It turns out that Henley was kind of into the subject of what words meant.
“The poet, who was one of the leading slang lexicographers of his day, saw the gates of heaven as strait — tight, narrow, difficult to get through,” the late great language columnist William Safire observed in 1984, when he wrote a column on “strait” and “straits.”
Maybe Henley had the New Testament in mind, too.
Matthew 7:13 in The King James Bible advises: “Enter ye in at the strait gate: for wide is the gate, and broad is the way, that leadeth to destruction, and many there be which go in thereat.”
Today, according to Merriam-Webster, “strait” means “a comparatively narrow passageway connecting two large bodies of water — often used in plural but singular in construction.”
Henley, the poet, was using an archaic meaning — a narrow passage, without water.
In contemporary English, “strait” also has a secondary meaning — “a situation of perplexity or distress — often used in plural,” according to Merriam-Webster, but also according to anyone who has used the phrase “dire straits,” including, one would presume, the band Dire Straits.
Both physical and emotional space
“Strait” describes both a physical space — for example, a body of water — and an emotional space, like “dire straits.”
Perhaps that dual meaning is why the word “strait” appears in translations of the Torah. In the 1917 Jewish Publication Society translation, the Hebrew word tzar, or “narrow,” is translated as “strait.”
Consider 1 Samuel, 13:6, in the JPS translation from 1917:
“When the men of Israel saw that they were in a strait — for the people were distressed — then the people did hide themselves in caves, and in thickets, and in rocks, and in holds, and in pits.”
Tzar has both a literal descriptive meaning and a figurative emotional meaning. Sure, as an adjective, it means narrow, such as in the famous song about the entire world being “a narrow bridge” — gesher tzar me’od.
But as ki tzar lo in Samuel 1 6:13 demonstrates, it can also refer to a tough circumstance, a strait. Similarly, perhaps, in contemporary Hebrew, someone might say, tzar li, or “I am saddened.”
These multiple meanings might lead a person to the hazardous question of whether one should say the “Strait of Hormuz” in the singular, or “Straits of Hormuz” in the plural.
That was what fascinated Safire in 1984. Today, his take feels like a postcard from another time — but it’s also soothing in this moment of, well, dire straits:
“My advice,”Safire wrote. “Go with the familiar; follow your ear. If you’re happy with the Straits of Gibraltar or Magellan, use the final s; if the place name is new to you, let the gazetteer crowd have its way.”
“Hormuz is unfamiliar to most Americans, and the Strait of Hormuz is therefore the name I would use, going along with Gary Hart and the stylebooks,” Safire continued. “But retain the singular sense: ‘The Straits of Gibraltar’ is a passage.’ ‘’The Strait of Hormuz’ is the next Quemoy and Matsu.”
I liked being distracted for a moment from Iran and Trump with the mention of “Gary Hart.”
That nostalgia reminded me that today’s Strait of Hormuz news cycle, about a traffic jam for the fuel and food we need to live, is about both a location and a feeling.
Sure, the waterway may be physically open, or, at least of this writing, effectively closed because of fear, but its status has other meanings too — like whether the Iranian regime actually won this war, and whether that narrow space is also a symbol of future peril.
And in those multiple meanings, strait echoes the Biblical tzar —narrow, yes, but also dangerous.
In Hebrew and in English, narrowness, perilousness and sadness frequently go together, indicating a world or a situation that must be navigated carefully. Perhaps a word like strait — a little bit singular, a little bit plural — captures it all.
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Mamdani says ‘I can’t tell you I support’ Israel as a Jewish state
(JTA) — New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani said he could not endorse states that privilege one religion over another, including Israel and Saudi Arabia, during a one-on-one interview with ABC’s Jonathan Karl on Sunday.
“Democratic Socialists of America now says they no longer favor a two-state solution. “Is that the way you see it as well? Karl asked in the interview, which came days after Mamdani’s endorsed Democratic socialist candidates for Congress swept their New York Democratic primaries.
Among them, Claire Valdez and Darializa Avila Chevalier campaigned on platforms that included opposition to U.S. military aid to Israel and support for Palestinian rights.
Mamdani replied to Karl: “The way I see it is equal rights for all people. And I think that that’s the truth for Israel. It’s the truth for any country in the world.”
When pressed by Karl that Israel is in fact a Jewish state and “that’s in the charter, that’s the way it is now,” Mamdani said he has consistently stated he supports “the state of Israel as a state with equal rights.”
However, he added, “I believe that any state that privileges one religion over the other is one that I can’t tell you I support, whether it be Israel or Saudi Arabia or anywhere else.”
The backlash to Mamdani’s comments was quick. In a statement Sunday, Ambassador Ofir Akunis, Consul General of Israel in New York, said, “Mamdani, we do not need your recognition of the Jewish state. If you knew a little history, instead of spending all day inciting and spreading hatred, you would know that Israel’s Declaration of Independence guaranteed full equality for all its citizens. That has been the reality since the day our state was established.”
Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, posted on X, “Mamdani is either willfully ignorant or maliciously mendacious,” adding that “Israel has no official state religion.”
He also stated that there are multiple countries for which Islam is the state religion, with additional Muslim-majority countries declaring Islam as the state religion in their constitutions.
Karl also asked Mamdani about his broader views on Israel, which became a prominent issue during the New York Democratic primaries, particularly among candidates who support Israel and continued U.S. military aid.
Mamdani said voters made it clear that “they were tired of tens of billions of dollars being spent in our taxpayer dollars to violate international law to kill thousands of civilians.”
He added that currently “Palestine is described as if there is a ceasefire,” but more than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed during it. He said New Yorkers want to “follow international law, to believe in the humanity for all.”
Karl also pressed the mayor on the Poetica coffee shop incident in Brooklyn last week, where staff refused to take New York Democratic Rep. Dan Goldman’s money for a coffee purchase, calling him a “genocide enabler” because he supports Israel.
Mamdani said while he has “political disagreements” with Goldman (who lost his seat to Mamdani-backed Brad Lander), “I do believe that that’s a response that goes beyond that.”
And when asked about rising antisemitism in New York City, the mayor said that while Jews are a minority of the city’s population, they constitute a majority of victims of the hate crimes committed in the city. ”That’s something that’s unacceptable,” he said.
Akunis said, however, that “The surge in antisemitism across the United States, and particularly in New York, is the result of ignorance and a lack of knowledge, combined with a fundamental hatred of the Jewish people.”
He added, “I once again warn that Mamdani’s inflammatory rhetoric will end in very serious and violent acts against Jewish and Israeli communities throughout the city.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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In North Carolina, a memorial project will honor Martin Luther King and Holocaust victims
(JTA) — Two people lean down from an abstract version of a rail car. Their outstretched hands reach towards a family gathered around the car’s opening. The adults on the ground reach back, either to get help stepping into the car or to say good-bye.
That’s one side of the artist rendering of what will be a Holocaust monument. On the other side, train tracks lead to the entrance of the Nazis’ largest death camp, Auschwitz-Birkenau. A message across the top reads, “They were here. We remember.”
The sculpture by artists David Wilson and Stephen Hayes, called “In Transit: The Weight of Absence,” is emotional on its own. But what makes the project planned for Charlotte, North Carolina, especially noteworthy is what will be alongside it.
Charlotte is the planned home for what its organizers believe is the first memorial plaza in the United States to both honor Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and remember the Holocaust in the same space. The Circle of Humanity: Monuments for Unity and Remembrance in Marshall Park will feature the 8-foot bronze statue of King currently in the park plus the new Holocaust monument.
Linking the two will be paved walkways, educational reflections and digital resources on the Holocaust, the Civil Rights movement and the combined history of African Americans and Jews in the U.S. School and tour groups will take part in interactive educational experiences.
To those who might wonder why these monuments belong together, Rabbi Ya’aqov Walker points to a common inheritance. “You could just describe it plainly: white supremacy in continental Europe and white supremacy in the southeastern United States,” said Walker, who is Black and serves on the project’s education committee.
The groups also share deep resilience and desire for change, he said, which led to a significant Jewish presence in the civil rights movement in the United States 20 years after the Holocaust.
“It was very prescient in their minds, from King to any major civil rights leader who was committed to nonviolence, to study and learn what the Jewish experience was, and to build relationships with rabbis as fellow spiritual leaders,” said Walker, who co-leads the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance.
The new monument will replace a small one dedicated in 1979 that’s hidden in overgrown foliage. Project partners include the Charlotte Black/Jewish Alliance, Mecklenburg County, Queens University of Charlotte, the Stan Greenspon Holocaust Education Center, and the Charlotte-Mecklenburg branch of the NAACP.
After a national search for artists that yielded 57 design proposals, a review committee narrowed the choices to eight finalists. Wilson and Hayes, who are Black and live in Durham, North Carolina, were one of two teams asked to submit their concepts. Though they had never designed a sculpture based on a Jewish theme, they were compelled by its juxtaposition to the King monument, “creating a broader dialogue about injustice, courage and the consequences of hatred,” Wilson told county commissioners during a recent public meeting.
David Wilson, left, and Stephen Hayes are the designers of “In Transit: The Weight of Absence,” the winning design for the Circle of Humanity memorial in Charlotte’s Marshall Park. (Courtesy Circle of Humanity)
Their presentation moved Commissioner Leigh Altman, who is white, to reveal that her great-grandparents and many of their children were murdered in the Holocaust. About 25 to 30 Holocaust survivors live in the Charlotte area today.
“This shared partnership for me is a reminder across one of history’s worst genocides and the worst legacy of what America has done wrong, and brought it together to find a commonality, which was a failed obligation to recognize the humanity of others and to fight for it,” she said.
The second finalist team, Miriam Gusevich and Sal Pirrone from Washington, D.C., envisioned an abstract sculpture with thousands of silver circles to represent those killed by the Nazis. The proposed structure opened to a skylight in the shape of a Star of David. Members of Gusevich’s family died in the Holocaust.
“Circle of Humanity” organizers held 12 community feedback sessions, including at synagogues, a Black church and Johnson C. Smith University, a historically Black university. About 850 community members participated. More than 100 completed written surveys on their preferences. Ultimately, a majority favored the rail car image. At one session, participants audibly gasped when “In Transit” was revealed.
It’s yet to be determined which materials will be used to render the piece. Options range from cast and fabricated metal to large-scale 3-D printing. What likely won’t change is the sculpture’s bronze hue and structure.
“The skin tones can be interpreted in many ways, and it looks very similar to an auction block” used in the trafficking of enslaved people, Walker noted. He recalled that during a feedback session at a Black church, some church members teared up to see the reminder of family separation.
Urban Design Partners in collaboration with Groundworks Studio will develop the plaza, in a design called “Woven Histories.” Potential elements include a stone walkway with a plaid design. The plaid pays tribute to the dress that civil rights pioneer Dorothy Counts-Scoggins wore on the day in 1957 when she faced down an angry white mob to become the first Black student to attend a segregated high school in Charlotte.
The plaza will include benches and may incorporate decorative stone books. Like the monument design, the concept is still open to changes based on additional community feedback. The planned budget is just under $1 million, including a $100,000 endowment for programming and maintenance. If fundraising efforts are successful and the timeline stays on track, the plaza is scheduled to open in May 2027.
Marshall Park has particular resonance as the setting. It is part of the former Brooklyn, a Black neighborhood razed in the 1960s in the name of urban renewal. More recently, Marshall Park has been a familiar site for protests and political demonstrations.
The idea for the innovative combination began with a discussion between Rev. Corine Mack, president of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg NACCP, and Rabbi Judy Schindler, Sklut professor of Jewish studies at Queens University of Charlotte and executive director of Spill the Honey, a national non-profit which produces arts and educational materials intended to empower the Black-Jewish alliance to combat racism and antisemitism.
The Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. memorial statue in Charlotte’s Marshall Park, created by renowned sculptor Selma Burke, was dedicated on April 5, 1980. (Courtesy Arrowmount School of Arts and Crafts)
“It all came out of the same conversation, looking at the Civil Rights movement, looking at the rise in racial slurs and antisemitism, and just really understanding that we have to do something to elevate the importance of not only our cultures, but what love would look like in this country,” Mack said. “I thought it was important that we went back to the root of the civil rights movement, which was us collaborating.”
She acknowledges a few phone calls from members of Charlotte’s Black community who expressed concern about the collaboration in light of the war and political divides opened after the Hamas attacks on Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. Others were unclear about the benefits of bringing the two histories together. But no vocal opposition has emerged to the project. Organizers say on-site education about the history of Black-Jewish ties in America is essential.
Charlotte has its own claims to this history. Humorist and social critic Harry Golden lived in the city and published his commentaries in The Carolina Israelite, a newspaper whose subscribers included Congressional members and well-known writers. In “The Vertical Negro Plan” in 1956, he pointedly noted that whites seemed to have no trouble standing next to Black Americans. It was only when Black people wanted to sit “that the fur begins to fly.” His tongue-in-cheek solution? Remove the seats at schools and lunch counters.
In 1971, attorney Adam Stein, father of N.C. Gov. Josh Stein, was part of the legal team who argued Swann v. Charlotte-Mecklenburg Board of Education before the Supreme Court. The case began the era of busing for school integration nationwide. Busing for that purpose officially ended in Charlotte in 2002, when the Supreme Court declined to take up a challenge to lower-court ruling recognizing local schools as adequately desegregated .
Now, supporters hope the Circle of Humanity will be a catalyst for Black-Jewish collaborations in other cities. Schindler, named after a great-aunt who was killed during the Holocaust, wants the gathering spot to be a place not only for remembrance, but for inspiration and beginnings.
“It’s really important to me that we bring joy to this work,” she said, envisioning the opening ceremony filled with klezmer music as well as both soul food and Jewish noshes. She cautions against “letting those to seek to harm us control our thoughts and our struggles and our fears. We need to celebrate our culture and who we are with pride and joy, so I pray that this will be a centerpiece for cultural celebration of all sorts.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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