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The klezmer world will remember the ‘youngest of the old guys’
(New York Jewish Week) — The late Brooklyn klezmer musician Pete Sokolow would sometimes take the stage as “Klezmer Fats.” But many players used a different sobriquet to refer to the pianist, who served as a link between generations: “the youngest of the old guys.”
Sokolow started playing klezmer in the summer of 1958 with older musicians at resorts in the Catskills. Twenty years later he was part of the klezmer revival.
“When it mattered, Pete was there,” klezmer historian Henry Sapoznik told the New York Jewish Week. “Pete was able to build a bridge” from the old-timers to the klezmer revivalists.
Sokolow died Dec. 4, 2022 at age 80. One year later, on Tuesday, Dec. 19, he’ll be remembered in a Zoom gathering held in conjunction with the upcoming Yiddish New York festival. Sokolow’s musical colleagues and family will join Sapoznik to honor his memory.
Sokolow began his career playing clarinet and saxophone but switched to piano, an instrument that was not originally associated with klezmer. His cramped Brooklyn living room was dominated by a Steinway baby grand from the late 1800s, inherited from his father, a piano teacher. When Sokolow was 17 he picked up one of his father’s old 78s, sat at the piano and taught himself how to play the Fats Waller style — thus, “Klezmer Fats.”
When the the klezmer revival kicked off in the late 197os, he was baffled by its leap from weddings and other “simchas” to the concert hall.
“All klezmer was, was dance music,” he said. “To me, it was the shockaroo of my life at that point that anybody would want to sit and listen to a concert of dance music.”
Throughout his career Sokolow played jazz as well as klezmer. He was particularly talented as a stride piano player. Sokolow led two bands: Klezmer Plus and the Original Klezmer Jazz Band. He also was a member of Sapoznik’s band Kapelye.
The klezmer clarinetist Michael Winograd played with him in the cross-generational Tarras Band, inspired by the music of the late klezmer virtuoso Dave Tarras. In an interview for a radio profile of Sokolow, Winograd said: “He’s a musician’s musician. He has perfect melodic sense, perfect harmonic sense. He’s a great arranger. He has one of those minds that you bump into every once in a while.”
Sokolow was the last regular keyboard player in the Tarras’ ensemble. He was known as the Fifth Epstein Brother because he played with The Four Epsteins, who began performing together as a klezmer ensemble in the late 1940s.
Sapoznik said Sokolow was “unbelievably productive.” In addition to his involvement in klezmer re-issues, writing klezmer tune books and orchestrating music for the Yiddish Radio Project, Sokolow had a hand in reviving the careers of old, retired klezmer musicians.
“It was because of Pete that the Epsteins got rediscovered,” said Sapoznik. In 1996, three surviving brothers performed together in the documentary “A Tickle in the Heart.”
Scores of young klezmer musicians, including Winograd, studied with Sokolow at KlezKamp, the yearly klezmer music and Yiddish culture festival in New York State. He was known as a tough as nails teacher. Sapoznik once joked that if you open up Webster’s dictionary and to look up “irascible,” you’ll see Sokolow’s picture.
“There was sort of an entrance exam” to be his student, said Sapoznik. “If you didn’t mind having your eyebrows singed off the first time, the results of being taken in and encouraged and motivated — no one else could come close to what he could do to fast-track your ability to grok the music.”
“He had a very low boiling point for people who attempted to change the music without understanding it, to change it just to change it. He would not brook that.”
But Sokolow was flexible enough to play pop music at wedding gigs.
“I think my peak personal music moment was hearing Pete sing ‘Love to Love You, Baby’ by Donna Summers,” joked Sapoznik. “And he did a great [version of Madonna’s] ‘Material Girl.’”
Sokolow suffered a stroke in 2015 and ended up missing the last KlezKamp. At the time he said, “Now I’m the oldest old guy. Most of the old guys are gone. Dave [Tarras] is gone. Sidney [Beckerman] is gone. All my old friends. I miss them.”
The online memorial for Pete Sokolow will take place on Tuesday at 7:30 p.m. Click here to register.
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The post The klezmer world will remember the ‘youngest of the old guys’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students
Haredi Jewish men look at the scene of an explosion at a bus stop in Jerusalem, Israel, on Nov. 23, 2022. Photo: Reuters/Ammar Awad
Israel’s military said it would issue 54,000 call-up notices to ultra-Orthodox Jewish seminary students following a Supreme Court ruling mandating their conscription and amid growing pressure from reservists stretched by extended deployments.
The Supreme Court ruling last year overturned a decades-old exemption for ultra-Orthodox students, a policy established when the community comprised a far smaller segment of the population than the 13 percent it represents today.
Military service is compulsory for most Israeli Jews from the age of 18, lasting 24-32 months, with additional reserve duty in subsequent years. Members of Israel’s 21 percent Arab population are mostly exempt, though some do serve.
A statement by the military spokesperson confirmed the orders on Sunday just as local media reported legislative efforts by two ultra-Orthodox parties in Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s coalition to craft a compromise.
The exemption issue has grown more contentious as Israel’s armed forces in recent years have faced strains from simultaneous engagements with Hamas in Gaza, Hezbollah in Lebanon, Houthis in Yemen, and Iran.
Ultra-Orthodox leaders in Netanyahu’s brittle coalition have voiced concerns that integrating seminary students into military units alongside secular Israelis, including women, could jeopardize their religious identity.
The military statement promised to ensure conditions that respect the ultra-Orthodox way of life and to develop additional programs to support their integration into the military. It said the notices would go out this month.
The post Israel to Issue 54,000 Call-Up Notices to Ultra-Orthodox Students first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy
Israeli Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich attends an inauguration event for Israel’s new light rail line for the Tel Aviv metropolitan area, in Petah Tikva, Israel, Aug. 17, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Amir Cohen
Israel’s far-right Finance Minister Bezalel Smotrich sharply criticized on Sunday a cabinet decision to allow some aid into Gaza as a “grave mistake” that he said would benefit the terrorist group Hamas.
Smotrich also accused Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of failing to ensure that Israel’s military is following government directives in prosecuting the war against Hamas in Gaza. He said he was considering his “next steps” but stopped short of explicitly threatening to quit the coalition.
Smotrich’s comments come a day before Netanyahu is due to hold talks in Washington with President Donald Trump on a US-backed proposal for a 60-day Gaza ceasefire.
“… the cabinet and the Prime Minister made a grave mistake yesterday in approving the entry of aid through a route that also benefits Hamas,” Smotrich said on X, arguing that the aid would ultimately reach the Islamist group and serve as “logistical support for the enemy during wartime”.
The Israeli government has not announced any changes to its aid policy in Gaza. Israeli media reported that the government had voted to allow additional aid to enter northern Gaza.
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for comment. The military declined to comment.
Israel accuses Hamas of stealing aid for its own fighters or to sell to finance its operations, an accusation Hamas denies. Gaza is in the grip of a humanitarian catastrophe, with conditions threatening to push nearly a half a million people into famine within months, according to U.N. estimates.
Israel in May partially lifted a nearly three-month blockade on aid. Two Israeli officials said on June 27 the government had temporarily stopped aid from entering north Gaza.
PRESSURE
Public pressure in Israel is mounting on Netanyahu to secure a permanent ceasefire, a move opposed by some hardline members of his right-wing coalition. An Israeli team left for Qatar on Sunday for talks on a possible Gaza hostage and ceasefire deal.
Smotrich, who in January threatened to withdraw his Religious Zionism party from the government if Israel agreed to a complete end to the war before having achieved its objectives, did not mention the ceasefire in his criticism of Netanyahu.
The right-wing coalition holds a slim parliamentary majority, although some opposition lawmakers have offered to support the government from collapsing if a ceasefire is agreed.
The post Influential Far-Right Minister Lashes out at Netanyahu Over Gaza War Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue
Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to the media during a press conference with New Zealand’s Prime Minister Christopher Luxon at the Australian Parliament House in Canberra, Australia, Aug. 16, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Tracey Nearmy
Australian police have charged a man in connection with an alleged arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue with worshippers in the building, the latest in a series of incidents targeting the nation’s Jewish community.
There were no injuries to the 20 people inside the East Melbourne Synagogue, who fled from the fire on Friday night. Firefighters extinguished the blaze in the capital of Victoria state.
Australia has experienced several antisemitic incidents since the start of the Israel-Gaza war in October 2023.
Counter-terrorism detectives late on Saturday arrested the 34-year-old resident of Sydney, capital of neighboring New South Wales, charging him with offenses including criminal damage by fire, police said.
“The man allegedly poured a flammable liquid on the front door of the building and set it on fire before fleeing the scene,” police said in a statement.
The suspect, whom the authorities declined to identify, was remanded in custody after his case was heard at Melbourne Magistrates Court on Sunday and no application was made for bail, the Australian Broadcasting Corp reported.
Authorities are investigating whether the synagogue fire was linked to a disturbance on Friday night at an Israeli restaurant in Melbourne, in which one person was arrested for hindering police.
The restaurant was extensively damaged, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, an umbrella group for Australia’s Jews.
It said the fire at the synagogue, one of Melbourne’s oldest, was set as those inside sat down to Sabbath dinner.
Israeli President Isaac Herzog went on X to “condemn outright the vile arson attack targeting Jews in Melbourne’s historic and oldest synagogue on the Sabbath, and on an Israeli restaurant where people had come to enjoy a meal together”.
“This is not the first such attack in Australia in recent months. But it must be the last,” Herzog said.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu described the incidents as “severe hate crimes” that he viewed “with utmost gravity.” “The State of Israel will continue to stand alongside the Australian Jewish community,” Netanyahu said on X.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese late on Saturday described the alleged arson, which comes seven months after another synagogue in Melbourne was targeted by arsonists, as shocking and said those responsible should face the law’s full force.
“My Government will provide all necessary support toward this effort,” Albanese posted on X.
Homes, schools, synagogues and vehicles in Australia have been targeted by antisemitic vandalism and arson. The incidents included a fake plan by organized crime to attack a Sydney synagogue using a caravan of explosives in order to divert police resources, police said in March.
The post Australia Police Charge Man Over Alleged Arson on Melbourne Synagogue first appeared on Algemeiner.com.