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The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus celebrates its 100th anniversary with a rare Yiddish rendition of ‘Hatikvah’
(New York Jewish Week) — Last fall, when Binyumen Shaechter started putting together the 2023 repertoire for the Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus, he thought an apt theme and title would be “Chutzpah! Yiddish Songs of Defiance” to celebrate the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising as well as the 75th birthday of the State of Israel.
He had no idea that, nearly a year later, when the chorus was gearing up for an encore performance of its June concert celebrating their 100th anniversary, Hamas would invade Israel and slaughter 1,400 Israelis — and that Jews might need to turn to these historical songs of defiance once again.
“If anything, what’s happening in Israel, in that region and to the innocent Gaza civilians is more of an inspiration and an incentive for us to sing with more passion, emotion and determination and defiance,” Schaechter, the director and conductor of the chorus, told the New York Jewish Week. “These songs made the people who sang them feel good about the things that they were feeling bad about.”
The concert, this coming Sunday at the Upper West Side’s Merkin Hall at Kaufman Music Center, includes three songs about the Jewish people’s relationship to the land of Israel at different points in Jewish history: a setting of Psalm 137, the “Partisans’ Anthem” sung by Jewish fighters in the 1940s and, perhaps most notably of all, “Di Hofenung,” a version of “Hatikvah,” Israel’s national anthem, that was translated into Yiddish in 1943 by Hillel Meitin.
The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus perform in 2019. Binyumen Schaechter conducts, while alumni join the chorus onstage. (Courtesy Binyumen Schaechter)
Schaechter believes the Yiddish version of “Hatikvah” is relatively unknown and, to his knowledge, has not been performed since his chorus picked it up. “I happened to find it in a collection of Yiddish war songs written in 1943,”he said. “I would be shocked if anybody has performed it in Yiddish. We’ve made that poem come to life after 80 years.”
“Because everything that’s going on in Israel, we just feel our hearts so full to be singing these songs like ‘Hatikvah’ and the partisans’ song in Yiddish,” Lynne Cassouto, a soprano who has been in the chorus for nine years, told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s just so poignant and so powerful right now to be singing together right now.”
Founded in 1923 on the Lower East Side as the Freiheit Gezang Farein (“Freedom Chorus”) by conductor and composer Lazar Weiner, the chorus was an extension of the Morgen Freiheit, a daily Yiddish communist newspaper. The singers “were native Yiddish speakers and were staunch lefties,” Schaechter said. For the first 15 or so years, the chorus would begin every concert with a Yiddish translation of the French communist anthem “The Internationale.”
In the decades after its founding, the chorus continued to grow as its leaders wrote new choral and solo works. The group performed all over the city, including at Carnegie Hall. In 1948, during the anti-communist backlash of the McCarthy Era, the chorus changed its name to the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus.
Binyumen Schaechter has conducted, directed and done the choral arrangements for the chorus for the last 28 years. (Courtesy Binyumen Schaechter)
By the 1980s, the chorus’ popularity had waned, and it became more of a community choir — anyone who wanted to join could, regardless of whether they could sing, Schaechter said.
Schaechter, 60, became the chorus’ conductor and the director in 1995. Born in East New York, Brooklyn, he grew up in the Bronx in a prominent Yiddish-speaking family: His father, Mordkhe Schaechter, was a Yiddish linguist and professor at Columbia, the Jewish Theological Seminary, Yeshiva University and YIVO, the Yiddish research institute. His aunt, Beyle Schaechter-Gottesman, was a Yiddish poet and songwriter. Binyumen and his three sisters all pursued careers in Yiddish: Rukhl is the editor of Forverts, the Yiddish Forward; Gitl is a Yiddish poet and Eydl teaches Yiddish classes for women in her haredi community in Tzfat, Israel.
Despite his upbringing, Schaechter said he never planned a career in Yiddish music — he thought he’d become a composer for musical theater. “My dream was to win a Tony Award for Best Score and to give my thank you speech in Yiddish,” he said. He wrote a few shows that weren’t produced, and worked as a substitute conductor at another chorus that shared some members with the Jewish People’s Philharmonic Chorus, who asked him if he’d like to take over as the conductor full time.
Now, said Schaechter, who also works as a Yiddish translator and lecturer, “I can’t imagine doing anything else.”
In 2021, the chorus officially changed its name to the Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus. “Our raison d’etre for many years has been singing in Yiddish, keeping Yiddish alive and doing it in a way that enlightens the audience about the treasures that Yiddish poetry, song and even choral arrangements can have,” he said, adding that singers need not be Jewish to join.
In his nearly 30-year tenure, Schaechter has expanded the range and ability of the chorus. The 36 members, ranging from 30-somethings to those in their 90s, had to audition. They hold a weekly practice session on Monday nights and perform anywhere from from three to 12 times a year around the city.
While knowing Yiddish is not a prerequisite — Schaechter estimates only about a fifth of the cohort could hold a conversation in the language — singers learn how to pronounce and perform the music with gusto while also learning the translation and meanings behind the songs.
“One of the things I love about the way Binyumen specifically presents a piece of music to us is that he will give us historical context — he will tell us about the composer, the author if it was originally a poem, the dialect, what the part of the world it was from, the context of when it was written,” said Cassouto, who, like Schaechter, hails from a musical, Yiddish-speaking family.
“I feel very strongly about Jewish continuity through all these art forms,” she added. “So that all, for me, is a piece of keeping that spirit alive and being true to where we come from, and not having it just become history, but really be retained as a part of my identity.”
“This was our culture. This was our language. This is our tradition going back for centuries,” Schaechter said. “There’s such wonderful literature and so many wonderful Yiddish songs that we don’t want to lose them. We want to pass them on to the next generation.”
Tickets for the Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus’ upcoming concert on Sunday, Oct. 29 at 1 p.m. can be found here, starting at $50. A recording of the concert can also be purchased.
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The post The Yiddish Philharmonic Chorus celebrates its 100th anniversary with a rare Yiddish rendition of ‘Hatikvah’ appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy
US Vice President and Democratic presidential candidate Kamala Harris speaks during a campaign event in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, US, Aug. 7, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Erica Dischino
Black Muslim leaders across the United States are calling on their supporters to withhold their vote from Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, accusing the incumbent US vice president of facilitating a so-called “genocide” in Gaza.
In a letter published by the Middle East Eye on Monday, 50 black Muslim leaders called on members of their community to embrace the legacy of “black liberation” by only voting for candidates who support a ceasefire in Gaza and an arms blockade on Israel. The coalition of Muslim leaders urged their followers to reject the notion that Harris would be better on domestic issues and that a Donald Trump presidency would pose greater danger to Palestinians.
“As black Muslims, we also know that the Israeli government’s genocide in Gaza is a war on Islam,” the letter read. “The Israeli government and its unhinged army of cowardly criminals have filmed themselves destroying mosques, burning Qurans, and slandering our sacred religious figures. The supremacist Israeli government has also destroyed churches and attacked the Palestinian Christian community.”
The black Muslim leaders condemned the Biden administration for supporting Israel’s defensive military operations against the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas in Gaza. The coalition also slammed Harris for not taking a more adversarial position against the Jewish state since she replaced US President Joe Biden at the top of the Democratic presidential ticket.
“All of this has occurred under the watch of the Biden-Harris administration, which has provided steadfast military, financial, diplomatic, and rhetorical support for the Israeli government’s war crimes for four years, including at least $18 billion since the start of the genocide,” the group wrote.
The Muslim leaders lambasted Harris over her repeated refusals to implement an arms embargo against Israel. In recent months, anti-Israel activists have attempted to pressure Harris into agreeing to block weapons transfers to the Jewish state. In August, the her campaign released a statement denying any support for such a move and affirming Harris’s commitment to ensuring “Israel is able to defend itself.”
“Vice President Harris has explicitly opposed an arms embargo on the Israeli government even though US law requires it. She has refused to lay out any plan whatsoever to force [Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin] Netanyahu to accept a ceasefire deal in Gaza that ends the genocide,” the letter stated. “She has validated the Israeli government’s efforts to spark a regional war with Iran, leading to instability in the region and the world at large. Just this week, she said that she would not have done anything differently than President Biden over the past four years.”
The coalition attempted to draw a parallel between the experience of black Americans and Palestinians, arguing that the Palestinian inhabitants of Gaza and the West Bank are subject to brutal racial discrimination.
“As Muslims obliged to uphold justice and as black Americans whose ancestors experienced the worst of crimes, genocide must be our red line,” the letter added.
“There’s a false narrative that is being pushed that the majority of Muslims who are black are Kamala Harris supporters,” Imam Dawud Walid, a Muslim leader from Michigan, told the Middle East Eye. “There’s this narrative that is trying to divide the community to say that the majority of Muslims who aren’t black are supporting third party, but the majority of Muslims who are black are somehow divided from the rest of the community, and that’s not true.”
In the final stretch of the 2024 presidential election cycle, the Harris campaign has scrambled to coalesce support among Muslim voters. Despite aggressive overtures toward the Muslim American community, recent polls indicate that the vice president could experience a collapse of support among the demographic. Some polling data has shown Green Party nominee Jill Stein leading Harris among Muslim voters in the critical swing state of Michigan, while other polls show Harris and Trump tied with Muslim voters across battleground states.
Moreover, many Arab American leaders have continued to urge their community to withhold their votes from Harris, arguing that the Democratic party deserves “punishment” for supporting Israel. Groups such as “Abandon Harris” have encouraged Arab American voters to only throw their support behind anti-Israel candidates. Other groups such as the “Uncommitted Movement” have also pushed voters, especially in the Arab and Muslim communities, to refuse to cast a ballot in favor of Harris.
The post Black Muslim Leaders Call on Supporters Not to Vote for Kamala Harris Due to Gaza, Israel Policy first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope
In his 2016 book Essays on Ethics, Rabbi Jonathan Sacks wrote, “A people that can know insecurity and still feel joy is one that can never be defeated, for its spirit can never be broken nor its hope destroyed.”
This year, as Simchat Torah draws near, we are painfully reminded that joy and suffering often coexist. While it is a staple of the human condition for Jews, this paradox echoes relentlessly throughout our history.
In the Diaspora, we will feel this contrast differently. Shmini Atzeret — a day marked by solemnity with Yizkor and the prayer for rain — falls on the anniversary of October 7th. Only the second evening transitions into the joy of Simchat Torah.
In Israel, however, the two days merge into one, with the solemnity of Shmini Atzeret intertwined with the joy of Simchat Torah. This year, embracing the usual high spirits will be incredibly challenging for Israelis. The weight of national grief hangs heavy; indeed, no Simchat Torah will ever be the same again.
When we danced with the Torahs last year, despite knowing that a terrible attack was unfolding, the full extent of the horror was not yet clear. It was only after Simchat Torah ended that the devastating truth began to emerge: 1,200 people tortured, murdered, and mutilated; families torn apart; and hostages dragged into Gaza.
In the months since, every painful detail has come to light, making it nearly impossible to embrace the unrestrained joy that typically defines Simchat Torah. How can we celebrate when every smile is shadowed by memory, and every song tinged with sorrow?
And yet, my late mother’s story comes to mind — her first Simchat Torah after the Holocaust, celebrated in the city of her birth: Rotterdam, Holland. It offers a profound lesson for us today.
My mother was born in 1941, a year after my grandparents married during the Nazi occupation. The Nazis invaded Holland in May 1940, and began deporting Jews to concentration camps in 1942.
Fearing for their lives, my grandparents went into hiding, spending more than two years in a cramped space behind a closet in the home of a gentile friend. My grandfather, active in the Dutch resistance, emerged only at night to carry out covert missions against the Nazis — knowing the risks but refusing to submit to despair.
Meanwhile, my mother was taken in by a Christian couple who raised her as their own, shielding her from the terrors outside. After the war, they returned her to her parents.
When the Nazis were defeated by the Allies in May 1945, Jewish life in Rotterdam began to re-emerge, although only a fraction of the community remained — 75% of Dutch Jewry, more than 100,000 people, had perished in Auschwitz, Sobibor, and other camps.
That fall, the synagogue reopened, and Simchat Torah was celebrated once more. The Torah scrolls my grandfather had hidden with gentile friends were retrieved. Miraculously, Rabbi Levie “Lou” Vorst, who had survived Bergen-Belsen and the infamous “Lost Train,” stood at the helm of the diminished community.
But the celebration was bittersweet. Almost everyone in the synagogue had lost parents, siblings, spouses, or children. My grandparents had lost their parents, siblings, and their second child, my uncle Yitzchak, who had died of malnutrition during the war.
And yet, they danced. Survivors — many without homes or families — clung to the Torah scrolls as if their lives depended on it. My mother, only four years old, stood quietly in the synagogue, receiving candy from weeping survivors. With each piece placed in her open mouth, the message was clear: the future must be sweet, even when the past has been unbearably bitter.
When she was born in 1941, during the Nazi occupation, her parents named my mother Miriam Chana, but they also added a third name: Tikva — hope. Naming her Tikva was a bold act of defiance and a statement of faith that they would live to see better days.
Many Dutch Jews from Rotterdam later made their way to Israel, realizing the ultimate Tikva—the dream of building a new life in the Jewish homeland.
Today, some of my mother’s friends from Rotterdam reside at Beth Juliana, a residential retirement complex in Herzliya for Dutch immigrants. But even there, the echoes of violence persist. Just two weeks ago, during Yom Kippur, a Hezbollah drone from Lebanon struck the building.
Though no one was injured, the drone destroyed an apartment filled with precious heirlooms and decades of memories. Miraculously, the resident had sought shelter moments before the impact — a stark reminder that even now, nearly 80 years after the Holocaust, the shadow of antisemitic hatred still looms over Israel.
As we mark the first anniversary of October 7th, I find myself returning to the image of those weeping survivors dancing with the Torahs in Rotterdam. If they could dance, surely we can too.
But just like them, our dancing this year will be different. Maybe it will be slower, or perhaps more enthusiastic — but whatever it is, it will be infused with memory, sorrow, and, most importantly, defiance. Our celebrations will not deny the pain but embrace it, just as my mother’s community did all those years ago.
The joy of Simchat Torah is not naïve happiness; it is the joy that comes from standing together, united in faith, knowing that despite everything, we are still here. Just as my grandparents emerged from hiding to rebuild, and just as the Torahs were salvaged from the ruins of Rotterdam, we too will lift the Torahs this Simchat Torah and say to our enemies: We are still here.
And we will hope. For without hope, there is no future. My grandparents named their daughter Tikva, believing in a day when evil would be defeated. We, too, must carry the torch of hope into the future. We will dance, and we will cry.
But above all, we will hope. Because even after the darkest of nights, the sun will rise again. And when it does, we will be ready to rebuild — one dance step at a time.
The post On Simchat Torah, We Mourn — But Also Hope first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition
The representative of Germany Isaak at the Eurovision Song Cotest entering the main stage on May 11, 2024 in Malmo, Sweden. Photo: Sanjin Strukic/PIXSELL/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Germany’s representative in the 2024 Eurovision Song Contest shared his thoughts in a recent interview about the hatred and booing that Israeli singer Eden Golan received while competing on behalf of Israel in the international competition earlier this year.
“I can definitely understand why everyone was booing, but I think the Eurovision Song Contest says we are all ‘united by music’ and I didn’t see no unity,” German singer Isaak, 29, said in an interview with Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie, referring to the official slogan of the Eurovision competition. He further said of Golan: “It’s a young musician performing quite well and everyone f—ked her off. There was so much hate in this room, and hate shouldn’t be a place in the Eurovision Song Contest.”
Isaak finished in 12th place in the Eurovision finals this year in Malmo, Sweden, while Golan finished in fifth. The Israeli singer competed with a song called “Hurricane,” a reworded version of her original song “October Rain,” which was disqualified for being too political since it referenced the Hamas massacre in Israel that took place on Oct. 7, 2023.
Golan made it to the top five of the Eurovision contest despite being booed on stage by anti-Israel audience members, facing death threats, and having a Eurovision jury member refuse to give her points because of his personal feelings against Israel’s military actions during the ongoing Israel-Hamas war. Golan also said she had to conceal her identity outside her hotel room in Malmo because of the threats she received from anti-Israel activists angry about the Jewish state’s participation in the contest.
Isaak told Irish blogger allthingsadam.ie that he believes Golan was bullied during the competition. He then criticized people for wrongfully targeting Golan with hatred when they have issues with the state of Israel but not the singer herself. The German singer then said the animosity was misguided and it was wrong for Golan to face such abuse just for her affiliation with Israel. He said a personal experience like what Golan faced can deeply scar a musician
“Do you know how young she is?” Isaak asked about the 21-year-old Israeli singer. “This is your life goal and you wanna be part of Eurovision Song Contest and you’re going on that stage … just image Germany f—ks up in some point. And I’m German and I wanna be part of the Eurovision. And I’m just a random musician, I just wanna show them my music. I’m not the f—k president. I’m just a random musician, I just wanna make a small kid’s dream come true. And then I go on that stage and no matter how good I am, no matter how f—k amazing I can sing, the people just see my country and they just boo me out. I think that would be the most terrible thing that could maybe ever happen to me. I think that can definitely leave scars.”
Isaak also talked in the interview about his experience backstage with the other singers at the Eurovision competition. “You didn’t really have that feeling [that] we are all ‘united by music.’ It was a little bit sad behind the stage, that’s what I think. There could have been more love, more connectivity, and more passion,” he said.
The 2025 Eurovision Song Contest will take place in Basel, Switzerland, in May. Bakel Walden, chairman of the Eurovision Song Contest Reference Group, discussed in a recent interview with Swiss media some changes to next year’s competition. He said the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which organizes the competition, “will pay more attention” to the well-being of artists in the future and stated that it is vital for the competition to maintain political neutrality. He insisted that “antisemitism has no place at the ESC.”
“The ESC stands for freedom of expression. The artists can comment on anything and also demonstrate in front of the hall. But on stage you need certain rules,” he said. “We want an ESC in which everyone puts their heart and soul into it. We cannot solve the many wars and conflicts in the world during the ESC. But it is a strong statement if we treat each other fairly, peacefully, and respectfully.”‘
Walden added that for next year’s competition the EBU will also have a crisis management team and “retreat rooms” for artists to relax where there will be no filming allowed.
The post Germany’s Eurovision Contestant Calls Out ‘So Much Hate’ Against Israeli Singer Eden Golan During Competition first appeared on Algemeiner.com.