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There’s a Grammy for Christian music. These musicians want Jewish music to get one, too.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — There is a Grammy Award for just about every kind of music — from pop to metal to New Age to Contemporary Christian — but there’s no Jewish category. Two Jewish musician friends hope to change that.
Joanie Leeds, a children’s musician and Grammy winner in New York City, and Mikey Pauker, a self-described “devotional rock” artist from California, are working on a formal proposal to add “best Jewish music album” to the list of Grammys awarded each year. They plan to submit their proposal to the Recording Academy, the body that governs the Grammys, by March 1.
In the past, albums of what is traditionally considered to be Jewish music have been nominated in a variety of categories, including best contemporary world music. The Klezmatics’ “Wonder Wheel” album won in that category in 2006, and some referred to the award as “the first Jewish Grammy.”
But musicians who produce albums of Jewish music often find themselves caught between categories, Leeds said. The global category is not a fit for American musicians, and categories for religious music, even if expanded, are also not an easy fit, she said.
“‘Jewish’ is complicated, because it’s not just a religion like Christianity,” Leeds said. “It’s also a culture.”
To strengthen their proposal, the pair consulted with rabbis and Jewish educators about what constitutes Jewish music.
“We’re doing our best to be as clear as possible and as inclusive as possible, because not everybody knows that Jewish music is diverse,” Pauker said. “It’s transdenominational, it’s based in spirituality, it’s based in culture and it’s not just Ashkenazi.”
Mikey Pauker, seen here performing in Berkeley, California, is one of the musicians behind a petition to add a Jewish music category to the Grammys. (Courtesy Pauker)
In their proposal, Pauker and Leeds make the case for a new category that will encompass Jewish religious music, such as cantorial music, nigguns and Mizrahi music, as well as secular music, such as klezmer, Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic music. Albums with Christian themes, including those produced by Messianic Jews, would not be eligible.
“It needs to have some sort of Jewish content in it to make it Jewish music,” Leeds said. “If there’s a song in Israel about some guy meeting a girl at a bar, or whatever it’s about that has no grounds in text or liturgy or anything, then it wouldn’t be considered Jewish music.”
“Our goal is really to educate not just the Recording Academy about what Jewish music is, but also educating the public as to what Jewish music is,” she said.
The Recording Academy regularly adds and modifies Grammy categories. This year, it added five new ones, including best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media and best spoken-word poetry album.
Pauker said this is not the first time musicians have petitioned the Recording Academy to add a Jewish category. But this time, he said, he and Leeds can point to the consistent output of high-quality Jewish music in recent years. He noted that in the past two years alone, more than 100 albums were released that could have been nominated in such a category.
“We’re at a point in music history where we’re having a Jewish renaissance, and the market has arrived,” he said. “We have enough artists where we can get this done.” He added that the Recording Academy has been supportive of him and Leeds in their endeavor.
In an effort to raise awareness about their proposal, they have launched a petition on the Change.org website. By Friday, it had more than 1,800 signatures, including from non-Jewish musicians.
A petition to add a Jewish Grammys category garnered more than 1,800 signatures in its first week. (Screenshot from Change.org)
Among the signers is Sephardic singer and activist Sarah Aroeste. She said she supports the push to add a Jewish category at the Grammys because her albums, including 2021’s “Monastir,” do not fit cleanly into the other categories.
“Jewish music crosses so many musical boundaries, yet we get lost, or are ineligible, in existing categories,” she wrote. “As a Ladino musician specifically, I’ve always been put in the global music category. I am literally up against musical acts from all around the globe!”
She added: “Having our own category — much like other ethnic or religious groups have them — would highlight the breadth and diversity of Jewish music as a genre and would allow those Academy members knowledgeable about the music to be able to vote.”
Pauker, 37, lives in southern California and recently launched his own folk-rock-reggae-chant record label called Beautiful Way Records. He will help lead Shabbat services during Wilderness Torah’s upcoming Passover in the Desert festival.
Leeds, who is based in New York City, won a 2021 Grammy in the Best Children’s Music Album category for her ninth album, a compilation of secular children’s music called “All the Ladies” that included a song about Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has also released multiple albums of Jewish kids’ music, including “Meshugana” and “Challah, Challah,” as well as a Christmas record called “Oy Vey” in collaboration with the rapper Fyütch.
Pauker said the two became close friends during the pandemic, when they spent many hours on the social media app Clubhouse discussing Judaism and music.
As the Recording Academy considers their proposal in the coming weeks, Pauker said he and Leeds will hold community conversations about trends in Jewish music.
“One of our hopes is this will launch hundreds of new artists, new records and collaborations that can really help push this genre forward,” he said.
This story originally appeared in J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission. Jackie Hajdenberg added reporting for JTA.
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With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over?
When the remains of the last Israeli hostage in Gaza returned to Israel this week, Scott Spindel, a lawyer in Encino, Calif., finally took off the thick steel dog tag he had put on after the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023.
His friend Lauren Krieger, an orthopedic surgeon, did the same. And he pulled down the last of the names of the hostages remaining in Gaza that his wife, Jenn Roth Krieger, had placed in the window of their Santa Monica home.
During the nearly 28 months that Israeli hostages remained in captivity in Gaza, Krieger, 61, and Spindel, 55, consistently argued over Israel’s war in the strip.
“Lauren would say that we probably were a little too extreme,” Spindel, whose daughter serves in the IDF, told me in a telephone interview. “I don’t think we blew up enough buildings.”
But those differences paled beside their mutual concern over the fate of the hostages.
“Unfortunately,” said Spindel, “it took tragedy to pull us together.”
So it was across the American Jewish landscape. Then, the body of Staff Sergeant Ran Gvili, the 24-year-old Israeli police officer killed on Oct. 7 and taken by Hamas terrorists back into the enclave, was returned to Israel — the last of the hostages to come home.
Jews from across the political spectrum unpinned yellow ribbon buttons from their lapels, removed the hostage posters from their synagogues, and folded up and put away the blue-and-white flags displayed as a symbol of the missing Israelis.
The marches and vigils American Jews held on behalf of the hostages — small but meaningful echoes of the mass rallies that roiled Israel — came to a quiet halt.
Jewish unity is forged in adversity. Without it, we are apt to find enemies among ourselves. And as painful as the hostage saga was, it unified an otherwise fractious American Jewish community in a time of crisis.
Without that common concern, are even deeper rifts our future?
“As committed and connected as we were,” said Spindel, “it doesn’t change the fact that we also were still divided about solutions.”
A family in distress
Across the United States, synagogues of all religious and political bents regularly joined in the same Acheinu prayer for the release and return of the hostages.
“Our family, the whole house of Israel, who are in distress,” the prayer begins — a wholly accurate summation of the totality of Jewish concern.
Surveys showed that the hostages unified American Jews even when Israel’s Gaza campaign divided them. An October 2025 Washington Post poll found that a plurality of American Jews disapproved of Israel’s military actions in Gaza — but a whopping 79% said they were “very concerned” about the hostages.
There have been other moments in recent Jewish history when calamity created unity. The 1995 assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin, for instance, brought together the vast majority of American Jews in mourning, even those who opposed his policies.
And, of course the brutal Oct. 7 attack, which claimed almost 1,200 lives, created a near-universal sense of shock and sorrow.
But the hostage crisis may have had an even deeper emotional — and perhaps political — impact.
“Even for people who were not affiliated Jewishly, those hostages struck a deep, deep chord,” Krieger told me. “It felt personal. I don’t think we’ve had that level of collective trauma in our lifetimes in that same way.”
And a family divided
The hostage crisis bonded American Jews to one another, and to their Israeli counterparts, at a time when enormous political rifts were opening within their communities.
In the U.S., as in Israel, there were sharp disagreements over Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s conduct of the war and whether he was even prioritizing the hostages’ safety.
And the encampments and protests against the war at college campuses — in which many Jewish students participated, and to which many others objected — created even deeper divisions over support for the Jewish state.
But if the hostage issue didn’t erase such differences, it muted them. Krieger and Spindel could frustrate each other in conversations about the conduct of the war, or American support for it. But in the end, they were both in that 79% that the Washington Post poll identified.
What will hold them — and the rest of us — together, now?
The hostage crisis provided something history unfortunately bestows upon Jews with regularity: an external enemy that transcended ideological differences. With it gone, American Jews return to what they’ve always been — a community bound by tradition, and riven by politics.
Krieger and Spindel have already resumed their arguments. But even though the dog tags are gone, they’re both still wearing Jewish stars on silver chains around their necks. When someone admires Krieger’s, he takes it off and gives it to them. He buys his metal stars in bulk on Amazon, and has given away dozens since Oct. 7.
“I want people to feel like I do,” he said, “like we’re a peoplehood worth cherishing.”
Worth cherishing — even though we can’t agree on much else.
The post With the last hostage released, is American Jewish unity over? appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran President Says Trump, Netanyahu, Europe Stirred Tensions in Protests
Amnesty International Greek activists and Iranians living in Athens hold candles and placards in front of the Greek Parliament to support the people of Iran, in Athens, Greece, January 30, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Louisa Gouliamaki TPX IMAGES OF THE DAY
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that US, Israeli and European leaders had exploited Iran’s economic problems, incited unrest and provided people with the means to “tear the nation apart” in recent protests.
The two-week long nationwide protests, which began in late December over an economic crisis marked by soaring inflation and rising living costs, have abated after a bloody crackdown by the clerical authorities that US-based rights group HRANA says has killed at least 6,563, including 6,170 protesters and 214 security forces.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi told CNN Turk that 3,100, including 2,000 security forces, had been killed.
The US, Israeli and European leaders tried to “provoke, create division, and supplied resources, drawing some innocent people into this movement,” Pezeshkian said in a live state TV broadcast.
US President Donald Trump has repeatedly voiced support for the demonstrators, saying the US was prepared to take action if Iran continued to kill protesters. US officials said on Friday that Trump was reviewing his options but had not decided whether to strike Iran.
Israel’s Ynet news website said on Friday that a US Navy destroyer had docked at the Israeli port of Eilat.
Trump, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Europeans “rode on our problems, provoked, and were seeking — and still seek — to fragment society,” said Pezeshkian.
“They brought them into the streets and wanted, as they said, to tear this country apart, to sow conflict and hatred among the people and create division,” Pezeshkian said.
“Everyone knows that the issue was not just a social protest,” he added.
Regional allies including Turkey, the United Arab Emirates, and Saudi Arabia have been engaging in diplomatic efforts to prevent a military confrontation between Washington and Tehran.
The US is demanding that Iran curb its missile program if the two nations are to instead resume talks, but Iran has rejected that demand.
Foreign Minister Araqchi said in Turkey on Tuesday that missiles would never be the subject of any negotiations.
In response to US threats of military action, Araqchi said Tehran was ready for either negotiations or warfare, and also ready to engage with regional countries to promote stability and peace.
“Regime change is a complete fantasy. Some have fallen for this illusion,” Araqchi told CNN Turk. “Our system is so deeply rooted and so firmly established that the comings and goings of individuals make no difference.”
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CBS News Chief Weiss Touts Commentator Push, Draws Mixed Reaction in Newsroom
FILE PHOTO: Bari Weiss speaks at the 2022 Milken Institute Global Conference in Beverly Hills, California, U.S., May 3, 2022. REUTERS/Mike Blake/File Photo
Three months into her tenure, CBS News Editor-in-Chief Bari Weiss presented a vision this week to revitalize the nearly century-old broadcaster, in part by applying the same formula that fueled the rise of The Free Press – recruiting commentators who offer observations about news, politics and culture.
From adding 19 new commentators, including some drawn from The Free Press ranks, to introducing new podcasts, newsletters and live events, employees were variously energized or skeptical of the ideas presented by CBS’ new boss. Weiss’ notions about how to thrive in a post-Walter Cronkite era struck some as in conflict with the stated mission of doing great journalism, according to seven current and former CBS News employees and industry insiders.
In her presentation, Weiss also envisioned a galaxy of cross-platform stars, like New York Times columnist and CNBC host Andrew Ross Sorkin, whom she highlighted with a meme: “Sorkining.” The Dealbook founder is the author of several business books, executive producer of the Showtime series “Billions,” and maestro of the New York Times premiere live event, and a Davos fixture.
“It’s like saying ‘Hey, Hollywood. Why can’t you just be like Leonardo DiCaprio?’ If people knew how to bottle that magic and make someone a star, they would do it,” said a former CBS employee.
An industry veteran said the idea suggested a lack of appreciation for the power of television, which has been making stars for generations: among them “CBS Evening News” anchors Dan Rather, Connie Chung, Walter Cronkite and Katie Couric.
The 41-year-old Weiss, who has no broadcast experience and has been described as a distant leader by six current and former CBS News sources, now has to deliver on her promise of capturing new and younger viewers – including political independents who don’t see themselves reflected in mainstream media. It is a daunting undertaking that has hobbled executives across broadcast and cable, including former CNN chief Chris Licht, ousted in June 2023.
One supporter sees the charismatic Weiss as a modern-day Katharine Graham, the legendary publisher of the Washington Post, who was undermined by underlings when she took over in 1963. Graham transformed the paper and led it through its Watergate-era heyday, and generally left editorial decisions to Executive Editor Ben Bradlee.
A current staffer, speaking on background, said, “People are saying, ‘Let’s give her a chance’ … I want to see her succeed. If she succeeds, we all succeed.”
CBS News and Weiss did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
PRIORITIES FOR CBS NEWS
Weiss, a former opinion journalist and media entrepreneur, joined CBS after parent Paramount owner David Ellison bought her five-year-old media company, The Free Press, for $150 million in October.
Some see Weiss’ playbook of expanding CBS’s journalism ranks with commentators as conflicting with other initiatives including breaking news and landing deep investigative stories, according to three current and former CBS News staffers and an industry veteran.
“There’s nothing wrong with that,” said the former employee. “But is that what a news division is or are they craving something completely different? That’s fine but don’t pretend it’s a news division.”
Another current CBS News staffer talked about past failures to capitalize on new ways of reaching the audience, such as leveraging the power of the Paramount+ streaming service to promote news shows, observing, “We have done a wretched job of being on the internet.”
Weiss is also attempting to change the news network’s political orientation, appealing to a wider cross-section of Americans, according to her remarks Tuesday. Weiss said she wants CBS News to reflect the friction animating the national conversation.
In broadening its perspective to include more diverse viewpoints, CBS News could ultimately lay claim to the uncharted ground for a center-right broadcaster, said Integrated Media Chief Executive Jonathan Miller, a veteran media executive who has held senior positions at News Corp and AOL.
“We need to commission and greenlight stories that will surprise and provoke – including inside our own newsroom,” Weiss said in her address to employees. “We also have to widen the aperture of the stories we tell.”
On that front, CBS has had mixed results so far. Earlier this month, “CBS Evening News” broadcast a widely panned segment featuring U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in various meme-like situations, saluting him as “the ultimate Florida man.”
EARLY SUCCESSES
It has also seen successes, including Lesley Stahl’s interview with Trump son-in-law and Middle East advisor Jared Kushner and Special Envoy Steve Witkoff, within a week of brokering a peace deal between Israel and Hamas, and Norah O’Donnell’s “60 Minutes” interview with Trump. Paramount paid Trump $16 million to settle a lawsuit over its editing of an interview with his White House rival, former Vice President Kamala Harris.
It landed journalistic scoops, including interviewing the man who charged one of two gunmen who attacked a Jewish community gathering in Sydney, and exclusive video of Alex Pretti, the man killed by Border Patrol in Minneapolis, reading a tribute to a veteran who died in 2024.
Weiss announced that the network would bring in contributors with expertise in politics, health, happiness, food and culture, whom she encouraged staffers to use on-air. The roster includes Free Press columnist Niall Ferguson of the conservative Hoover Institution, as well as Casey Lewis, a former Teen Vogue and MTV editor who writes about youth culture.
“It’s great to have younger people, a diverse demographic and diverse ideology represented,” said Kathy Kiely, the chair in Free-Press Studies at the Missouri School of Journalism. “Newsrooms can’t do a good job unless we have that diversity in our ranks. What worries me is the emphasis on opinion over primary-sourced, reported facts.”
Weiss emphasized making content available online before it airs on TV to reach more viewers. CBS has long been in third place behind rivals ABC and NBC and, like most mainstream media, is struggling with audience declines as consumers migrate to social platforms.
Pew Research estimates about one-third of all adults get at least some news from podcasts. CBS News does not appear among Spotify’s or Apple’s rankings of the top 50 news podcasts.
One former employee expects the digital-first goal to be complicated because CBS hasn’t devoted sufficient resources to helping correspondents or anchors curate their social media presence or re-edit television interviews for YouTube or streaming.
Weiss encouraged staffers to think of the news organization as the best-capitalized media startup in the world.
“We are in a position, with the support of all of the leadership of this company, to really make the change we need.”