(JTA) — The IDF’s chief cantor will be allowed to perform for Hanukkah in Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall — but not for everyone — after tensions over Israel ripped through one of the city’s most popular Jewish celebrations.

The Royal Concert Hall, or Concertgebouw, last week canceled the performance to be hosted by the Chanukah Concert Foundation because it featured Shai Abramson, the “representative cantor of the State of Israel” and chief cantor of the Israeli army. The organization said it based this decision on “the IDF’s active involvement in a controversial war” and “Abramson’s visible representation of that institution.”

The Chanukah Concert Foundation responded by threatening a lawsuit over “restriction of religious freedom.” The conflict spread to protests, rifts in the Jewish community and a war of words between the Israeli government and the mayor of Amsterdam. But on Wednesday, the Concertgebouw and the Jewish foundation announced a compromise.

They settled on separate concerts on Dec. 14, the eve of Hanukkah. During the afternoon, the Concertgebouw will host a public, family-focused concert without Abramson. In the evening, as sundown falls and the first Hanukkah candle is lit, Abramson will sing at two private concerts in the same hall for guests who already bought tickets to see him.

“Over the past week, we have seen the situation escalate into tension. We agree that this damaging trend must stop,” the organizations said in a joint statement. They added that proceeds from Abramson’s concerts would be donated to “a charity that promotes social cohesion in the city.”

Across the Netherlands, residents have grown increasingly critical of Israel and its two-year campaign in Gaza. A survey in September found that 58% of Dutch people wanted their government to take tougher actions against Israel, including boycotts, statements that Israel is committing genocide and recognition of a Palestinian state.

Abramson’s cancellation prompted an outcry among some prominent Dutch Jews and Jewish organizations.

Former lawyer Oscar Hammerstein called for a boycott of the Concertgebouw in the newspaper De Telegraaf. Leon de Winter, Jewish Dutch novelist and columnist for the paper, wrote that “Joseph Goebbels would happily give the Concertgebouw management a pat on the back.”

Dozens of people have protested outside the Concertgebouw in recent days. They were supported by the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, a Dutch group that advocates for Israel and Jews.

David Serphos, a board member and spokesperson of the Chanukah Concert Foundation, said the cancellation “caused a lot of pain” among many Dutch Jews who see the Concertgebouw as a special place. The building first hosted a Hanukkah concert in December 1914, according to Barry Mehler, the head of a separate Hanukkah concert for the Jewish Music Concerts Foundation. The tradition was interrupted by World War II and revived only in 2015.

“It’s situated in a part of the city where a lot of Jews live,” Serphos said in an interview. “A lot of Jews go to the Concertgebouw either weekly or monthly. They are regular guests.”

An anti-Zionist Dutch Jewish group is planning to protest outside the Concertgebouw on Dec. 14, the day of the Hanukkah concerts, when they will also light a menorah. The group, Erev Rav, an anti-Zionist Jewish group, garnered over 2,200 signatures on a petition backing the Concertgebouw’s cancellation decision and said it was “deeply disappointed” by the compromise with the Chanukah Concert Foundation.

“The Concertgebouw’s initial refusal to provide a stage to a representative of a military perpetrating mass atrocities was a principled position grounded in an understanding of the way Zionist propaganda, including through the arts, sustains a genocidal regime,” Erev Rav said on Instagram, where it also accused the “Dutch Zionist lobby” of conflating anti-Zionism with antisemitism.

The Israeli government exerted its own pressure on the Concergebouw. Diaspora Minister Amichai Chikli said in a letter to Amsterdam Mayor Femke Halsema on Nov. 4 that Abramson’s cancellation was “an act of moral cowardice and discrimination.”

Referencing the Holocaust history of the Netherlands, where 75% of Dutch Jews were killed, Chikli said, “Once again, Jews are being told that their identity, their art, and their connection to Israel make them unwelcome.”

Halsema lashed back in her own letter. Acknowledging “the fear and pain felt within Amsterdam’s Jewish community,” she said that she “strongly and unequivocally” rejected Chikli’s suggestion of antisemitism by the Concertgebouw.

“I find the comparison with the persecution and extermination of Jews during the Second World War beyond despicable,” said Halsema. “That history demands accuracy and integrity, not instrumentalization.” She also rebuked “any attempt to pressure or intimidate” local leadership and said that Amsterdam “will not be governed by foreign institutions, nor driven by external political agendas.”

Serphos said the Chanukah Concert Foundation was satisfied with their compromise and hoped to move on from the conflict.

“We want to continue working with the Concertgebouw,” he said. “We want to look ahead and not look back, and we’re happy that we managed to find common ground.”

The post Following uproar, IDF cantor to perform at Amsterdam Hanukkah concert after all — but not for everyone appeared first on The Forward.

In the dark, sparsely furnished Israeli Immigration Authority waiting room at Ben Gurion airport, handcuffs around my wrists, I picked up a siddur — a prayerbook. It was 6 a.m. and I began to recite the ancient words of shacharit, morning prayers. Praying was familiar, an attempt to make sense of the baffling circumstances I found myself in: a Jew being deported from the Jewish state.

Thousands, if not millions, of other Jews across Israel would recite those same words that morning. But unlike them, I knew this was the last time — for a long time — that I would be able to say them in the Jewish homeland. I had just learned I would not be allowed to return to Israel for a decade.

All because I was on a bus, as part of an activist excursion organized by a peaceful, solidarity-focused NGO, that entered a recently-declared closed military zone in the West Bank as we tried to reach Palestinian farmers in their olive groves. A closed military zone is determined at will by the Israeli army; it is a designation that gives soldiers legal authority to bar entry or remove anyone—including residents.

I entered the closed military zone unknowingly. The usual consequence for a Jew who does that is a temporary restriction from the West Bank — not a 10-year ban from the country.

I am 18 years old. For me, 10 years feels like a lifetime.

A deep, critical connection

In September I joined a program called Achvat Amim, or “solidarity of nations,” for a gap year before starting at Williams College. The program is organized around learning Jewish texts, considering Israeli and Palestinian history, and volunteering in both Israel and the occupied West Bank.

Achvat Amim felt like the perfect way for me to deepen my connection to a place I both love, and struggle with.

Judaism has been the lens through which I experience the world, and as Jewish values inform my understanding of self, they also inform my understanding of Israel. As I have tried to find my place in an imperfect and deeply unjust state, I have turned again and again to the Jewish concepts of tikkun olam (repairing the world) and b’tselem elohim (a belief that every human being is created in the image of God).

When I lived in Jerusalem during 10th grade, I attended pro-democracy protests every week. On my many trips to Israel since, I’ve joined protests demanding an end to the war in Gaza and the return of the hostages. These mass displays showed me that many Israeli Jews were willing to fight for and honor the Jewish values that drive me. They urged me to believe there was a just future for this country.

In the two months before my deportation, I was introduced to a world of Jewish leftists in Jerusalem who split their time between synagogue, Shabbat meals, political demonstrations, and solidarity actions side-by-side with Palestinians in the West Bank. They showed me a way to be deeply Jewish and connected to Israel, yet unapologetically critical of the injustice I saw.

And I saw injustice. As I spent more time in the South Hebron Hills and Jordan Valley, I saw demolished homes, burned villages, and fields of uprooted olive trees. There was also joy: I held babies, danced with little girls, and drank cup after cup of sage-infused tea. When the olive harvest began, I joined the Israeli organization Rabbis for Human Rights, going twice each week to help protect farmers from harassment or attack by Israeli settlers and soldiers.

Accompanying farmers as Jews made a statement: We would not stand idly as our fellow Jews burned Palestinians’ fields, murdered their sheep, and harmed their bodies.

A forceful rejection

I spent many days high up in olive trees, meeting other Jewish activists as we separated leaves from fruit. The day I was detained began exactly that way. I climbed trees, laid out tarps, and poured multicolored olives into buckets. But walking back to our bus, volunteers were confronted by Israeli soldiers. They asked all 11 of us for identification, then announced that we were being detained. Two soldiers boarded the bus and directed the driver to take us to a police station in the settlement of Ariel.

I was not worried. I knew other visiting Jewish activists who had been detained and released the same day, perhaps banned from returning to the West Bank for a couple of weeks. That is exactly what happened to the volunteers who held Israeli citizenship and long-term visas. I watched as each of them walked out of the station.

But after four hours of interrogation and waiting, I began to understand the vulnerability of my tourist visa, and I became worried. Finally, at 7:00 pm, I was informed that my detention had turned into an arrest, and my deportation hearing would be held at 3 a.m. the following morning.

I was shocked. I am not Greta Thunberg, who was deported three weeks before me after attempting to enter Gaza as part of a protest flotilla of aid ships, I am an 18-year-old Jewish American, the daughter of a rabbi.

I was not wearing a keffiyeh, I was wearing rings etched with the words of the Shema prayer. It did not seem to matter what I had said in my many interviews that day nor did it matter that I kept Shabbat, could speak nearly fluent Hebrew, and knew where to find the best falafel in Jerusalem. All that seemed to matter is that by showing up as a Jew to aid Palestinians, I was the wrong kind of Jew.

Israel was supposed to be a home for all Jews, for me. I never imagined it would reject me so forcefully.

A few minutes after learning that the state where I had always been told I belonged was deporting me, I asked a police officer wearing a kippah if I could borrow a prayerbook. He watched me recite the words with a confused expression. I imagine that my knowledge of the prayers defied his assumptions about Jews like me.

I realized that this binary-defying confusion is our power. It asserts that as Jewish activists, we stand with Palestinians not despite our Judaism, but because of it.

Who defines Judaism — and Israel?

I know what my deportation is supposed to mean.

It’s supposed to tell American Jewish activists doing solidarity work in the West Bank that they are not safe, and Jewish high schoolers that they should make other plans for their gap years. It sends a message that the only Jews whom Israel wants are compliant ones.

But we cannot let ourselves be defined by those who use Judaism in the name of violence.

To not return to Israel for a decade is unfathomable to me. I do not want to forget my way around the streets of the old city, or the secret route I like to take to the Western Wall. I want to eat pomegranates from trees that hang over sidewalks, and figs from community gardens. I wanted to taste the olive oil made from the olives I picked with my own hands.

My deportation felt like a betrayal. Israel was supposed to be for me, for every Jew. But the settler movement and the current government would like to redefine what it means to be Jewish along political lines.

In Hebrew, I was taught to love our neighbors and to commit to repairing a broken world. To me, that means that while I may be angry at Israel and critical of its actions and policies, I cannot serve justice by severing my relationship with this land entirely.

I am not done with Israel, not done with Judaism. I am not giving up, and neither should any leftist American Jew. I believe that if there is hope for Israelis and Palestinians, it’s in the place of struggle. It does not serve us, as those who want a future of shared society, security, and justice in this land, to give up on this land.

The post Israel deported me for helping West Bank Palestinians. I won’t give up on a peaceful future for the country I love appeared first on The Forward.

‫וואָס געשעט ווען אַ יונגע פֿרוי פֿאָרט זוכן אַ פֿאַרלוירענע געבענטשטע חסידישע סאָפֿע אין אונגערן, און געפֿינט דווקא אַ נײַעם קונסטוועג וואָס ברענגט ייִדיש אין קינאָ אַרײַן און דערבײַ הייבט זי אָן אַ הצלחהדיקע פֿילם־קאַריערע?

באַקענט זיך אויף אַ זומישן שמועס אויף ייִדיש מיט פּראָפֿ׳ פּערל גליק — אַ פֿילמאָגראַפֿקע וואָס איז דערצויגן געוואָרן בײַ אַ חסידישער משפּחה — זונטיק, דעם 23סטן נאָוועמבער, 1:30 נאָך מיטאָג ניו־יאָרקער צײַט.

הײַנט איז גליק אַ פּראָפֿעסאָרין פֿון פֿילם־פּראָדוקציע בײַ פּען־סטייט־אוניווערסיטעט, און די גרינדערין פֿון Palinka Pictures. זי שאַפֿט דאָקומענטאַלע און נאַראַטיווע פֿילמען, אין וועלכע זי וועבט צונויף ייִדיש־לשון מיט די טעמעס זכּרון, משפּחה און דאָס דערציילן פּערזענלעכע געשיכטעס.

דער אינטערוויו, וואָס וועט געפֿירט ווערן דורך אלי בענעדיקט, ווערט געשטיצט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע.

גליקס פֿילמען האָט מען שוין געוויזן אינעם Film Forum און אויף PBS, ווי אויך אין פּראָגראַמען פֿאַרבונדן מיט דעם „קאַן־קינאָ־פֿעסטיוואַל“. צווישן אירע באַקאַנטסטע פֿילמען זענען: „דיוואַן“, Where is Joel Baum און „שלעסער אינעם הימל“.

בענעדיקט וועט שמועסן מיט איר וועגן איר שאַפֿערישן פּראָצעס, ווי ייִדיש שפּילט אַ ראָלע אין אירע פֿילמען, און די געשיכטע הינטער געוויסע סצענעס. מע וועט אויך ווײַזן קורצע אויסצוגן צו פֿאַרטיפֿן דעם שמועס.

כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן אויף דער פּראָגראַם, גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.

‫

‫‫

The post A chat in Yiddish with filmmaker Pearl Gluck appeared first on The Forward.