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A Minnesota synagogue built an ice rink — and is inaugurating it with a klezmer skate
(JTA) — A forecasted low of -16 degrees in the Twin Cities on Thursday has the stage set perfectly for two frozen Jewish firsts — a Klezmer on Ice festival and a synagogue-run skating rink.
Such is life in Minnesota, where bone-chilling temperatures are no match for Jewish festivities.
“It kind of shows us the Minnesota-style of thinking about the winter where just because it’s freezing cold outside, you don’t have to stop doing everything,” said Marcus Rubenstein, rabbi at Temple of Aaron in St. Paul.
“I used to be a rabbi in New York. They said you couldn’t schedule any big events in the winter because no one would come in case it snowed,” Rubenstein said. “But [here] sometimes it will snow 6, 7 inches and be -5, -10 degrees, and you’ll have everybody come out. I mean people in their 80s, 90s to little kids. And they just put on their coats and go out and have fun.”
Rabbi Marcus Rubenstein of Temple of Aaron test drives his synagogue’s new ice rink. (Courtesy of Marcus Rubenstein)
Temple of Aaron, a Conservative congregation of about 700 families, is inviting families to bundle up and have fun on what Rubenstein believes is the first-ever skating rink on a synagogue property. The rink, which can accommodate about 30 people at a time, was built and is being maintained by “Ice Captains” — synagogue members who clear it of snow and shovel off any extra ice that forms.
On Thursday, skaters at the rink heard the kickoff performance of the klezmer festival, featuring Jewbalaya, a hybrid klezmer and New Orleans jazz band in which Rubenstein plays the trumpet.
But the music will be piped in from inside the synagogue — a concession, Rubenstein and others associated with the festival said, to the cold.
Last week, musicians promoting Klezmer on Ice with a pre-festival performance alongside Lake Harriett, the (usually frozen-over) body of water at the heart of Minneapolis, ran into some technical challenges. Anticipating frigid temperatures, the musicians planned to play from a lakeside booth decorated like a boom box as part of a pop-art initiative called Art Shanty. But there was a wrinkle.
“We were supposed to have a sousaphone player who by the time they got their heavy big brass instrument into the box, the valves were frozen so they couldn’t play,” said Josh Rosard, an organizer of Klezmer on Ice. The performance went on without the sousaphone.
It’s not just brass instruments that are vulnerable to cold snaps. Strings and woodwinds can quickly go out of tune in the cold, as metal contracts and wood begins to warp. Clarinets and violins, staples of the Eastern European Jewish music genre, just can’t take it.
That’s why most of the Klezmer on Ice events will take place indoors — including but not only at Temple of Aaron. On the schedule for the weekend-long festival are local and national performers Sarina Partridge, Tzipporah Johnson, Izzy Buckner, the Klezmommies and the band Midwood. There will also be a cabaret variety show; klezmer-infused Shabbat services; and a luminary Havdalah ceremony.
Rosard said he saw the event as a breakout moment for the Twin Cities’ klezmer scene and, given the strong track record of longstanding klezmer festivals at spawning new acts, an opportunity.
“I’m really excited for what players in the community are going to take out of the workshops in particular and excited to see what may come out of it in the future,” said Rosard, who grew up casually playing the accordion but got more seriously involved in the klezmer world during the pandemic. He met his Klezmer on Ice co-organizer, Jewish musician and folklorist Sarah Larsson, with whom he attended KlezCanada and the Portland Klezmer Festival.
Still, he acknowledged, “It’s a little bit tongue in cheek to do something like this in the middle of February in Minnesota.”
Rubenstein said his congregants are up for it. Temple of Aaron’s new ice rink will be open not only during the klezmer festival’s opening night but for skating sessions most Saturdays after Shabbat morning services and Hebrew school classes finish.
The sun sets ahead of the Klezmer on Ice Festival’s opening night, which features a free skate session at Temple of Aaron’s ice rink. (Courtesy of Marcus Rubenstein)
If the activity isn’t exactly standard after-synagogue fare, it’s perfectly permitted under the Conservative movement’s interpretation of Jewish law. The movement, of which Temple of Aaron is a part, permits non-competitive ice skating on Shabbat, so long as no Shabbat rules are violated (such as driving to or from a rink or paying to rent skates), and the skating takes place within the boundaries of an eruv, or Jewish legal enclosure inside which certain objects can be carried on Shabbat.
Rubenstein said he was thinking about the activity in different terms — as it relates to making Temple of Aaron a centerpiece of a St. Paul Shabbat.
“The kids are ice skating anyway,” he added. “So why not ice skate at shul and come do it together with their Jewish friends, and build community that way?”
Temperatures are supposed to rise over the course of the weekend, but the high on Friday should be in the low single-digits. So for the klezmer performance that is supposed to take place at Lake Harriet, Rosard says, a plan is in place to avoid last weekend’s snafus.
“We’ll have the sousaphone player drive up as close as possible, then run-slash-briskly walk straight into the performance shelter,” he said. “We didn’t quite have the urgency last time.”
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Herzog Says Wellbeing of Israelis His Only Concern in Deal With Netanyahu’s ‘Extraordinary’ Pardon Request
Israeli President Isaac Herzog speaks during a press conference with Latvian President Edgars Rinkevics in Riga, Latvia, Aug. 5, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ints Kalnins
i24 News – In an interview with Politico published on Saturday, Israeli President Isaac Herzog remained tight-lipped on whether he intended to grant Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s “extraordinary” pardon request, saying that his decision will be motivated by what’s best for Israel.
“There is a process which goes through the Justice Ministry and my legal adviser and so on. This is certainly an extraordinary request and above all when dealing with it I will consider what is the best interest of the Israeli people,” Herzog said. “The well-being of the Israeli people is my first, second and third priority.”
Asked specifically about President Donald Trump’s request, Herzog said “I respect President Trump’s friendship and his opinion,” adding, “Israel, naturally, is a sovereign country.”
Herzog addressed a wide range of topics in the interview, including the US-Israel ties and the shifts in public opinion on Israel.
“One has to remember that the fountains of America, of American life, are based on biblical values, just like ours. And therefore, I believe that the underlying fountain that we all drink from is the same,” he said. “However, I am following very closely the trends that I see in the American public eye and the attitude, especially of young people, on Israel.”
“It comes from TikTok,” he said of the torrent of hostility toward Israel that has engulf swathes of U.S. opinion since the October 7 massacre and the subsequent Gaza war, “from a very shallow discourse of the current situation, pictures or viewpoints, and doesn’t judge from the big picture, which is, is Israel a strategic ally? Yes. Is Israel contributing to American national interests, security interests? Absolutely yes. Is Israel a beacon of democracy in the Middle East? Absolutely yes.”
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Syria’s Sharaa Charges Israel ‘Exports Its Crises to Other Countries’
FILE PHOTO: Syria’s President Ahmed al-Sharaa addresses the 80th United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) at the U.N. headquarters in New York, U.S., September 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton/File Photo
i24 News – Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa on Saturday escalated his messaging against Israel at the Doha forum.
“Israel is working to export its own crises to other countries and escape accountability for the massacres it committed in the Gaza Strip, justifying everything with security concerns,” he said.
“Meanwhile, Syria, since its liberation, has sent positive messages aimed at establishing the foundations of regional stability.
“Israel has responded to Syria with extreme violence, launching over 1,000 airstrikes and carrying out 400 incursions into its territory. The latest of these attacks was the massacre it perpetrated in the town of Beit Jinn in the Damascus countryside, which claimed dozens of lives.
“We are working with influential countries worldwide to pressure Israel to withdraw from the territories it occupied after December 8, 2014, and all countries support this demand.
“Syria insists on Israel’s adherence to the 1974 Disengagement Agreement. The demand for a demilitarized zone raises many questions. Who will protect this zone if there is no Syrian army presence?
“Any agreement must guarantee Syria’s interests, as it is Syria that is subjected to Israeli attacks. So, who should be demanding a buffer zone and withdrawal?”
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Turkey’s Fidan: Gaza Governance Must Precede Hamas Disarmament in Ceasefire Deal
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan attends a press conference following a meeting with Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov in Moscow, Russia, May 27, 2025. Photo: Pavel Bednyakov/Pool via REUTERS
Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan told Reuters on Saturday that not advancing the US-backed Gaza ceasefire plan to its next stage would be a “huge failure” for the world and Washington, noting that President Donald Trump had personally led the push.
In an interview on the sidelines of the Doha Forum, Fidan said a credible Palestinian civil administration and a vetted, trained police force needed to be in place to allow Hamas to disarm, and that the group was prepared to hand over control of the enclave.
“First of all, we need to see that the Palestinian committee of technical people are taking over the administration of Gaza, then we need to see that the police force is being formed to police Gaza – again, by the Palestinians, not Hamas.”
NATO member Turkey has been one of the most vocal critics of Israel’s assault on Gaza. It played a key role in brokering the ceasefire deal, signing the agreement as a guarantor. It has repeatedly expressed its willingness to join efforts to monitor the accord’s implementation, a move Israel strongly opposes.
Talks to advance the next phase of President Trump’s plan to end the two-year conflict in Gaza are continuing.
The plan envisages an interim technocratic Palestinian administration in the enclave, overseen by an international “board of peace” and supported by a multinational security force. Negotiations over the composition and mandate of that force have proven particularly difficult.
Fidan said the Gaza police force would be backed by the international stabilisation force. He added that Washington was pressing Israel over Turkey’s bid to join the force, to which it has voiced readiness to deploy troops if needed.
FIDAN SAYS KURDISH SDF IN SYRIA NOT WILLING TO INTEGRATE
Asked about a landmark deal in March in which the Kurdish-led Syrian Democratic Forces and Damascus agreed that the SDF would be integrated into Syria’s state structures, Fidan said signals from the SDF showed it had “no intention” of honouring the accord, and was instead seeking to sidestep it.
Ankara, which considers the SDF a terrorist organisation, has threatened military action if it does not comply, setting a deadline of the end of the year.
“I think they (SDF) should understand that the command and control should come from one place,” Fidan added. “There can be no two armies in any given country. So there can only be one army, one command structure … But in local administration, they can reach a different settlement and different understandings.”
Almost a year after the fall of president Bashar al-Assad, Fidan said some issues of minority rights were unresolved, insisting that Turkey’s backing of the new Syrian government was not a “blank cheque” to oppress any groups.
He said Damascus was taking steps toward national unity, but that Israeli “destabilisation policies” were the chief obstacle.
Israel has frequently struck southwestern Syria this year, citing threats from militant groups and the need to protect the Druze community near the frontier. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Tuesday he expected Syria to establish a demilitarised buffer zone from Damascus to the border.
TURKEY: U.S. COULD REMOVE SANCTIONS ‘VERY SOON’
Fidan also said Washington’s initial 28-point plan to end the Russia-Ukraine war was just a “starting point,” and that it was now evolving in a new format. He said mediation by US officials was “on the right path.”
“I just hope that nobody leaves the table and the Americans are not frustrated, because sometimes the mediators can be frustrated if they don’t see enough encouragement from both sides.”
Asked about efforts to lift US sanctions imposed in 2020 over Ankara’s purchase of Russian S-400 air defense systems, he said both sides were working on it, adding: “I believe we’ll soon find a way to remove that obstacle.”