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From shtetl to synth: How Yiddish electronica found its rhythm
Yiddish music has always evolved — from the shtetl to the stage, and now to the synth. For some time now a new wave of artists has been bringing its spirit into the digital age. Across clubs from Montreal to New York, artists are remixing old-world melodies into the digital soundscape of the 21st century. It’s not nostalgia. It’s a pulse.
Two of the most innovative voices in this movement, Josh “Socalled” Dolgin and Chaia, are proving that Yiddish isn’t just surviving — it’s vibrating with life. Dolgin, the Canadian producer and musician who pioneered Yiddish hip-hop, began his journey far from any shtetl. Growing up in Chelsea, Quebec, as the only Jewish kid in school, he fell in love with funk and hip hop in the early 1990s. It was a subculture that felt both strange and electric, and he saw it as funk for a new era. When he discovered sampling he found his voice.
One day in a thrift store, he stumbled upon a record by Aaron Lebedeff, the Yiddish theater composer and singer best known for the song “Romania, Romania.”Between each verse were beautiful, hooky orchestral bars that inspired him to blend Yiddish music with hip hop. Mixing those breaks into beats became a way of reclaiming Jewish identity and discovering his own culture.
Two decades later, Dolgin teaches at McGill University while continuing to perform and record. He notes that Yiddish electronica isn’t a new wave — it has existed for more than 20 years — but access has transformed it. Back then, he worked with a sampler that could record only a few seconds of sound; now, everyone has a studio on their phone, able to explore Yiddish identity anywhere and at anytime.
Dolgin doesn’t see the music as a gimmick or cultural experiment. “I don’t want to force-feed audiences my work to make a point,” he explained. “The music does the speaking. If it slaps, it slaps.” His listeners range from non-Jewish Europeans to Jews rediscovering their roots. Creating a contemporary sound infused with history, he said, is rewarding — even if most Jews today aren’t deeply engaged with Yiddish culture.“I just wanted to show that this music can be on the same level as any of the great world music traditions.”
For a younger generation, including Brooklyn-based producer and accordionist Chaia, that same impulse has taken on new urgency and political resonance. Like Dolgin, she began in klezmer before turning toward electronic sound. In her teens, she played accordion in a community klezmer band. Later, while studying under klezmer revival pioneer Hankus Netsky at the New England Conservatory, she began experimenting with his vast archive of field recordings. Netsky had dozens of laptops filled with interviews and Yiddish songs, and Chaia started digitally altering them and blending them with the techno she heard in Boston’s underground clubs.
Her first track, “Oy Mamenyu,” reworked short clips of people talking that she took from real recordings or archives and mixed them to music (in Chaia’s case, a clip about women in the shtetl). The sound was hypnotic — traditional Yiddish phrasing layered over minimalist electronic beats. Soon, other musicians were following suit. In 2022, Chaia launched a festival afterparty called Kleztronica, a night devoted to Yiddish-electronic fusion. She expected just a few friends; instead, hundreds of people showed up.
The event was intentionally political and unapologetically queer. “We sang songs from the Jewish Labor Bund and shouted ‘Down with the police’ in Yiddish,” she said. Since then, she has hosted a dozen Kleztronica nights and expanded into a broader series called Diasporic Techno Night, where each artist samples music from their own heritage. “By celebrating our own diasporas, we can be in solidarity with one another,” she explained.
She describes her tracks not as futuristic but as portals. “I’m pulling voices of people who are no longer here and using them like time travel machines,” she said. “If our ancestors envisioned solidarity and liberation, why can’t we say the same now?”
Her most recent album, Yiddish Electronic, released this year, takes that idea to new height. Each track reimagines a folk song through layers of archival sound — recordings of singers, drummers, cantors and even spoken reflections on trauma. She hopes listeners can “feel the ancestral magic” in her songs, hearing “something they recognize and something they’ve never imagined together.”
Both Dolgin and Chaia are clear about one thing: fusion isn’t easy. “Fusion is dangerous and mostly sucks,” Dolgin said bluntly. “To make it work, you have to love both genres and know them deeply. You can’t just slap one onto the other.” Dolgin also stresses that to mess with tradition, you have to know it first. Chaia agrees, noting that her approach is grounded in years of study and respect for source material. “We both make sure the Yiddish is exact — the intonation, the phrasing,” she said.
Despite their different generations, the two musicians share a common mission: to keep Yiddish vibrant without turning it into a museum piece. Dolgin does it through funk and humor; Chaia through radical techno and activism. Both see Yiddish as a living language of resistance.
“Music can be fun and funny, but also tragic and heart-wrenching,” Dolgin reflected. “That mix of laughter and tears — it’s what klezmer always did best.”
Related article: https://forward.com/culture/554470/kaia-berman-peters-klezmer-edm-jewish-dance-music-kleztronica/
The post From shtetl to synth: How Yiddish electronica found its rhythm appeared first on The Forward.
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Israel Publishes Draft Law Seeking to Boost State Revenues From Dead Sea Minerals
A drone picture shows part of the Dead Sea and its shore near Ein Gedi, Israel, Feb. 7, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ilan Rosenberg
Israel on Wednesday published a draft law that aims to boost state revenues from a concession for extracting minerals from the Dead Sea as well as tackling its environmental consequences.
The Finance Ministry said the proposed law intends to redefine the concession to ensure the public and the state get their rightful share, while ensuring the preservation of nature and environmental values.
“The law serves as the basis for allocating the concession and the terms of the future tender for resource extraction from the Dead Sea, with an emphasis on promoting optimal competition, lowering entry barriers, and attracting leading international players,” it said.
Fertilizer maker ICL Group has held the concession, giving it exclusive rights to minerals from the Dead Sea site, for five decades, but its permit is set to expire in 2030.
Last month, ICL gave up right of first refusal for its Dead Sea concession under a government plan to open it up for tender, although it would receive some $3 billion if it loses the permit when it expires.
ICL, one of the world’s largest potash producers, has previously said its Dead Sea assets were worth $6 billion. ICL extracts mainly potash and magnesium from the concession.
Under the draft law, which still needs preliminary approval from lawmakers, the state‘s share of concession profits would ultimately rise to an average of 50% from 35% currently, partly through royalties, the ministry said.
The law also aims to tackle negative impacts of resource extraction activities in the Dead Sea, which continues to shrink.
ICL plans to participate in the future tender and has said it believes it is the most suitable candidate to operate the future concession.
Accountant General Yali Rothenberg said the law places emphasis on fair, efficient, and responsible use of one of Israel’s most important natural resources.
It “will ensure that the state maximizes economic value for the public, promotes optimal competition, and protects the unique environment of the Dead Sea region for future generations,” he said.
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Israel Says It Received Body From Hamas, Indicates Rafah Crossing to Open Soon to Let Gazans Cross Into Egypt
People hold images of dead hostages Ran Gvili and Sudthisak Rinthalak, whose bodies haven’t been returned yet, as Israelis attend a rally calling for the immediate return of the remains of all hostages held in Gaza, more than two years after the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Hamas, at the Hostages Square in Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Nir Elias
Israel received a body that the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas said was one of the last two deceased hostages in the Gaza Strip on Wednesday, as Israel said it would allow Gaza’s gateway to Egypt to open once all hostages were returned.
A body has been transferred by the Red Cross to the Israeli military and will undergo forensic identification, a statement from the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office said.
Hamas also handed over remains on Tuesday, which Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s office later said were not of any hostage.
The handover of the last hostages’ bodies in Gaza would complete a key condition of the initial part of US President Donald Trump’s plan to end the two-year Gaza war, which also provides for the Rafah border crossing between Gaza and Egypt to open in both directions.
Israel has kept the crossing shut since the ceasefire came into effect in October, saying that Hamas must abide by the agreement to return all hostages still in Gaza, living and deceased.
“The crossing will be opened both ways when all of our hostages have been returned,” Israeli government spokesperson Shosh Bedrosian told reporters.
Since the fragile truce started, Hamas has returned all 20 living hostages and 26 bodies in exchange for around 2,000 Palestinian detainees and convicted prisoners, but two more deceased captives – an Israeli police officer and a Thai agricultural worker – are still in Gaza.
ISRAEL SAYS PREVIOUS ‘FINDINGS’ NOT LINKED TO HOSTAGES
The armed wing of the Hamas-allied Palestinian Islamic Jihad terrorist group, the Al Quds Brigades, said it had found a hostage body after conducting a search in northern Gaza, along with a team from the Red Cross.
Hamas and Islamic Jihad said they had handed over the body to the Red Cross late on Wednesday afternoon. The groups did not say which of the two remaining deceased hostages they believed it to be.
The two are Israeli police officer Ran Gvili and Thai national Sudthisak Rinthalak, both kidnapped during Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered two years of devastating war in Gaza.
OPENING OF CROSSING COULD ALLOW OUT THOSE NEEDING TREATMENT
COGAT, the Israeli military arm that oversees humanitarian matters, said the Rafah crossing would be opened in the coming days to allow Palestinians to cross into Egypt.
The decision to open the crossing for those seeking to leave Gaza was made in “full coordination” with those that have mediated between Israel and Hamas during the war, Bedrosian said.
Egypt, along with Qatar and the US, has acted as a mediator.
COGAT said it would be opened under the supervision of a European Union mission – a similar mechanism to that employed during a previous Gaza ceasefire agreed in January 2025.
Before the war, the Rafah crossing was a key entry point for aid into the territory, as well as weapons smuggling for Hamas. It has been mostly closed throughout the conflict.
At least 16,500 patients in Gaza require medical care outside of the enclave, according to the United Nations. Some Gazans have managed to leave for medical treatment abroad through Israel.
Violence has tailed off since the Oct. 10 ceasefire but Israel has continued to strike Gaza and conduct demolitions against what it says is Hamas infrastructure. Hamas and Israel have traded blame for violating the US-backed agreement.
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Israel, Lebanon Send Civilian Envoys to Truce Committee for First Direct Talks in Decades
An Israeli citizen looks out from a viewpoint towards Lebanon, near the Israel-Lebanon border, as seen from northern Israel, Nov. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
Israel and Lebanon sent civilian envoys to a military committee monitoring their ceasefire, top officials from both said on Wednesday, in a move set to expand the scope of talks between the long-time foes for the first time.
The meeting was a step toward a months-old US demand that the two countries broaden talks beyond monitoring the 2024 ceasefire, in line with US President Donald Trump’s agenda of peace agreements across the Middle East.
It came even as fears of a renewed flare-up between Israel and powerful Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah persist.
Lebanese Prime Minister Nawaf Salam told journalists he hoped civilian participation in the meetings would help “defuse tensions,” saying further Israeli strikes in recent weeks had been a clear escalatory signal.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the atmosphere at the meeting was good and that the sides agreed to put forth ideas for economic cooperation.
LEBANON OPEN TO US, FRENCH TROOPS
Lebanon and Israel have been officially enemy states for over 70 years, and Beirut criminalizes contacts with Israeli nationals. Meetings between civilian officials of each side have been extraordinarily rare throughout their fraught history.
Lebanese President Joseph Aoun has said in recent months, however, that he is open to negotiations to pursue a more robust truce and dispatched Lebanon‘s former ambassador to Washington, Simon Karam, to head his country’s delegation to the truce committee‘s meeting.
Netanyahu’s office said that it had sent the deputy head of foreign policy division at Israel‘s National Security Council to the meeting, as part of what it said was the ongoing dialogue between Israel, Lebanon, and the United States.
The committee, chaired by the United States, met on Wednesday for approximately three hours on the Blue Line, which serves as the frontier between Lebanon and Israel.
A statement issued after the session concluded said attendees welcomed the added envoys as an “important step” toward ensuring the committee is “anchored in lasting civilian as well as military dialogue.”
It said it looked forward to working with the representatives to nurture peace along the long-volatile border.
Israel and Lebanon agreed to a US-brokered ceasefire in 2024 that ended more than a year of fighting between Israel and Iran-backed Hezbollah. Since then, they have traded accusations over violations.
Salam said on Wednesday Lebanon was open to the committee taking on a direct verification role to check Israeli claims that Hezbollah is re-arming, and verify the work of the Lebanese army in dismantling the terrorist group’s infrastructure.
Asked by reporters if that meant Beirut was willing to have French and US troops on the ground, Salam said, “Of course.”
ISRAEL DEMANDS HEZBOLLAH DISARM
Netanyahu’s office said that regardless of any economic cooperation, Hezbollah must be disarmed.
Hezbollah’s media office did not immediately respond to questions from Reuters on the talks‘ expansion.
The Iranian-backed, Shi’ite Muslim group has repeatedly rejected any negotiations with Israel as a “trap.”
Despite the ceasefire, Israel has continued air strikes on what it says are Hezbollah’s efforts to rebuild its military capabilities in breach of the truce. Lebanon says Israel‘s bombardment and occupation of hilltop positions in south Lebanon amount to ceasefire breaches.
Fears have been growing in Lebanon that Israel will return to a full-blown military campaign after expressing frustration with the pace of Lebanese authorities’ efforts to seize Hezbollah weaponry across the country.