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How HaZamir youth choir serves as ‘an on-ramp to Jewish life’
(New York Jewish Week) — All across the country, groups of Jewish teenagers meet each week to rehearse as a choir. In groups as small as two and as large as 18, they gather in synagogue basements, Jewish community centers, senior centers and even churches to sing together. For many, it’s their only involvement with Jewish life.
These 450 young people, who range in age from 13 to 18, are members of HaZamir, an international choir for Jewish high school students. With 26 chapters in the United States and 10 in Israel, they convene each year for a spring concert in New York City.
But this coming concert — to be held on Sunday, March 19, at Lincoln Center’s Frederick P. Rose Hall — will be different than most years. This weekend’s celebration, which includes more than 300 student and alumni singers, will commemorate HaZamir’s 30th birthday as well as the 75th anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
“The idea behind the creation of HaZamir was to give Jewish teenagers the opportunity to have a high-level music experience and to express their Jewish selves and their music selves,” said Mati Lazar, HaZamir’s conductor and founder. “At that point, and even now, [that] is not really a given.”
Sunday’s concert will include performances by the entire ensemble, as well as songs performed by the Israeli cohort and members of the Chamber Choir, an elite group of HaZamir singers. (Students have to audition to join HaZamir, and select singers are invited to audition for the Chamber Choir.) The highlight is always the “senior song” — “Yachad Na’Amod” (“Together We Stand”) — that closes out the concert, said Vivian Lazar, Mati’s wife and the director of HaZamir.
“This is a problem with any high school teacher — you fall in love with your 12th graders,” Vivian told the New York Jewish Week. “They’re adults already. They’re smart, and they’re intuitive and then they leave you. For the last verse, they put their arms around each other. Some of them don’t sing because they’re crying so hard.”
HaZamir singers at the 2013 Gala Concert. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Mati Lazar, who declined to provide his age, founded HaZamir in 1993 as the high school arm of the Zamir Chorale, a professional Hebrew-language choir and Jewish choral performance group in North America that was established in 1960. A native of Brooklyn, he had been a member of Zamir Chorale as a teenager, and wanted to create an opportunity for other young people to have the same experience.
Starting with just one small chapter in New York — which Mati personally ran — he watched it grow, and grow, over the next three decades. “I knew it would be important — I knew it would evolve into what it has evolved into,” Mati said. “The surprise for me was how successful it would be in Israel.” The first Israeli chapter was founded in 2006.
He is also the founder and director of Zamir Choral Foundation, the umbrella organization that operates HaZamir and Zamir Chorale, as well as a choir for middle schoolers and a choir for young adults in their 20s and 30s.
Though HaZamir is an extracurricular activity for these high schoolers, the Lazars place serious demands on their members. “We empower these teenagers,” Vivian Lazar said. “When they go and have free time together, they’re kids. When they’re sitting in rehearsal, we treat them like professionals, and so they behave that way.”
As a result, participating in the choir can often become a lifelong commitment — and sometimes even a family affair. Sophie Lee Landau grew up in New York listening to her mother perform as a member of Zamir Chorale. Landau joined HaZamir in seventh grade and stayed with the group throughout high school. In college, she became a member of Zamir Chorale for a number of years until she moved out of New York in 2015.
For the past six years, Landau, 29, has been the conductor for the Houston-based chapter of HaZamir. “It’s an opportunity to connect with your peers who have come from a similar faith and to connect more to Jewish text,” Landau told the New York Jewish Week. “It’s really special to be able to give [students] an outlet to connect to their heritage and to find peers and friendships with similar interests and similar backgrounds. It’s about not feeling like you’re alone.”
HaZamir singers performed a concert at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to commemorate the one year anniversary of the deadly shooting that took the lives of 11 synagogue members. (Courtesy HaZamir)
The Lazars see the choir as “an on-ramp to Jewish life” with an emphasis on pluralism, community and Zionism. HaZamir is not designed to be religious, Vivian explained, though she suggested that singing together in harmony is often a spiritual experience.
However, “to be Jewish is to be literate,” Vivian said, adding part of being in the choir and learning to sing the Hebrew music includes learning the texts and their meanings.
“The more you know about your history and your tradition and your culture, the better human being you can be,” Vivian said she tells her students.
For participants, these principles culminate during “Festival,” a Shabbat sleepover that takes place in the days leading up to the annual concert. This year, the group will congregate at the Sleepy Hollow Hotel in Tarrytown, New York.
“Festival” is the first time chapters from around the world meet after having rehearsed the same songs as individual groups throughout the year. “It is a spiritual kind of experience singing music together: You’re breathing together, you’re thinking about the same text at the same time, and you’re making harmony,” Mati Lazar said. “All differences really subside.”
According to Landau, the weekend is especially rewarding for participants who hail from smaller Jewish communities. “This is the one opportunity for the kids to all get together,” she said. “Once you get together and you sing with 300 other kids, the sound is overwhelming. It’s the thing that they look forward to most, after working hard all year they finally get to put it all together and hear what the music can do.”
Over 400 students attended HaZamir’s “Festival” in 2019. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Though it’s meant to be a rehearsal boot camp for the teenagers, Festival also aims to nurture the cross-country and international friendships that are made on Zoom throughout the year. Activities include a Thursday-night jam session, hours of rehearsals during the day and a range of Shabbat services on Friday night and Saturday morning — egalitarian, Orthodox, Reform, and all-women services are among the options. For many participants, Vivian said, it’s the first time they can explore these different types of Jewish religious expression.
For Milo Shaklan, a senior in HaZamir’s Brooklyn chapter, whose ninth and tenth grade concerts were canceled due to COVID-19, going to Festival and the Gala concert for the first time last year was “a moment of understanding,” he said.
“I got to connect with all these other Jews,” Shaklan said. “I had no idea how big the community was. When I’m interacting with people in my synagogue community, I am interacting with people who more or less observe like me. At HaZamir, I’m interacting with Americans who are less observant than me and Americans who are more observant than me, and then Israelis who are both more and less observant than me.”
Landau concurs. “To be able to establish such a network is really incredible, and that’s why this weekend is so important,” she said.
For the Lazars, it’s alumni like Landau — who has maintained a long-term relationship with the choir — who are the biggest reward for the efforts. This year, 14 HaZamir alumni are now conductors of their own chapters, and all HaZamir alumni will be invited on stage to sing during the second half of the two-hour concert.
“It’ll be a very, very beautiful moment,” said Vivian.
The HaZamir 30th Anniversary Concert will take place on March 19 at 3:00 pm. Buy tickets here.
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If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come?
(JTA) — TORONTO –- Sari Watson was too afraid to attend Yom Kippur services. Concerned by rising levels of antisemitism in Canada, she was safely at home 25 minutes away when a gunman charged at her childhood synagogue.
“My internal alarm has been going off, and you begin to think about escape routes or backup plans,” said Watson, 39, who lives in Quinte West, Ontario, about 15 miles west of Belleville, where the attack during Kol Nidre on Sept. 20 culminated in a shootout that left the gunman dead and one policeman hospitalized. “The only reason I wasn’t at synagogue was because I have been terrified of this exact situation, or worse, happening.”
Florida Sen. Rick Scott, Oklahoma Gov. Kevin Stitt and President Donald Trump himself, all Republicans, have proposed extending refugee status to Canadian Jews who fear the spike in antisemitism in their country.
“’It’s so amazing to know that the Republicans understand the level of antisemitism we’re dealing with here,” she says. “President Trump gets the climate and the danger.”
Still, Watson has mixed emotions about the thought of leaving her home country. “I want to stay here and fight for our safety in Canada,” she said. “The option to come to the U.S. is really important, but we shouldn’t have to need it.”
The Trump administration has imposed stringent restrictions on immigration and is carrying out mass deportations, but is inviting South African whites – and now, potentially, Canadian Jews – refugee status. Critics accuse Trump of playing politics with refugee status, but some Canadian Jews see it as a lifeline.
Talk of Jews feeling compelled to leave Canada gained momentum last week when a well-known Jewish journalist posted publicly on social media about getting a foreign passport. Neil Herland, a newsreader for the national broadcaster, the CBC, wrote on X about his encounter with pro-Palestinian protesters outside Toronto’s Meridian Arts Centre, where Yom Kippur services were being held. Herland said that, concerned about rising antisemitism in Canada, he recently acquired his Austrian passport as a safety precaution. (Independent Press Gallery, a press freedom advocacy group, condemned the CBCfor reportedly suspending Herland after pro-Palestinian advocates lodged a complaint about his post.)
Some Jews are past the precaution stage. Sheldon Shugal, 64, and his wife are currently researching how to move to the United States.
“If I were able to claim refugee status to come to the U.S., I’d do it without hesitation,” said Shugal, who lives in Calgary. “I used to love our country … but it’s just not a place that I want to continue to live in.”
Shugal, a property manager, said he has seen increased antisemitism in Canada in the wake of the deadly Hamas raid in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and the war it launched. He said he and his wife have been struggling to overcome the complexity of acquiring an American visa.
“The Jew-hatred is no longer rising in Canada, it’s fully immersed here,” says Shugal. “It’s not the country I grew up in. I don’t feel affinity to Canada anymore.”
Shugal’s concerns are reflected in the findings of B’nai Brith Canada, which recently reported a 9.3% increase in antisemitic incidents from 2024-2025. According to this report, online harassment has surged dramatically, while Ontario saw the greatest total number of antisemitic incidents out of all the Canadian provinces and territories.
Antisemitic attacks have proliferated. In March of this year, Toronto synagogue Temple Emanu-El was shot at following Purim celebrations. The next week, two more Toronto synagogues were hit with gunfire over Shabbat, causing damage to the buildings, though no injuries were reported. In late April, assailants allegedly fired replica guns at “visually-identifiable” members of the city’s Jewish community, with one of the men sustaining minor injuries.
Shugal said reports of antisemitism have rattled him as well as the pro-Palestinian encampment his daughter encountered on her campus. “There hasn’t necessarily been anything I’ve personally experienced. It’s just what I’ve seen throughout the country,” Shugal said.
Lauren Cohen, an immigration lawyer based in Boca Raton, Florida, said that since the Oct. 7 attacks, about half of her Canadian clients cite antisemitism as a primary reason for wanting to leave Canada for the United States.
“In the past three months, I’ve noticed a very significant increase in the number of people between 55-70 who are contacting me,” said Cohen, who is originally from Toronto. “They have grown children or no children, and they have a little bit more money,” she said. “They want freedom.”
Antisemitism is not the only consideration for her clients, Cohen said. “The economy’s struggling. It’s not just antisemitism,” she said. “That might be the straw that broke the camel’s back, but it’s so many other factors as well.”
Cohen founded the Jewish Community Collective, an organization which helps Jewish Canadians and “displaced Jews” find connection in America. Another option for Jewish Canadians looking to make a new home in the States is Lech L’Tulsa, a program cosponsored by the Jewish Federation of Tulsa that helps settle Jewish newcomers, “designed to help Jewish Canadian citizens relocate to Tulsa.”
Some Canadian Jews do not see greener grass south of the 49th parallel, however. They point to Canada’s more expansive social safety net as one of the many reasons life in the Great White North” is better.. “Unquestionably, the answer to whether I’d consider moving to the States is emphatically ‘no,’” said Lawrence Stanleigh, a dentist in Calgary.
“I believe our country is a better place to live,” said Stanleigh, 67. “The U.S. doesn’t have a public healthcare system. Why would I want to leave our safety net for the U.S.?”
Stanleigh said the idea that the United States is a safe haven for Canadian Jews is misleading. “As bad as things are in Canada, I think they’re worse in the United States,” he said. “It’s not a better place for education or for healthcare. The whole idea of moving there for our safety is a fantasy that the Republicans believe in.”
Substituting the United States for Canada is shortsighted, Stanleigh said. “There are failures on behalf of Canadian leaders to stand firm in their support of the Jewish community,” he said. “But as bad as things are, I think they’re worse in the States. Our American cousins are blithely unaware of the problems they have at home.”
Anthony Housafather, a Jewish Canadian Member of Parliament representing a riding, or electoral district, in Montreal, is skeptical of the notion that the United States would offer Jews better protection.
“I think this idea is inspired by some right-wing Jews who have decided that their mission is to attack the Canadian government, and to make it look like somehow, Donald Trump and the Republicans are the savior of the Jewish people,” Housefather said in an interview.
Trump and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney are at a low point in their relationship, with tensions over trade intensifying – and Trump seeks opportunities to take potshots at Carney.
Housefather also does not believe that leaving for the United States is gaining traction among Canadian Jews. “There are some people who have decided that Florida or Israel is a greener pasture,” he said. “But that does not represent a significant or a predominant view, and the idea that everybody’s leaving Canada is actually not true.”
The increase in antisemitism is universal – and should be treated holistically, he said. “What I do agree with is everywhere there’s a very serious problem with antisemitism,” he said. “Everywhere Jewish communities don’t feel safe, and all levels of government need to keep doing more.”
Housefather encourages his Jewish countrymen to remain proud Canadians. “Antisemitism has grown to an unacceptable level in this country,” he said. “It doesn’t mean that you should have less pride in being Canadian because there’s a loud, angry, small group of Canadians trying to make us scared.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post If Trump makes good on offering Canadian Jews refugee status, will they come? appeared first on The Forward.
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UK foreign secretary: The threats to Israel don’t justify its treatment of Palestinians
(JTA) — British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband called Palestinian suffering in Gaza and the West Bank a “stain on the conscience of the world” at the Labour Party’s annual conference in Liverpool, his most blistering attack on Benjamin Netanyahu’s government yet.
His attack comes a number of weeks after he told the British Parliament that his country planned to reset its relationship with Israel and ban trade with its West Bank settlements.
In an initial nod of support to the Jewish state, Miliband, who is Jewish, described how three years ago “Hamas’ murderous attack on Oct. 7th united the vast majority of the world in rightful condemnation.”
The Labour Party, he said, will battle antisemitism and “will always recognise the threats Israel faces and stand emphatically against those who seek its destruction. But this cannot justify the suffering the Netanyahu government has inflicted in Gaza and the West Bank.”
He had a message, Miliband said, for the millions of people who had been moved and outraged by the plight of the Palestinian people: “We hear you. You were right.”
He said the government would call out “ethnic cleansing by the settler terrorists in the West Bank,” the “evidence of war crimes in Gaza” and Israel’s “illegal occupation of Palestine.”
Britain remains committed to a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, he said, and to helping prevent the destruction of that option.
Miliband repeated his government’s pledge to ban West Bank settlement products and prevent his country’s financial institutions, construction companies and service industry from operating in Israeli-controlled areas beyond the pre-1967 lines.
Laying out the global challenges, he spoke of Iran, Russia, climate change and AI, but he focused on Israel more than on any other issue.
He recalled his Jewish parents’ experiences fleeing and surviving Nazi persecution and finding sanctuary in Britain, “a country that was a beacon of light against the darkness.”
Now, as then, Miliband said, Britain has to confront global challenges by fighting for its values, “the values my parents saw in Britain, values which today are more important than ever.”
His parents did not think it was enough to simply live in a country with values: “They taught me that I have a responsibility to fight for them too,” Miliband said as he spoke of the idea of survivor’s guilt.
“I think my parents had something else. Survivor’s responsibility,” he said, adding that it’s a message passed to the next generation to leave the “world a better place than we found it” by never being “bystanders to oppression and injustice.”
The Palestinian ambassador to Britain, Husam Zomlot, responded to Miliband’s speech on X: “Thank you to the millions of people in Britain and around the world who stood firmly on the side of justice, on the side of Palestine.”
Israel currently has no ambassador posted in the U.K. Tzahi Braverman, Netanyahu’s former chief of staff, was appointed to the post but has been unable to take it up while under criminal investigation for obstruction of justice, fraud and breach of trust and is barred from leaving the country.
Tensions have been rising between London and Jerusalem. Until the Gaza war, Britain had been one of Israel’s staunchest allies. Ties frayed under the former Labour government of Keir Starmer, which last year recognized Palestinian statehood. Relations have been even more strained since Labour Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s new government was sworn into office in July.
In the aftermath of the U.K.’s decision to ban imports of Jewish West Bank settlement products, with France and Canada joining that move, Israel took a number of retaliatory measures. These included closing the British consulate in Jerusalem and removing its representatives from the International Gaza Support Center.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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Republican incumbent Rep. Lawler and Democrat Conley spar over antisemitism, Israel in NY debate
(JTA) — Incumbent U.S. House Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican from New York, faced off against Democrat Cait Conley in a fiery debate on Monday night, sparring over their respective commitments to tackle antisemitism in America.
The friction was immediately palpable when the candidates, who are vying for New York’s hotly contested 17th District seat, one of the most Jewish districts in the country, jousted over everything from military assistance to Israel to the most effective ways to combat religious hatred.
“Israel is our greatest ally in the Middle East,” Lawler said. “They are a beacon of hope and opportunity and freedom and democracy.”
“They have not committed a genocide,” he continued, adding that some of his Democratic colleagues have “wavered in their support” for the country.
Lawler called out New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, a Democrat, on his anti-Israel positions, describing him as someone his “opponent says she respects.”
In response, Conley stressed that she is “absolutely disgusted by the rising antisemitism that is happening within both political parties,” describing the phenomenon as “fundamentally un-American.”
She then voiced her support for the bipartisan Jewish American Security Act, legislation that was introduced first as a Senate bill and then as a House companion bill co-led by Lawler.
When Lawler then pressed Conley on whether she denounced not only antisemitism but Mamdani himself, she deflected the question. But he continued to push the matter, noting that he denounced Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens, right-wing personalities who regularly lash out against Israel and who Jewish organizations have said cross the line into antisemitism.
Conley responded by noting her “firm disagreements with members of the DSA,” referring to the Democratic Socialists of America faction that includes Mamdani.
When Lawler reiterated that she had not condemned Mamdani, Conley accused her opponent of failing to denounce President Donald Trump, whom Democrats revile as a bigot, and said he voted “with him 100% of the time” — a claim Lawler decried as “provably false.”
Lawler rattled off multiple bipartisan efforts with Rep. Josh Gottheimer, a Democrat from New Jersey, to advance relevant legislation such as the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025.
“Jewish Americans are under attack in this country, and we have a responsibility to stand up and ensure everyone’s safety,” Lawler said. “No one should be in fear of going to synagogue.”
Conley likewise recognized the rising hate against members of the Jewish community, stressing that this hostility has “absolutely no place here in America.”
New York’s 17th Congressional District, the lower Hudson Valley region north of New York City, is home to one of the biggest Jewish populations nationwide, as noted by News 12 debate moderator Tara Rosenblum.
“There are few places in the country where the conflict in the Middle East hits closer to home,” Rosenblum said.
More than one in five voters in the district, which includes all of Rockland and Putnam counties, as well as parts of Westchester and Dutchess, are Jewish, according to Rosenblum. She also noted, however, that there are growing Muslim communities across the Hudson Valley.
Asked whether there were any circumstances under which they would vote to withhold those funds, the candidates both voiced their support of Israel.
Conley, an Army veteran who served multiple combat tours in the Middle East, emphasized both Israel’s “right to exist” and the importance of ensuring “the safety and security of the people of Israel.”
“I also criticize Netanyahu when I believe he’s doing the wrong thing for Israel and for America,” she added.
Conley stressed that like her opponent, she would have voted against a House amendment that sought to cut $3.3 billion in annual aid to Israel. The amendment, authored by Republican Rep. Thomas Massie of Kentucky, would have “stripped assistance packages and other forms of reconstruction,” Conley argued.
Lawler, meanwhile, described U.S. assistance to Israel as “in our interest, especially with respect to our military personnel in the region.” He noted not only the significant number of bases in the Middle East, but also the 700,000 Americans living in Israel.
Both candidates agreed that Israel’s actions in Gaza do not constitute a genocide and that U.S. recognition of a Palestinian state should be conditioned on the disarmament of Hamas. Where they differed was on the expansion of West Bank settlements. Conley opposed such growth, while Lawler said that Israel is operating within its legal authority.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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