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How on-the-rise Jewish indie rocker Blondshell takes inspiration from Larry David and Sarah Silverman
(JTA) — When she sits down to write song lyrics, Sabrina Teitelbaum, who records music under the moniker Blondshell, doesn’t plan to reference her Jewishness. It just spills out in subtle turns of phrase.
In her song “Sepsis,” for instance, the quickly-rising 25-year-old rocker sings: “I think I believe in getting saved/Not by Jesus validation/In some dude’s gaze.”
In “Salad,” her latest track, which she debuted on Jimmy Fallon’s late-night show Tuesday night, she flirts with the idea of poisoning a friend’s abuser. She sings: “Look what you did/You’ll make a killer of a Jewish girl.”
“I was bat mitzvahed and the whole thing, but I don’t know — I think, culturally, my Judaism finds its way into my music, even in ways that I haven’t really been aware of until somebody brought it up,” she said on Zoom last week from her home in Los Angeles.
Jewish-tinged dark humor is rarely seen in indie rock, especially in the woman-dominated subsets of the genre that Blondshell is being associated with, alongside the likes of Snail Mail, Soccer Mommy and Mitski. And she’s not afraid of putting it out there — the press release for “Salad” notes the song’s “nod” to her Jewishness and the fact that it came out on the first night of Passover.
Teitelbaum’s self-titled album, which is getting rave reviews in advance of its release on Friday, is full of the coming-of-age stories and feelings found in shows like “Girls” and “Broad City.” On “Kiss City,” she sings, “I think my kink is when you tell me that you think I’m pretty.” On “Joiner”: “You’ve been running around LA with trash/Sleeping in bars with a gun in your bag/Asking can I be somebody else.”
The constant undertone is one of personal trauma — from unhealthy relationships, bad sex and other dark things in her personal life that she didn’t want to elaborate on.
“There are just ways of talking about trauma that I think are kind of distinctly Jewish,” she said, “and that comes up in my music for sure.”
It’s all accompanied by earworm pop melodies and the thick guitar sounds found in some of her biggest influences from the ’90s, like Hole (Courtney Love’s main outfit) and PJ Harvey.
Teitelbaum was born in New York to a Jewish dad and a mom who converted to Judaism. She spent a lot of time watching “Curb Your Enthusiasm” and clips of Sarah Silverman standup on YouTube with her sister. The family attended a Reform synagogue and celebrated the major holidays.
She spent two years in USC’s music writing program before dropping out to fast-track her career. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, she wrote electronic pop under the name BAUM. But during lockdown, she dug deep back into ’90s rock and set out at first with just a goal of improving her guitar skills.
“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to get better. And I’m going to sit down and practice for an hour a day,’ or whatever it was. And I would procrastinate by writing,” she said. “Because I was like, I don’t want to do scales and get better at chord structure, those things. So yeah, it was me trying to get better at guitar that led to everything.”
Teitelbaum performs on “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” April 5, 2023. (Todd Owyoung/NBC)
After finishing a batch of songs as Blondshell, she signed to the buzzy Partisan Records — home to a slew of acclaimed rock groups, such as Fontaines, D.C., Idles and The Black Angels — and began releasing songs last summer. She was quickly grouped together with the vanguard of other female alt-rockers, who have been relentlessly talked about in music journalism for about a decade. The comparisons bring up mixed feelings.
“It can be flattening. People are like, ‘You’re the wave of songwriters, Phoebe Bridgers and Soccer Mommy,’” she said. “My music doesn’t sound anything like Phoebe Bridgers.”
But she added that she is prone to do some categorizing, too.
“There are a lot of women in rock. And so I also get it and I myself have done it when I’m talking about who had been influenced by — I’m like, you know, women in rock in the 90s, PJ Harvey and Courtney Love. I’m also grouping them together.”
Heading out to tour last year across the heart of the country in a van was a startling experience. It was the first time in a while — possible ever — where, as a Jew, she felt like a minority.
“I’m always surrounded by other Jews — like everybody I work with is Jewish,” she said, referencing her manager (Shira Knishkowy), her producer (Yves Rothman) and others she has met in the industry. She mentioned other Jewish rockers she has looked up to, too, including Jeff Tweedy of Wilco and the sisters of Haim.
“[Now] this thing keeps happening where I’m like the only Jew on a tour… It’s a new experience that I’m having,” she said. “It kind of gives a different context to my upbringing, and to who ends up feeling familiar to me.”
In a recent conversation with her Jewish grandmother, Teitelbaum was asked a familiar question.
“She was like, ‘What’s your manager’s name?’ I said ‘Shira.’ She said, ‘Oh, a nice Jewish girl. Does she know her name means song?’ And I was like, ‘she knows,’” Teitelbaum said with a laugh.
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Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism
(JTA) — Vanderbilt University has launched an inquiry into a mathematics lecturer whose classroom exercise about Palestinian territory drew criticism from the activist group StopAntisemitism.
Tekin Karadağ, a senior lecturer at the university’s department of mathematics, drew the ire of the antisemitism watchdog after it obtained a slide from one of his lectures that used a pro-Palestinian protest slogan and suggested that Israel was shrinking the Palestinian territory.
“Assume Palestine as a state with a rectangular land shape. There is the Mediterranean Sea on the west and the Jordan River on the east,” read the slide. “From the river to the sea, Palestine (…) was approximately 100 km. in 1946. The land decreases by 250 sq. km per year, due to the occupation by Israel. How fast is the width of the land decreasing now?”
Karadǎg, a Turkish national who received his PhD from Texas A&M University in 2021, included the question under “examples related to the popular issues” in a survey of calculus class, according to StopAntisemitism, which wrote in a post on X that Karadǎg was “bringing his anti-Israel, antisemitic bias into his classroom.”
In a statement shared with the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Vanderbilt said that the content had been removed and that an inquiry had been launched into Karadağ.
“The university has received reports alleging a member of the faculty engaged in unprofessional conduct related to content shared during course instruction,” the school said. “The content in question has been removed, and a formal inquiry has been initiated consistent with relevant university policy.”
In recent years, rhetoric about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict on college campuses has grown increasingly fraught, with professors’ commentary on the region sparking heavy scrutiny and, at times, disciplinary measures when their universities have determined that they exceeded the bounds of academic freedom. A recent report by Columbia University’s antisemitism task force found that students frequently experienced pro-Palestinian advocacy in classes entirely unrelated to the Middle East — such as dance or math classes.
The inquiry was not the first time that Vanderbilt took swift action against the expression of pro-Palestinian sentiments on its campus.
In March 2024, the university, which has roughly 1,100 Jewish undergraduate students, was among the first universities to expel students who participated in pro-Palestinian demonstrations. This year, the school’s antisemitism “grade” from the Anti-Defamation League was bumped up from a “C” to an “A.”
The post Vanderbilt launches inquiry into instructor after math question about Israeli occupation draws criticism appeared first on The Forward.
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Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm
(JTA) — British actor Hugh Laurie pushed back against being labeled as a “Zionist” after facing a wave of online criticism for posting a tribute to the Israeli producer of the hit television show “Tehran.”
“Dana Eden, who co-created and produced ‘Tehran’, died on Sunday, seemingly by her own hand,” Laurie, who played a nuclear inspector in the show’s third season, tweeted last week. “It’s a terrible thing. She was brilliant, and funny, and an exceptional leader. Love and condolences to all who knew her.”
The seemingly innocuous post eulogizing Eden, 52, who was found dead while filming the latest season of the hit Apple TV+ series in Athens last week, quickly drew a volley of backlash on social media.
“She was part of the occupation force’s propaganda arm,” wrote one user in response to Laurie’s post. “What a shame, didn’t expect you to be a closet Zionist.” Another wrote that Eden “creates propaganda for Israel so that they can kill kids more effectively. People should have no sympathy for her.”
The award-winning series, which follows a young Israeli Mossad agent in Iran, was produced by the Israeli public broadcaster Kan and purchased by Apple TV+ in 2020 for roughly $20 million. Eden’s death, for which no cause has been announced, occurred during production of the show’s fourth season, which had already stalled following Oct. 7.
Laurie is not the first actor to spurn the “Zionist” label, as entertainers in recent years have increasingly faced pressure to declare their views on Israel. In December, Jewish actress Odessa A’zion pushed back on claims she was a Zionist after an image of her wearing an IDF shirt as a teenager circulated online.
On Friday, Laurie, who previously starred in the Emmy Award-winning medical drama “House,” shot back at the criticism.
“Nothing I have ever said or done could lead a sane person to believe that I am a Zionist,” wrote Laurie in a post on X. “However. If someone exults in the death of a friend of mine, yes I will block them. If you wouldn’t do the same in my position, you can f—ck off too.”
Laurie’s subsequent post also drew outcry, but this time from pro-Israel influencers who lamented the actor’s disavowal of the Zionist label, calling him “weak” and a “pathetic weasel” in the replies.
Freelance journalist Angela Epstein replied to Laurie’s post, writing, “Not Hugh Laurie as well. I thought he was one of the decent ones….”
“God almighty, why does no one understand English any more?” wrote Laurie in response to Epstein’s critique. “I have not spoken or written a word that would indicate pro or anti Zionism. That’s what those words mean. Blimey.”
The post Hugh Laurie rejects ‘Zionist’ label after his tribute to Israeli ‘Tehran’ producer sparks social media firestorm appeared first on The Forward.
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German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage
(JTA) — An anti-Zionist group in Germany has drawn condemnation after it announced plans for a protest against the Buchenwald concentration camp memorial in response to a ban on pro-Palestinian symbols at the site.
The group Kufiyas in Buchenwald claims that the memorial has become a place of “historical revisionism and genocide denial.” It announced a demonstration for April 11, the anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi concentration camp.
“Instead of honoring the persecuted and resolutely opposing every genocide, the memorial spreads Israeli propaganda and provides the ideological ammunition for the ongoing genocide in Palestine,” the group says on its website.
Buchenwald, one of the first concentration camps built by the Nazis and one of the largest in the country, was the site of the murder of roughly 56,000 male prisoners, including 11,000 Jews, from 1937 to 1945.
Last year, a German court ruled that the concentration camp had a right to refuse entry to visitors who wear a keffiyeh, a traditional Palestinian headscarf that has been adopted by pro-Palestinian protesters. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit by a woman who attempted to wear the scarf to an event commemorating the concentration camp’s liberation.
The woman, who was only identified by her first name, Anna, posted a testimony about her actions on the Kufiyas in Buchenwald Instagram page in which she said she was inspired by the resistance of Buchenwald prisoners.
“Our fundamental principle is this: criticism of the Israeli government’s policies, settlement policy, or actions in the Gaza Strip is legitimate,” said the Buchenwald Foundation’s director Jens-Christian Wagner in a statement outlining the memorial’s protocols. “However, it becomes antisemitic when used to relativize the Holocaust and discredit its victims as perpetrators. We will not tolerate this at the Buchenwald Memorial.”
The campaign against the memorial has been signed onto by a host of pro-Palestinian groups, including the International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network and the German group Jewish Voice for a Just Peace in the Middle East, which has defended the protest on X as evidence of what “commemorating past German crimes has to do with rejecting current ones.”
In a post on Instagram announcing the protest earlier this month, the Kufiyas in Buchenwald group wrote that it would hold a “public protest” in Weimar, the German city located nearby the concentration camp. The group also said it planned to host lectures and a “tour that vividly illustrates the events in the former concentration camp.”
It was unclear whether the protest is intended to take place outside the memorial itself. Kufiyas in Buchenwald did not immediately respond to an inquiry from the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the location of the protest.
The protest quickly drew condemnation from German leaders, including the country’s antisemitism czar Felix Klein, who told the Swiss outlet Neue Zürcher Zeitung that the protest marked a “new low point in the unfortunately all-too-common reversal of perpetrator and victim roles.”
Michael Panse, the commissioner for combatting antisemitism for the German state Thuringia, where Weimar is located, told the outlet that the protest was “tasteless and historically ignorant.”
The protests also drew condemnation from the European Jewish Congress, which wrote in a post on X that the demonstration represents a “deeply troubling instrumentalization of Holocaust remembrance.”
“Holocaust memorial sites are places of solemn reflection and respect for the victims of National Socialism,” the post continued. “They must never be exploited to promote agendas that deny Israel’s legitimacy or glorify those who perpetrate violence against Jews.”
The post German anti-Zionist group’s plan to protest at Buchenwald memorial over kaffiyeh ban sparks outrage appeared first on The Forward.