When Polish-born musician Maria Ka released her latest album Di Mashin (The Machine), she wasn’t merely reviving Yiddish song — she was remaking it in her own cosmic image.

Performing out of Gdańsk, she fuses everyday Yiddish speech with the vastness of outer space, using synths, distortion and humor to connect the language’s earthly pulse with celestial wonder.

Her approach is unorthodox by design. Rather than treating Yiddish as sacred, she sees it as a living, working language — one that can carry “punk rock” energy as easily as poetic introspection. For Ka, the language’s vitality lies in its adaptability. “Authenticity,” she says, “means Yiddish being modern, vivid and evolving.”

Beyond Klezmer

Ka’s music steers clear of nostalgia. She speaks with playful candor about her dislike of traditional klezmer, preferring what she calls the “mechanical rhythms” of shipyards, engines and machinery — sounds that mirror both the industrial history of her city and the emotional machinery of human connection.

Her songs blend the personal and the metaphysical — daily struggle intertwined with a hum of cosmic motion. “We run through our days,” she said, “while the universe simply expands.”

Ka credits much of her inspiration to pioneering women in music and theater — from Polish rock icon Kora to American legend Grace Slick and the British singer Siouxsie Sioux. Their daring artistry, she says, shaped her own stage persona: bold, visual and unapologetically original.

A Yiddish Voice in Dresden

In October, Ka opened Dresden’s Jüdische Woche (Jewish Week) festival — an experience she describes with disbelief and gratitude. The performance, which happened to fall on her birthday, felt to her like an impossible full circle. “If you told people during WWII that a Yiddish artist would perform new songs in Dresden,” she said with a laugh, “they’d have called you crazy.”

For her, bringing Yiddish music into postwar German spaces is not only symbolic but redemptive, a way to turn historical trauma into creative dialogue. “It’s meaningful,” she says, “because it opens understanding.”

Emotion, Light, and Connection

Ka writes instinctively — beginning with emotion and often discovering melody alongside it. Inspiration can come from anywhere: a word, an article, even a scientific term. One track, “Alef-Tsentauri Disko,” was sparked by an article she read about the star Alpha Centauri, which she transformed into a Yiddish pun, creating a link between the first letter of the Hebrew alphabet, alef, with the word alpha.

Her forthcoming piece, Di Kosmishe Motorn (The Cosmic Motors), continues that theme. It’s a psychedelic reflection on intimacy between the human soul and the stars. Despite her space-age vision, Ka’s goal is earthly and humane. She hopes listeners feel “light, positivity and balance” through her songs. In a fractured world, she believes music remains one of the few forces that unite. “There are more things that connect us than divide us,” she says. “Music proves it.”

The post Maria Ka’s cosmic Yiddish music — from punk grit to starlight appeared first on The Forward.

People react near the scene, after an attack in which a car was driven at pedestrians and stabbings were reported at a synagogue in north Manchester, Britain, on Yom Kippur, Oct. 2, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Phil Noble

Following the deadly Yom Kippur terrorist attack in Manchester earlier this month, Jewish leaders in Britain are calling on the government to crack down on rising antisemitism, demanding a comprehensive national strategy to protect the community amid an increasingly hostile environment.

On Tuesday, the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the Jewish Leadership Council, and the Union of Jewish Students issued a joint statement proposing a set of guidelines and policy recommendations for the government to tackle anti-Jewish hatred.

Together with other communal organizations, including the Community Security Trust, the document sets out policy priorities in four key areas: policing and security, extremism, civil society, and schools and universities.

Board of Deputies, @JLC_uk and @UJS_UK have today published priorities for a comprehensive strategy to tackle antisemitism.

Full paper is on our website: https://t.co/rekrvqGk6k pic.twitter.com/PjI0O6JpRN

— Board of Deputies of British Jews (@BoardofDeputies) October 28, 2025

Amid a persistent surge in antisemitic incidents, Jewish leaders said this document should serve as a foundation for continued efforts, while calling on the government, experts, and community partners to deepen discussion and collaboration to root out antisemitism in British society.

“Following the awful Yom Kippur attack at Heaton Park Synagogue we have seen a series of welcome announcements from the government,” Phil Rosenberg, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said in a statement.

“However, these measures on their own will not be sufficient to meet the long-term society-wide challenge of confronting antisemitic hatred. We need to see a Comprehensive Government Strategy on Antisemitism,” he continued.

On Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement and holiest day of the year in Judaism, a man identified by police as Jihad al-Shamie, 35, drove a car onto the grounds of the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester, northern England, and went on a stabbing spree, leaving two Jewish men dead and at least three others critically injured.

The attack occurred as the congregation gathered to observe Yom Kippur and ended seven minutes later, when police shot the assailant dead.

Shortly after the attack, UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer announced an emergency £10 million boost to Jewish communities to strengthen security at synagogues and schools, marking a record high in funding to safeguard religious institutions.

The Jewish community in Britain has faced a troubling surge in antisemitic incidents and anti-Israel sentiment since the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Last month, the British nongovernmental organization Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) released research conducted by YouGov which showed that those characterized as embracing “entrenched” antisemitic attitudes in the UK had grown to 21 percent, the highest figure on record, showing a jump from 16 percent in 2024 and 11 percent in 2021.

The survey came after the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters, published a report in August showing there were 1,521 antisemitic incidents in the UK from January to June of this year. It marked the second-highest total of incidents ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following the first half of 2024 in which 2,019 antisemitic incidents were recorded.

In total last year, CST recorded 3,528 antisemitic incidents for 2024, the country’s second worst year for antisemitism and an 18 percent drop from 2023’s record of 4,296.

Jewish leaders have consistently called on authorities to take swift action against the rising wave of targeted attacks and anti-Jewish hate crimes they continue to face.

According to government statistics, religious hate crime has reached record levels, with Jewish people targeted more than any other group.

Among the proposed measures and policy guidelines, the joint document unveiled this week calls for sustained visible policing at synagogues and schools, tougher enforcement against violent rhetoric at protests, greater powers for authorities to shut down extremist organizations, and stricter rules to tackle harassment and incitement on university campuses.

Louis Danker, president of the Union of Jewish Students, called for stronger and more coordinated government action to tackle antisemitism and extremism on campuses.

“Extreme student groups have never been so emboldened to glorify terrorism and incite hate,” he said in a statement. “The government must act with urgency to break the culture of impunity, clarify universities’ obligations, and root out antisemitism from our campuses.”

Keith Black, chair of the Jewish Leadership Council, stressed that protecting Jewish life must go beyond physical security measures.

“We need sustained action to combat the root causes of antisemitism and extremism,” Black said in a statement.

“The murder of Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year, was a devastating blow to our community’s sense of safety and belonging in this country,” he continued.

View of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Met, founded in 1870, the largest art museum in the Americas, New York City. Photo: IMAGO/robertharding via Reuters Connect

The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City is being sued for selling a Vincent van Gogh painting that was allegedly seized by the Nazis from a Jewish couple during World War II.

The iconic museum acquired “Olive Picking” (1889) in 1956 for $125,000 from the Knoedler Gallery and sold the artwork to a Greek collector in 1972, according to the lawsuit, which was first reported by The New York Times. The suit, reportedly filed Monday in the Federal District Court in Manhattan, argues that The Met should never have had possession of the painting because it allegedly belonged to Hedwig and Frederick Stern, a Jewish couple who lived in Munich, Germany, until December 1936, a year after they purchased the artwork.

The Sterns fled Germany with their six children to save themselves from Nazi persecution during the Holocaust. They were unable to take the Van Gogh painting with them because Nazi officials considered the artwork “German cultural property,” according to the lawsuit. After the painting was sold, the funds were put in a “blocked account” and later seized by the Nazis.

“In the decades since the end of World War II, this Nazi-looted painting has been repeatedly and secretly trafficked, purchased and sold in and through New York,” claimed the lawsuit filed by Judith Anne Silver, the heir of the Stern family. She also argued that The Met curator who bought and later sold the painting, Theodore Rousseau Jr., should have known the Van Gogh artwork was likely looted by the Nazis because he was “one of the world’s foremost experts on Nazi art looting,” noting his tenure as a lieutenant commander in the US Navy during World War II. Rousseau served in the Office of Strategic Services during the war and authored a report for the Art Looting Investigation Unit.

Silver is not only fighting to have the painting returned to her family but also seeking damages “for taking and detaining it,” as well as other fees.

The lawsuit targets The Met as well as the Athens-based Basil & Elise Goulandris Foundation, which is named after the Greek collector who bought “Olive Picking” from the New York institution. The foundation operates two museums – on the island of Andros and in Athens – and the oil on canvas painting is currently on view at the museum in Athens. According to the painting’s provenance listed on the foundation’s website, the Marlborough Fine Art gallery in London purchased “Olive Picking” from The Met before it was sold to the Goulandris private collection in 1972.

Heirs of the Stern family previously sued The Met and the Goulandris Foundation over the same painting in 2022 in California, but a judge dismissed the case. The family has now filed its lawsuit in New York.

‘To this day, the Goulandris Defendants continue to conceal how and when the BEG came into possession of the Painting; the Stern family’s ownership of the painting from 1935 to 1938; and the facts that the Nazis looted the painting from the Stern family, coerced the Sterns into selling it via a Nazi-appointed agent, and confiscated the proceeds of the sale,” the new lawsuit claims.