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Seymour Stein, Jewish music mogul who discovered Madonna and The Ramones, dies at 80
(JTA) — Seymour Stein, one of the most influential music executives of the 20th century, who frequently throughout his career referred to his Jewish Brooklynite roots, died at 80 on Sunday at his home in Los Angeles.
The cause was an unspecified form of cancer, according to reports.
Stein, born Seymour Steinbigle in 1942 and raised near Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, signed artists to his Sire record label ranging from pop superstars like Madonna to punk rockers like The Ramones to New Wave pioneers like the Talking Heads. He also helped found the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame in the early 1980s and was inducted with a lifetime achievement award in 2005.
As he details in his 2018 autobiography, Stein’s father became closer to Orthodox Judaism in his 30s and 40s, regularly bringing his family to a nearby synagogue, where he was a vice president. Stein wrote that his father stopped by the synagogue at 6 a.m. before working in Manhattan’s Garment District and then again after work on his way home every day.
He described the Jews of 1940s Brooklyn in detail in “Siren Song: My Life in Music”:
We had every flavor of Ashkenazim — Russian, Polish, Baltic, Romanian, Austrian, Hungarian, German, and Czech Jews, including about fifty thousand survivors from the concentration camps. We had lost tribes you didn’t even know existed — Syrian, Iraqi, Persian, Yemeni, Ethiopian, even some Sephardic Jews whose family trees had curled through Spain, North Africa, the Middle East, and South America…. [E]ach Jewish community was distinct, often with its own native food and language.
In 1966, Stein — who shortened his last name on advice from an early mentor, the Jewish executive Syd Nathan — co-founded Sire Records, which would go on to sign and promote artists from a range of burgeoning genres in the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s: British indie rockers like The Smiths and The Cure, electronic innovator Aphex Twin, the rapper Ice-T.
“He knows all the lyrics to every song you’ve ever heard,” said Chrissie Hynde, the famed leader of The Pretenders, another Sire band.
Along the way, Stein wrote and mentioned in interviews how he found camaraderie with other Jewish executives and stars, after having grown up in an era when Jews were implicitly banned from some professions in the United States but found a haven in the entertainment industry. In his autobiography, for instance, he calls Lou Reed and New Wave electro-rocker Alan Vega fellow Brooklyn Jews.
“It’s amazing now that so many doctors and lawyers are Jewish,” he said in a 2013 interview with Tablet magazine. “Jews in America weren’t allowed in those professions 120 years ago. Music is something Jews were good at and they could do. All immigrants into America tried their hand at show-business.”
Stein signed Madonna from his hospital bed, where he was recovering from an open-heart surgery in 1982. She would release three top-of-the-charts albums with Sire before creating her own imprint in 1992.
In 1975, his wife, Linda, encouraged him to look into The Ramones, a group of scrappy punks in ripped jeans from Queens (two of whom were Jewish). She would co-manage the band for a time before becoming a real estate agent.
Stein, who later came out as gay, wrote that “the roles were a little confused” in his marriage and that he felt pressured to hide his attraction to men in part because of his traditional Jewish upbringing. “Just because I may have been gay didn’t mean I wasn’t Jewish,” he wrote. He and Linda had two children but eventually divorced.
In the Tablet interview, Stein mentioned that he stayed observant, though not Orthodox, throughout his life. He visited Israel several times and worked with Israeli pop star Ofra Haza on multiple albums. In the 1990s, he visited the grave of Rabbi Nachman of Breslov in Uman, Ukraine, a small town where thousands of Orthodox Jews gather each year on Rosh Hashanah.
“I feel a strong attachment to Nachman’s teachings,” he said.
Linda Stein was murdered by her assistant in 2007, and their daughter Samantha died in 2013 from brain cancer. Stein is survived by their other daughter Mandy, a sister and three grandchildren.
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When Is a Wedding Too Extravagant?
A wedding ceremony, illustrative. Photo: Jason Hutchens via Wikimedia Commons.
It has been part of my life as a rabbi to attend weddings — more often than not, to “perform.” I reckon that I have attended approximately 100 weddings of various sizes, styles, numbers, and traditions. Some I have enjoyed, but I am finding it increasingly hard to feel comfortable about many of the religious weddings I have attended.
They are getting more and more protracted. People are forced to wait for hours. A wedding I once attended was so overcrowded by jostling relatives under the Chupah, that the father of the bride couldn’t get close enough to give his son in law a sip of the cup of wine.
One band plays for the reception, another for the Chupah, a third for Hasidic or Israeli dances, a fourth for ballroom dancing, and a fifth for a disco. One singer is for Ashkenazi cantorial style, one for Hasidic pop, one for Sephardi tunes, and another for Carlebach. As for food, a loaded reception is offered as people arrive, and sushi is a must. There are multiple servings and meals, and if there’s a Hasidic Mitzvah dance at the end, you’ll get a complete breakfast too.
It is fashionable in the Diaspora to fly in rabbis from Israel. An oligarch recently hired an airliner to ferry over musicians, artistes, and security alone. Consider the millions being spent each year on religious weddings. And then consider how much charitable and educational work could be accomplished instead of a one-night bash that disappears into photo albums a few hours after it is over, to be glanced at perhaps once a year thereafter. The cost and the waste is mind blowing.
Successful businessmen have to invite business contacts, flaunt their success to attract new capital, and invite gaggles of rabbis to prove their religious status and legitimacy. It is not just spoiled daughters who clamor for excess; it’s magnates, too.
Over the past 50 years of rising Jewish affluence, as well as continuing Jewish poverty, many religious leaders of all denominations have tried hard to limit excessive expenditures on weddings, to absolutely no avail. Desperate parents have offered apartments and cars instead of huge weddings. Occasionally, you hear of a couple who elope to Israel or just take a rabbi and two witnesses into Central Park, but the pressures are great — and in most Jewish circles, it is simply not an option.
Recently, I entertained a relatively humble Rosh Yeshiva from Israel with 10 children who has personal debts of $500,000 because of marrying off his five daughters. It was not just the cost of the wedding itself or all the celebrations. It was the need to buy an apartment for each that left him staggering under such a heavy load of debt. And at the same time, he must help and support his five sons who are also married but are studying full time. This is not atypical. A rented apartment is unacceptable nowadays. And the chances of someone with no serious secular education getting a good job are massively reduced in Israeli society, indeed in any society nowadays.
Judaism is expanding because of its families blessed with many children. And it is true that social welfare (incidentally a product of the secular culture they despise) enables this mindset. But eventually, at some point, social welfare will have to be cut back as fewer enter the workplace to fund all this with their taxes.
For our own good as a people, we must call a halt to throwing so much money away on pure self-indulgence. If we care for our future, we must give as much attention to supporting Jewish education as we do to celebrating occasions. And the place to start is weddings. Make your calculations. Then set budgets, be realistic, and divide the sum evenly between your needs and those of others.
It is a huge mitzvah to rejoice at weddings and to help couples get married. Every day in our prayers, we are reminded how important Hachnasat Kala is. But that doesn’t mean we should go overboard. There should be limits.
The author is a rabbi and writer based in New York.
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PLO: ‘Every Achievement of Hamas Is a Victory for the Palestinian People’
Palestinian Hamas terrorists stand guard at a site as Hamas says it continues to search for the bodies of deceased hostages, in Beit Lahiya in the northern Gaza Strip, Dec. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Stringer
Hamas’ terrorism is considered a Palestinian national achievement and its successes belong to all Palestinians, proclaimed a member of the PLO’s governing body on Palestinian Authority (PA) television.
While Palestinian Media Watch (PMW) has been exposing the PA’s ongoing open call for cooperation and/or unity with Hamas, this time the Palestinian official went even further:
Palestinian National Council member and political commentator Hamada Farana:“Whether there are political agreements, contradictions, or disagreements between this faction and another, [Hamas] is part of the Palestinian people.
Every achievement of the Resistance [Hamas] is a victory for the Palestinian people on a cumulative, gradual, and multi-stage level. Likewise, every loss [of the Resistance] is a burden for the Palestinian people and will delay or postpone the process of final victory.” [emphasis added]
[Official PA TV, Capital of Capitals, Nov. 27, 2025]
Seeing Hamas’ victories, including October 7, 2023, as a Palestinian achievement is the reason why the PA continues broadcasting a clear message to its people that Hamas is an inseparable and indispensable partner of the Palestinian national movement.
Just a day after Farana’s statement, Mahmoud Abbas’ advisor declared that the PA’s “hands are extended and our hearts are open to … Hamas:”
PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas’ Advisor on Religious Affairs and Islamic Relations Mahmoud Al-Habbash:“Despite all our reservations regarding Hamas’ policies, positions, and actions, we still consider it and we will continue to consider it as part of the Palestinian people, and no one can deny it that.
Therefore, it has the right to engage in political activity within the framework of Palestinian law and under the umbrella of Palestinian law and as part of the Palestinian internal house. However, Hamas cannot have its own weapons, nor can it have its own rule … Our hands are extended and our hearts are open to rapprochement with Hamas, and as I said before, Hamas is still part of the Palestinian people, despite all its shortcomings.” [emphasis added]
[Mahmoud Al-Habbash, YouTube channel, Nov. 28, 2025]
Habbash is well aware that Hamas, because of its “success” on Oct. 7, remains the most popular Palestinian movement. To counter Hamas’ popularity, the PA recently bragged about employing terror against Israel long before Hamas came into existence. Fatah Central Committee Secretary Jibril Rajoub recently called upon Egypt to help the PA “bridge gaps” with Hamas.
Of course, Mahmoud Abbas would prefer that Fatah rule alone, but it is not because Fatah differs ideologically; rather, it is because Abbas does not want to share power. Nevertheless, since Hamas is overwhelmingly popular among Palestinians and the PA cannot afford to alienate that base, the two movements operate as partners of convenience: Abbas gains international recognition and funding, and unity with Hamas provides popular legitimacy among the population.
This is the PA’s dual-track strategy, presenting “Hamas-free” governance to the West while preparing to reintegrate Hamas once international support is secured. It continues to make a mockery of President Trump’s 20-point plan — which required Hamas to play no role in Gaza’s governance — and exposes Mahmoud Abbas’ claim at the UN that “Hamas will have no role in governance” as a lie.
Thus, Palestinian officials or political voices are frequently affirming the same message: The PA and Hamas are partners in the same national project, differing only in structure and timing, not in goals.
Ephraim D. Tepler is a contributor to Palestinian Media Watch (PMW). Itamar Marcus is PMW’s Founder and Director. A version of this article originally appeared at PMW.
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Erdoğan’s Sanctuary: Why NATO’s ‘Ally’ Is the Quartermaster for Hamas’ Next War
Turkish President Tayyip Erdoğan is welcomed by Qatar’s Emir Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad al-Thani in Doha, Qatar, Oct. 22, 2025. Photo: Murat Kula/Turkish Presidential Press Office/Handout via REUTERS
The intelligence bombshell dropped this week by the Israel Defense Forces and the Israel Security Agency confirms what strategic analysts have long feared: Turkey, a nominal NATO ally and a pivotal European partner, is actively serving as the operational and financial command center for the Iran-Hamas terror axis.
This revelation is not about a few misguided transactions; it exposes a sophisticated, Iran-directed cash network operating within central Turkey, utilizing the country’s financial infrastructure to move hundreds of millions of dollars to Hamas. This massive illicit funding flow is designed not merely to sustain the terror group, but to systematically rebuild its capabilities outside the Gaza Strip, ensuring its ability to launch future attacks against Israel and destabilize the entire region.
The intelligence is forensic and undeniable. Israeli agencies have identified key Gazan operatives, including Tamer Hassan, a senior official in Hamas’ finance office in Turkey, and currency exchangers Khalil Farwana and Farid Abu Dair, who are central to this Iranian-directed operation.
Turkey is providing the sanctuary — the physical space, the financial rails, and the political protection — that enables Hamas to bypass global sanctions and regenerate its forces. As one expert noted, the very presence of these Turkish-based operatives demonstrates how Hamas has successfully diversified its financial footprint precisely to evade the very border controls and sanctions the West is supposed to enforce.
The most immediate and self-defeating policy failure exposed by these findings lies in the ongoing US debate over post-war Gaza. How can the West entrust the post-war security of Gaza — a mission predicated on dismantling Hamas — to a nation that is providing the funding infrastructure for Hamas’ reconstitution right now? Inviting President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s military into Gaza is akin to asking the arsonist to lead the fire brigade.
Erdoğan’s motivation for this dangerous double game is rooted in domestic political survival and ideological positioning. He has relentlessly framed himself as the global champion of the Palestinian cause, a stance that solidifies his support among his conservative, Islamist-leaning base. This aggressive, public hostility toward Israel is vital to his political legitimacy at home.
Yet, as reports confirm, this public defiance is often paired with private pragmatism. Individuals within Erdoğan’s inner circle have reportedly asked Hamas leadership to “leave Turkey quietly” and even pushed the terror group to accept the Trump administration’s earlier Gaza proposals, despite provisions unfavorable to Hamas. This is the portrait of a leader who is prioritizing his own domestic political calculus over any commitment to the NATO alliance or genuine regional peace. He sustains a permissive sanctuary for terrorists while simultaneously maneuvering just enough to avoid the complete diplomatic breakdown that might jeopardize his economic lifeline.
Turkey’s role must be identified for what it is: a hostile sanctuary. A core NATO responsibility is collective security, yet Turkey is using its access to Western financial systems and its geographical position to actively facilitate the rebuilding of a designated terror organization directed by the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, Iran. The failure to shut down this financial conduit proves that Ankara is prioritizing the Tehran-Beirut-Gaza axis over its commitments to its Western allies.
The time for cautious diplomatic language is over. The US and Israel must treat Turkey not as a problematic ally requiring careful handling, but as the operational partner of a hostile terror network.
The intelligence is clear: Hamas cannot be defeated on the battlefield only to be rebuilt in the banking halls of Istanbul. The long war against Iran’s proxies is fundamentally a financial war. To secure Israel’s long-term future and stabilize the broader Middle East, the US must move immediately to impose comprehensive, crippling sanctions on the Turkish financial infrastructure that is enabling this terror funding. The only way to stop the cancer of Hamas is to surgically remove its life support, and the intelligence confirms that the critical, vulnerable breaking point is currently located inside a supposed ally. The security of the Mediterranean, and the long-term viability of the Abraham Accords, depends on holding Erdoğan accountable for his nation serving as the Quartermaster for Hamas’ next war.
Amine Ayoub, a fellow at the Middle East Forum, is a policy analyst and writer based in Morocco. Follow him on X: @amineayoubx