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The End Jew Hatred Movement is spreading across the country — and sparking controversy
(New York Jewish Week) — Last month, Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Jewish Democrat, proclaimed April 29 “End Jew Hatred Day,” citing “an urgent need to act against antisemitism in Colorado and across the country.”
Similar proclamations came from New York Rep. Mike Lawler, a Republican, and dozens of other elected officials nationwide.
But in the New York City Council, an identical effort proved controversial. While the overwhelmingly Democratic council approved April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day annually, six council members either abstained from or voted against what organizers had intended to be an unanimous decision.
The initiative behind the proclamations, called the End Jew Hatred Movement, is a relatively new presence based in New York City that is increasingly making its voice known nationally — through rallies, petitions, a relentless press campaign and now in the halls of government. One measure that demonstrates the initiative’s growth is the number of April 29 proclamations. Last year, there were a handful. This year, according to End Jew Hatred, there were 30.
The movement also provided the spark for the unexpected opposition in the New York City Council. Lawmakers who did not support the proclamation said they demurred because the End Jew Hatred Movement, while run by people who say they “set aside politics and ideology,” has been associated with right-wing Jewish activists.
End Jew Hatred doesn’t publicize much about its structure or funding. It is not a registered nonprofit organization, and would not tell the New York Jewish Week its annual budget or how it receives donations.
Its backers call it an unapologetic voice that’s fighting a growing problem, antisemitism, while its critics say it is an attempt to inject hawkish rhetoric into a national effort to combat anti-Jewish persecution. Amid that debate, the movement’s growth, and its successful spearheading of resolutions nationwide, show how an initiative founded by conservative activists has wielded influence in the conversation about antisemitism, even in liberal political spaces.
Here’s what we know about End Jew Hatred, how it’s establishing itself in New York City and beyond, and why its activities are drawing backlash.
A movement founded in the politics of 2020
Founded in New York City near the beginning of the pandemic, End Jew Hatred first drew local attention in October 2020, when it organized a rally in front of the New York Public Library protesting the way its activists said New York City Mayor Bill De Blasio and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo were unfairly targeting Orthodox New Yorkers with public health restrictions.
Haredi New Yorkers and their backers railed against the city’s regulations that year, and claimed that policies limiting group prayer and other religious ceremonies were selectively enforced against their communities.
“Never in my life did I think I would see this type of blatant Jew-hatred from our public officials,” Brooke Goldstein, who founded End Jew Hatred, said at the rally, which drew dozens of protesters. “Singling out New York Jews for blame in the coronavirus spread is unconscionable and discriminatory.”
But while the movement’s first significant action concerned the pandemic, a spokesman for End Jew Hatred said it was inspired by another seismic event that took place in 2020: the racial justice protests and the growth of the Black Lives Matter movement.
“How can we replicate this for the Jewish people?” said Gerard Filitti, senior counsel for the organization Goldstein directs, the Lawfare Project, describing End Jew Hatred’s genesis. “We saw antisemitism shoot up during the pandemic. So it was kind of the right time to launch this idea.”
Since then, in addition to spearheading the proclamations, the initiative has continued holding rallies, protesting the United Nations Relief and Works Agency, which aids Palestinian refugees, for “promoting Jew hatred”; speaking out against antisemitism in Berlin, Toronto and other cities around the globe; and, earlier this year, opposing a reported plea bargain for the men who assaulted Joseph Borgen while he was en route to a pro-Israel rally in May 2021. It was also a signatory on a letter to Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg protesting the plea deal, and members of the movement showed up to the alleged attackers’ court hearing.
Nearly three years after its launch, the movement remains opaque about its structure, declining to share any financial information or elaborate on its relationship to the Lawfare Project, which bills itself as an “international pro-Israel litigation fund.” In a brief statement to the New York Jewish Week, a spokesperson for End Jew Hatred said the organization accepts donations from local community members and support from like-minded nonprofit groups, though he declined to detail how those donations were processed.
“Our network of activists spans the globe, from New York City to Los Angeles, from Toronto to Berlin,” he said. “Also, the movement is supported by people from all walks of life who donate both their time and money to make the movement a success. Activists are encouraged to fundraise within their community, and some actions have been supported by organizations that have taken part in them.”
Roots in pro-Israel and right-wing activism
The Lawfare Project, Goldstein’s group, has represented Jewish students who settled a discrimination lawsuit with San Francisco State University, and the following year, represented an Israeli organization that settled a suit with the National Lawyers’ Guild, after the guild declined to place the group’s ad in its annual dinner journal.
This year, the group is providing legal aid to a Las Vegas-area Jewish teen who had a swastika drawn onto his back. And it sued the mayor of Barcelona over her decision to sever ties with Tel Aviv.
Goldstein also has a history of right-wing activism and controversial statements. She has made appearances on conservative news networks such as Fox News, One America News and Newsmax. She once said that “there’s no such thing as a Palestinian person,” and on Election Day in 2016, tweeted, “Can I run the anti-anti-islamophobia department in the Trump administration?”
Goldstein has said she sees Ronald Lauder — the philanthropist, World Jewish Congress president and conservative donor — as an ally. In a virtual conversation between the two hosted by Manhattan’s Fifth Avenue Synagogue last year, Goldstein thanked Lauder for his “support and his friendship,” and Lauder called Goldstein “so smart and wonderful.” Lauder was also involved with the movement’s effort to establish End Jew Hatred Day in New York City last year.
Ronald S Lauder, President of the World Jewish Congress (WJC) recorded before a bilateral a conversation with Chancellor Scholz. (Michael Kappeler/Getty Images)
End Jew Hatred has also worked with Dov Hikind, a former Brooklyn Democratic state assemblyman who now runs a group called Americans Against Antisemitism. Hikind’s group has partnered with End Jew Hatred, and he has appeared at its events. Hikind told the New York Jewish Week that his group and End Jew Hatred are “involved in terms of pushing the same agenda.”
Hikind has stirred controversy as well: In 2013, he wore blackface as part of a Purim costume, and in 2005, sponsored a bill that would have allowed police to profile Middle Eastern men on the subway. He was a follower of the late right-wing extremist Rabbi Meir Kahane.
Controversy or consensus?
Even as its right-wing connections have sparked suspicion from progressive activists, End Jew Hatred has garnered support from establishment Jewish groups. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations promoted End Jew Hatred Day on Twitter last week, posting a graphic with the logo of the movement. And the city’s Jewish Community Relations Council also backed the City Council resolution.
“All people, regardless of party affiliation, have a role to play in combating antisemitism and other forms of hatred, and we should not lose sight of that,” a JCRC spokesperson told the New York Jewish Week. “From our perspective, every day should be End Jew Hatred Day.”
Lauder has also advocated the use of the term “Jew hatred” in place of antisemitism in a video published by the World Jewish Congress that has been viewed more than 480,000 times.
“No one is embarrassed anymore when they’re called an antisemite,” he said. “Antisemitism must be called what it really is: Jew hatred.”
That view is not universally shared among antisemitism watchdogs. Holly Huffnagle, the American Jewish Committee’s U.S. director for combating antisemitism, said that the term “Jew hatred” is “jarring” and “makes people stop and think.” But she said the term does not capture the way antisemitism is often expressed via coded conspiratorial language.
“[People] might not know what [the term] antisemitism is, but Jew hatred they know,” she said. “In that sense it can be used to get attention, to help people call it out.”
“On the other hand, the antisemitism we see today, in its primary form, which is conspiratorial, is not captured by the term ‘Jew hatred,’” she added. “I hear from a variety of people that they don’t hate Jews, they’re against Jew hatred, they’re not antisemitic, but they believe that Jews have too much power [or] they control the media.”
And End Jew Hatred’s right-wing ties have also made some progressive activists in its home base of New York City wary of its motives. The lead sponsor of the City Council’s End Jew Hatred Day resolution was Queens Republican Inna Vernikov, a former aide to Hikind who has previously spotlighted antisemitism allegations at the City University of New York.
Her resolution, which passed overwhelmingly, garnered a mix of 14 co-sponsors, including some prominent Jewish Democrats and all six of the council’s Republicans — two of whom have links, respectively, to white supremacists and a person arrested for storming the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.
Council Member Inna Vernikov introduced a resolution to create an annual “End Jew Hatred” day in the New York City Council on April 27, 2023. (New York City Council Flickr)
Those right-wing connections were part of what led six progressive council members to either abstain from or vote against the resolution. One of the council members who voted no, Brooklyn’s Shahana Hanif, told the New York Jewish Week that she has participated in multiple actions against antisemitism but opposed the resolution because she didn’t want to endorse End Jew Hatred as a movement.
“Antisemitism is real,” Hanif said. “I understand the urgency. I understand the opportunity when there is a resolution or any kind of symbolic gesture that comes along, that every legislator wants to be united in supporting our Jewish colleagues. But in the same breath, it is our responsibility to know who is leading on these efforts.”
City Comptroller Brad Lander, a prominent Jewish progressive politician, vouched for Hanif’s record of standing up to antisemitism and echoed her concerns. He told the New York Jewish Week that End Jew Hatred’s activists are “right-wingers who have a track record of working very closely with people who foment hatred.”
Jews for Racial and Economic Justice, a progressive group, also opposed the resolution. Rafael Shimunov, a member of the group, said the resolution was “clearly associated with the right,” and noted that at a hearing ahead of the vote, an activist decried bail reform, something right-wing advocates have pushed for years to repeal.
Shimunov also took issue with remarks Vernikov has made about George Soros, the billionaire Jewish liberal megadonor who has become an avatar of right-wing antisemitism, and whom Vernikov called ”an evil man, who happens to be Jewish.” JFREJ activists also noted that also noted that some Republican cosponsors of the bill, such as Vernikov, Vickie Paladino and Joann Ariola, have called for transgender women to be barred from women’s sports at schools and universities. In addition, Paladino has a history of anti-LGBTQ comments. The activists say these views undercut the council members’ calls to oppose hatred directed at Jews.
End Jew Hatred’s supporters dismissed accusations that their cause is right-wing. In a text message, Vernikov told the New York Jewish Week that “this resolution has nothing to do with politics or right-wing extremists.” Hikind also echoed that message.
“Everyone in the Jewish community supported this idea,” Hikind said. “To say it’s just right-wing organizations is dishonest and hypocritical.”
Filliti, the Lawfare counsel, said the aim of the resolution — and End Jew Hatred as a whole — was to send “a unifying message.”
“We’re not looking to make this political,” he said. “We have had so much success with this and we are so happy to see this going forward.”
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Floyd Mayweather showered cash on Jewish causes — and now he’s suing their ‘Robin Hood’ alleging $175 million got diverted
They made for an odd photo: The diminutive boxing legend with a platinum grin and diamond chain, and the Orthodox macher who sported a black velvet yarmulke.
But when Floyd Mayweather, Jr., appeared in public in recent years — at LA Lakers games, promotional appearances and repeated trips to Israel — he was rarely without his jeweler, friend and business adviser, Jona Rechnitz.
For a few Jewish groups, the partnership was a gold mine.
With Rechnitz in his inner circle, Mayweather donated more than $1 million to Israeli and Jewish institutions that included United Hatzalah, Magen David Adom and Aish. And when Rechnitz and Mayweather traveled to Israel after Oct. 7, they were welcomed as heroes.
Now the relationship has come to a screeching halt with a lawsuit Mayweather filed last week in a Manhattan court, alleging Rechnitz defrauded him of $175 million in jewelry consignment funds, diverted settlement proceeds and unauthorized loans against his properties.
That their relationship collapsed in a big-money dispute did not shock anyone familiar with their histories. Mayweather had a long record of domestic violence incidents, with three separate convictions over the course of a decade, and more recently had allegedly skipped out on money owed. Rechnitz pleaded guilty in 2016 in a high-profile bribery case in New York City, getting a reduced sentence in exchange for cooperation with prosecutors. (Mayweather claims in his suit that Rechnitz, serving as his financial manager, did not initially disclose his criminal past.)
The two had also been linked to an alleged cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme in a case that was dismissed in 2022, and both are named as defendants in separate lawsuits related to an alleged ticket selling scam. (Rechnitz has denied the claims.)
Yet while the going was good, Jewish organizations and causes lined up to take part in their largesse. Now most have gone silent. But those willing to speak out say they have no regrets about the relationship.
“I don’t give a s— if he’s a Robin Hood and he’s stealing from the rich to help the poor — good, let him keep doing it.”
Adina SashOrthodox women’s activist, on Jona Rechnitz
Adina Sash, an Orthodox women’s activist, shared on Instagram a screenshot of an April 2025 message from Mayweather, asking her to contact Rechnitz so they could help her cause. Sash advocates for agunahs, women whose husbands refuse to grant a Jewish divorce, often generating headlines for stunt-driven pressure campaigns against the men.
Sash called Rechnitz a “massive” behind-the-scenes supporter of agunahs, estimating he had donated $250,000 to cover the women’s legal fees.
“I don’t give a s— if he’s a Robin Hood and he’s stealing from the rich to help the poor,” Sash said in an interview. “Good, let him keep doing it.”
Rechnitz, who denied Mayweather’s claims through an attorney, said he was unavailable for a phone interview Wednesday. But in a text message, he said he had brought Mayweather to organizations “involved in holy work.”
“Nobody stood by our side and I asked him to do so for me,” Rechnitz added, “and I also arranged for any out of pocket costs incurred for his trips to Israel such as airfare and hotels.”
Lavish gifts
In the first few days after Oct. 7, Mayweather quickly emerged as a rare ally for the Jewish state. He made public statements defending Israel on social media to his more than 25 million Instagram followers. He sent his private jet, loaded with emergency supplies, to the country less than a week after the attack. And he visited the country at least four times over the next two years, each time accompanied by Rechnitz.
Rechnitz, a real estate scion, had begun working his way into Mayweather’s inner circle after moving to his hometown of Los Angeles in 2017. Rechnitz was coming off a stint in New York that concluded with his sentencing to five months in jail for a bribery scheme involving the city’s then-deputy mayor for public safety and the leader of the New York City correction officers’ union. (The sentence was overturned on appeal in 2023.)
Mayweather was a controversial figure in his own right. In addition to his domestic violence record, he has been ordered by a judge to pay child support, and he is currently being sued based on allegations that he failed to pay rent and the bill for his private jet.
Rechnitz said he was forewarned. “Many people told me not to deal with him and criticized Jewish organizations for honoring him,” Rechnitz said in a text message to the Forward. “People make mistakes and I do not think that anyone can pass judgment without being in the same situation. Like many people, Floyd has his faults.”
The relationship between the two seemed to serve them both: Mayweather was flattered by Jewish leaders willing to look past their bad qualities, and bringing the boxer around helped rehabilitate Rechnitz in the Jewish world. Mayweather’s lawsuit described Rechnitz as his “de-facto” investment manager, real estate advisor, and banking liaison; it did not say how much Rechnitz was paid for those services but said it was a “constructive fiduciary relationship.”
They also made money together, according to one filing against them related to the cryptocurrency EthereumMax. Mayweather promoted the token at a boxing match and a Miami bitcoin conference in 2021. A class action lawsuit against the company alleged that Rechnitz had made hundreds of thousands of dollars selling his tokens after a raft of promotions from celebrities like Mayweather inflated their value. The filing claimed Mayweather was paid $2.5 million to be a “marquee promoter” of the coin. A judge later dismissed the case.
Despite the checkered past of both the boxer and his confidant, Jewish groups received them enthusiastically. United Hatzalah festooned its headquarters with Mayweather banners upon his first post-Oct. 7 visit to Jerusalem, with its president, Eli Beer, donning a Mayweather-branded cap during the visit. Magen David Adom’s American fundraising affiliate presented the boxer with a rhinestone-studded emergency vest.
Aish, an international Orthodox outreach group, bestowed Mayweather with a “Champion For Israel” award, with Mayweather and Aish CEO Rabbi Steven Burg posing for a photograph overlooking the Western Wall.
Mayweather also spoke to students and faculty at Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School, an Orthodox institution in New Jersey, last year, accompanied by Beer and Rechnitz and introduced by head of school Rabbi Eliezer Rubin, who said he was “exhilarated” to have Mayweather there.
Jewish groups characterized Mayweather’s support for the Jewish people as authentic and purely motivated. But it was also clear that it was driven by Rechnitz’s ties to the community. At a 2025 gathering of the Republican Jewish Coalition, Jona’s father, Bobby — himself an eminence grise of the pro-Israel lobby — proudly told those gathered at the event that his son was the boxer’s entree into Israel and Jewish affairs. When Mayweather took the mic, he said he saw Bobby as a “father-like figure” and Jona as a brother.
Responding to questions about the lawsuit, United Hatzalah spokesperson Simmy Allen said in a statement Wednesday that the organization would not comment on legal matters between private parties.
“Mr. Mayweather visited United Hatzalah’s headquarters in Jerusalem twice and saw firsthand how United Hatzalah is on the frontlines of emergency medical services in Israel and we are grateful for his support,” Allen wrote. He did not mention Rechnitz.
In an email, Rubin, Kushner’s head of school, said he did not regret welcoming Floyd and that Rechnitz did not facilitate the visit.
“When even influential Jews are remain silent about the malicious and vile attacks against the Jewish people, we need to commend and support people outside of our faith who are standing with us,” Rubin wrote.
He added that the school had no relationship with Rechnitz.
Representatives from Aish and the Republican Jewish Coalition did not respond to questions.
The new allegations
Mayweather’s lawsuit alleges that Rechnitz exploited the boxer’s trust — and his property — to enrich himself.
The bulk of the $175 million claim relates to jewelry belonging to Mayweather that Rechnitz allegedly pawned to a Miami jeweler for $13 million. Mayweather says its real value was closer to $100 million, and that Rechnitz did not have permission to borrow against the assets.
Mayweather also claimed that Rechnitz drew loans totaling tens of millions of dollars on various properties owned by Mayweather entities without his consent, and diverted at least $15 million in funds intended for Mayweather into accounts controlled by co-defendants.
Morris Missry, an attorney for Rechnitz and co-defendants Ayal Frist and Alexander Seligson, said Wednesday in a statement that Mayweather’s claims were “utterly baseless.”
“Mr. Mayweather’s gambling issues, prolific spending habits, monies owed to third party creditors and IRS tax liens and levys, as well as other unseemly behavior will be exposed and we believe that Mr. Mayweather will be the one paying significant damages to our clients,” Missry wrote.
Mayweather’s lawsuit is not the first lodged against Rechnitz since his 2016 plea agreement. In 2023 a judge granted $17.7 million plus interest to a jeweler who said Rechnitz’s checks to him had bounced. Separate lawsuits filed by a former neighbor of Rechnitz’s, Joe Englanoff, alleged that Rechnitz convinced Englanoff to invest $1.4 million in tickets to a Mayweather fight, which Rechnitz promised he could resell at several times the value.
Englanoff, who was renting Rechnitz the house next door, moved to evict him and separately sued Mayweather and Rechnitz for $15 million, citing breach of contract. Rechnitz countersued, saying the property was in worse condition than what Englanoff advertised. Rechnitz said in a text that Englanoff “is a serial litigant whose greed has blinded his ways.” Litigation is ongoing.
Englanoff did not respond to an inquiry.
Some on social media called Mayweather’s Instagram post attacking Rechnitz into question for antisemitism, noting that Mayweather had compared him to vermin and chosen a picture of Rechnitz wearing a yarmulke.
One who appeared to side with Mayweather was Rae Kushner Yeshiva High School teacher Rabbi David Schlusselberg, who said on X that Mayweather had spoken admirably to his students when he visited last year.
“When a Jewish person in his inner circle backstabs him and is being sued for $175 million, it isn’t antisemitic for Floyd Mayweather to post about this,” Schlusselberg wrote on X. “I feel terrible for Floyd Mayweather who has only showed love and support for the Jewish people.”
But Schlusselberg later deleted the post. Though he did not want to say why, he told the Forward he did so after speaking to Rechnitz on the phone.
Sash, the agunah activist, said any sentiment supporting Mayweather for pro-Israel advocacy was naive.
“The only reason he ever stood with Israel is because that’s how Jona puppeteered him,” Sash said. “Floyd is a puppet. Jona was the puppet master.
“He told me explicitly that his goal was to position Floyd as a representation of someone who supports Israel,” she added. “He knew that it would be monetarily beneficial for Mayweather’s portfolio to align himself that way.”
Rechnitz said he told Sash he was behind Mayweather’s charitable giving to Jewish groups and that his goal was to position Floyd as a supporter of Israel, but denied mentioning any underlying financial motive.
And he added that he was surprised Sash disclosed his involvement in her cause, which he said was supposed to remain confidential. He said he helped agunahs independent of Mayweather, with the assistance of family and friends.
Despite Rechnitz’s overt machinations with regard to his friend and client, Sash saw Rechnitz’s support for agunot as genuine. In one instance, she said, he had offered an agunah’s husband $500,000 to grant a Jewish divorce. (The man did not accept, Sash said.)
What financial benefits Rechnitz believed would accrue to Mayweather from his pro-Israel support was unclear, but Sash — who said she never took money from Rechnitz or Mayweather — speculated it had to do with real estate, a shared area of interest for the two men.
As to the possibility that Rechnitz paid for his support with someone else’s money, Sash said it didn’t matter.
“Even if it were to be proven that that exact money was taken from someone else, good, because the system is so rigged against agunahs,” she said. “If there is someone else willing to do illegal activity to help agunahs, amazing — we need every ounce of help we can get.”
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Inspired by a queer Bundist poet, this Jewish composer set her work to Yiddish music
Composer Avi Fox-Rosen, like many Jews looking for meaningful community outside of religion, found a spiritual home in music.
“I think I was looking for, in some ways, a mentor or somebody in a generation ahead of me who can provide another model for how to be Jewish and work towards peace and intersectional justice,” Avi Fox-Rosen said.
He found queer Bundist poet Irena Klepfisz.
Klepfisz is the daughter of Rose and Michał Klepfisz, organizers of the 1943 Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. Michał was killed on the second day of the revolt.
Fox-Rosen recently set to music a poem by Klepfisz, “Di rayze aheym/The journey home.” The Yiddish-English bilingual poem is one of her best known works and has been central to many people who have sought queer, secular and leftist framings for their engagement with Jewish identity. Fox-Rosen is releasing a new original album of the same title on May 30.
“Di rayze aheym” is based on a trip Klepfisz took with her mother to Poland in 1983 around the 40th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was the first time either of them had been back since World War II.
In an interview with the author, Klepfisz compared today’s clean, well-kept condition of the Jewish cemetery in Warsaw with its appearance during her visit in the ‘80s, when it was overgrown and weathered by time. “It was practically wild,” she said.
“Where ‘Di rayze aheym’ sprang from was that cemetery — there are allusions in the poem to it,” said Klepfisz. The poem contains a total of nine sections, including “Vider a mol/Once again” and “A beys-oylem/A cemetery,” with many of them containing direct translations between English and Yiddish side by side.
Fox-Rosen remembers being drawn to Klepfisz’s work in the time following Oct. 7, as many Jews were finding themselves renegotiating their relationship to Jewish identity. “She has this incredible body of work that explores identity and displacement and diaspora. Also queerness, of course, and this exists alongside her work in prose and activism,” Fox-Rosen said.
Fox-Rosen, the son of Reform Rabbi Karen Fox, comes from Los Angeles. He was not raised with a particularly strong relationship to Yiddish culture. Describing his Jewish schooling, he said that “there was no significant Yiddish content, but a lot of Hebrew content.” He immersed himself in music, Jewish and otherwise, and eventually came to Yiddish music and culture in a roundabout way.
“My first big plan was to be a jazz guitar player, move to New York City and get famous that way. So I moved to New York City and as I worked in the jazz scene, I got to know a lot of Jewish musicians doing meaningful work with Yiddish content,” said Fox-Rosen. Frank London of the Klezmatics, as well as Greg Wall who is often referred to as the “Jazz Rabbi,” are among the musicians Fox-Rosen cites as influential in getting more involved in Yiddish culture.
He was initially drawn more to the secular Yiddish community than the actual Yiddish language or music traditions, he said. “I loved that there was this committed group of secular Jews making really interesting music, that’s what drew me in.”
He went on to become a member of the Yiddish-language rock band Yiddish Princess, alongside Sarah Gordon, Michael Winograd and Yoshie Fruchter.
“I’d been looking for a non-religious way to express Jewishness and find my people, and Irena has largely been one of the people to shape this community,” said Fox-Rosen.
Klepfisz has often referred to herself as a “practicing secular Jew.” She notes the intensely secular values of the Bund in interwar Poland. “The Bundists in interwar Poland didn’t deny their Jewishness; in fact, they emphasized it. But they were also militant secularists. For example, they would insist on meetings on Shabes.”
Not wanting to show up empty-handed when offering Klepfisz to set her poem to music, Fox-Rosen produced a demo of some verses of “Di rayze aheym” set to music.
“I was very flattered,” Klepfisz said. “I thought it was actually a very good choice, because it’s a very minimalist poem, so you don’t have a lot of words to fit. There are a lot of big blank spaces for the music.”
What resulted is an album of art-pop meets klezmer and Yiddish. Fox-Rosen noted influences for him from art-pop musicians Rufus Wainwright as well as Anohni and the Johnsons. Essential for Fox-Rosen in evoking a Yiddish sound are the instrumental contributions of two familiar faces in Yiddish music: klezmer fiddler Alicia Svigals and improvisational pianist Marilyn Lerner. “At times I wanted it to feel like a real fiddle kapelye, which it often does because of Alicia,” said Fox-Rosen. Kapelye is Yiddish for a klezmer band.
“You know, we used to say that Yiddish was ‘on life support,’ but I don’t think that’s true anymore,” Klepfisz said. “There was the revival that popped up in the ‘80s with klezmer music and now I think there’s a much greater appreciation for Yiddish culture.”
“Di rayze aheym/The journey home” is now available for pre-order through Borscht Beat on Bandcamp and will be released on May 30 alongside a concert at Jalopy Theatre in Brooklyn.
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In Israel, an Arab-Jewish youth orchestra builds a new ‘East-West’ sound together
(JTA) — TEL AVIV — A raucous crowd of football fans filled the narrow strip of grass between Tel Aviv’s music center and Bloomfield Stadium, home to the Maccabi and Hapoel Tel Aviv soccer teams. Threading their way through them toward the concert hall was an incongruous procession of young musicians in eveningwear, lugging cases of every shape and size for contrabasses, violins, ouds, cellos and darbukas.
Inside the concert hall, a small audience of friends, siblings, parents and music lovers let out a swell of whoops and claps more in keeping with a soccer game than the polite demeanor usually reserved for orchestras.
The concert was the public culmination of a youth project composed of Jewish and Arab performers run by the Jerusalem Orchestra East & West, known as TJO, the Israeli orchestra led by conductor Tom Cohen that blends Western orchestral music with Middle Eastern, North African and Andalusian traditions. TJO has shared the stage with major Israeli artists including Matti Caspi, Danny Sanderson and Ehud Banai, and is due to perform at the Concordia Summit in New York in September.
The program brings youth orchestras from across the country under TJO’s guidance, training young musicians to carry forward the musical language Cohen has spent years developing. He describes that language as part of an evolving “Israeli sound,” made up of “everything that began with our grandparents in the various diasporas around the world and arrived with them here in waves of immigration.”
It grew out of his own journey from Western classical music into the music of the Maghreb and the Middle East, and “brings together elements from East and West without losing the identity and distinctiveness of either one,” he said.
“We’re creating something new that is greater than the sum of its parts,” Cohen said. Still, he was careful to add that the sound was not his orchestra’s invention, but part of “an evolution, not a revolution that erases what came before it.”
Last week’s concert brought together 80 musicians, ages 9 to 20, from half a dozen youth orchestras around the country, with some ensembles numbering in the dozens and others only a handful. Cohen said the project is meant to train a next generation of musicians who could one day join TJO, named the country’s leading orchestra by the Culture Ministry in 2022, while also sending them out as “ambassadors of its language” in their own work.
“Throughout the process, we placed special emphasis on artistic excellence, direct professional encounters and a connection to the adult orchestra as a mentoring body that sets the path,” he said of the youth project.
Ensemble Sdot, a nine-member group from the Sdot Negev Regional Council in southern Israel whose players mostly wore kippot, took the stage first to perform a reworked song by the late Israeli singer-songwriter Meir Banai. In the audience, waiting for his own performance, Youssef Sarhan, a 9-year-old violinist from Majd al-Krum, an Arab town in northern Israel, bobbed his head along from his seat. He had begun studying a year and a half earlier with Fadel Maana, a veteran violinist in the Arabic tradition from the same town and one of TJO’s senior musicians, who later brought him into the youth orchestra.
Addressing the young musicians from the stage, Cohen said he usually resists the familiar exercise of identifying who came from which community.
“This nonsense of saying who’s from where, it’s so unnecessary,” he said. But the mix was part of what made the music work, he told them, with Jewish, Muslim, Christian and Druze youth “backstage trading information about Umm Kulthum,” the revered Egyptian singer; maqams, the melodic modes used in Arabic and other Middle Eastern music; and other musical references.
“Even if you’ve never spoken to each other in your lives, when two children sit together on stage, catch each other’s eyes while they’re playing and creating something together, the connection that’s forged there is as deep as family,” Cohen told them.
Cohen, who lives with his family in Brussels, said the years of war had changed his relationship with his work, which had always been his greatest source of joy.
“It’s a feeling I can’t describe, a feeling of being outside of time,” he said by telephone after the concert. “But the last three years took that away from me.”
As an Israeli conductor who plays Arabic music, Cohen said, his international career went quiet amid growing hostility toward Israel abroad, while in Israel it became harder to enjoy performing when, as he put it, “half an hour away, the world is falling apart.”
The youth project offered a way back. Cohen said he found comfort in the connection between musicians “who come from completely different religions, backgrounds and places,” and came to see the orchestra as “a symbol of real hope, not just a professional artistic institution.”
Malak Aboufdaly, a teenage bassoon player from Acre, said that after years of war, she felt a responsibility to give the audience a measure of relief.
“It’s my job to make you feel how I play. Sad or happy,” she said. “But I think it’s really important that we can make people happy after two or three years of war.”
Outside the concert hall, 17-year-old Shoval Hayak, wearing a black evening gown, was being scolded to go back inside. She was excitable and effusive, not long removed from being a regular high school student in Moshav Hosen, near Israel’s northern border. After Oct. 7, her family was evacuated to Tel Aviv, where she threw herself into singing. She joined the youth orchestra framework and later performed with the Israeli hip-hop and funk band Hadag Nahash.
At the concert, she was preparing to sing “Hallelujah” with Nihaya Safadi, a singer and viola player also from Acre, in an arrangement Cohen wrote during the orchestra’s first summer seminar.
“I didn’t believe I could ever be a singer,” she said.
Some of her peers, she said, tried to escape the reality of war and displacement through recreational drugs. Hayak found her escape in music.
“I gave my heart and soul to this project. I got sucked into it more and more,” she said. “I truly believe that if I give my whole heart, all the small details that make everything shine come to the surface. Each time I go on, there are tiny improvements that I’m not even aware of at the time.”
She spoke quickly and warmly about the people around her: her mother, who she called “my support system”; Cohen, who she said had become like a father to her; and her boyfriend Yair, who could not attend because he was observing the Omer, the traditional mourning period between Passover and Shavuot when many observant Jews avoid live music. “Bless his soul, I adore him,” she said.
The same affection extended to the other young musicians she performed with. “They’re the best family I could ever ask for,” she said.
Cohen said watching young musicians like Hayak “become professional and be captivated by the magic of music” is part of what kept him invested in the project, which he took on as a volunteer effort. The next step, he said, is to give the program a larger stage and bring in more students.
The adult orchestra returned to the same East-West language last week in a concert about mixed identity at the Israeli Opera in Tel Aviv, with additional performances scheduled elsewhere. The program centered on “matrouz,” Arabic for “interweaving,” a Judeo-Arabic tradition of placing Hebrew lyrics over Arabic melodies billed by the orchestra as the “original Jewish mash-up.”
Its pre-recorded guests included Dana International, the Israeli pop star who became the first transgender singer to win Eurovision in 1998, and Yousef Sweid, the Arab Israeli actor – performers who mirror the orchestra’s interest in what it calls “both/and” identities that can be Arab and Jewish, left-wing and right-wing, religious and secular.
The youth evening ended with all the young musicians together playing “Fatouma,” a Lebanese piece arranged and led by Cohen, who bounced on the balls of his feet, twirled on stage and flashed theatrical expressions at the players as he conducted.
“I was looking for a way back to my happiness and I found it in this world of children,” he said. “When I’m with them and making music, I go back to real, deep joy. Like a child.”
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