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The hora, the hora! How Jewish wedding music got that way
(JTA) — When my wife and I were planning our wedding, we thought it might be cool to hire a klezmer band. This was during the first wave of the klezmer revival, when groups like The Klezmatics and The Klezmer Conservatory Band were rediscovering the genre of Jewish wedding music popular for centuries in Yiddish-speaking Eastern Europe.
Of course we also wanted to dance to rock ‘n’ roll and needed musicians who could handle Sinatra for our parents’ benefit, so we went with a more typical wedding band. Modernity won out over tradition.
Or did it? Musician and musicologist Uri Schreter argues that the music heard at American Jewish weddings since the 1950s has become a tradition all its own, especially in the way Old World traditions coexist with contemporary pop. In a dissertation he is writing about the politics of Jewish music in the early postwar period, Schreter argues that American Jewish musical traditions — especially among secularized Conservative and Reform Jews — reflect events happening outside the wedding hall, including the Holocaust, the creation of Israel and the rapid assimilation of American Jews.
That will be the subject of a talk he’ll be giving Monday for YIVO, titled “Yiddish to the Core: Wedding Music and Jewish Identity in Postwar New York City.”
Because it’s June — and because I’m busy planning a wedding for one of my kids one year from now — I wanted to speak to Schreter about Jewish weddings and how they got that way. Our Zoom conversation Wednesday touched on the indestructibility of the hora, the role of musicians as “secular clergy” and why my Ashkenazi parents danced the cha-cha-cha.
Born in Tel Aviv, Schreter is pursuing his PhD in historical musicology at Harvard University. He is a composer, pianist and film editor.
Our conversation was edited for length and clarity.
I was struck by your research because we’re helping to plan a child’s wedding now. It’s the first wedding we’ve planned since our own, and we’re still asking the same questions, like, you’ve got to make sure the band can handle the hora and the Motown set and, I don’t know, “Uptown Funk.” Your research explores when that began — when American Jewish weddings began to combine the traditional and secular cultures.
In the period that I’m talking about, post-World War II America, this is already a fact of life for musicians. A lot of my work is based on interviews with musicians from that period, folks now in their 80s and 90s. The oldest one I have started playing professionally in 1947 or ’48. Popular American music was played at Jewish weddings as early as the 1930s, but it’s a question of proportion — how much the wedding would feature foxtrots and swing and Lindy Hop and other popular dance tunes of the day, and how much of it is going to be klezmer music.
In the postwar period, most of the [non-Orthodox] American Jewish weddings would have featured American pop. For musicians who wanted to be in what they called the “club date” business, they needed to be able to do all these things. And some “offices” — a term they used for a business that books wedding bands — would have specialists that they could call on to do a Jewish wedding.
You’re writing about a period when the Conservative movement becomes the dominant American Jewish denomination. They have one foot in tradition, and the other in modernity. What does a wedding look like in 1958 when they’re building the big suburban synagogues?
The difference is not so much denominational but between the wide spectrum of Orthodoxy and the diverse spectrum of what I describe as “secular.”
Meaning non-Orthodox — Reform, Conservative, etc.?
Right. Only in the sense that they are broadly speaking more secular than the Orthodox. And if so they are going to have, for the most part, one, maybe two sets of Jewish dance music — basically a medley of a few Jewish tunes. You might have a wedding where it could be a quarter of the music or even half would be Jewish music, but this would be for families that have a much stronger degree of attachment to traditional Jewish culture, and primarily Yiddish culture.
There’s a few interrelated elements that shape this. Class is an important thing. For lower class communities in some areas, and I am talking primarily about New York, you’d have communities that are a little bit more secluded, probably speaking more Yiddish at home and hanging out more with other Jewish people from similar backgrounds. So these kinds of communities might have as much as a third or half of the music be Jewish, even though they consider themselves secular. It’s actually very similar to an Orthodox wedding, where you might also have half and half [Jewish and “American” music].
Jews in the higher socioeconomic class might, in general, be more Americanized, and want to project a more mainstream American identity. They might have as little as five minutes of Jewish music, just to mark it that they did this. Still, it’s very important for almost all of them to have those five minutes — because it’s one of the things that makes the wedding Jewish. I interviewed couples that were getting married in the ’50s, and a lot of them told me, “You need to have Jewish dance music for this to be a Jewish wedding.”
Composer and pianist Uri Schreter is pursuing his PhD in historical musicology at Harvard University. (Nicole Loeb)
When I was growing up in the 1970s at a suburban Reform synagogue on Long Island, klezmer was never spoken about. I don’t know any parents who owned klezmer albums. Then when I got married a decade later, it was in the middle of the klezmer revival. Am I right about that? Were the ’50s and ’60s fallow periods for klezmer?
You’re definitely right. Up until the mid-1920s, you still have waves of immigration coming from Eastern Europe. So you still have new people feeding this desire for the traditional culture. But as immigration stops and people basically tried to become American, the tides shift away from traditional klezmer.
The other important thing that happens in the period that I’m looking at is both a negative rejection of klezmer and a positive attraction to other new things. Klezmer becomes associated with immigrant culture, so people who are trying to be American don’t want to be associated with it. It also becomes associated with the Holocaust, which is very problematic. Anything sounding Yiddish becomes associated for some people with tragedy.
At the same time, and very much related to this, there’s the rise of Israeli popular culture, and especially Israeli folk songs. A really strong symbol of this is in the summer of 1950, when the Weavers record a song called “Tzena, Tzena,” a Hebrew Israeli song written in the 1940s which becomes a massive hit in America — it’s like number two in the Billboard charts for about 10 weeks. Israeli culture becomes this symbol of hope and the future and a new society that’s inspiring. This is all in very stark contrast to what klezmer represents for people. And a lot of the composers of Israeli folk song of its first decades had this very clearly stated ideology that they’re moving away from Ashkenazi musical traditions and Yiddish.
So the Jewish set at a wedding becomes an Israeli set.
At a typical Conservative wedding in the 1950s and ’60s, you might hear 10 minutes of Jewish music. The first one would be “Hava Nagila,” then they went to “Tzena, Tzena,” then they would do a song called “Artza Alinu,” which is today not very well known, and then “Hevenu Shalom Aleichem.” They are songs that are perceived to be Israeli folk songs, even though if you actually look at their origins, it’s a lot murkier than that. Like two of the songs I just mentioned are actually Hasidic songs that received Hebrew words in pre-state Palestine. Another probably comes from some sort of German, non-Jewish composer in 1900, but is in Hebrew and is perceived to be a representation of Israeli culture.
But even when the repertoire already represents a shift towards what’s easier to digest for American Jewry, the arrangements and the instruments and the musical ornamentation are essentially klezmer. The musicians I spoke to said they did this because they felt that this is the only way that it would actually sound Jewish.
That is to say, to be “Jewish” the music had to gesture towards Ashkenazi and Yiddish, even if it were Israeli and Hebrew. As if Jews wanted to distance themselves from Eastern Europe — but only so far.
Someone like Dave Tarras or the Epstein Brothers, musicians who were really at the forefront of klezmer in New York at the time, were really focused on bringing it closer to Ashkenazi traditions. Ashkenazi Jewish weddings in America are not the totality of Jewish weddings in America, and Israeli music itself is made up of all these different traditions — North African, Middle Eastern, Turkish, Greek — but in effect most of the really popular songs of the time were composed by Ashkenazi composers. Even “Hava Nagila” is based on a melody from the Sadigura Hasidic sect in Eastern Europe.
Of course, if you’re a klezmer musician you’re allergic to “Hava Nagila.”
Then-Vice President Joe Biden dances the hora with his daughter Ashley at her wedding to Howard Krein in Wilmington, Delaware on June 2, 2012. (White House/David Lienemann)
You spoke earlier about Latin music, which seemed to become a Jewish thing in the 1950s and ’60s — I know a few scholars have focused on Jews and Latinos and how Latin musical genres like the mambo and cha-cha-cha became popular in the Catskill Mountain resorts and at Jewish weddings.
Latin music is not exclusively a Jewish thing, but it’s part of American popular culture by the late 40s. But Jews are very eagerly adopting it for sure. In the Catskills, you would often have two separate bands that alternated every evening. One is a Latin band, one is a generic American band playing everything else. And part of that is American Jews wanting to become American. And how do you become American? By doing what Americans do: by appropriating “exotic” cultures, in this case Latin. This is a way of being American.
Jews and Chinese food would be another example.
And by the way, in a similar vein, it also becomes very popular to dance to Israeli folk songs. A lot of people are taking lessons. A lot of people are going to their Jewish Y to learn Israeli folk dance.
I’ve been to Jewish weddings where the “Jewish set” feels very perfunctory — you know, dance a hora or two long enough to lift the couple on chairs and then let’s get to the Motown. Or the Black Eyed Peas because they were smart enough to include the words “Mazel Tov!” in the lyrics to “I Gotta Feeling.”
So that’s why we always hear that song! I will say though, even when the Jewish music appears superficial, it does have this deeper layer of meaning. It’s very interesting how, despite all these changes, and despite the secularization process of American Jewish weddings, the music still connects people to their Jewishness. These pieces of music are so meshed with other religious components. Of course, most people see this as secular. But a lot of people connect to their Jewish identity through elements such as Jewish music, Jewish food, certain Jewish customs that are easier to accommodate in your secular lifestyle, and the music specifically has this kind of flexibility, this fluidity between the sacred and the profane.
That’s beautiful. It sort of makes the musicians secular clergy.
It’s interesting that you say that. In his history of klezmer, Walter Zev Feldman refers to the klezmer — the word itself means “musician” — as a kind of a liminal character, an interstitial character between the secular and the mundane. The music is not liturgical, but when the klezmer or the band is playing, it is an interval woven with all these other religious components and things that have ritual meaning.
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Is there a future for Yiddish in Antwerp?
פֿון לייזער בורקאָ
איך בין געקומען קיין אַנטווערפּן מיטן ציל צו פֿאָרשן דאָס ייִדיש, וואָס מע רעדט דאָרט, ווײַל אַנטווערפּענער ייִדן האָבן אַ שם, אַז זיי רעדן דאָס בעסטע און דאָס עכטסטע ייִדיש. אַזוי האָב איך געהערט אַ סך מאָל; געלייענט אין חסידישע פֿאָרומס, און געהערט לעצטנס אין אַן אינטערוויו מיט ר׳ מענדל הערש פּאַנעט, אַן אַנטווערפּענער חסיד, וואָס וווינט הײַנט אין ניו־יאָרק.
די ייִדישע באַפֿעלקערונג אין אַנטווערפּן איז זייער קליין אין פֿאַרגלײַך מיט די גרויסע ייִשובֿים אין ניו־יאָרק און ארץ־ישׂראל. עס וווינען דאָרט סך־הכּל 20,000 ייִדן, מערסטנס חרדים — סײַ חסידים סײַ מתנגדים. דאָס איז אַנטקעגן 300,000 חרדים אין אַמעריקע און איבער אַ מיליאָן אין ארץ־ישׂראל, און 40,000 אין לאָנדאָן אַפֿילו. דער פּראָצענט ייִדן וואָס רעדט ייִדיש איז זיכער העכער אין אַנטווערפּן, אָבער דער ציבור איז פֿאָרט נישט אַזוי גרויס.
עס וווינען אויך מאָדערנע אָרטאָדאָקסישע ייִדן אין אַנטווערפּן. איך האָב געהערט, אַז אַ סך פֿון זיי קענען אויך ייִדיש, אָבער רעדן אין דער היים, דער עיקר — פֿראַנצויזיש.
די אַנטווערפּענער ייִדישע באַפֿעלקערונג איז נישט איינהייטלעך, אַפֿילו אויב אַ סך חרדים זעען אויס ענלעך. אַ גרויסע צאָל פֿון די מענער זענען פֿון ערגעץ אַנדערש, אָבער האָבן זיך אַריבערגעצויגן, כּדי חתונה צו האָבן מיט אַן אַנטווערפּענער כּלה. דערפֿאַר הערט מען דאָרט אויך נישט ווייניק ענגליש און עבֿרית אויף דער גאַס. פֿון דעסט וועגן, איז דאָס אַנטווערפּענער ייִדיש נישט אַזוי געמישט מיט ענגליש און עבֿרית, ווי דאָס ייִדיש בײַ אַמעריקאַנער אָדער ישׂראלדיקע חרדים. זיי ניצן אָבער יאָ אַ מאָל פֿלעמישע ווערטער, ווי למשל דאָס וואָרט „מוילבאַק“ (מיסטקעסטל) פֿון פֿלעמישן vuilbak.
אויף וויפֿל איך האָב געהערט, האָט דאָס אַנטווערפּענער ייִדיש טאַקע אַן אַנדער טעם ווי דאָס אַמעריקאַנער ייִדיש. ערשטנס רעדט מען מער אויפֿן פּויליש־גאַליציאַנער שטייגער מיט אַן אוּוווּלאַרן ריש (אַזוי ווי אויף עבֿרית, אָדער אויף פֿראַנצויזיש און דײַטש). מע הערט אָפֿטער דעם ווייכן למד אין ווערטער ווי „גלײַך“ און „קלײַן“. מע זאָגט ווערטער ווי „אויס“ און „אויך“ מיט אַ קלאָרן o.
לייענענדיק די אַלע נײַעס וועגן די פּראָטעסטן קעגן מדינת־ישׂראל אין מערבֿ־אייראָפּע און וועגן די אַנטיסעמיטישע אינצידענטן דאָרט, האָב איך זיך געזאָרגט אַ ביסל וועגן די אַנטווערפּענער ייִדן. מיט יאָרן צוריק האָב איך געמאַכט אַ וויזיט און איך האָב געדענקט, אַז עס וווינען דאָרט אַ סך מוסולמענישע אימיגראַנטן. צי זענען די ייִדן דאָרט טאַקע זיכער?
די שטאָט אַנטווערפּן איז טאַקע זייער אַ געמישטער עולם. איך בין אײַנגעשטאַנען נישט ווײַט פֿון אַ גרויסן פּוילישן סופּערמאַרק און אַ געשעפֿט פֿון אַפֿריקאַנער סחורות. די ייִדן וווינען אין מיטן שטאָט אין דרום פֿון דער פּרעכטיקער צענטראַלער באַנסטאַנציע, וווּ עס געפֿינט זיך דער באַרימטער דימענטן-קוואַרטאַל. ייִדן אַרבעטן שוין הונדערטער יאָרן אין אַנטווערפּן ווי שלײַפֿערס און סוחרים פֿון דימענטן. הײַנט אַרבעטן דאָרט מערסטנס אינדיער, ווײַל די דימענטן־אינדוסטריע איז כּמעט אין גאַנצן אַריבער קיין אינדיע, וווּ די שלײַפֿערס אַרבעטן פֿאַר ביליקער.
צי זענען די ייִדן דאָרט אין אַ סכּנה? איך אַליין האָב זיך געפֿילט זיכער, אָבער איך האָב נישט קיין באָרד און פּאות. אַ חסיד מיטן גאַנצן לבֿוש האָט אפֿשר אַן אַנדער דערפֿאַרונג.
קיין פּאָליציי אָדער זיכערהייט־כּוחות האָב איך נישט געזען אין דער ייִדישער געגנט, כאָטש אַ שומרים־אָרגאַניזאַציע („שמירה“) איז יאָ פֿאַראַן. איך בין אַרײַנגעגאַנגען אינעם גרויסן סאַטמערער בית־מדרש און אַרומגעגאַנגען דאָרט — קיינער האָט מיך נישט אָפּגעשטעלט אָדער געפֿרעגט, וואָס איך טו. די אַנטווערפּענער ייִדן האָבן נישט מורא פֿאַר פֿרעמדע, דאַכט זיך.
לויט די נײַעס־באַריכטן זענען יאָ פֿאָרגעקומען אַ סך מער אַנטיסעמיטישע אינצידענטן זײַט דעם אָנהייב פֿון דער עזה־מלחמה — אָבער אַזוי איז דער מצבֿ אומעטום. די אַנטווערפּענער ייִדן פֿילן זיך דאָרט אין דער היים און וועלן אַזוי גיך נישט אַנטלויפֿן.
אין אַנטווערפּן פֿאָרן אַ סך ייִדן אויף ביציקלען, וואָס זיי רופֿן „וועלאָס“ (פֿון פֿראַנצויזיש), אפֿשר נאָך מער ווי די פֿלעמער (Flemings בלע”ז). מע זעט אַפֿילו טאַטעס וואָס פֿאָרן מיט אַן עופֿהלע אויף אַ צווייט בענקל, וואָס דאָס זעט מען נישט אין אַמעריקע. דאָס איז דערפֿאַר ווײַל די ייִדישע געגנט איז קאָמפּאַקט און מע דאַרף נישט פֿאָרן ווײַט. נאָכן טאָג אין חדר גייען די קינדערלעך אַהיים אָדער פֿאָרן אַהיים אויף קליינע סקוטערס. בכלל הערשט אַ געפֿיל פֿון זיכערקייט, מער ווי אין ניו־יאָרק, למשל. ס׳איז פֿאָרט אייראָפּע, וווּ די מענטשן שיסן זעלטענער, און וווּ ווייניקער משוגעים דרייען זיך אויף די גאַסן.
אַחוץ אַנטווערפּן האָב איך אויך געמאַכט אַ וויזיט אין דער בעלגישער הויפּטשטאָט, בריסל. איך האָב באַלד באַמערקט אַן אונטערשיד: אַ סך פּאַלעסטינער פֿענער, אין ערטער אויך אַנטי־ישׂראלדיקע און אַנטיסעמיטישע גראַפֿיטי. די מוסולמענישע באַפֿעלקערונג פֿון בריסל איז אַ סך גרעסער. אין געוויסע געגנטן — ווי מאָלענבעק, וווּ איך בין אײַנגעשטאַנען — זעט עס אַ מאָל אויס ווי אַן אַראַבישע שטאָט. איך האָב זיך געהיטן דאָרט פֿון טראָגן אַ העמד אָדער עפּעס מיט אַ ייִדישער אויפֿשריפֿט. אין בריסל וווינען אויך מער אָרעמע־לײַט ווי אין אַנטווערפּן. מיר איז געווען אַ חידוש צו זען דאָרט פּוילישע שיכּורים, וואָס דרייען זיך אויף די גאַסן — אַ סך מער ווי איך זע אין וואַרשע.
אין בריסל האָב איך געכאַפּט אַ לאַנגן שמועס מיט ר׳ אַנשל מיכאָלי, אַ היגער ייִדישיסט און אַ געבוירענער בריסעלער. ער זאָגט, אַז די בריסעלער ייִדישע באַפֿעלקערונג איז אַ מאָל געווען גרעסער ווי די אַנטווערפּענער, אָבער זי גייט באַרג־אַראָפּ שוין אַ סך יאָרן, סײַ דעמאָגראַפֿיש, סײַ גײַסטיק. אין די 1960ער יאָרן זענען די מערסטע טראַדיציאָנעלע ייִדן געוואָרן זייער ציוניסטיש־געשטימט און זײַט דעמאָלטס האָבן אַ סך יונגע לײַט עולה געווען. די פֿאַרבליבענע וועלטלעכע ייִדן באַטייליקן זיך ווייניק אינעם קהילה־לעבן. קיין געפֿיל פֿאַר ייִדיש אָדער ייִדישקייט האָבן זיי נישט, בדרך־כּלל.
לאָמיר האָפֿן, אַז אַנטווערפּן וועט אויסמײַדן דאָס אומגליק, וואָס האָט געטראָפֿן בריסל, און אַז די קהילה וועט בלײַבן זיכער און וועט וואַקסן. עס וואָלט געווען אַ גרויסער שאָד, ווען עס גייט אונטער איינער פֿון די לעצטע ייִדישע אינדזלען אין אייראָפּע, וווּ מע רעדט אַזאַ שיינעם ייִדיש.
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In NYC, Election Day arrives with all eyes on Jewish voters
It’s Election Day in New York City
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Many New Yorkers are thinking far beyond the five boroughs as they cast their votes in an election some see as a referendum on the Middle East.
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Jewish and Muslim New Yorkers — two populations of about the same size, both nearing 1 million — are being closely watched today, as views on Israel, Palestine, antisemitism and Islamophobia mobilize voters with intense enthusiasm.
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Polls show Cuomo, a proud defender of Israel, leading with Jewish voters. And Mamdani’s longtime pro-Palestinian activism tapped into a movement of New Yorkers galvanized by the Gaza war, pollsters say.
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“There’s a large swath of New Yorkers, particularly those that were showing up at these protests, who in 2025 were looking for something to latch on to, some sort of organized effort,” Democratic pollster Adam Carlson told The New York Times. “There’s a lot of natural overlap between those groups, and I think that just fueled momentum.”
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Some anti-Zionist Jews, like members of the increasingly influential group Jewish Voice for Peace, strengthened Mamdani’s rise as he won the primary and held onto a strong lead in general election for months. But many others say they are worried about Mamdani’s views on Israel setting the stage for a “political normalization” of anti-Zionism that can bleed into antisemitism.
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Polls are open until 9 p.m. today, and election officials say results could come within an hour of that time. Find your polling site here.
A Mamdani Israel policy?
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If Mamdani is elected mayor, how could he actually take action on his pro-Palestinian advocacy?
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We dug into Mamdani’s greatest push for a new Israel policy in the state Assembly, where he proposed the bill “Not On Our Dime” to target donations to Israeli settlements. The legislation, which never advanced, faced a backlash from lawmakers in both parties, including Jewish Democrats.
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Shortly after winning his Assembly seat in 2020, Mamdani also called for a boycott of Cornell Tech on Roosevelt Island, a campus of Cornell University that partners with Technion-Israel Institute of Technology, because of the Israeli university’s ties to the military. His comment on the “Talking Palestine” podcast with Sumaya Awad resurfaced during the primary and again this week after a spokeswoman told The New York Times that, if elected, he would assess the Cornell partnership.
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Mamdani has said he does not intend to invest city funds in Israel bonds as mayor, in keeping with current Comptroller Brad Lander’s decision in 2023. But we also found that two of New York City’s five public pension funds could be vulnerable to a mayor-backed divestment push.
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Mamdani would be able to stack the boards of these two pension funds to put divestment from Israel on the table, and his supporters are pushing for that move.
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He will also face pressure from the Democratic Socialists of America, which counts him as a member, to implement boycott, divestment and sanction moves against Israel.
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On Sunday, the party’s “NYC Palestine Policy Committee” held a meeting to “iron out policies that the anti-war working group membership would like to see implemented at the municipal level,” according to a schedule on the D.S.A. website.
Corbyn hosts Mamdani phone bank
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Former U.K. Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, who was booted from his party amid an antisemitism scandal, hosted a phone bank for Mamdani on Sunday evening.
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The event was co-led with the New York City D.S.A. chapter and paid for by Mamdani’s campaign, according to a post shared on X by Corbyn.
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During the Zoom call, Corbyn said that Mamdani “will ensure that the world doesn’t pass by on the other side while the terrible genocide goes on in Gaza, which has been so terrible for the Palestinian people,” according to the Forward.
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We covered the accusations against Corbyn, including a 2020 government watchdog report that said his leadership was responsible for “unlawful acts of harassment and discrimination” against Jews.
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Cuomo pounced on the alliance. “Having Jeremy Corbyn – someone whose party was found to have committed unlawful acts of discrimination against Jewish people under his leadership – phone-banking for @ZohranKMamdani says everything you need to know,” he said on X.
Trump and Musk endorse Cuomo
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Cuomo got an official endorsement last night from President Trump, who has frequently opined on the race and insulted all of the candidates.
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“Whether you personally like Andrew Cuomo or not, you really have no choice,” Trump said in a Truth Social post. “You must vote for him, and hope he does a fantastic job. He is capable of it, Mamdani is not!”
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Trump also warned voters away from Republican nominee Sliwa, who is polling third. “A vote for Curtis Sliwa (who looks much better without the beret!) is a vote for Mamdani,” he said, referencing the red hat that Sliwa wears as the founder of the Guardian Angels.
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Cuomo is balancing his outreach to Republican voters with criticism of the president, who is deeply unpopular in New York City. “The president is right. A vote for Sliwa is a vote for Mamdani, and that’s why this election is now up to the Republicans,” he said in response to Trump’s post on 77 WABC.
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Mamdani, who has repeatedly linked Cuomo to Trump, pounced on the endorsement. “The MAGA movement’s embrace of Andrew Cuomo is reflective of Donald Trump’s understanding that this would be the best mayor for him,” he said in Astoria, according to Politico.
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Elon Musk also urged New Yorkers to vote for Cuomo, and to “bear in mind that a vote for Curtis is really a vote for Mumdumi or whatever his name is.”
Last call for Jewish voters
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Sliwa promised to protect Jews at the Society for Advancement of Judaism last night. “I’m standing outside of a synagogue on the Upper West Side tonight, as I’ve stood for many many years outside of synagogues, protecting Jews as they worship during their High Holidays all over this city,” he said on Instagram, referencing again his role in defending Jews during the 1991 Crown Heights riots.
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In a pointed gesture of solidarity with Jews, Cuomo posted his condolences for the family of Omer Neutra, an Israeli-American Long Island native whose body was returned by Hamas to Israel on Sunday.
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Dov Hikind, an Orthodox Jewish politician and former top surrogate of Sliwa’s who recently switched to Cuomo’s side, said in a Yiddish video that Jews would no longer be able to live in New York if Mamdani is elected.
Following the money
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Super PACS spent more than $29 million in the general election through Sunday. By today, that figure will likely surpass the $30.1 million spent ahead of the primary.
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Cuomo has the most money behind him. He received about $10 million in support, with another $13.6 million spent on negative ads against Mamdani, reported Politico.
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The post In NYC, Election Day arrives with all eyes on Jewish voters appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall cancels annual Hanukkah concert, citing singer’s IDF ties
(JTA) — Last year, Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall held its 10th anniversary of a Hanukkah concert series that was rebooted 70 years after it was halted by the Nazis, in what some Dutch Jews saw as a repudiation of antisemitism that had swelled during the war in Gaza.
This year, the concert has been called off — and the prestigious concert hall citing the chosen singer’s ties to the Israeli army.
The Chanukah Concert Foundation, which organizes the event, had booked Shai Abramson to sing. Abramson is a retired lieutenant colonel for the IDF who serves as the army’s chief cantor.
The Royal Concert Hall, or Concertgebouw, said in a statement on Sunday that it had pressed for months for a change to the program and canceled the concert, scheduled for Dec. 14, when one was not made.
“This decision was made because it was not possible to reach an agreement on an alternative to the performance by the IDF Chief Cantor,” the statement said.
It continued, “For The Concertgebouw, it is crucial that the IDF is actively involved in a controversial war and that Abramson is a visible representative of it.”
The Hanukkah concert was rebooted in 2015, 70 years after the Nazis ended the longstanding tradition in the city and murdered three-quarters of the Dutch Jewish population. The relaunch was billed as a chance to connect and celebrate the city’s Jewish residents, a community that has never come close to its pre-Holocaust size.
Now, the Chanukkah Concert Foundation says the Concertgebouw is contributing to the “isolation the Jewish community feels it is being pushed into in the current era,” even as the concert hall said it “always remain a place where the Jewish community is welcome.”
“The Jewish community has been facing exclusion in the cultural sector for over two years,” the Chanukah Concert Foundation said in a statement on Sunday. “It is ironic that the Concertgebouw — where Chanukah celebrations have been held since December 14, 1921, a tradition interrupted only by World War II — is now confronting the Jewish community with exclusion and isolation.”
The Chanukah Concert Foundation said it would pursue legal action against the Concertgebouw, whose characterization of Abramson as an IDF representative it rejected.
“He is an independent artist, invited by the State of Israel to sing at national memorial ceremonies,” the foundation wrote in a statement. “Labeling him as an IDF representative fosters unwarranted negative sentiment toward Israel, the Jewish community in the Netherlands and visitors to the concert, purposely turning this great musical experience into a political event.”
The cantor’s website says his performances around the world are done “with the intention of developing and strengthening ties with Jewish communities around the world, and intensifying connections with Israel and with the IDF.”
The Hanukkah concert’s cancellation is not the first time the war in Gaza has interfered with plans at the Concertgebouw. In November 2023, a planned benefit concert for the Israeli humanitarian nonprofit Zaka was canceled after the Concertgebouw demanded that half of the proceeds go to a Dutch Palestinian aid group that had been accused of anti-Israel bias. The following year, the concert canceled performances by a Jerusalem-based quartet citing “safety” concerns over planned pro-Palestinian demonstrations.
Amsterdam has been a hotspot of such demonstrations. Last year, the city was roiled by pro-Palestinian protests, and a soccer game between the local team and Maccabi Tel Aviv sparked antisemitic mob violence against Israeli supporters.
In March, the University of Amsterdam suspended a student exchange with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, accusing the school of failing to distance itself from the war in Gaza.
As for the Hanukkah concert, the concert foundation says it will “assume that the concerts on December 14th will go ahead, including Cantor Abramson,” amid its planned litigation.
The Concertgebouw, meanwhile, has removed the concert from its website, where among the other upcoming performances listed are multiple by the Jerusalem Quartet, the group whose concert was canceled last year over security concerns.
“Making this decision was extremely difficult,” Concertgebouw Director Simon Reinink in a statement about the Hanukkah concert cancellation. “Only in very exceptional cases do we make an exception to our important principle of artistic freedom. To our great regret, such an exception is now occurring. The intended performance by the chief cantor of the IDF is at odds with our mission: connecting people through music.”
The post Amsterdam’s Royal Concert Hall cancels annual Hanukkah concert, citing singer’s IDF ties appeared first on The Forward.