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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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The post The hora, the hora! How Jewish wedding music got that way appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Israel Warns Citizens in UAE to Keep Low Profile Amid Iranian Drone, Missile Strikes
Smoke billows from Zayed port after an Iranian attack, following United States and Israel strikes on Iran, in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, March 1, 2026. Picture taken with phone. Photo: REUTERS/Abdelhadi Ramahi
Israel’s National Security Council has urged Israelis in the United Arab Emirates to exercise extreme caution as Iran continues its campaign of drone and missile attacks across the country and broader Gulf region, warning that their safety could be directly at risk.
Jews and Israelis living in the UAE are being advised to avoid public events, synagogues, Israeli-linked businesses, and unnecessary gatherings, including at airports, unless holding a valid flight ticket.
Israeli authorities also instructed employees of companies linked to Israel to stay away from offices and facilities for their own safety.
As flights to and from the UAE remain unpredictable, travelers are strongly advised to avoid itineraries with layovers in the country.
The Israeli government confirmed that supplementary flights bringing Israelis home from the UAE are expected to conclude by Sunday, March 15.
As the war escalates, Iran is continuing to attack neighboring countries and regional interests of the US and Israel, launching waves of drones and missiles that have struck Gulf states, hit critical infrastructure, and forced heightened security measures across the Middle East.
While the US-Israeli campaign has destroyed much of Iran’s military capabilities, thereby reducing their rate of missile fire, launches are still occurring.
Iran has launched more than 1,800 drones and missiles at the UAE since the war began two weeks ago, the latter’s defense ministry said on Friday. While most of the projectiles have been stopped by interceptors and other defensive measures, six people have been killed and 141 have been injured, in addition to significant damage.
In an interview on Friday, UAE Minister of State Lana Nusseibeh urged Iran to cease its attacks on neighboring countries if it seeks a negotiated end to the conflict.
“Ultimately, it will be a diplomatic solution, but there needs to be that tipping point moment, and I think that [US President Donald Trump] will lead us all to that moment in his time,” Nusseibeh said.
“It is difficult to talk about mediation when under attack … Mediation can only happen when the guns go silent,” she continued.
Nusseibeh also expressed that the region was shocked by Iran’s “egregious, illegal, and unlawful attacks” on Gulf nations and Jordan.
According to her, Iranian officials gave no warning that the UAE would be targeted during talks in Tehran two weeks earlier, making the attacks “so shocking and so egregious.”
Iran claims its strikes target the US military presence across the Middle East — including bases in the UAE, Gulf states, Iraq, Jordan, and Turkey — framing them as retaliation for American actions in the region.
However, Iranian drones and missiles have struck key infrastructure, including Dubai Airport, major hotels, and the UAE’s financial hub, sending shockwaves through the region and triggering heightened security alerts across neighboring countries.
The UAE’s top diplomat warned that restoring relations with Iran to their pre‑war status would be nearly impossible, pointing to “the destruction and the chaos that Iran has caused in the region,” as evidence of the deepening regional crisis.
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Temple Israel was my home — and what I learned there can help us get through this difficult moment
Temple Israel has long been a staple of the Detroit Jewish community — and in many ways, it has been a cornerstone of my own life. My connection to that synagogue stretches back to my earliest musical memories.
My first voice teacher, in 8th grade, was the wife of Temple Israel’s cantor, Neil Michaels. As a teenager, I sang in their choir, the Teen T’filah Team, where I was first exposed to the music of the Reform movement and where I first experienced the use of instrumentation in services. It was there that I first learned the song Kehilah Kedoshah by Dan Nichols, a piece I now frequently sing with our own East End Temple choir. As a high school student, I even sang alongside the cantors there during High Holiday services. Throughout childhood I remained close with all three of Rabbi Paul Yedwab’s children, as we attended school together, were in theatre together, and travelled to Israel together.
Temple Israel is where my mother studied for her adult bat mitzvah which was officiated by Rabbi Harold Loss. And it was Temple Israel that took me on my first and second trips to Israel — experiences that profoundly changed the trajectory of my life, deepening and reframing my relationship with Judaism, and ultimately inspiring me to devote my life to the Jewish people. I still vividly remember our 2010 Teen Mission to Israel, led by Rabbi Josh Bennett. On that trip, I realized something transformative: that clergy could be more than just symbolic exemplars of a community, but also fun, adventurous, relatable, deeply present in the lives of young people, and powerful influences on their willingness to engage in Jewish life.
That trip had an unquantifiable impact on me. It was on that drive home from the airport that I decided Judaism needed to once again become a more central part of my life. Two weeks later, for my senior year of high school, I made what felt at the time like a radical decision: I transferred from West Bloomfield High School to the Jewish Academy of Metropolitan Detroit (now the Frankel Jewish Academy).
During that year, I began seriously exploring whether I might pursue a career in the cantorate. I arranged an off-campus internship that allowed me to compare and contrast the life and role of the cantor in both the Conservative and Reform movements. Once a week, I studied privately with Cantor Meir Finkelstein at my family’s Conservative congregation, Shaarey Zedek, and another day each week, I studied with Cantor Michael Smolash at Temple Israel. Aside from my internship, my favorite class that year was a course called Denominational Differences, co-taught by rabbis from the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform movements — including two of my own beloved rabbis, Aaron Starr (Shaarey Zedek) and Josh Bennett (Temple Israel). In fact, that very subject eventually became the topic of my master’s thesis in cantorial school.
Needless to say, it is unlikely that I would be standing here today as your cantor were it not for the profound influence that the Metro Detroit Jewish community—and Temple Israel in particular—had on me throughout my childhood.
It is for this reason that yesterday’s news struck me so deeply. Learning of antisemitic attacks in the news is always painful and disturbing. Yet, as the frequency of these attacks across the globe becomes evermore pervasive, it’s difficult not to become slightly jaded or emotionally hardened — a natural coping mechanism to deal with ongoing trauma. People are not meant to live in a state of perpetual anxiety and hypervigilance.
But yesterday’s attack on Temple Israel shook me to my core. It is impossible not to experience antisemitism differently when it touches your own community. Realizing that one of my childhood synagogues was the target of a terrorist attack feels surreal. We know intellectually that terrible things happen in the world — but we rarely expect them to happen to us. We must, therefore, remain forever mindful that tragedy is always personal to someone.
Even amid this frightening event, I am profoundly grateful for the brave security personnel at Temple Israel — especially their director of security, Danny — who quite literally put his life on the line to protect everyone inside the building, including the 106 preschool children and teachers who were in class at the time. We pray for the swift and complete physical and emotional healing of those officers, and we hold them in our hearts. It is truly miraculous that no civilians were injured during this attack. And the outpouring of support from the broader Metro Detroit community has been extraordinary — especially from our non-Jewish friends and neighbors who did not hesitate to help in our time of need.
We are particularly grateful to the Chaldean (Iraqi-Christian) community who opened their homes and businesses to shelter those fleeing the scene. The Chaldean-owned Shenandoah country club, museum, and cultural center across the street immediately welcomed and protected those seeking refuge. The fact that Shenandoah — the largest Chaldean community center in the United States — stands directly across the street from Temple Israel — the largest Reform synagogue in the United States — is no coincidence. It reflects the deep personal and communal ties between our communities.
When I was a student there, West Bloomfield High School was comprised of roughly one-third Jewish and one-fifth Chaldean students. Our communities shared classrooms, neighborhoods, friendships — and often cultural similarities. Both Jews and Chaldeans are Middle Eastern peoples whose identities weave together religion, culture, and ancestry. Both communities carry histories shaped by persecution and resilience. Both place profound emphasis on family, education, and tradition. In fact, back home I became somewhat known as the Chaldean community’s Jewish wedding singer, singing at numerous Chaldean churches as the bride walked down the aisle.
In moments like this, we see those shared bonds revealed in the most powerful of ways. I have no doubt that from this tragic incident something meaningful will emerge: our communities will grow stronger, more resilient, more deeply connected, and even more outspokenly proud of our identities. Hatred seeks to isolate and intimidate, but solidarity, courage, and compassion remind us that we are never alone. When neighbors protect neighbors, when communities stand together in the face of fear, we transform even the darkest moments into opportunities for unity, strength and hope.
Olivia Brodsky is the cantor and co-clergy of East End Temple in Manhattan.
The post Temple Israel was my home — and what I learned there can help us get through this difficult moment appeared first on The Forward.
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California Education Department Sues Oakland School District Over Alleged Refusal to Enact Antisemitism Reforms
Californians protesting outside the Department of Education in Sacramento. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect
California is suing one of its own publicly funded school systems, the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD), accusing its officials of refusing for several years to address antisemitism and protect the civil rights of Jewish children being subjected to abuse by both their peers and teachers.
Filed by the state’s Department of Education on March 5, the complaint alleges that OUSD’s superintendent never followed through on “corrective actions” decreed by the department to correct a hostile environment which produced “multiple complaints of antisemitism.” One of the measures called for issuing a letter to parents that “condemns antisemitism” while outlining OUSD’s efforts to combat it. The state charges that the superintendent, Dr. Denise Saddler, ignored its directive, a legal obligation as a state entity and recipient of public funds.
“No law or regulation grants OUSD the discretion to disregard or delay prompt implementation of the corrective actions mandated,” the complaint says. “Unless this court grants the relief requested, respondent OUSD will continue to fail and refuse to perform its legal duties.”
The lawsuit continues a dispute between the department and OUSD which began last year when, amid a flood of Jewish students leaving the district, the agency found OUSD guilty of antisemitic discrimination which affected both students and staff. In one incident, the district allowed the presentation of a map, prepared in support of Arab American Heritage Month, which did not include Israel. Speaking to The Oaklandside, a local newspaper, in October, an OUSD spokesman admitted that was “an oversight,” but by that time it had already happened twice.
California itself is being sued by a coalition of leading Jewish advocacy organizations over its alleged failing to address “systemic” antisemitic discrimination in K-12 public schools.
Led by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and StandWithUs, the legal action stems from consecutive years of antisemitic abuse perpetrated against Jewish students, parents, and teachers by anti-Zionists at every level of the school system. Court documents shared with The Algemeiner earlier this week revealed new, harrowing accusations of Jews being called “k—kes,” Jewish students being threatened with gang assaults, and K-12 students chanting “F—k the Jews” during anti-Israel demonstrations promoted by faculty.
In one highly disturbing incident described in the legal complaint, fifth graders from the OUSD were filmed by the teacher saying “Another major thing that I’ve learned is that the Jews, the people who took over, basically just stole the Palestinians’ land” and “one thing that’s really surprising to me, and that appeals to me is that the US is helping the Jews.” In another incident, the Oakland Education Association confected a curriculum in which the intifada — which refers to two prolonged periods of terrorism in which Palestinians murdered Israeli civilians — was taught to third graders as a nursery rhyme.
Litigation related to antisemitic incidents in California K-12 schools surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, which triggered a barrage of antisemitic hate crimes throughout the US and the world. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, according to complaints.
In the Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials were accused of ignoring complaints about discrimination and tacitly approving hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School, for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed in 2024 by the Brandeis Center and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In October, California Gov. Gavin Newsom signed a law which requires the state to establish a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools at a time of rising anti-Jewish hatred across the US. As previously reported by The Algemeiner, the bill confronted Newsom, a Democrat rumored to be interested in running for US president in 2028, with a politically fraught decision, as it aims to limit the extent to which the state’s ideologically charged ethnic studies curricula, supported by progressives and many Democrats, may plant anti-Zionist viewpoints into the minds of the 5.8 million students educated in its public schools.
Newsom, who has since endorsed the false charge that Israel is an “apartheid” state, approved the measure amid these cross currents, paving the way for state officials to proceed with establishing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and potentially barring antisemitic materials from reaching the classroom.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.