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There’s a Grammy for Christian music. These musicians want Jewish music to get one, too.
(J. The Jewish News of Northern California via JTA) — There is a Grammy Award for just about every kind of music — from pop to metal to New Age to Contemporary Christian — but there’s no Jewish category. Two Jewish musician friends hope to change that.
Joanie Leeds, a children’s musician and Grammy winner in New York City, and Mikey Pauker, a self-described “devotional rock” artist from California, are working on a formal proposal to add “best Jewish music album” to the list of Grammys awarded each year. They plan to submit their proposal to the Recording Academy, the body that governs the Grammys, by March 1.
In the past, albums of what is traditionally considered to be Jewish music have been nominated in a variety of categories, including best contemporary world music. The Klezmatics’ “Wonder Wheel” album won in that category in 2006, and some referred to the award as “the first Jewish Grammy.”
But musicians who produce albums of Jewish music often find themselves caught between categories, Leeds said. The global category is not a fit for American musicians, and categories for religious music, even if expanded, are also not an easy fit, she said.
“‘Jewish’ is complicated, because it’s not just a religion like Christianity,” Leeds said. “It’s also a culture.”
To strengthen their proposal, the pair consulted with rabbis and Jewish educators about what constitutes Jewish music.
“We’re doing our best to be as clear as possible and as inclusive as possible, because not everybody knows that Jewish music is diverse,” Pauker said. “It’s transdenominational, it’s based in spirituality, it’s based in culture and it’s not just Ashkenazi.”
Mikey Pauker, seen here performing in Berkeley, California, is one of the musicians behind a petition to add a Jewish music category to the Grammys. (Courtesy Pauker)
In their proposal, Pauker and Leeds make the case for a new category that will encompass Jewish religious music, such as cantorial music, nigguns and Mizrahi music, as well as secular music, such as klezmer, Yiddish, Ladino and Judeo-Arabic music. Albums with Christian themes, including those produced by Messianic Jews, would not be eligible.
“It needs to have some sort of Jewish content in it to make it Jewish music,” Leeds said. “If there’s a song in Israel about some guy meeting a girl at a bar, or whatever it’s about that has no grounds in text or liturgy or anything, then it wouldn’t be considered Jewish music.”
“Our goal is really to educate not just the Recording Academy about what Jewish music is, but also educating the public as to what Jewish music is,” she said.
The Recording Academy regularly adds and modifies Grammy categories. This year, it added five new ones, including best score soundtrack for video games and other interactive media and best spoken-word poetry album.
Pauker said this is not the first time musicians have petitioned the Recording Academy to add a Jewish category. But this time, he said, he and Leeds can point to the consistent output of high-quality Jewish music in recent years. He noted that in the past two years alone, more than 100 albums were released that could have been nominated in such a category.
“We’re at a point in music history where we’re having a Jewish renaissance, and the market has arrived,” he said. “We have enough artists where we can get this done.” He added that the Recording Academy has been supportive of him and Leeds in their endeavor.
In an effort to raise awareness about their proposal, they have launched a petition on the Change.org website. By Friday, it had more than 1,800 signatures, including from non-Jewish musicians.
A petition to add a Jewish Grammys category garnered more than 1,800 signatures in its first week. (Screenshot from Change.org)
Among the signers is Sephardic singer and activist Sarah Aroeste. She said she supports the push to add a Jewish category at the Grammys because her albums, including 2021’s “Monastir,” do not fit cleanly into the other categories.
“Jewish music crosses so many musical boundaries, yet we get lost, or are ineligible, in existing categories,” she wrote. “As a Ladino musician specifically, I’ve always been put in the global music category. I am literally up against musical acts from all around the globe!”
She added: “Having our own category — much like other ethnic or religious groups have them — would highlight the breadth and diversity of Jewish music as a genre and would allow those Academy members knowledgeable about the music to be able to vote.”
Pauker, 37, lives in southern California and recently launched his own folk-rock-reggae-chant record label called Beautiful Way Records. He will help lead Shabbat services during Wilderness Torah’s upcoming Passover in the Desert festival.
Leeds, who is based in New York City, won a 2021 Grammy in the Best Children’s Music Album category for her ninth album, a compilation of secular children’s music called “All the Ladies” that included a song about Jewish Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg. She has also released multiple albums of Jewish kids’ music, including “Meshugana” and “Challah, Challah,” as well as a Christmas record called “Oy Vey” in collaboration with the rapper Fyütch.
Pauker said the two became close friends during the pandemic, when they spent many hours on the social media app Clubhouse discussing Judaism and music.
As the Recording Academy considers their proposal in the coming weeks, Pauker said he and Leeds will hold community conversations about trends in Jewish music.
“One of our hopes is this will launch hundreds of new artists, new records and collaborations that can really help push this genre forward,” he said.
This story originally appeared in J. The Jewish News of Northern California and is reprinted with permission. Jackie Hajdenberg added reporting for JTA.
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Gaza ‘Board of Peace’ to Convene at WH on Feb. 19, One Day After Trump’s Meeting with Netanyahu
US President Donald Trump speaks to the media during the 56th annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, Switzerland, January 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse/File Photo
i24 News – A senior official from one of the member states confirms to i24NEWS that an invitation has been received for a gathering of President Trump’s Board of Peace at the White House on February 19, just one day after the president’s planned meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The meeting comes amid efforts to advance the implementation of the second phase of the Gaza ceasefire, following the limited reopening of the Rafah crossing, the expected announcement on the composition and mandate of the International Stabilization Force, and anticipation of a Trump declaration setting a deadline for Hamas to disarm.
In Israel officials assess that the announcement is expected very soon but has been delayed in part due to ongoing talks with the Americans over Israel’s demands for the demilitarization of the Gaza Strip. Trump reiterated on Thursday his promise that Hamas will indeed be disarmed.
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If US Attacks, Iran Says It Will Strike US Bases in the Region
FILE PHOTO: Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi meets with Omani Foreign Minister Sayyid Badr Albusaidi in Muscat, Oman, February 6, 2026. Photo: Omani Ministry of Foreign Affairs/ Handout via REUTERS/File Photo
Iran will strike US bases in the Middle East if it is attacked by US forces that have massed in the region, its foreign minister said on Saturday, insisting that this should not be seen as an attack on the countries hosting them.
Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi spoke to Qatari Al Jazeera TV a day after Tehran and Washington pledged to continue indirect nuclear talks following what both sides described as positive discussions on Friday in Oman.
While Araqchi said no date had yet been set for the next round of negotiations, US President Donald Trump said they could take place early next week. “We and Washington believe it should be held soon,” Araqchi said.
Trump has threatened to strike Iran after a US naval buildup in the region, demanding that it renounce uranium enrichment, a possible pathway to nuclear bombs, as well as stopping ballistic missile development and support for armed groups around the region. Tehran has long denied any intent to weaponize nuclear fuel production.
While both sides have indicated readiness to revive diplomacy over Tehran’s long-running nuclear dispute with the West, Araqchi balked at widening the talks out.
“Any dialogue requires refraining from threats and pressure. (Tehran) only discusses its nuclear issue … We do not discuss any other issue with the US,” he said.
Last June, the US bombed Iranian nuclear facilities, joining in the final stages of a 12-day Israeli bombing campaign. Tehran has since said it has halted uranium enrichment activity.
Its response at the time included a missile attack on a US base in Qatar, which maintains good relations with both Tehran and Washington.
In the event of a new US attack, Araqchi said the consequences could be similar.
“It would not be possible to attack American soil, but we will target their bases in the region,” he said.
“We will not attack neighboring countries; rather, we will target US bases stationed in them. There is a big difference between the two.”
Iran says it wants recognition of its right to enrich uranium, and that putting its missile program on the negotiating table would leave it vulnerable to Israeli attacks.
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My university wants me to sign a loyalty oath — am I in America or Vichy France?
As a historian of modern France, I have rarely seen a connection between my everyday life in my adopted state of Texas and my work on my adopted specialization: the period we call Vichy France. Apart from the Texan boast that the Lone Star Republic is bigger than the French Republic, and the small town of Paris, Texas, which boasts its own Eiffel Tower, I had no reason to compare the two places where I have spent more than half of my life.
Until now.
Last week, professors and instructors at the University of Houston received an unsettling memo from the administration, which asked us to sign a statement that we teach rather than “indoctrinate” our students.
Though the administration did not define “indoctrinate,” it hardly takes a PhD in English to read between the lines. Indoctrination is precisely what our state government has already forbidden us from doing in our classes. There must not be the slightest sign in our courses and curricula of references to diversity, identity and inclusion. The catch-all word used is “ideology,” a term Governor Greg Abbott recently invoked when he warned that “Texas is targeting professors who are more focused on pushing leftist ideologies rather than preparing students to lead our nation. We must end indoctrination.”
This is not the first time in the past several months that I have been reminded of what occurred in France during the four years that it was ruled by its German occupiers and Vichy collaborators.
Very briefly, with Germany’s rapid and complete defeat of France in 1940, an authoritarian, antisemitic and collaborationist regime assumed power. Among its first acts was to purge French Jews from all the professions, including high school and university faculties, and to impose an “oath of loyalty” to the person of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the elderly but ramrod straight and clear-headed hero of World War I.
The purpose of the oath was simple and straightforward: By demanding the fealty of all state employees to the person of Pétain, it also demanded their hostility to the secular and democratic values of the French republican tradition. Nevertheless, an overwhelming majority of teachers signed the oath —even the novelist and feminist Simone de Beauvoir, who needed her salary as a lycée teacher, as did the writer Jean Guéhenno, a visceral anti-Pétainist who continued to teach at the prestigious Paris lycée Henri IV until he was fired in 1943.
Vichy’s ministers of education understood the vital importance that schools and universities played in shaping citizens. Determined to replace the revolutionary values of liberty, equality and fraternity with the reactionary goals of family, work and homeland, they sought to eliminate “godless schools” and instill a “moral order” based on submission to state and church authorities. This radical experiment, powered by a reactionary ideology, to return France to the golden age of kings, cardinals and social castes came to an inglorious end with the Allied liberation of the country and collapse of Vichy scarcely four years after it had begun.
The French Jewish historian Marc Bloch — who joined the Resistance and sacrificed his life on behalf of a very different ideology we can call humanism — always insisted on the importance of comparative history. But comparison was important not because it identified similarities but because it illuminated differences. Clearly, the situation of professors at UH is very different from that of their French peers in Vichy France. We are not risking our jobs, much less our lives, by resisting this ham-handed effort to demand our loyalty to an anti-indoctrination memo.
But the two situations are not entirely dissimilar, either. Historians of fascism like Robert Paxton remind us that such movements begin slowly, then suddenly assume terrifying proportions. This was certainly the case in interwar France, where highly polarized politics, frequent political violence and a long history of antisemitism and anti-republicanism prepared the ground for Vichy. In France, Paxton writes, this slow, then sudden transformation “changed the practice of citizenship from the enjoyment of constitutional rights and duties to participation in mass ceremonies of affirmation and conformity.”
As an historian of France, I always thought its lurch into authoritarianism was shocking, but not surprising. After all, many of the elements for this change had existed well before 1940. But as a citizen of America, I am not just shocked, but also surprised by official demands for affirmation and conformity. One day I will find the time to think hard about my naiveté. But the time is now to think about how we should respond to these demands.
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