Uncategorized
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.
—
The post There’s a Grammy for Christian music. These musicians want Jewish music to get one, too. appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Uncategorized
He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers.
(JTA) — A Los Angeles real estate investor known for selling homes to celebrities has donated a $100 million office tower to Chabad, the global Orthodox Jewish outreach movement, to create what is slated to become one the world’s largest Jewish centers.
Alon Abady and his wife, Monique, transferred the 16-story, 300,000-square-foot complex at 9911 W. Pico Blvd. to Chabad of California, which plans to transform it into the Chabad Campus for Jewish Life.
The property sits in the Pico-Robertson neighborhood, the heart of Jewish Los Angeles, down the street from the Museum of Tolerance and near the Simon Wiesenthal Center, Fox Studios and, since 2023, the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies, a Conservative movement seminary.
Chabad officials say the building was appraised last fall at $103 million, making it one of the largest single gifts ever to a Jewish organization. The new campus is expected to serve as a regional hub for Jewish religious life, social services and education, as well as a global center for the Lubavitch movement’s worldwide network of emissaries.
The campus will include a synagogue, life-cycle venues, youth and senior programs, mental-health and social services, museums and support for Jewish students on college campuses, along with facilities for large communal and international gatherings.
“It will be an epicenter of Jewish life,” said Rabbi Chaim Nochum Cunin, one of the leaders of West Coast Chabad. “It will transform the landscape of Jewish life in Los Angeles and throughout the world.”
Abady, who works as a managing partner of Waterfall Bridge Capital, paid $35 million for the property in 2023 with plans to redevelop it. The current market value of $103 million reflects an appraisal by Partner Valuation Advisors conducted in September, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, director of public relations for Chabad’s headquarters in Brooklyn.
Abady is best known for high-profile real estate deals in Los Angeles, including the $96 million purchase of the Sofitel Beverly Hills hotel in 2021. He has also been involved in a series of widely noted residential transactions, including buying and later selling Simon Cowell’s former Beverly Hills home and selling a property to Justin and Hailey Bieber.
The campus will rank among the largest Jewish institutions in the world. It will be smaller than Chabad’s 538,000-square-foot Menorah Center in Dnipro, Ukraine, but larger than most Jewish community centers in North America and comparable in scale to New York’s 92nd Street Y, which also includes residential and non-Jewish cultural facilities.
Abady said his gift reflects a long-standing relationship with Chabad that dates back to his family’s arrival in Los Angeles in the 1970s, when they were assisted by Rabbi Baruch Shlomo Cunin, Chabad’s West Coast director.
“This is a lifelong dream that also allows me to honor my parents and my children,” Abady said in a statement. “When my family immigrated to Los Angeles in the 1970s, Chabad was there for us. That was never forgotten.”
The announcement comes at a moment when many Jewish institutions are under financial strain. In Los Angeles, it follows the recent sale of the American Jewish University’s historic Bel Air campus. The 22-acre hilltop property was transferred in 2024 to Milken Community School, its neighboring Jewish middle and high school, and AJU’s rabbinical school, Ziegler, moved to Pico-Robertson.
While the final purchase price was not publicly disclosed, the sale was widely reported to be in the roughly $60 million range, allowing Milken to expand its campus as AJU consolidated its operations.
The post He sold a house to Justin Bieber. Now this LA investor has given Chabad $100M to build one of the world’s largest Jewish centers. appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wears ‘stop the genocide’ eye black
(JTA) — In his postgame interview on Monday night, Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair said the things you’d expect to hear, like crediting his teammates for a dominant playoff win and praising his coach.
But on the Pro Bowler’s eye black was a message that you don’t see every day on ESPN: “STOP THE GENOCIDE.”
Al-Shaair, who is Muslim, has long been a vocal pro-Palestinian advocate.
In December 2023, as a member of the Tennessee Titans, Al-Shaair chose to support the Palestine Children’s Relief Fund through the NFL’s “My Cause, My Cleats” program.
“Given the recent events in Israel and Gaza, this nonprofit provides medical aid and essential supplies to children injured and left homeless by the bombings in Gaza,” he said in his entry about the charity.
Al-Shaair supported the same charity in 2024 and 2025 as a member of the Texans, and has worn cleats that read “FREE” on one side, referring to the “Free Palestine” movement, and “Surely to Allah we belong and to him we will all return” on the other. The cleats also featured the text, “AT LEAST 41,788 Palestinians killed, 10,000+ estimated to be under the rubble, 96,974 wounded.”
Al-Shaair has also signaled criticism for Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel that triggered the war in Gaza, about which he’s become an outspoken advocate on and off the field.
“I feel like it’s something that’s trying to be silenced,” Al-Shaair told the Houston news site Chron in 2024. “On either side, people losing their life is not right. In no way, shape or form am I validating anything that happened, but to consistently say that because of [Oct. 7] innocent people [in Gaza] should now die, it’s crazy.”
Al-Shaair was one of two active NFL players who signed onto the “Athletes for Ceasefire” letter, which called on President Joe Biden to call for a ceasefire in February 2024.
The Texans named Al-Shaair as their club winner for the 2025 Walter Payton Man of the Year Award, which recognizes “players who excel on the field and show exceptional dedication to uplifting their communities with consistent, positive impact.”
A post on the Texans’ website details Al-Shaair’s charitable work including support for homeless youth and adults, hosting a movie night at NRG Stadium for HYPE Freedom School students, and providing free tickets and food for students from the Muslim Organization of Sports, Socials and Education. His pro-Palestinian advocacy is not mentioned in the post.
While the linebacker has been vocal about his pro-Palestine views, Monday night’s postgame interview with Scott van Pelt — during which he said nothing about Israel or Gaza, but had an eye black message big enough to read during his close-ups — may have been his loudest form of advocacy yet, as it came shortly after a nationally televised playoff game on ESPN. Video of the interview has circulated on social media and drawn praise from pro-Palestinian activists.
“This is how you use your platform. Proud of you brother,” wrote Omar Suleiman, an imam and activist with over 1 million followers.
According to the NFL rulebook, players are “prohibited from wearing, displaying, or otherwise conveying personal messages either in writing or illustration, unless such message has been approved in advance by the League office.” The rule also states that the league “will not grant permission” to players displaying a message “to political activities or causes, other non-football events, causes or campaigns, or charitable causes or campaigns.”
The most notable case of political activism in the NFL in the last decade came when Colin Kaepernick, protesting police brutality, refused to stand for the national anthem. Kaepernick was not issued a fine or suspension by the NFL, though no teams signed him as a 29-year-old free agent, leading to debate over whether he was blackballed by the league for his stance.
Players have previously been fined for wearing eye black with personal messages, though they had not gotten league approval before their games. Al-Shaair has not been issued a fine.
The post Houston Texans linebacker Azeez Al-Shaair wears ‘stop the genocide’ eye black appeared first on The Forward.
Uncategorized
What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism
The man charged with arson in the burning of Beth Israel Congregation in Jackson, Miss., called the institution a “synagogue of Satan” in an interview with authorities, according to an FBI affidavit.
The phrase, originating in the New Testament book of Revelation, has been used in recent years to attack Jews, making its way into graffiti on Jewish institutions, antisemitic conspiracy theories and in far-right commentator Candace Owens’ criticism of Jewish figures.
But its meaning is not necessarily consistent: “Synagogue of Satan” has been used to refer to a supposed Jewish conspiracy to control the U.S. government, as a broad indictment of Jewish people as Satanic and as a narrow critique against Jewish people perceived as behaving badly. It has been used by Christian nationalists and by Nation of Islam leaders.
It remains unclear how the term made its way into the vocabulary of Stephen Spencer Pittman, who was arrested the day of the attack. Pittman, 19, followed dozens of Instagram accounts that share motivational Bible quotes and created a website promoting “scripture-backed fitness.” But his public social media activity apparently only turned antisemitic on Jan. 10, when he shared an antisemitic cartoon and confessed to setting fire to Beth Israel.
Origin of a slur
The book of Revelations, the last book of the New Testament, uses the phrase twice in a message of comfort to Jesus’ followers facing persecution, castigating “the synagogue of Satan who say that they are Jews and are not.” The implication is that the early Christians’ persecutors are perverting the meaning of Judaism to further their ends.
Christian scholars note that the author of Revelations was likely Jewish. Nevertheless, the phrase has come to serve as a catch-all to justify antisemitism by claiming that Jews are inherently Satanic, or out of favor with God’s plans for the world.
Its popularization as an antisemitic term may originate in the Christian Identity movement, a group of white evangelical extremists who believe that the true descendants of Adam are the white race, and the Jews are descendants of Cain — who in their view, is the offspring of Eve and Satan. The Christian Identity movement, which dates back to the early 20th century, peaked in the 1980s and 1990s, but it left a lasting impression on far-right theology.
The influential Evangelical leader Rev. Billy Graham — known as “America’s pastor” for his ubiquitous TV presence — infamously used the phrase in a 1973 conversation with then-President Richard Nixon, who at the time was complaining about Jews purportedly controlling the US media. (Graham apologized for his comments nearly 30 years later, after a recording of the conversation became public.)
Graham’s use of the term underscored a key connection between Christian Zionism and antisemitism. He told Nixon in that recorded conversation that while he supported Israel, Jewish people didn’t understand his real feelings about them, which is that there were two types of Jews: conservative ones who supported Graham and his ministry, and the “synagogue of Satan” — liberal-minded ones and especially Jews who worked in media.
Fuel on the fire
In recent years, the term has come to be applied more creatively. Controversial rapper Jay Electronica used it in a song in 2014. Nation of Islam leader Abdul Haleem Muhammad blamed the synagogue of Satan in 2016 for a supposed plot to de-masculinize American black men through marijuana. A group of neo-Nazi agitators that has flyered neighborhoods around the country with propaganda draped a banner over a Los Angeles freeway with the phrase in Oct. 2022.
If the term can be said to have a “power user” today, it would be Owens, the far-right commentator who has promoted a range of antisemitic conspiracy theories, including Frankism and the notion that Israel was behind Charlie Kirk’s assassination.
Owens has accused Jewish conservative commentator Ben Shapiro, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, and “radical Zionists” of being members of the synagogue of Satan.
But Owens is merely one of a slew of right-wing agitators who have accelerated use of the term in recent months.
Andrew Torba, the chief executive officer of the far-right social media hotbed Gab, posted an entire essay last fall — titled “Naming the Synagogue of Satan” — saying Christendom was under threat because the US had been captured “with AIPAC donations” and “Hollywood propaganda.”
As recently as Dec. 2025, a far-right podcaster in Colorado called for the execution of Gov. Jared Polis and other Jewish state democrats, referring to them as “Synagogue of Satan Jews.”
Just a few weeks later, Beth Israel Congregation, the oldest synagogue in Mississippi, was slapped with the moniker the day it went up in flames.
The post What the ‘synagogue of Satan’ slur tells us about Christian antisemitism appeared first on The Forward.