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Why am I so much better at singing in Hebrew than in English?
Twenty years ago this week, I celebrated my bat mitzvah in Denver. Afterward, my voice teacher — oh, the days when I dreamed of Broadway stardom — gave me some puzzling feedback on the ceremony. I sang much better in Hebrew, she said, than I ever had in English.
Since my turn as a teenage Torah-chanting rockstar, others have occasionally complimented my voice — but only when I sing in Hebrew. I’ve been approached swoonily after performing the odd aliyah during High Holiday services, but my efforts at karaoke tend to leave a room cold. (Then again, my toddler nephew seems to like my way with “Old MacDonald”; it’s the quality of your fans, not their quantity, that counts.)
After two decades, I wanted an answer. Why on earth would I have a beautiful voice in Hebrew, a language I have never spoken, but only an OK one in my native tongue?
My old voice teacher shared an idea, back when she first raised the matter: Maybe I was able to produce a less labored sound in Hebrew because it was the first language I ever sang in, from my earliest days going to shul. I floated that theory to my parents, who were skeptical. After all, they rightly noted, there was the matter of my own “Old MacDonald” phase to contend with — although, truthfully, I was more of a “Frère Jacques” girl.
But it turns out that my teacher may not have been that far off.
“The human singing mechanism really organizes itself for expression,” said Nicholas Perna, director of vocal pedagogy at the University of Colorado, Boulder, in a phone interview. (Perna is my dad’s voice teacher; dreams of stardom run in the family, although the talent distribution skews paternal.) In other words: A singer will give their best performances with material that means something to them, not just because the audience can feel their emotion, but because the emotion actually physically changes the way in which the voice produces notes.
So the fact that I started to sing in Hebrew very early in life does matter, only for different reasons than my teacher thought. It’s not that I’m more comfortable with singing in the language. It’s that doing so means more.
My most treasured memories of Jewish practice are all about singing. I learned the melodies I sang at my bat mitzvah not from a rabbi or cantor — the small, lay-led shul in which I grew up had neither — but rather from listening to the whole congregation singing around me. I can still hear some of their voices, all these years later, when I think about certain prayers. A mystical tenor, guiding Kol Nidre; a single quavering soprano, lilting high above “Eitz Chaim”; my father’s firm baritone mixing with my own mezzosoprano as we led Torah services. (I hold the melody; he harmonizes.) To this day, I make a point to join some of my home synagogue’s High Holiday services by Zoom — despite the plethora of in-person options near me in Brooklyn — because of my yearning for the intonations I’ve known since childhood.
When singing anything with such a richness of association attached to it, Perna said, “you are probably optimizing your vocal tract in a way that allows you to express, that your body knows how to innately do.”
The understanding that depth of feeling governs vocal quality dates back millennia, he told me. “The earliest form of music was probably this sort of tribal and/or religious organized voicing,” he said. “Think of King David’s instruction in the Psalms: ‘give a joyful Shout to the Lord.’ Is that scripture, or is that singing instruction?”
Yes, there are some purely mechanical reasons why my voice would be different in the two languages. “English is not an easy language to sing,” Perna said, and it’s true that when I articulate vowels in Hebrew, they feel different: I think I produce them closer to my soft palate, while English expression sits lower, nearer the throat.
And there’s also the fact that I have never considered singing in Hebrew to be a performance. It’s prayer, an experience of communal closeness, not a moment when I wonder if those who listen to me will think I sound nice. Eliminating the kind of stage fright that a sense of performance creates, Perna said, can do wonders.
But really, the emotion is the central thing. Which might explain why “Old MacDonald” is such a hit with my nephew, too. When you sing with love — for a community, a child, or a whole faith tradition — you sing with beauty. E-I-E-I-O.
The post Why am I so much better at singing in Hebrew than in English? appeared first on The Forward.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
