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Why Bad Bunny’s halftime show delighted New York Jews of a certain age
Since last month, a TikTok has been floating around, showing arthritic Latino grandmas and grandpas hearing Bad Bunny for the first time, courtesy their bemused grandchildren. On the reel, he samples “Un Verano en Nueva York,” a 50-year-old salsa song about New York City — or “Nueva Yol,” as Bad Bunny calls his update in his echt Puerto Rican accent. He sang “Nueva Yol” at the Super Bowl halftime show. The original dates from the 1970s, when the old folks were young and lithe and out on the town. On TikTok, when they listen to the new version, they perk up, and then they dance, as the kids look on, bemused and delighted.
I imagine that something similar happened to countless aging Jewish salsa music freaks like myself when they saw the halftime show. I’m 75 now, and I got up and danced, remembering those years during Jimmy Carter’s presidency when I donned high heels and tight skirts to dance away my Saturdays nights at venues like Casino 14 — catorce, it was pronounced — on 14th Street right by Union Square. I’d had a Jewish boyfriend whose mom, a Bell telephone operator, had danced mambo in the 1950s and taught her son the moves. He taught me the cha-cha and rhumba; other friends my age, many of them Jews, loved the music too and knew the steps and clubbed along with me. All this seemed no more remarkable to us than knowing how to say the prayer over the bread on Friday nights.
The Jewish love affair with Latin music began back in the 1950s and, since then, Jews have played it as musicians, produced it as record company owners, and DJed it in clubs and on the radio. Scholars have tried to explain the affinity, and why it has been such a comfortable fit for both ethnic groups. Some speculate that the music of both cultures tends to minor scales. Others point out that, as Jewish neighborhoods such as East Harlem were transitioning in the 1950s to Puerto Rican enclaves, the two groups lived side by side. (Working-class Jews even shared factory spaces with Puerto Rican laborers, especially in the garment industry.)
And there was the Borscht Belt. Starting in the 1950s, the big hotels typically maintained two house bands: one for mainstream pop, and the other for all Latin — the tummlers taught mambo lessons around the swimming pool. By the 1930s, Puerto Rico had been thoroughly colonized by the U.S. and was thoroughly poverty stricken. A vast exit began to the mainland: Puerto Ricans, after all, were American citizens. Many moved to the Bronx. By the 1960s, many of the kids had grown up to be musicians. Some had big bands and a big-band sound. They played regular gigs at places like Kutscher’s in the Catskills. You can still hear Tito Puente in 1959 playing “Grossinger’s Cha Cha Cha.”
Some of the musicians were Jews — for example, Larry Harlow, a classically trained pianist whose grandfather was a cantor and father a Latin music bandleader in the Catskills. Harlow’s actual family name was Kahn; his nickname among musicians and audiences was “El Judio Maravilloso,” the Marvelous Jew. His cousin Lewis Kahn was a salsa violinist and trombonist who’d studied at Julliard; he was “El Segundo Judio Maravilloso.” Once, I gave Lewis a lift back to his hotel post-concert, after I saw him shambling down the street alone. Painfully shy and bespectacled, he seemed more like a member of the Frankfurt School than someone in a band with matching suits and screaming brass.
My foreign language in high school had been Spanish. My conversational skills were good but still stilted. I didn’t get better — didn’t pick up the rhythms and slang and everyday spoken beauty of the language until the 1970s. I began listening then, over and over and over, to my growing collection of LPs from the salsa label Fania, copying the words and learning how they mashed together. Based in New York City, Fania even had a fan magazine. New York also had the annual Puerto Rican parade, and I vividly recall running into impromptu conga circles on street corners, where young people sang not just in Spanish but also in Lucumi, the deeply spiritual language of the Afro-Caribbean Yoruba and Santeria religions. They’d picked up the words from the same records I listened to. Their devotion to the musical aspects of their heritage reminded me of my fascination with cantorial music, which was also available on vintage LPs and even on low-watt radio in Brooklyn.
Twenty-five years ago I went to Columbia one summer to study Yiddish. In class I learned that Molly Picon had sung in Yiddish in the 1940s on the Forward-owned radio station WEVD. Her show was followed by one in Spanish with mambo bands like La Sonora Matancera. How many Jews kept listening after the Picon program signed off? Were Sholem Aleichem and Uriel Weinreich the salseros of their own culture? I got bat mitzvahed at age 71 at a shul in Brooklyn. I had kosher food at the after-party. And we danced to a mambo band, led by Benjamin Lapidus, a fellow synagogue member.
Bad Bunny’s “Nueva Yol” couldn’t be more New York. It talks about going to Bear Mountain in the summer. About the Yankees and the Mets. The 4th of July. About Willie Colon, the beloved salsa trumpeter from the Bronx who ran (unsuccessfully) for Congress in 1994 and for Public Advocate in 2001.
Bad Bunny’s halftime performance of “Nueva Yol” also celebrated a Brooklyn matriarch named Maria Antonia Cay, aka Toñita. She runs an intimate social club for Puerto Ricans in Williamsburg where she cooks traditional food, serves it, and tends bar at age 85. She made a cameo appearance at halftime, as Bad Bunny sang lyrics about conflict and anxiety, featuring his signature tic, the phrase “Uuy, uuy!” Go forward in the mouth just a bit and you’re at Yiddish “Oy oy!” At one point he jumped into a joyful mosh pit of dancers. They hoisted him up and paraded him around. It could have been the reception, in any borough, of any Jewish wedding.
There’s a lot of talk these days about Diaspora Jews versus Israel Jews. It’s a topic that’s been fraught for years and inspires endless discussion. There’s not so much talk about Diaspora Puerto Ricans: the people who settled and struggled here decades ago and whose lives became cultural cross-over when Leonard Bernstein, Jerome Robbins and Leonard Bernstein — all Jews — created West Side Story. Today, the New York boroughs, with about a million Jews, constitute the biggest Jewish city in the world after Tel Aviv. And New York City has more Puerto Ricans than San Juan. Bad Bunny’s halftime show reminded us of our shared diaspora. It did so as our bodies grooved, even if they were geriatric bodies grooving slower than before.
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BBC Issues Correction After Claiming ‘There Have Been Other Holocausts’ in Response to Complaint
The BBC logo is seen at the entrance at Broadcasting House, the BBC headquarters in central London. Photo by Vuk Valcic / SOPA Images/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) has been accused of “trying to downplay or deny the horror of the Holocaust” after the broadcaster claimed “there have been other holocausts [sic]” when responding to a complaint by a reader about an online article.
The BBC posted on its website an article about King Charles III and Queen Camilla meeting with survivors of Nazi persecution to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Jan. 27. According to Jewish News, the article originally stated that Bergen-Belsen concentration camp survivor Mala Tribich “became the first holocaust [sic] survivor to address the cabinet,” and she asked ministers: “How, 81 years after the holocaust [sic], can these people once again be targeted in this way?”
A reader wrote a complaint about the article using a lowercase “h” in the word “Holocaust” and received a response via email in which the BBC rejected the request to make the change but did not explain why. The reader was also told in the email, “Historically there have been other examples of holocausts [sic] elsewhere,” according to Jewish News. The email was reportedly written by an experienced BBC broadcast journalist.
The BBC has since edited the article to feature an uppercase “H” in the word “Holocaust” and added a note to the online article. “Several references to ‘Holocaust,’ which had been initially spelled in this article with a lower case ‘h,’ have been changed to take an upper case ‘H,’ in accordance with the BBC News style guide,” the BBC wrote. A BBC spokesperson further told Jewish News the email to the reader had been “sent in error.”
“All references to the Holocaust in this article should have been capitalized and we have now updated it accordingly and added a note of correction. We will be writing again to the original correspondent,” the spokesperson noted.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) was outraged by the BBC’s error, and said the incident is another example “of an institutionalized dismissal or even hatred of Jews that permeates the BBC’s increasingly agenda-driven reporting.”
“Why is the BBC effectively joining far-right, far-left, and Islamist propagandists and conspiracists in trying to downplay or deny the horror of the Holocaust?” CAA posted on X. “The BBC is peddling softcore Holocaust denial by trivializing the name of this horrific crime.”
“It is difficult to know where the monumental ignorance of the BBC news and complaints divisions ends and their willful revision of history begins,” the organization added. “The Nazi slaughter of the Jews was so extensive that the word genocide had to be invented to describe it. While that word has since been applied to other attempts to wipe out whole peoples, the older word ‘holocaust’ was newly adapted to this event, with which it is uniquely associated.”
The BBC just recently issued an apology after it failed to mention Jews during some of its coverage of International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
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‘You Really Saved Me’: Pianist, Former Hamas Hostage Dedicates Performance to Fellow Survivor Eli Sharabi
Former hostage Alon Ohel reacts as he is welcomed home, after he was discharged from the hospital following his release from captivity in Gaza, where he was held after being kidnapped during the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack by Hamas, in Lavon, Israel, Oct. 24, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Shir Torem
A musician and former Hamas hostage returned to the stage on Monday night in Israel for a performance and dedicated a song to fellow survivor Eli Sharabi, who was his companion in captivity.
Israeli-Serbian pianist Alon Ohel survived 738 days in captivity in the Gaza Strip after being kidnapped when he tried to flee the Nova Music Festival in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023. He was released more than two years later, on Oct. 13, 2025, along with the last remaining 20 living hostages. Ohel was held for some time in Hamas’s tunnels alongside Sharabi, who was abducted from Kibbutz Be’eri on Oct. 7, 2023, and released last February.
Several Israeli artists performed on Monday evening as part of a concert for Ohel at Hangar 11 in Tel Aviv.
At one point during the event, Ohel went on stage and did a solo performance of “Yesh Li Sikui” (“I Have a Chance”) by singer-songwriter Eviatar Banai. Ohel dedicated the song to Sharabi, who was standing in the audience.
“In a way, you really saved me with your approach to life,” Ohel said to Sharabi from on stage.
The pianist then shared memories of sitting with Sharabi in the terror tunnels. “We had backgammon or some card game. We played and laughed a bit, and joked around, and I remember you mentioned my mother’s name, Idit, and in that moment I fell apart,” he said. “I couldn’t handle it. The longing broke me in an instant. I went aside and cried. I just cried and broke down. A longing that never ends.”
“After you let me fall apart, I remember you came over to me,” Ohel added, still addressing Sharabi. “You told me: ‘Alon, you have to pull yourself together. You have to disconnect. This can’t work like this. You broke down, now that is it, you pick yourself up. You’re a big kid and we have one goal: to return to our families no matter what. It’s okay to break down, but we must never lose hope.’”
Ohel then recalled how after a year and a half of being together in the terror tunnels, during which time the two men were chained to each other, Sharabi was taken away and Ohel was held in captivity alone.
Sharabi’s words helped him get through those lonely days, Ohel admitted. He told Sharabi on Monday night: “I continued with the mantras you taught me, the ones you kept drilling into my head: ‘Be mentally strong and optimistic,’ and I added being calm in soul. This is my opportunity to say thank you.”
Monday night’s concert featured many artists, including Idan Amedi, Shlomi Shaban, Alon Eder, Gal Toren, Guy Levy, and Guy Mazig. All proceeds went toward a rehabilitation fund for Ohel.
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In Trump’s instinct to punish and desecrate, a rejection of the values of King David
When is it most essential to speak truth to power: When power is amenable to listening, or when power, confronted, digs in further?
The Bible has a powerful parable about that question in the story of Nathan the Prophet and King David. And as President Donald Trump’s administration showcases a tendency to punish those they’ve already wronged — like pro-Palestinian Columbia University protest leader Mahmoud Khalil and Renée Good’s widow — it’s of fresh relevance in the United States today.
After King David sleeps with Bathsheba and has her husband killed, God is displeased, and sends Nathan to confront the king.
Nathan tells the king the story of two men. One is rich, with large flocks and herds, and one poor, with just one small lamb who “used to share his morsel of bread, drink from his cup, and nestle in his bosom; it was like a daughter to him.” When a traveler came, the rich man served him not one of his own flock, but the poor man’s one little lamb.
This story enrages the king, who vows, “As God lives, the man who did this deserves to die!”
Bad news, Nathan tells him: King David is that man. What has he done with all his power and riches? Taken another man’s wife, and had him killed.
The king, hearing this, admits his guilt. The act of admitting shame sets a crucial precedent for the Jewish people. Because David takes stock of himself and what he has done, and accepts his punishment — the death of his first child with Bathsheba — he is allowed to move forward.
In our modern U.S., we must ask: What would have happened if David had responded to Nathan’s story by digging his heels in? If he had tried to blame Bathsheba’s dead husband or desecrate his memory, would that make what Nathan did futile or unimportant?
Since the beginning of Trump’s second term one year ago, we have repeatedly seen his administration fail to live up to King David’s example. Time and again, the public has served the role of Nathan, beseeching Trump to look at how he deploys his wealth and power, and do better. And time and again, we’ve been met with not just defiance, but with an insistence on pursuing the original course of action with more vehemence.
We have seen that with Khalil, whom the Trump administration continues to try to deport, despite the fact that he holds a green card and has no criminal record.
We have seen it in the case of Kilmar Abrego Garcia, whom the administration mistakenly deported to El Salvador. Instead of apologizing profusely to Garcia and his family for the trauma they suffered due to the government’s ineptitude, the administration responded by making retroactively building a criminal case against him a top priority.
We’ve seen it in the administration’s efforts to investigate the widow of Renée Good after Good’s killing by an ICE agent set off national protests. To put a finer point on it: They shot and killed a woman and then reportedly decided to try to prove it was she who was guilty.
Most recently, we’ve seen it in the federal government’s motion to end asylum claims for 5-year-old Liam Conejo Ramos and his family. A picture of Ramos being detained, wearing a blue bunny hat and looking terrified, sent shockwaves through the country. He and his father recently returned to Minnesota after being arrested and sent to a detention center in Texas.
The administration’s response to the righting of this grievous wrong — the detention of a tiny, traumatized child — was not to, say, change its policy of arresting, detaining, and trying to deport children, but to try to further punish that little boy’s family.
It’s as if, on hearing, “that man is you!,” King David decided to open an inquiry into the crimes of Bathsheba’s late husband — with no evidence that any such crimes existed. Over and over again, Trump and his team respond to our efforts to speak truth to their power by finding some other poor man’s lamb to slaughter.
Which brings us back to Nathan.
If King David had rejected Nathan’s message, I don’t think that would have made the message itself less important. I think it would have simply meant Nathan must continue to try, that he must keep insisting that the king should recognize his abuse of power, and do his best to make it right.
That might have felt pointless to Nathan. I think it can feel pointless to all of us today. It can feel that, for every good thing that happens — like the release of a 5-year-old from the horrors of detention — the administration seems determined to be doubly cruel. For every horrific act they commit by mistake, they seem determined to carry out a more horrific one on purpose.
But it isn’t pointless. Our would-be king may not heed the call, but others do. Prosecutors keep resigning instead of trying to punish the innocent. Judges continue to name the administration’s abuses, and work to undo them. Jewish organizations continue to reject the idea that the detention of pro-Palestinian students for exercising free speech is a matter of national security.
Trump may never admit, in Nathan’s words, that he is that man. But the rest of us can keep insisting: not only on the innocence of those being hurt in this country, but on the guilt of all of those who are hurting them.
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