For your listening pleasure, way too many versions of Avinu Malkeinu, nigunim, Fiddler on the Roof, and of course, the trending Miami Boys Choir.

Shana Tova U’metuka from us at Jewcy Mag! Make sure to hit the follow button on our Spotify for more playlists this (((holiday season))).

This article was originally published in Jewcy’s substack The Weekly Jewce.

The post A Very Jewcy Rosh Hashanah appeared first on Jewcy.

By posting as the ‘Chief Rabbi of Gaza’, Michael has amassed almost 7,000 followers, some of which include Fleur Hassan, the deputy mayor of Jerusalem and Disturbed lead singer David Draiman. While poking fun at the often careless ignorance of anti-Israel progressives, Rabbi Linda has duped ‘Tinder Swindler’ Simon Leviev, Jewish Currents, former British MP Thelma Walker, and most notably, New Jersey congress hopeful Imani Oakley.

I sat down with Michael to talk about creating the account, the shenanigans he’s been up to as Rabbi Linda, and the astute political commentary behind them.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Tell me about when Rabbi Linda was born and what inspired you to create her.

I’m normally scrolling through Twitter, but during the last flare up in Gaza back in May, I was seeing so much hate and disinformation coming from progressive circles. I’m thinking of people like Ariel Gold, for example, who just seem like a parody even though they aren’t. 

Why not have a character that takes these anti-Israel positions to the extreme and attempts to predict the future on antizionist positions? And it happens. Rabbi Linda will say something absolutely crazy, and then a real person comes along and inevitably says the same thing.

I’ve been having fun with it. It’s taken off more than I expected. I did it as a sitting-on-my-couch kind of thing. But now she has a bit of a following, and people expect her to tweet about certain things. I’ll get messages all the time from people asking me to respond to something or to support something by highlighting it in an outrageous way. 

Can I ask about her photo? Is it from one of those AI websites that generates a realistic fake face?

Yeah, I definitely didn’t want to take anyone else’s image or get in trouble for that. I was refreshing the website for about an hour until I found the right picture of what I imagined her to look like. And these websites have gotten better since then, but I can’t change it now because you know her face. Like, punchable with the sunglasses… 

Yeah, you can’t change it anymore. She’s so recognizable, and people on the Jewish enclaves of social media have become quite attached to her.

For sure. In the beginning, when I would go dark for Shabbat people would be asking, “Why aren’t you tweeting?” I think the Imani Oakley story was actually published once Shabbat had already started. I’m not online on Shabbat, so I didn’t see anything. Once I came back I had like 50 DMs from people being like, “Are you suspended? What happened to your account? Why haven’t you tweeted yet?”

The Imani Oakley story was incredible. Did you expect to be duping people and pranking public figures since the beginning or is that something that came later on?

That came later. My earliest tweets were about organizing a Tehillim group for Hassan Nasrallah when he was ill, and then trying to organize a Gaza Pride Parade. I think the Pride Parade was what really made the account take off. Pinkwashing was a big thing at the time, and I was just trying to highlight how ridiculous that is when Tel Aviv is one of the most LGBT friendly cities and Gaza is very much the opposite.

I was honestly expecting the account to move around the anti-Israel circles and instead it was noticed by pro-Israel people, which I guess are the people who get the joke.

With Imani Oakley, I was inspired by some previous disastrous interviews by AOC and the founders of Ben and Jerry’s that illustrated that they just parrot talking points and they don’t have any substantive understanding of Israel. I thought it would be fun to test the empty suit theory on Oakley. 

How much background went into creating Rabbi Linda? This character has a lot of detail and it’s all very consistent.

It’s loosely based on my life. I am married. I have a wife, so Linda has a wife. She has a daughter. I have a daughter… Unlike Linda, my daughter’s name is not Leila Khaled.

The parallels make it easier to keep the details consistent. But she does have a lot of backstory, and part of it is remembering it. There’s the name of her shul and her OnlyFans page and all that ridiculous stuff that she does. Part of what makes her fun is that she has a real story.

So you’re also a nude yogi like Rabbi Linda?

Not a nude yogi. I have tried yoga, and I’m not the biggest fan. But it’s those kinds of things that make Linda realistic. There was one time when Jewish Currents retweeted Rabbi Linda not knowing she is a satire account after they had posted an article about at home abortion guides. I had thanked them and said how helpful it was for sex workers like myself.

I don’t care if someone wants to get abortion, but I wanted to show the ridiculousness of a rabbi being a sex worker and they just took it at face value. It was up there for a while before they took it down. 

The ‘nude yogi’ thing comes from that. I’m trying to make it obvious for anyone looking at the page that this is satire. I hope that gives it away.

And yet there’s still people who are consistently falling for it. They don’t know that these things aren’t true and they are confidently engaging.

That’s the fun part. Her bio says “Chief Rabbi of Gaza”. There are no Jews in Gaza. It says “Jewish Issues advisor to Ismail Haniyyeh,”  who is a senior political leader of Hamas. That’s obviously not a thing. Just the idea that there is a shul in Gaza [laughs]… People have asked me privately who I serve there, and I tell them there’s plenty of UNRWA workers who are Jewish. 

It just shows that many people are completely ignorant of all these issues. Jews are not permitted in Gaza, and in any future Palestinian state, there would be no Jews there either. As a base point, if you don’t understand that Hamas’ charter calls for the destruction of Israel in its entirety as an open, safe society for Jews, then you’re not really getting it.

Do you ever worry about how coverage like this interview, or the New York Post article might make tricking public figures more difficult?

That was one of my biggest hesitations with the New York Post. If I let them write about this, I will be able to do this less because a quick Google search now shows it’s a parody account. But there are other parody accounts out there that no matter how big, people fall for it. So I just figured, if they can stay relevant, then I can do it too. 

And Rabbi Linda is in more of a niche space. How many Zionist Jews on Twitter care to follow an account like this? There’s only so far she can go, and she’s gone pretty far. Yeah, I guess it will be harder to do those kinds of things, but at this point, I’m over that concern.

Rabbi Linda’s account is critical of the left-wing Israel-Palestine discourse, but it’s also critical of the woke-type rhetoric that often comes attached to it. For example, she writes Torah as “TorXh,” which I’m guessing is alluding to the controversy behind the term “Latinx.”

That was in response to an article about the Torah being gendered. Somebody re-gendered the whole Torah and switched all the genders around. So then I responded by asking her not to gender the Torah at all. She asked how you would do it if it wasn’t gendered, so I made it “TorXh.”

I’m just trying to keep the character consistent. There are real rabbis that she may or may not be modeled after who are much more interested in fitting Judaism into progressive politics than actual Jewish traditions. It’s the woke types who engage with Rabbi Linda. I just go where the audience goes. 

People’s observances are between them and God and I’m not critical of how someone practices their faith, but it tends to be antizionist Jews who are the type to do these things, so it blends in. And so the people I’m trying to parody don’t recognize it either. It fits into their circle perfectly. They have no idea.

There’s some sort of a mess of ideologies and a rebranding of Judaism in a way that perhaps makes space for anti-Israel views.

It’s putting an American progressive lens on everything Jewish even if it’s not taking place in America and trying to fit everything into that mold and hierarchy, which doesn’t really apply… It’s just how it works. People impose their views on anything and it happens on the right too. I’m not opposed to criticizing Marjorie Taylor Greene and Paul Gosar. I’ve definitely done plenty of that too.

Maybe the next step for Rabbi Linda is beef with Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene.

I don’t think she’ll engage with me. I’ve tried on Twitter a few times. But the space laser thing was pretty amazing. There’s just always good content with her. 

There was also Thomas Massie, a Kentucky congressman who has voted against Iron Dome funding, when he tweeted a picture of his whole family holding guns. Some of them were Uzis, which are Israeli made weapons, so I attacked him for that. He also didn’t respond.

Maybe the left is more gullible here because they’re excited to see someone else on their team.

There’s more of a platform for the squad-type people. It’s Ilhan Omar who serves on the foreign affairs committee, even after saying we shouldn’t send weapons to Ukraine and whatnot. Then there’s people like Steve King, who is on the right, and he was stripped of all of his committee assignments when he said something antisemitic. Both parties definitely have a problem with antisemitism, but I think some tend to have a bigger platform. In this case, it’s the squad, where it seems like they can just say anything and get away with it. 

I honestly think we’re not very far behind what happened in England with Labour and Jeremy Corbyn. Our progressive wing is maybe four or five years behind.

I’m sure many British Jews would agree with that assessment. There’s been a lot of criticism on that end because it feels like Jewish community is splitting off here and many are blinding themselves to it, while in the UK, there was more unity.

When you are too steeped in ideology, whether it’s far left or far right, it takes over your Jewish identity. It takes priority over it. So I think in this country, the Jews who are giving cover to folks like Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar are more concerned with being accepted in certain circles than with being Jewish.

What is in the future for Rabbi Linda? What’s the big picture?

I think she’ll be relevant as long as there’s some sort of commentary to make based on what’s happening in Israel. And there are quieter weeks, which are good. I like the quiet weeks. But there are weeks where things are going on and something needs to be said to highlight the ridiculousness of some positions. 

I saw a woman holding a sign in Ukraine which had Golda Meir’s very famous quote, which is originally about Israel: “If we lay down our weapons, there’ll be no Ukraine, but Russia lays down its weapons, there’ll be no war.” I’m a huge Golda fan, so I love that quote, and it describes the situation in Israel so well, and I’m happy that it was used in Ukraine too. But the fact that people can understand it when it applies to Ukraine, but not Israel, just shows it’s always different when there are Jewish people involved.

That kind of hypocrisy will probably always exist, and flare ups like the Israel-Gaza conflict last May are bound to happen again, so she’ll always be relevant.

I don’t want her to have to exist, but at this point, I can’t really take her away. Even after the Texas hostage situation… I didn’t expect to say anything. I actually didn’t want to. And some prominent people kept saying, “Rabbi Linda’s got to weigh in here. People are upset.” I was like, “Alright, if it makes light of the situation.” But I felt uncomfortable doing it.

I didn’t want to tweet about Ukraine either. It’s a sensitive situation, but some things just need to be said. I made a situation in which I just have to be consistent with the character even if it sucks.

It’s interesting to hear about how playing this character can sometimes become uneasy, but it just comes with the territory of committing to the bit and the satire. Still, it’s a very Jewish thing to deal with serious situations with humor. I hope we can all continue to do that.

It started because it was just so exhausting to be pro-Israel on social media. Someone’s gotta make light of it a little bit, and be able to laugh at it all.

You can follow Rabbi Linda Goldstein on Twitter @RabbiLindaGold1 and on Instagram @realrabbilindagoldstein.

The post Who Is Rabbi Linda Goldstein, Really? appeared first on Jewcy.

So, if you’re like me and are set on not celebrating the birth of Jesus, but need some mundane and leisurely activities to keep you busy on your day off while the world is on pause, I got you. We’ll brainstorm together. I already have some ideas.

1. The Classic Jewish-American Tradition

Can’t rate this one first hand, given that I’ve yet to partake in it. (This year will be my first time and I can’t wait!) But Chinese food on Christmas is a very sweet tradition that American Jews seem to cherish. And I agree. The non-commemoration of the most famous goyishe holiday with an intercultural feast is such a home run. Follow up your meal with a late night movie for a truly authentic night.

2. Pretend It’s Still Hanukkah

No need to be salty that our holidays are over, while everyone else is celebrating theirs. Just pretend they aren’t! I wouldn’t say the prayers or actually light a menorah. And definitely don’t say the prayers–G-d’s name in vain and all. But listening to some Hanukkah music, sufganiyot, and latkes are not a bad deal. Watch A Rugrats Chanukah for some extra fun, too.

3. Drink And Watch Netflix

The second season of Emily in Paris with Jewish actress Lily Collins (yes she is, Google it) is out and if you haven’t binged it in its entirety yet, this is the time to do it. And get some wine, while you’re at it. Other options are the terrible new Sex and the City reboot, And Just Like That… or whatever Succession is.

Of course, if you’re looking to live vicariously through your laptop screen, you can watch Christmas movies, duh. Serendipity will be my recommendation here because I’m a sucker for rom-coms and Love, Actually doesn’t do it for me. There’s also a Christmas-themed reality dating show on HBO Max called 12 Dates of Christmas. And I don’t know why I had never heard of it until this week, but you can bet that’s what I’ll be consuming on the evening of December 24.

4. Learn About Jewish Suffering

Like I said before, there’s no need to be salty. But if you choose to, that’s valid and know that I support you. I won’t point you to anything about the Shoah, because I’ll suggest that you stay more on theme this season.

Did you know that since the middle ages up until relatively recent times, some Christian communities in Europe would use December 25th to launch pogroms against Jewish communities? Because they blamed us for Jesus’ death and all that jazz. Not cool! Read about it!

There’s also the Inquisition, which most Jews know very little about. You can read about that too. Why not.

5. Walk The Empty Streets

It’s literally the perfect night to feed your main character complex and hit the empty lit-up streets. How emo! All you’ll need is headphones (preferably not wireless because vibes) and some cash just in case your run into your bashert and end up going on a one-night adventure. Cut to the wedding scene! I told you I’m a sucker for rom-coms…

6. Be Shomer Shabbos

This year, Christmas falls on Shabbat. But even if you’re reading this on a year that it doesn’t, isn’t observing the weekly Jewish holiday a great way to disconnect yourself from all the Christmas frenzy? Turn off your phone, grab a few books, and voila. Christmas passed and you didn’t even notice. 

…Except being shomer is pretty hard, and that’s probably unrealistic if you’re going cold turkey. But this is the best night to give it a try! If you can’t fully dive in, try starting small. Maybe just no phone for 25 hours? Easy enough?

7. Nittel Nacht

Did you know Chasidic Jews have their own Christmas tradition? Yeah, me neither. Unlike Jews on the more secular Jews’ Chinese food tradition, it is less of an alternate activity as it is a diss. Drama!!!

The custom of Nittel Nacht (nacht meaning ‘night’, and nittel deriving from the Hebrew niteleh, ‘the hanged one’) dates back to the 16th century, but tensions date back to the writing of the text Toledot Yeshu, a Jewish telling of Jesus’ story–and not a very flattering one.

It is a custom to not study Torah. Some rabbis even forbid having sex! Instead, they partake in other activities such as playing chess or cards, while others read Toledot Yeshu to remember the longstanding feud.

8. Sleep In

As good an option as any. Listen, I will definitely be indulging in some well-deserved rest, and so should you! Honestly, it’s not like I have any Christmas presents to wake up to unless you count my daily dose of Adderall.

Worst comes to worst and none of these options appeals to you, hit me up and we can play some board games or something. I have no plans so…

Anyway, Happy Not-Our-Holiday and Shabbat Shalom!

The post Christmas: Eight Things to Do if You’re a Jew appeared first on Jewcy.

Rosalía is a Spanish singer-songwriter who gained fame mixing flamenco with pop and urban music. This mix is prominent in hits like “MALAMENTE” and “Aute Cuture,” while others like “De Plata” and “QUE NO SALGA LA LUNA” have a more pure flamenco sound. Rosalía has collaborated with artists such as Bad Bunny, J Balvin, Travis Scott and most recently, The Weeknd. So yeah, she’s a baddie.

You already know I’m biased, but Rosalía is excellent. Her music is fresh, it’s catchy and it slips Spanish folklore into the changing landscape of pop, while her acapella live vocals will leave you speechless and in awe of her raw talent. Whenever I listen to Rosi, I am transported.

Similarly, many Sephardic artists have been heavily influenced by flamenco, like Sarah Aroeste’s newest cover of “Ocho Kandelikas” or Jorge Mehaudy’s “Buena Semana”. Now, you can understand how my music sessions can transition from Sech to Sephardic folk in just less than an hour. Rosalía is the bridge. She is my bridge.

Ladino–or Judeo-Spanish–is a Romance Language developed from Old Spanish and originally spoken by Sephardic Jews in Spain, and later throughout Europe and Morocco after the Edict of Expulsion. My connection to Spain is tied to my own Sephardic roots, and Ladino music was an integral part in the soundtrack of my formative years. It still is.

Listening to Rosalia sends my imagination into a frenzy. If only I could hear her sing “Hija Mia” or “La Rosa Enflorece”. Just picture it. And I know what you’re thinking, but Rosalía would not be the first non-Jewish artist to make a splash in the world of Sephardic music. Joaquin Diaz’s records of Sephardic music are classics, and Dafné Kritharas’ rendition of “Sien Drahmas” is heartbreakingly perfect.

So Rosalía, in the slightest chance that you are reading this, sing with us! Help us bring awareness to an endangered Jewish language and put it at the forefront. And most importantly, let’s create something beautiful.

The post Dear Rosalía, Please Sing in Ladino appeared first on Jewcy.

Jesus was not white. This statement is simple enough, and it is truthful, I suppose. (I never assumed he looked like a Renaissance painting because I have common sense, and now we have BBC’s reconstruction, which looks like he would have been profiled by airport security, for sure.) 

But once you give an inch… Now, absolutely everyone wants to claim the lord and savior as theirs. I mean, we’re all obsessed with “representation,” and the son of God is the ultimate cop. Jesus has been Black. He has been Asian. He has been Irish. Jesus has even transcended the racial debate and has been gendered as non-binary. OH, and lest I forget, Jesus has of course been Palestinian. A Palestinian Brown Jew, nonetheless. Might as well have been a sphinx. 

So here’s where the Jews come in. We–and this is a loose ‘we’ thankfully–have resorted to defending ourselves against misinformation and erasure by stating the obvious. Jesus could not have been Palestinian because Palestine did not exist in his lifetime. He was born in the Kingdom of Judea, and the term “Palestine” wasn’t used until more than a century after his death. And I hope I don’t have to explain why he wasn’t Black or Asian because I won’t. Jesus was a Jew. He was Judean, if you will. Fine.

There are, of course, those of us who are going as far as to say Jesus was Mizrahi, which is unfortunately as ridiculous as saying he was a Palestinian Jew. If we’re using the argument that he could not be Palestinian because Palestine wasn’t a thing… Well, then neither was the Mizrahi because the diaspora wasn’t a thing either (not as we know it today), and Jesus was also not in it. No sense at all. This argument, apart from being very wrong and using the same non-logic as other communities, seems to one-up the defensiveness of just saying he was a Jew. It’s a little iffy, and this is the sense I get from a lot of the Jewish response.

To put it plainly, my friends, some of you Jews are a little too eager to ‘claim’ Jesus. 

I get it. As Jews, we’re forced to cede our representation all the time now because we’re deemed not worthy of it. But Jesus!? We’ve spent thousands of years distancing ourselves from this man who, by the way, was a heretic according to our tellings, one whose name many religious Jews will not even utter. There was a whole other religion created from him which was used to oppress us, and the cherry on top is we were blamed for his death. Now suddenly he is our poster child? Hashem Yishmor. I’m all for claiming what’s ours, but I will graciously take this ‘L’.

Also, isn’t the whole point of Jesus that he was a beacon of universalism? I claim to be no expert on Christianity, but I’m pretty sure obsessing over Jesus’ race and appearance is counterintuitive to his message, no? The fact that communities want to see themselves in him, and depict him in their own image is not crazy. It’s natural, and I take no issue with it.

I do not care. I don’t! And neither should you. Wasn’t that one of the selling points for Judaism in the first place? That we do not have to care about all this? God knows we have other things to worry about.

Let them claim him. He was one of ours, but he isn’t ours. Ironic as it may be, it is funner this way too and great to watch from afar. What will Jesus be next? Azerbaijani? Losangelino? A teletubby? Vegan? A barb? Maybe he’ll even be Ashkenazi. I bet he likes bagels and klezmer and chopped liver. Happy for him. And ultimately, whatever he is, wherever life takes his legacy, I’ll take comfort in knowing that it’s absolutely none of my business.

The post Jesus Was Ashkenazi appeared first on Jewcy.

And it’ll take just one listen to become hooked on Kosha Dillz and Nissim Black’s remix of Adam Sandler’s satirical classic. Sandler’s “The Hanukkah Song” is an American Jewish staple. Kosha and Nissim’s rendition give it the respectful nod it deserves for its cultural impact while elevating the piece into a perfectly-fit 2021 repackaging.

Essentially, it slaps. And “The Hanukkah Song 2.0” is the newest addition to our holiday playlist A Jewcy, Jewcy Hanukkah because it deserves the kavod.

The post On the Eighth Night, Stream Kosha Dillz and Nissim Black’s ‘The Hanukkah Song 2.0’ appeared first on Jewcy.

“Chanukah is not a festival of light,” said Kern alluding to the painfully incorrect interpretations of the holiday made by popular politicians, among others, “It remembers Jewish warriors and their rebellion against the erasure of Jewish life in Judea and Jerusalem.”

This wasn’t Lee’s only banger this Hanukkah season. Look at this:

BAM. Take that, people-who-are-wrong-about-Hanukkah!

Anyway, we wouldn’t usually do this kind of Twitter reporting, but JEWS AREN’T MOTHS!? This simple phrase ravaging the platitudinous and shallow “celebration of light” is absolutely everything.

He’s right. We aren’t moths. Thank you, Lee. You win Hanukkah Twitter.

Bonus: This tweet that made me tear up.

The post Lee Kern: ‘Jews Aren’t Moths’ appeared first on Jewcy.

Be warned, though. This is not your usual holiday playlist. No, no. This playlist is not for the faint of heart, nor for those who lack a knack for adventure. Of course you’ll have some classics. There are quite a few versions of both “Ocho Kandelikas” and “Hanukkah, Oh Hanukkah” because I am an Ashkephardi melech. But I have no “Hava Nagila” and no Adam Sandler’s very overrated “Hanukkah Song” for you. Sorry. We’re doing this right.

My dear frumsters, seculars, and all those in-between, you’re here to be challenged, to elevate your taste, to diversify your Hanukkah repertoire, and trust me, you won’t ever look back.

And yes, I’m exaggerating. And correct. They can both be true, okay? Anyways, make sure to follow our Spotify for future music reccs, and to give A Jewcy, Jewcy Hanukkah a like so you can find it again later.

Chag Sameach, rock (of ages) on, and listen below.

The post A Jewcy, Jewcy Hanukkah Playlist appeared first on Jewcy.

This time around, Sarah Aroeste is making history by creating the first all-Ladino Hanukkah album, Hanuká! The record is a gorgeous reimagining of the Jewish holiday, shattering our preconceptions of what Hanukkah music should sound and feel like. In every way, Hanuká! is an instant classic. And while I could go on and on singing Aroeste’s praises, the album speaks for itself and deserves a top-to-bottom listen before taking its hard-earned place in your holiday playlist.

I sat down with Sarah on Zoom to talk more about her groundbreaking record, and after gushing about bimuelos for a good minute, we got down to business: the music and the festival of lights.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

When did you decide to release a Hanukkah album? How long has this been in the works?

So, I was already in the middle of recording a different album, and then last winter, while I was recording Monastir, and doing everything from my monitor, I had so many Zoom Chanukah appearances. And for all of these appearances, I had to come up with an interesting repertoire, not only to keep my audiences excited, but to keep me excited. I found myself with all that I had researched and I realized, I have enough to make an album with such a treasure trove of material that most people have never heard of. 

There was something about COVID Hanukkah last year that felt different than previous years. We were all hungry and thirsty for joy. But it came out so visibly for Jews during the Hanukkah season in a way that I feel like it hadn’t previously. I just felt like it was so joyful last year, despite the pandemic, and I wanted to harness some of that joy and combine it with that repertoire that I had developed over that period. 

So right after Hanukkah, I said to my producer, “I know we’re in the midst of recording a different album. But I want to make sure that we record this as fast as we can, so we can bottle this energy.” So I spent about six months as the other album was rolling out  arranging and conceptualizing the Hanukkah album. And this summer, in July, I had a window to go to Israel where my producer lives, and we recorded the Hanukkah album and shot the “Ocho Kandelikas” video at the same time.

Wow, that must have been hard, especially as you were promoting the first album.

If you heard the Unorthodox podcast episode that came out last week, I was supposed to do that months and months ago when Monastir came out. But it kept on getting delayed. So it was actually part of the Hanukkah episode, which was so weird because I actually have a Hanukkah album, but that’s not what the focus was.

So yes, it was a little bit of a ‘ping-pong’ back and forth, but as a creative artist, especially living through the pandemic, I had so much bottled up energy that I just had to get out this year. So, it was a banger, putting out two records, but they’re so different. And I think they both express the joy of Sephardic culture in different ways. They sort of fed off of each other.

They’re really so beautiful and so expressive. In both of them you can feel all the influences of Sephardic culture and what that carries. Can you tell me a bit more about that?

You know, I write a lot of my own music, but on these two albums, I just wrote two original songs. So I can’t take credit for the other melodies and lyrics that are included. But yes, the nature of Ladino music–one of the reasons why I love it so much–is that you can hear both through the melody and the rhythms, the influences of the wide expanse that represents Sephardic Jewry.

As Jews went eastwards from Spain, they picked up influences from all of their neighbors, and to the extent that I could maintain those same rhythms and melodies, I did, because I love them. In some cases, I reimagine songs and I write them in my own way, but I try to give as much of an Ottoman-Balkan-Eastern-Mediterranean feel to my music as I can.

Right, and in that vein, you completely re-imagined “Ocho Kandelikas” in your album with a Flamenco version. 

I adored Flory Jagoda who passed away earlier this year. She was such a huge influence on me. And she’s the original. I mean, to say I’m a fan of Flory Jagoda is an understatement. She was everything to me. In terms of her career as a singer-songwriter and Ladino, she is the queen. Nobody can surpass her or her original version. And that song has been done so many times, in every way. For anybody who knows anything about Ladino music, it’s been there, done that. There’s nothing new I can give to it.

So when I was conceptualizing this album, I reached out to Flory’s family and I said, “Listen, I want to put together this album. I don’t want to have ‘Ocho Kandelikas’ on it. And instead, I want to do the lesser-known ‘Hanuka, Hanuka’.” It’s such a sweet song that she wrote–track eight on my album. I love singing it with my children, who actually record it. And I was gonna leave it at that. 

While I was conceptualizing my other album, Monastir, I wrote a song that I wanted to have an Andalusian sound to it. So I hired this incredible Israeli flamenco singer, Yehuda Shuky Shveiky, who recorded this song for me on my other album, and as we were recording that, I said, “Wait a second, that is something I could do differently. That is something I could bring to ‘Ocho Kandelikas’.”

As soon as we finished recording the track for the other album, I said to him, “Do you want to collaborate on a flamenco version of ‘Ocho Kandelikas’?” And he was all in, so I really gave him the latitude to arrange it because flamenco is his life. I said, “these are the parameters. I don’t want to move so far away that you can’t tell that it’s that song.” But the only way I would feel comfortable doing it is if I don’t try to imitate Flory but do it entirely in my own way. 

And I love the idea of giving it a Spanish Andalusian flair because Ladino comes from Spain. And even though Flory’s version is very Balkan because she came from Bosnia, I was sort of paying homage to her, but also to the Spanish roots of the language. I was pretty confident that a flamenco version had never been done of the song. There have been new Tango versions, and everything’s been done to it, but not flamenco. So this was our chance to really put our stamp on it.

It’s palpable how much you respect and love Flory. In fact, you have a picture of her in the beginning and the end of the “Ocho Kandelikas” music video, which just came out. Did you ever get to meet her?

Oh, many times. I mean, not many, but enough. I sang with her. She was a friend–I’m emotional just thinking about her. It was important, like I said, to give her all the kavod and the respect, because this is her classic, iconic song. And so not only did I want to maintain the integrity of the song, through my version, I wanted to pay a nod to her, that it came from her. So that’s why we felt it was important to actually have her image in the video. So the photograph is at the beginning and at the end of the song. She was just a beautiful, beautiful soul.

She meant a lot to the Sephardic community because she gave us representation. Now, you’re continuing that legacy. What impact do you hope to have in the Jewish community?

My goal in creating this album was twofold. One was to celebrate Hanukkah. Simply put, there had never been an all-Ladino collection of Hanukkah songs. I wanted people to know that there’s lots of wonderful Sephardic Hanukkah songs, and I wanted to create a collection that is just an expression of joy for Hanukkah, and at the same time, also an expression of joy for Ladino.

I said in my liner notes, Hanukkah is a miracle. And so is Ladino. We are here to celebrate that. The fact that it has lasted this long, despite the Holocaust, despite its endangered status, it is still here. Let’s celebrate that miracle. So you put those two things together, and I just wanted it to be an explosion of joy. 

And that’s representative not just in the music, but I wanted to have bright colors on the album cover, right? We’re not just stuck with blue and gold. We’re light. We’re all of these colors reimagined. I didn’t want to be this cliche, with a menorah… and you know, dreidel isn’t really what we played with in the Sephardic world. I wanted it to feel bright and Mediterranean, not only the music, but in its color palette and in the feel of it. 

Do you study Ladino, by the way?

For many, many years. I started studying it through music. I’ve had teachers along the way. When I write my own music. Most of my albums prior to the last two were all original songs. This Hanukkah album is actually my seventh album, but I do have mentors in the field to review my work before I publish.

And what’s your favorite song in the album?

I really love track number four, “Fiesta de Hanukah.” It’s one that I wrote, which maybe I’m not allowed to say, but it’s the blessings that we say over the candles, but in Ladino. I wrote it using the Ladino translation of the traditional Hebrew blessings. 

I love this song because my kids love it the most and they love jumping in on the choruses. It’s just really festive. And I wanted to create my own tradition, being able to say those blessings in song in Ladino.

My personal favorite was “Ya Viene Hanuká.” I loved it.

Yeah! So, Gloria Ascher sings that. She was one of my teachers, and she’s been a mentor of mine. She is a delightful, delightful woman. She was one of the first people to teach Ladino in America in a university. She was the first professor of Ladino at Tufts. I love capturing the voices of my mentors on my albums. Every album has a couple of cameos. And I really wanted to feature her on this one.

What advice do you have for people who want to connect to Ladino?

I’ve actually written resource articles! On my website, there’s a whole area of Latino resources, but in the last three years, or two years, the accessibility for learning Ladino has exploded, especially since the pandemic. Now it’s on mobile apps. There are just so many ways now to connect.

Sarah Aroeste’s Hanuká! is available now on all streaming and music retail platforms, including Spotify and Apple Music. Aroeste’s “Ocho Kandelikas” music video is watchable on Youtube and on her website, which also has resources for learning Ladino and more information on the artist and her work.

The post Sarah Aroeste’s Ladino Hanukkah Album Is Here—And It’s Glorious appeared first on Jewcy.

Nonetheless, there is one aspect of the Harry Potter universe we have seldom talked about. In perhaps the biggest cultural phenomenon of our generation, the actor who played the eponymous character is a Jew.

That’s right, if you didn’t know this by now, Daniel Radcliffe is part of the tribe, and Tuesday marked 20 years since the release of the first installment of the film series–“Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone”–in which he was cast to play the lead. The rest is history. 

Despite Rowling’s noble attempt to post-canonically signal representation of Jews at Hogwarts, and then having the Goldstein sisters in the “Fantastic Beasts” prequels, nothing will be as powerful as our Jewish Harry.

Daniel Radcliffe has said he is “very proud to be Jewish,” although he is an atheist. 

With the stardom that came with the Harry Potter movies, Radcliffe became one of the most famous people in the world. Out of everyone, it was someone from our teeny tiny ethno-religious nation. And a very proud one. How fucking cool!

Since Harry Potter, the Jewish star has played both the very famous Jew, poet Allen Ginsburg, and a neo-Nazi, while drawing on his Jewish identity for both parts, as he’s discussed in a few interviews.

Clearly, Daniel Radcliffe is more than just Harry Potter. But for many of us, he’ll always be the boy who lived… and the boy who gave young Jews much needed representation.

We’re excited to see Daniel, along with his co-stars, in the upcoming 20-year reunion of Harry Potter, ‘”Return to Hogwarts” coming to HBO Max on January 1.

The post We Had a Jewish Harry Potter. That Matters. appeared first on Jewcy.