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.

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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.

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And this won’t be the first time the pop star has performed in Israel. He put on concerts in Tel Aviv in 2011 and later 2017, filling a venue of fifty thousand.

Unsurprisingly, the singer has already begun to receive backlash for his decision to perform in the Jewish state. “Justin Bieber performing in Israel is an In’Justice’ to the people of Palestine,” one Twitter user said.

Bieber won’t be the first artist to get blowback for announcing a show in the Israel. Several artists like Lana del Rey and Lorde cancelled their shows in Israel during heightened tensions between Israel and Palestinians in 2014. After the recent conflict in May, during which countless celebrities espoused anti-Israel views on social media, the reaction is expected.

As Israel becomes increasingly polarized, performing there is a statement, whether intentional or not. But either way, we’re excited Bieber is taking another trip to the Holy Land, and with his track record, we’re positive he will not disappoint.

As for Lana, Lorde, and the others: It’s not too late to say sorry…

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For our first addition, we have curated a Rosh Hashanah playlist for you to prep and revel in this new year. It’s a mess and there’s way too many versions of ‘Avinu Malkeinu’ and I think you’ll love it.

Shana tova u’metuka, enjoy, and don’t forget to hit the follow button!

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From June 9th to 11th, the first Sababa Music Festival will be held in Dingman’s Ferry, Pennsylvania (right on the New Jersey border). In addition to live music, the festival will let you relive all of your favorite summer camp memories—yoga workshops, kayaking, and sleeping in cabins (sold out) and tents (still tickets available). The weekend also includes fully-kosher catered meals and Shabbat services.

The schedule on Friday includes swimming (with separate times for men and women), a Latin dance workshop, and a pool party (how very Catskills). Where does the ‘music’ part of the music festival come in? For starters, in welcoming Shabbat, of course! Esther Freeman will accompany an exclusive women’s concert with a candle lighting ceremony, and Kabbalat Shabbat will be led by Peretz Benhiyoun.

Guests will spend the rest of Shabbat in services, playing ultimate frisbee, and watching “Shmayunkie,” a comedy sketch group.

Once the havdalah candle is out, the festival will really turn up. A band called Pupik will be playing with members of the Jerusalem group G-Nome Project. After, there will be a late-night set by Jewish DJ LEVYTICUS, who’s known for combining Jewish music with top 40s songs. Guests then have the option of partying all night around a bonfire for kumzits, the practice of singing spiritually moving songs.

On Sunday, there’s an event called SMASH, a showcase of up-and-coming musicians who will be competing for the coveted SMASH award. It will include performances by The Cake Eaters featuring Moishe Wilshanski, Yingle, and Menachem. Guests will also have the chance on Sunday for one last gender-isolated swim or a basketball or frisbee game.

Once guests pack up and head out, the only thing that’ll be missing will be the crying 13 year olds, collecting the addresses of their cabin mates and promising to write. But similar to camp, guests of Sababa Music Festival will already be planning to come back, summer after summer.

Sophie Aroesty is an editorial intern at Tablet.

Image via Sababa.

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By all counts, the music video for “Als Ding hot a Soff, nur baym Wursht senen zway,” Joe Fleisch’s Yiddish cover of the ’80s German New Wave hit “Alles hat ein Ende, nur die Wurst hat zwei” (“Everything Has an End, Only the Sausage Has Two”) is bizarre. Shot in black and white in an evocative nod to the aesthetics of James Bond, the video―a collaboration with producer Ori Toledano and director Guy J. Bolandi―alternates between shots of Fleisch singing eerily and shots of naked, androgynous women (in a secluded forest!) who have the song’s lyrics projected or painted on their bodies.

For the casual viewer who stumbles upon Fleisch’s erotic odyssey, some context would be helpful. Joe Fleisch is actually the pseudonym of 54-year-old German author and entrepreneur Jossi Reich, whose other musical endeavor, the Tel Aviv-based band the Jewish Monkeys, is likewise unorthodox. While the band’s name might call to mind the cheerful pop vibe of the Monkees, Reich’s group performs a “distinctive mishmash of rock, klezmer, funk, and Balkan music, sung in English, Spanish, Esperanto and Yiddish,” in the words of Tablet contributor Dana Kessler. From a raunchy ode to Romania to a multicultural mashup (“The Banana Boat Song” meets “Hava Nagila,” with some politics thrown in for good measure), nothing, it seems, is musically off limits.

“It’s a personality split. It’s a complete other thing,” Reich told Jewcy, delineating his musical personae. “Jewish Monkeys is a punk rock band and very satirical and very funny and is kind of an orchestra with eight people.”

For Bolandi, who has directed projects for major TV networks like Nickelodeon and Comedy Central, “Als Ding hot a Soff” was more personal than his commercial work. “The entire concept of the video was about translation,”  said Bolandi, 35, referring not only to linguistic translation, but translating high-tech concepts―computerized designs typify the New Wave ethos―into lo-fi iterations. “In a way, this is a reference to technology, actually painting on the bodies.”

Reich’s interest in the song stems from his obsession with German New Wave music growing up, such as the theatrical stylings of Nina Hagen and the political incorrectness of Deutsch Amerikanische Freundschaft (German-American Friendship). “The music was absolutely German, very monotonous,” he said.

In “Als Ding hot a Soff,” Toledano, whom Bolandi introduced to Reich, provides the sonic heart of the project: klezmer clarient and computerized music samples. Coming from a musical household (he’s the son of Israeli singer and Eurovision contestant Avi Toledano), his prowess is no surprise. Plus, as the founder of Snowstar, a production company, it’s his job to tell stories by marrying visual media and music.

“I do Americana, Blues. I don’t have one genre,” said Toledano, 32. “I could work on a wide range of different genres and be something else every day and work with as many people as possible on different productions.”

Even if everything does have an end (or two, for sausages), let’s hope this creative partnership’s is far in the distance.

Experience the delightful weirdness that is the music video below:

Image via YouTube.

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Because 2016 continues in some ways to be a dumpster fire of a year, yesterday we lost singer-songwriter Leonard Cohen.

Famously, Cohen wrote constantly about Jewish themes in his work, from “Who By Fire” inspired by Unetaneh Tokef, and “Hallelujah” containing Biblical imagery pertaining to King David (such naches from the most over-covered song of all time).

Cohen, who was 82, had been speaking frankly lately about his own mortality, and he left us with a life and career fully culminated. In his final album, You Want it Darker, he even quotes the Kaddish. But this isn’t the first time we’ve heard traditional prayer from Cohen.

Cohen’s final performance in Israel was in 2009, a concert in Ramat Gan. Proceeds went to bereaved families on both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and as the concert closed, Cohen addressed them, offering them comfort, and then a prayer.

The last name was no coincidence, of course, Cohen himself was a Kohen, and he stretched his hands out towards the audience in the traditional gesture and made the priestly blessing. It translates as:

The Lord bless you and protect you. The Lord deal kindly and graciously with you. The Lord bestow His favor upon you and grant you peace.

Like a benevolent folk rock zeyde, Cohen leaves us at a tough time for many of us, but with a reservoir of comfort that we really need. We have his astounding career and body of work, and you can receive your blessing of peace from him below:

Image by Takahiro Kyono via Flickr.

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“Where are we? What the hell is going on?”

These lyrics filled the 180-person hall at New York’s Jewish Museum on Thursday evening, as Israeli cellist Maya Beiser launched into the fourth piece of her performance—an original interpretation of Imogen Heap’s chart topper Hide and Seek.

It was an unorthodox choice for a classically trained cellist, but Maya Beiser has always been bold: that’s why she plays the cello, and why she took to the stage for the museum’s Bang on a Can series, which is dedicated to promoting innovative music.

On the small kibbutz in northern Israel where she was raised, every child was given an instrument to play at the age of six. Most kids asked for violins, Beiser remembers, but “being the rebel that I am, I asked for a cello.” She wanted an instrument that no one else on the kibbutz played.

This choice set her on her path towards becoming the world-renowned cellist that she is today. Beiser, educated at Yale University, trained on the classical masters—Brahm, Bach—but then she started to listen to rock and roll.

The music she composes, arranges, and plays is inspired by the varied musical influences she’s had throughout her life. “I was always fascinated by different kinds of music,” she explains. “Schubert, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd. One of my earliest memories was hearing the muezzin’s call to prayer.” Her kibbutz, Gazit, is located near many Arab villages.  Plus, growing up, her Argentinian father instilled in her a love of tango music, and her French-born mother ensured she had an appreciation for the French musical greats.

“Spin me around again / and rub my eyes / this can’t be happening”

This Imogen Heap lyric captures the spirit of Beiser’s performance. All of her aforementioned influences and more crept into her Bang on a Can concert, making for an eclectic, somewhat disorganized recital. But then she jolted the audience with her debut performance of her arrangement of ‘Hide and Seek’ on the electric cello. It was bold, risky, and startling; totally different from classical cello compositions, and even from Beiser’s more experimental work. The fact that she played this electronic hit on a cello was unique in and of itself, but she went above and beyond by singing along with the robotic song. She played dubstep on the cello, and sang using a Vocoder. “It’s almost like the cello is controlling my voice to the computer,” she explains.

As evidenced by her music, Beiser very much marches to the beat of her own drum—or to the pluck of her own cello. “I always had a very strong personality,” she tells me. “The classical music world is kind of too strict and stiff for me. I always wanted to do things my own way.” And she has.

In addition to her unique compositions and rock covers, Beiser is an Israeli feminist hero. When she was 17 and conscripted to the Israeli army, she insisted that she wanted to audition for the elite army string quartet. Until that point, in the early 1980s, women weren’t allowed into the unit. Beiser recalls being told she couldn’t audition. “I said if you don’t let me audition, I’ll go to the press,” she explains with pride. “I fought my way,” she remembers, and she won. That year, the army accepted Beiser and another female musician into the quartet, bringing an end to the ban on women.

Since then, she has continued to promote women in her industry. On Thursday, Beiser’s repertoire consisted exclusively of female composers, going all the way back to the medieval composer Hildegard von Bingen. “It’s crazy, it really is insane, that in the twenty-first century we still have to be in that place where we have to make an effort to actually make a program that would include women composers,” she reflects. “It’s a sad reality.”

(Image care of Christina Jensen PR. Credit: ioulex.)

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In December, minimalist soul duo Silk Rhodes released their debut, self-titled album to great acclaim. Steeped in smooth vocals, soulful 1970s melodies, and enigmatic messages about the human experience, their sound is a cross between Prince and The Delfonics, with a touch of 90s R&B—or, as Rolling Stone put it, “the soundtrack for a roller rink on a cloud.”

27-year-old vocalist Sasha Desree (AKA Sasha Winn) grew up in New York City, attended LaGuardia High School, dropped out of SUNY Purchase, then headed to Baltimore where he met producer Michael Collins. They created their first full-length album in Collins’ Honda CR-V, which was set up as a “studio on the go.” They invited anyone and everyone to contribute to the recording process as they drove around Baltimore, and across the country.

Desree spoke with me from the apartment he shares in Los Angeles with Collins about looping, Silk Rhodes’ unique recording process, and why New York is no longer a stomping ground for young artists.

Check out their new video for their debut single, “Pains” here.

How do you feel about the vibes in L.A. vs. New York? Which pace do you prefer?

Living in New York can seem unnecessary after a bit. I’ve been bouncing back and forth now between Oakland and L.A. for the past year. I grew up in New York, lived there for 20 years. Then I went to Baltimore and made music.

Being from New York, your identity as an American is a bit different than the average American. That being said, I think the West Coast is more my pace. I’m a slow and steady kind of person. I’ve noticed that the similarities between L.A. and New York are things I don’t like… They’re both cities that are run by some sort of publicity beast. There’s a machine that’s working and running there and you can smell it. You can sense when it employs people that don’t know that they’re being employed by that machine to do its bidding.

What was your early creative life like in New York?

The community I grew up in [on the Upper West Side] was radical and that’s what it represented to me. As I grew up and explored New York more and more, it seemed as though being radical was not only not a priority for the people in New York, but New York itself made it hard for that to happen. It’s a hard place for artists to live and make enough money. It seems like these cities, more than being places to really live, are like market places. The Union Square Farmers’ Market for example—all of the sellers have farms upstate and they work on their things and bring them to New York and sell them—and then they leave! That’s kind of how I’m starting to feel about New York. Bring the things there, share them, but don’t stay forever.

Just contribute to the big machine and then bounce! There is a weird script-y element to New York and LA.

Totally. And I do love the vibe in East L.A., but these are the cities that write the script for the media all over America. And it seems like things come to California first. This is where the trends are made and then brought to the rest of the country. So it’s very interesting to have that insight here. But New York and L.A. inspire me to dig deep in film and music, and I realize how important those channels are.

Silk Rhodes has a very 1970s soul/funk-inspired sound that incorporates this really minimalist melody. Can you elaborate on your style?

Our connection with 70s soul music really began when we were living in this house together in Baltimore for about a year; that’s where this project gestated. We were listening to some more recent R&B music coming from many kids who had been previously making indie-pop or experimental pop-electronic music, and it seemed like they were still hiding behind the technology or tons of reverb. The emotionality of it was sort of clandestine. You go back and look at 70s soul, the vocals are right there, in front, and the words are equally important. It’s message and groove-driven music. Going back to that 70s sound in terms of the nostalgia was important to us, but also really clearing it out so it was super minimal. There’s nothing but emotions and the words for you to take in as the audience.

I grew up listening to my dad’s jazz records, a lot of John Coltrane, as well as Prince and 90s R&B. As we’ve gone back and found the lost 70s soul, there’s something in the vocal harmony that is so beautiful, and sometimes imperfect.

You guys had a very interesting process recording this record. Most of it was recording on the fly, driving around Baltimore and inviting people to join you. That spontaneity of recording music—do you see this as an anomaly these days, where albums can be so doctored? In listening to your album, even the placing of the tracks sounds spontaneous, but at the same time it has this common thread; this thread of human experience.

In the studio, you try to recapture that solace you get from being alone in your room. So you write it down, record a demo, and then you’re in a studio where you only have so many hours and things can feel a bit rushed. With our recording experience, we… allowed the studio to be anywhere. Be it your room, your car, or anywhere… Sometimes we would have a room full of people in there while we were working on a song, helping think-tank style coming up with ideas for lyrics. And we’ve always been inspired by our friends and the people around us. One of the things that keeps us moving around is that we want to be continuously inspired by new, different people, and we love to meet people who are making things.

Would you just pull over and open up the doors and start blasting music and chatting with people?

We connected in the world of spontaneous creation. We recorded it all over the place while in transit. And it could be anyone. One time these kids were in a gas station trying to sell us weed in Baltimore, and we told them we didn’t want to buy their weed but if they needed a ride we’d do that, under one condition: that they would make music with us all the way there. And they did.

We made some of our best music on porches and during drives in Baltimore, in a motel in Iowa City. We got into this hotel room at 11:00pm and we decided the only way to really get the full night’s limit of the hotel was to use it as a studio as well.

I’ve heard a lot about musicians using looping techniques more and more, but I don’t get it. I know you did this for this record. Can you explain?

Basically you add make multiple layers to a song very quickly. You can do what one might do when recording multiple tracks, but you can do it quickly. So each time it repeats, you add another layer and it can manifest a complex sound very quickly. But I think there’s something really beautiful about doing it all with the voice. There’s something about when you play an instrument and you can get the same thing out of it in terms of expression as you can get with the human voice.

How did you get into music?

The first song I ever sang was actually a Yiddish lullaby. I grew up singing folk songs and political songs from the sixties. I started singing soprano and training opera in middle school, and then as my voice changed I started writing more music. I play keyboard, bass, drums; a little bit of everything. And then of course, a lot of the stuff I’ve done uses heavily looped vocals. Looping has been a real hotbed of creation for us.

I went to college at SUNY Purchase and then I dropped college and kept one teacher. I found this amazing teacher/mentor named Joel Thome, who was Frank Zappa’s musical director for 20 years. He was the sweetest man I’ve ever studied under, or worked with in music in general, and he really expanded my horizons. It really got me into astrology, the occult, and the connections between that and vibration and music.

I moved back to New York and met with Joel once a week for two years. Both my parents are professors actually, and I’m really interested in the mentor system. That was the original form of teacher-student relationship. I’m anti-institution in general. I think that now, the ideal situation is one where both parties are teacher and student, constantly switching between the two. A free-trade agreement.

Catch Silk Rhodes live in New York on January 10.

(Image: Michael Collins and Sasha Desree (right) of Silk Rhodes, courtesy of Theo Jemison.)

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Which makes Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch’s new CD, Raysn: The Music of Jewish Belarus, so much more remarkable. His music is propulsive, dynamic, and often surprising—the essence of live performance. Slepovitch is probably the foremost keeper of Litvish Jewish culture in North America. He’s definitely the only one combining academic ethnographic work with a distinctive artistic vision. Raysn encompasses East and West, Jewish and non-, and builds a bridge between historic and modern performance. Though rooted in a somewhat obscure tradition, the result is enormously entertaining.

Even the name of his band, Litvakus, is both freighted signifier and playful connector. In Yiddish, ‘Litvakus’ denotes that which is related to Litvaks, the Jews of Lithuania. But for Slepovitch it’s also a play on the words “Litvak U.S.” (he recently became an American citizen). Or, as he told me recently, a kind of subliminal command: Litvak us/Litvak you/ Litvak me. If you thought Litvaks were the humorless counterparts to fun loving Galitzianers, you might be surprised.

But before we go any further, some terminology should be established. Lite (Lithuania) is a historical term denoting much more than what falls within the borders of the modern Lithuanian state. Jewish Lite is more or less contiguous with the historical Grand Duchy of Lithuania and encompassed parts of Poland, Belarus, Ukraine, Latvia, and, of course, Lithuania. In Yiddish, Belarus is known as Vaysrusland or (the more obscure) Raysn. The culture of the Belarussian portion of Lite, the multilingual, multicultural Raysn, is where Slepovitch, a native of Minsk, plants his flag.

Slepovitch is a Litvak, but a fun Litvak, leaning more in the direction of Mickey Katz than the Vilne Gaon, more Moyshe Kulbak than Chaim Grade. True to his Litvak roots (and his doctorate in ethnomusicology) the CD booklet contains a wealth of information, pinning each piece, old and new, within a specific locale. The text provides amply for those who care to know time signatures, instrumentation, and notes on phrasing. For the average user, the most important information is all there: song lyrics in YIVO standard transliteration next to English translation, with context for each song’s provenance.

The booklet may speak to the detail-oriented ethnomusicologist, but the music is pure aural pleasure. This is undoubtedly party music: dance tunes are at the center of Raysn. Traditional kolomeykes and shers sit next to original compositions like the very Brooklyn ‘Q Train Volekh.’ Slepovitch has assembled an incredibly talented group of musicians on Raysn. Craig Judelman’s fiery fiddle-work hints at a path from the swamps of Raysn to the hills of Appalachia. Sam Weisenberg’s percussion keeps the party moving with a light but driving energy. The most unusual sound comes from the generous application of drone, something not found often in modern-era klezmer recordings. Taylor Bergren-Chrisman on bass and Joshua Camp on accordion not only make this klezmer drone work, they make it sing.

Slepovitch notes that use of drone accompaniment was typical of the multicultural, Jewish Belarussian style. Extensive use of heterophony and microtone scales create an unusual dissonance, all of which make Raysn sound both distinctively contemporary yet rooted in place and time. Slepovitch’s virtuosic clarinet playing, compositional skills, infectious singing, and multilingual mastery propel Raysn to the forefront of contemporary Jewish music.

The Raysn album release event takes place tonight at 7pm at the Center for Jewish History in New York.

Related: Actor Shane Baker on Translating ‘Waiting for Godot’ into Yiddish

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