Bersten, along with fellow Jewish dancer Val Chmerkovskiy and other pros, created the routine to make Jewish kids feel seen and proud, receiving praise as a milestone for the show's history.
Aroeste writes and sings in Ladino, the Judeo-Spanish dialect that originated by Spanish Jews after their expulsion from Spain in 1492. Those who left Spain, including Aroeste’s family, carried the medieval language with them to the various points where they later settled, primarily along the Mediterranean coast and North Africa. In time, Ladino came to absorb bits and pieces of languages all along the Mediterranean coast, including some Greek, Turkish, Portuguese, French, Italian, Hebrew, and more.
This exotic pan-Mediterranean language has, unfortunately, been fading away. But the continued musical legacy of Spanish Jews highlights the strength of an oral tradition that spans centuries and crosses many geographic boundaries.
American born and trained in classical opera as a teenager at Westminster Choir College and then at Yale University, Aroeste became drawn to her Sephardic musical past after spending a summer in 1997 performing at the Israel Vocal Arts Institute in Tel Aviv. There, she had the fortune of studying with Nico Castel, one of the world’s great Ladino singers and coaches at the Metropolitan Opera, with whom she learned she shared a similar Sephardic background. Continuing to study with Castel upon her return to the US, Aroeste started incorporating classical Ladino songs into her opera repertoire. She quickly realized that Ladino, not opera, was her true musical passion and soon after made the leap to studying Ladino full time.
Since then, Aroeste has been a vocal advocate for exposing new audiences to Sephardic culture and has worked tirelessly to keep Ladino alive for a new generation. Aroeste is one of few Ladino composers today who writes her own music, and whether with her original compositions or with interpreting Ladino folk repertoire, she has developed a signature style combining traditional Mediterranean Sephardic sounds with contemporary influences such as rock, pop and jazz.
Sarah sings with participation from Alan Franco and Berkshire Salsa, and members of the Latino and Jewish communities of the Berkshires, Massachusetts.
Enjoy, and Shabbat shalom!
A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS: THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS. YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.
It was later included on Master KG's second album of the same title, released in January 2020. A single edit was released on streaming services on July 10, 2020, after it went viral during mid-2020, garnering international reaction due to the #JerusalemaChallenge. The dance challenge was started by a group of young men in Angola and it was their video of them dancing to the song which sparked a global trend.
A remix featuring Nigerian singer Burna Boy was released on 19 June 2020. It reached number one in Belgium, Netherlands, Romania and Switzerland, while peaking in the top ten of multiple other European countries. A second remix featuring Venezuelan singer Micro TDH and Colombian singer Greeicy was released on 17 September 2020.
At the third ceremony of the African Entertainment Awards USA "Jerusalema" won the Song of the Year award.
After winning awards all around the world and inspiring dances in many countries, the song finally found its way to Israel where it was translated to Hebrew and found favor with Israelis across the religious and non-religious sectors.
Enjoy!
The event was also graced by an interfaith and interethnic panel which also included a delegation of Sri Lanka’s indigenous people.
Last Sunday’s event showcased Sri Lanka and Israel’s historic interactions going back 3,000 years when the island traded spices, precious stones and exotic fauna with ancient Jewish kingdoms.
This was followed by short films on Israeli innovations in the field of medicine, education and agriculture that it is open to share with Sri Lanka. Video greetings were also shared from Israel including members of the Knesset.
The Kelaniya University dance troupe performed a rendition of the Jewish folk song ‘Nagila Hava’ with a Sri Lankan twist.
Enjoy!
A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS: THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS. YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.
You wouldn't expect Rad Halaila, a classic Israeli hora dance, to show up in a courtyard in Valladolid, a city in northwest Spain about 100 miles from Madrid. But it had so much appeal to the Valladolid World Dance Association that they adopted the name Radalaila for their dance group.
Rad Halaila is a hora in which the dancers move individually to the right, describing a circle and entering and leaving it. It is a very energetic dance.
Enjoy!
A SPECIAL NOTE FOR NEW EMAIL SUBSCRIBERS: THE VIDEO MAY NOT BE VIEWABLE DIRECTLY FROM THE EMAIL THAT YOU GET EACH DAY ON SOME COMPUTERS AND TABLETS. YOU MUST CLICK ON THE TITLE AT THE TOP OF THE EMAIL TO REACH THE JEWISH HUMOR CENTRAL WEBSITE, FROM WHICH YOU CLICK ON THE PLAY BUTTON IN THE VIDEO IMAGE TO START THE VIDEO.
"It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing" are the words in a 1921 composition by Duke Ellington, with lyrics by Irving Mills,
now accepted as a jazz standard, characterized by jazz historian Gunther
Schuller as "now legendary", "a prophetic piece and a prophetic
title." 
The National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene, now with a permanent home at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in Lower Manhattan, is celebrating its 100th anniversary this month. And what a celebration it will be!
Twenty dancers form a semicircle as Israeli choreographer Ohad Naharin's recorded voice speaks the first words of the traditional Passover song "Echad Mi Yodea" (Who Knows One), marking the beginning of his work by that name.
They sit down, lean forward and bow toward the floor. The Israeli rock group Tractor's Revenge pumps up the tempo with its version of the song. Thrusting out their chests, the dancers tilt backward in their chairs and spread their arms wide, wildly shaking their heads as if possessed. By the end, they are shouting out the lyrics and flinging off most of their clothes in an ecstatic celebration of movement and freedom.In the Batsheva Dance Company version, the piece begins with a narrator speaking these words in a haunting voice: ”The illusion of beauty and the fine line that separates madness from sanity, the panic behind the laughter and the coexistence of fatigue and elegance.”
For Argentine-born Gustavo Bulgach, tango is music with an attitude.
“Tango means the blues. Tango is not just tango - it means - it’s an attitude that you want to express. In every language, in Yiddish, in Spanish - in whatever language - Tango represents that kind of attitude of losing or having your heart broken by life,” Bulgach says.
Bulgach is the band leader of the Yiddish Tango Club, a group that fuses a form of Jewish dance music known as "klezmer" with Argentine tango.
“Tango is not only Argentinian. It’s a loop from Europe also. It’s like something dramatic, and it’s the count…maybe one, two, three,” says vocalist Divina Gloria.
The band pays tribute to the music of the Jewish immigrants in Argentina. Bulgach is Jewish, and his family emigrated to Argentina from Russia. Jewish vocalist Divina Gloria’s family came from Poland. Yiddish tango evokes memories of her own childhood in Argentina.Enjoy!
McKenna: Leonard Cohen was born into a Jewish family in Montreal in 1934. Yet his influences come also from the Catholic and Protestant communities of that city. And perhaps its that cosmopolitan background that gives him an intriguing angle, particularly on biblical history. In the song Hallelujah, he draws on a wonderfully and subversively passionate passage in the second book of Samuel. It happened towards evening when David had risen from his couch and was strolling on the palace roof that he saw from the roof a woman bathing. The woman was very beautiful. David made enquiries about this woman and was told 'why that is Bethsheba, Allion's daughter, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.' Then David sent messengers and had her brought. She came to him and he slept with her. Now she had just purified herself from her courses. She then went home again. The woman conceived and sent word to David - 'I am with child'.
In the song there's the baffled king, David, and there's the baffled singer, Leonard Cohen, in search of the lost chord that certainly pleased the lord and might possibly please the woman. And there's the original story too, reduced now to the domestic and physical situation that it was and always is. Bethsheba may have broken the throne, but she also tied David to a kitchen chair. Delilah did something similar. There's more to be learned from the bible than God's dealing with the human race. There's also the dealings of women with men. There's the hard fact that nothing can be reconciled - at least not here.
Cohen: Finally there's no conflict between things, finally everything is reconciled but not where we live. This world is full of conflicts and full of things that cannot be reconciled but there are moments when we can transcend the dualistic system and reconcile and embrace the whole mess and that's what I mean by Hallelujah. That regardless of what the impossibility of the situation is, there is a moment when you open your mouth and you throw open your arms and you embrace the thing and you just say 'Hallelujah! Blessed is the name.' And you can't reconcile it in any other way except in that position of total surrender, total affirmation.We enjoyed the ballet performance and hope that you will, too.
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