Growing up, my life was filled with Jewish music. Songs and melodies written by Debbie Friedman echoed through the Sunday school classrooms at my Reform synagogue. When Dan Nichols and E18hteen’s album “Be Strong” came out in 2001, my family played the CD religiously — except at Hanukkah when we listened to “Festival of Light” or when decided to switch things up with “Honey Would You Be Meshuga Tonite,” a spacey klezmer album by a group called Klingon Klezmer. Later, when I joined my synagogue’s children’s choir as a tween, I was introduced to the music of Rick Recht and subsequently listened to “Salaam/Ki Va Moed” on repeat on the bus to school each morning throughout middle school.
But it was around this time that I realized that my knowledge of secular pop music was seriously lacking. I eventually switched out Jewish tunes for Top 40 billboard hits on my iPod, and lost my connection to Jewish songwriters. It’s only been recently in my adulthood, when I’ve connected with a new shul, started building a Jewish home with my partner and, of course, been working at a Jewish non-profit for the last nearly four years that I’ve begun to find my way back. Now, alongside secular artists like Chappell Roan and MUNA, my Spotify is filled with my old Jewish favorites, alongside new names like indie Yiddish pop singer Olke and Ladino folk artist Lily Henley. (There is room for all of it, what a concept!)
But Olke’s “Di Froyen” came out in 2023, Henley’s “Oraz Dezaoradas” came out the year before and the Jewish music of my past is 20-30 years old at this point. In 2024, I’ve been waiting and waiting for new Jewish music to debut that would similarly find its way into my neshama and call it home, and would remind me that Jewish music is both deeply rooted in tradition and that tradition is always waiting for reinvention.
Good things come to those who wait. Over the last few weeks I’ve received two such albums: Erez Zobary‘s “Erez” and Batya Levine’s “Yivarechecha.”
“Erez,” is the Canadian R&B singer’s fourth album, yet it’s the first in which she deeply explores her Yemenite Jewish roots. She does so with virtuosity. In tracks like “Saftah (סבתא)” and “Saadya (סעדיה),” Erez honors her Yemenite elders and linguistic heritage by integrating audio recordings of conversations about Yemeni-Judeo Arabic with family members into the music. “Henna (חינה)” — which is inspired by a Yemenite folk song Erez’s savta Bracha used to sing to her from the perspective of a young woman begging her parents not to marry her off too young — reflects the pride and strength Erez feels she received from the women in her family. The versatile song is anchored in images of Erez donning the traditional Yemenite henna garb worn for wedding festivities, a catchy niggun and a style and instrumentation that blends smooth Western R&B with a Yemenite sound.
The thesis of the album is without a doubt “Cedar Tree (ארז),” Erez’s rumination on her own name. (Erez is a Hebrew word which means “cedar tree.”) “Cedar tree, you’re all I’ll ever be,” Erez repeats again and again in her deep, sultry voice, finding literal and symbolic grounding in her roots.
“I wanted to pay homage to my family, tell our story, including all of the sacrifices they have made and I also wanted to show my North American audience that Jewish people are diverse and our stories and histories are varied and important,” Erez wrote me via email. “A big part of this album for me was standing loud and proud in my identity, and not shying away from telling my story. I no longer want to hide, because that isn’t living a full life.”
Erez grew up in the Toronto Jewish community, but was connected to Yemenite Jewish culture primarily through her own family and the Yemenite music she listened to. Even so, Erez felt she was still lacking in explicit knowledge of her own history like reading and speaking Yemeni Judeo-Arabic and the history of Yemenite music. With the help of a grant from the Canadian government, Erez began working on “Erez” in August 2023. She was able to travel to Israel, where her grandparents emigrated following Operation Magic Carpet, where she was able to learn from her family as well as prominent Yemenite musicians. From there, she started working on the album, really taking her time with the creation of each song, and collaborating with Yemenite musicians Yoni Kubani and Tamir Barzilay, as well as keyboard player Adam Eisen and guitar player David Lipson.
What results is an album which brings forth the heart and soul of herself and her family, and has ultimately been a healing endeavor for Erez. “Singing in the tongue of my ancestors has been healing, cathartic, connecting and beautiful. I feel so grounded in who I am and I feel like I understand myself and my roots better,” Erez said. “While I have a long way to go in my understanding and pronunciation, this was the start of embracing this new connection point to my Yemenite culture.”
Ultimately, the most remarkable part of the experience of this album for Erez is the relationship-building and connection she has fostered with others in her community. “There are so many talented Yemenite creatives who are dedicated to keeping our tradition alive,” she said.
Less than a week after “Erez” debuted, “Yivarechecha” came into the world on Rosh Chodesh Kislev. Batya Levine’s long-awaited second album, is, as the liner notes call it, “a collection of songs to bless you in the depths of our broken world — in the wild trenches of grief, rage, fear and sorrow, and in the oceanic currents of love, joy, resilience and hope.” In 2020, after the release of their first album “Karov,” Hey Alma wrote that the queer, Modern Orthodox-raised Ashkenazi musician was “singing from [their] kishkes,” and that sentiment remains true here.
In the title track “Yivarechecha,” Batya and backing vocalists tenderly recites the Birkat Kohahim or Priestly Blessing to an original melody. Listening to it is like being blessed by your parents on Shabbat as a child. It’s a fitting anchor for the album which mixes Jewish liturgy and original English songs, bare vocal tracks and simple string accompaniment to evoke a deep feeling of comfort. Throughout the near-50 minute album, the listener is safe to dance in praise to “Hodu,” collect their breath in “Breathe” and let themselves release the bone-deep pain of the last year to “Yashva Vadad (lullaby for the weary).”
The music is a combination of new compositions by Batya, as well as songs that didn’t make it onto “Karov.” Batya admitted to me via voice notes that they don’t really write music for albums, they just write music. And now, four years after their first album, they felt as though they had enough material and enough energy to bring forth something new. Thus, with vocalists Anat Hochberg, Aly Halpert, Molly Bajgot, Yoshie Fruchter, Arielle Korman, Jessie Reagen and Richie Barshay, as well as assorted strings from Yoshie, violin from Arielle, cello from Jessie and percussion from Richie, Batya recorded the album live in the spring of 2024. This allowed everyone to be present on the same take at the same time, listening to one another and shaping the energy of the music together.
Inevitably, Batya says, the process of making the album was healing for them. But it was also deeply challenging process in which they wrestled with their own high standards and just the struggles of being a person in this particular moment. “The spiritual lesson I kept being pointed back towards with a lot of support and love and care of people close to me and Hashem was not to resist the fear, the sadness, the disappointment that was coming up for me. But to really go into those feelings and then sing from within the depths of the low place,” they said.
As a listener, it’s impossible not to palpably feel Batya’s emergence from the depths. The effect is the creation of devekut or deveikus, or an ever-present yearning for closeness with Hashem, which is a trademark of Batya’s work. But with this album, the devekut arises both because of and in spite of the brokenness of our world; a response which Batya tells me is not directed at any one specific brokenness, but at the levels of spiritual, materially, emotional, communal rupture that have been rising since Batya recorded “Karov” right before the pandemic. While they acknowledge that rupture has existed in our world forever, this specific moment holds weariness and despair in Batya’s experience. “This album is meant to bring accompaniment and presence and be a source of drawing blessing into those places,” they said.
“Yivarechecha” does just that, and so, too, does “Erez.” As I’ve listened to Erez Zobary and Batya Levine in my Brooklyn apartment, in the shadow of a drought in New York City, I feel the swells and abundance of coming closer to Jewish music more than I ever have before. And it is like a blessing for rain.
