A&T Playlist #5: Jewish Country Music

Shanah tovah, friends! If you don’t know, that means happy new year!

I did not anticipate how much of a veritable thirst there would be for this playlist until I mentioned it on Twitter yesterday. But I should have known, because I’ve been thirsty for it since I started this blog a decade ago. While I’ve featured Jewish artists on the blog and podcast throughout the years, I haven’t compiled everyone into one place. The Sabbath between the High Holidays seemed like the perfect time to do that.

I want to be clear about where this playlist comes from, and a bit about my own relationship to Judaism. I already wrote a bit about how 9/11 altered my worldview, but I didn’t write about how it impacted my relationship to Judaism. As I mentioned in the article, I was 13 and I attended private school in New York City. You know what that means: for basically every Saturday of the following two years, I listened to sermon after sermon spewing Islamophobia. “This is what they do in Israel. Don’t you see?” was the thrust of most of them. There was one rabbi whose congregation we wound up at several times. His sermons were so rabid that my sister and I finally threw our pieces of candy at him instead of the b’nai mitzvah. Our rabbi thought it would be cute to have the twins give a drash on Jacob and Esau. We didn’t have the language or historical context, but our speeches were anti-Zionist and the shul conveniently forgot to give us our official certificates of Bat Mizvah. Those two years taught me that if the moral authorities in Judaism were so ready and willing to twist the pain and obvious targeting of the United States into a political project for Israel, I was out.

(I now understand those rabbis represented the gamut of politically moderate to conservative reform congregations in the Upper East Side of Manhattan in the late 1990s/2000s, and not the whole spectrum of Judaism.)

I yearned to reconnect with Judaism, but didn’t really find my footing until Trump’s election. Since then, I’ve been trying to understand what is valuable to me in Judaism, and how to nourish the aspects of spirituality that I thought Quakerism could fill, but did not. The Jewish voices represented in this playlist may not agree with each other politically — in fact, I imagine a few of them may be angry after reading this introduction. But that’s kind of the point, right? Two Jews, three opinions? Needless to say, I hope this list reflects those who see Judaism as a force for social justice, a home for LGBTQ+ and BIPOC practitioners, as well as a place to reckon with a painful past and present.

A last note, before I talk about the songs: for this round of the playlist, I’m focusing on music that is explicitly about Judaism. There are lots of amazing Jewish artists to celebrate in the Americana and roots world, and they’ll have their day later. Please feel free to suggest more artists to add!

• Karen and the Sorrows — “Jonah and the Whale” (Guaranteed Broken Heart) — No Jewish country music playlist would be complete without Karen and the Sorrows, and if we’re gonna have a playlist before Yom Kippur, this is the one that needs to go on here. For now. Karen is a fierce advocate for marginalized voices in country music and the matriarchy of the queer country music scene. If you want to hear more about her relationship to Judaism, you can listen to our interview on Country Queer Spotlight. I also profiled her in Country Queer if you’re more of a reader, but the Judaism discussion is in the podcast.
• Nefesh Mountain — “Piece of the Sun (For Anne Frank)” (Songs For the Sparrows) — Other than Karen, who has her own outsider status, Nefesh Mountain was the first roots group I’d seen take on an explicitly Jewish identity. For “Piece of the Sun,” I was expecting a mournful tune. Instead, the bluegrass veterans create something uplifting and joyful, reminding us to celebrate those we’ve lost amidst the tragedy of the shoah.
• Ben Fisher — “Heavy Gates of Gaza” (Does the Land Remember Me?) — Hot damn did I have a lot to say about this album when it came out. Ben worked as a journalist in Israel, and this concept album is a sweeping combination of a number of voices throughout Israel’s history — on both sides of the West Bank. It also grapples with feelings towards Israel as an assimilated American Jew and made me feel less alone in my ambivalence.
• The Shondes — “Everything Good” (Brighton) — Queer Jewish punk band The Shondes’ release show for this album is one of the best concerts I’ve attended in my life. Just listening to this album helps me feel empowered. We’ll get back to them when I make a Passover edition to the list. But if you didn’t know, now you do.
• Joe Buchanan — “How Good It Is” (Back From Babylon) — Joe approached me a few years ago with this album and it’s haunted me ever since. Buchanan converted to Judaism as an adult, and you can really hear the significance the faith holds for him in his music, which, if you didn’t listen to the niguning too close, would be at home in any honky tonk.
• Itai and the Ophanim — “The Work Is Not Upon You to Complete” (Itai and the Ophanim) — While “How Good It Is” focuses on the joys of receiving Torah, trans punk band Itai and the Ophanim remind us of our duty towards tikkun olam. This is the facet of Judaism that speaks to me the most, and that message coming from fellow queer Jews means a lot.
• Rabbi Sandra Lawson — “Kaddish in Memory of Black Lives” (Single) — Similarly, Rabbi Sandra Lawson points us to a specific source of injustice. I want to note that Rabbi Lawson also has songs of empowerment and joy, but I felt this particular song fit thematically. I look forward to future playlists, hopefully with more than one Jew of color featured on it, that focus on songs of empowerment.
• Dana Sipos — “Hoodoo” (The Astral Plane) — I wrote up how transcendent this album is on No Depression. In this song, though, Sipos explores some of the darker connections we have across space and time, in particular. Sipos explores how the silences in her family’s past have impacted her present.
• The Klezmatics — “Mermaid’s Avenue” (Wonder Wheel) — What can I say? This is a fun song, and I got it from this playlist of queer Jewish songs.
• Girls in Trouble — “We Are Androgynous” (Half You Half Me) — I think I found out about this band from the podcast Kosher Queers? Anyway, it is a very cool project and this is a very cool reminder that ancient views of the world may not be as rooted in our ways of thinking as much as we think.

Honorable Mention: Brivele — “Shootin’ With Ra-Ra-Rasputin” (Cradle Songs, Grave Songs) — Turns out Yiddish anarchist bands don’t want to participate in the Spotify ecosystem! This album is beautiful and tragic and everything in between, and this song is fuckin’ hilarious. (Also Bandcamp playlist function when?)

And here’s the Spotify list!

I think that following me on Spotify is a thing you can do to make sure you get a new playlist from me every Friday! You can also follow Tuesday Teardrops, a playlist of new and exciting songs that refreshes every — you guessed it — Tuesday! As always, buy music and/or merch directly from the artists because Spotify is a horrible and exploitative platform!You can support Adobe & Teardrops by buying merch or hitting the ol’ Patreon or Ko-fi links!