Work

Lider mit Palestine : Yiddish Songs and Jewish Solidarity with Palestinians in Times of Genocide

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: This article examines how contemporary Yiddish songs serve as vehicles for Jewish solidarity with Palestinians during the ongoing genocide in Gaza. Building on historical sociologists’ critical concerns with comparability, we demonstrate how postvernacular cultural practice enables what Michael Rothberg terms ‘multidirectional memory’ that connects Jewish and Palestinian experiences of genocide without flattening their differences or putting them in competition with each other. Through analysis of the Lider mit Palestine project, a collaborative album of 17 original Yiddish songs in solidarity with Palestinians released in response to the genocide in Gaza, we explore how Yiddish language and musical forms offer distinct resources for solidarity that other cultural expressions might not achieve. Drawing on textual and musical analysis of three songs that employ the culturally specific term khurbn (destruction/Holocaust), we demonstrate how the songs mobilize historical traditions of Yiddish internationalist socialist activism, Jewish diasporism and anti-fascist resistance, while affectively linking memories of the Nazi Holocaust with the ongoing genocide in Gaza through musical rather than purely textual means. This cultural response challenges dominant narratives within Jewish communities that position Zionism as intrinsic to Jewish identity, instead demonstrating how Jewish diasporic belonging can reinforce rather than conflict with Palestinian liberation. The analysis contributes to scholarly conversations about cultural responses to genocide, adds to existing contributions in sociology that demonstrate the importance of taking clear anti-genocidal stances in academic work, and shows how comparative memory work can strengthen solidarity movements across difference during times of systematic destruction.

Source: The Sociological Review

DOI: 10.1177/00380261261461068

Authors: Isabel Frey, Ben Rogaly

Institutions: University of Music and Performing Arts Vienna, University of Sussex

Language: English

Topic: Memory, Trauma, and Commemoration

Subfield: Social Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Peace, justice, and strong institutions

Open Access status: hybrid

Estimated APC paid: $3,900