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It’s a female-only audience for religious singer Bracha Jaffe, a New Yorker who will perform February 23 at the Jerusalem International Convention Center.
While gender-separated events sponsored by public entities were recently declared illegal by Israel’s attorney general, private events such as the Jaffe concert can only cater to one gender.
Jaffe, who covers his hair and only performs with his all-female band, Zahav, works daytime as a nurse practitioner, while singing in venues across the United States and Europe.
Due to restrictions on religious women singing in front of men, Jaffe only sings for women. The same goes for her social media accounts, which she only makes available to women.
Jaffe is a 33-year-old mother of five, who grew up in a Cantorial family in Brooklyn and took voice lessons from the age of 11.
“It was unheard of back then in our circles – girls weren’t taking singing lessons back then. But my parents were modern thinkers, and it was about what made me happy” , she told Glamor Magazine in an interview last year.
Jaffe began performing for local women’s events while in nursing school and, like other religious singers, used a private Instagram account to promote herself.
Now Jaffe has five music videos and more than 18,000 Instagram followers, and told Glamor she might want to start an Orthodox women’s record label.
