By Cailin Acosta
ANAHEIM, California — One of the highlights of attending the Festival of Holidays at Disney California Adventure is checking the performance schedule to make sure I can catch a klezmer session with Mostly Kosher.
The band has performed at California Adventure for the past eight seasons. In 2017, I happened to walk past the winery where they were playing and stopped in my tracks, thrilled to hear Yiddish and klezmer jams. Ever since, I’ve made it a point to ensure they’re on the schedule. My teens insist this officially makes me a “groupie.”
Mostly Kosher hails from Los Angeles and is a klezmer-rock ensemble that radically reconstructs Judaic and American cultural music through klezmer rhythms and Yiddish refrains. Their sound weaves together jazz, Latin, rock, and folk influences.
The ensemble is led by vocalist Leeav Sofer, joined by violinist Janice Mautner Markman, drummer Eric Hagstrom, bassist Adam Levy, guitarist Nadav Peled, and clarinetist Ben Tevik.
At the Hollywood Lounge stage, Sofer introduced each band member before pulling out a Star of David tambourine and stepping into the audience, inviting young children to tap along. Encouraging the crowd to dance and sing, he even demonstrated how to dance the hora.
Markman, Hagstrom, Levy, Peled, and Tevik each took energetic solo turns, moving playfully across the stage. The 20-minute performance included a musical trip around the world, with Sofer singing in Ladino, Yiddish, and, of course, leading a lively spin around the stage to “Dreidel, Dreidel, Dreidel.”
After the show, I spoke with Mostly Kosher’s marketing manager, Karen Wilson, who shared the band’s commitment to tikkun olam through their involvement with the Urban Voices Project.
Urban Voices Project brings artists into underserved communities across Southern California—including prisons, community clinics, and shelters—to perform and teach music to individuals experiencing homelessness.
The band also serves as a mentor ensemble for the Jewish Youth Orchestra, a project of the Jewish Federation of the San Gabriel Valley, which provides performance opportunities and ongoing workshops for middle and high school musicians.
Mostly Kosher will be performing at the “4th Annual Urban Voices Project: A Holiday Called Home” at noon, on Saturday, Dec. 6 at Terasaki Budokan in Los Angeles. Click here for more information.
For more information on Mostly Kosher, click here.
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Cailin Acosta is the assistant editor of the San Diego Jewish World.