80 | MARCH 30 • 2023 

I

t’s no secret that many of the composers 
who built the Great American Songbook 
— Irving Berlin, Jerome Kern, George 
and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen among 
them — were Jewish. 
Less celebrated, however, are the 
Jewish women in those ranks. But Hadar 
Orshalimy hopes to change that. 
On March 8, International Women’s Day, 
the Israeli-born, New York-based singer 
and songwriter released a new album, 
“Witchcraft,
” featuring nine pop standards 
penned or co-written by Jewish women. Her 
selections range from hits — Kern’s “The 
Way You Look Tonight” (lyrics by Dorothy 
Fields), “The Best is Yet to Come” and 
“Young at Heart” (lyrics for both by Carolyn 
Leigh) — while others represent deeper 
digs, such as Ann Ronell’s “Willow Weep for 
Me,
” which has been recorded more than 
800 times, and Ruth Lowe’s “I’ll Never Smile 
Again.
” 
Presenting them together, “Witchcraft” is 
both tribute and testimonial, shining a light 
on artists whose contributions are not fully 
appreciated.
“These women were amazing,
” Orshalimy, 
41, says by phone from the New York City 
home she shares with her husband and fel-
low musician, Sheldon Low, and their nearly 
2-year-old daughter. “They were as badass 
as the male writers at the time were — these 
women were 10 times more badass. They 
literally all went against every social norm 

at the time — not just being Jewish, which 
in the 1920s and 1930s meant you couldn’t 
work anywhere. My grandmother couldn’t 
get a job at Ford because she was Jewish, 
right? And being women, whose ‘job’ was 
to stay home and have babies, they had to 
work double hard.
“So, as a Jewish woman who has a young 
daughter now, and with women’s rights 
being challenged and the incredibly high 
rise in antisemitism, I felt like this is the 
time to do something 
positive and celebrate and 
honor these women and 
give them the recognition 
they probably never got.
”
Orshalimy’s own 
music journey began 
in Tel Aviv, though her 
mother (maiden name 
Beth Ann Fishman) 
was born in Detroit, 
attending Mumford High 
School; the singer and 
her family spent summers visiting family, 
many of whom are still in the suburbs. “My 
mom’s entire family is very, very musical,
” 
Orshalimy says. “Family time would usually 
involve sitting at the piano, testing each 
other’s ear — who can get the right chord to 
which song. Some people watch sports, this 
is what we used to do.
”
A musical career trajectory “wasn’t even a 
choice,
” she adds. “It was just kind of always 

there. I studied music, took piano lessons, 
started singing in children’s choirs and sing-
ing groups. I was always pretty good at it. I 
don’t think I ever made a decision — ‘OK, 
this is what I’m going to do for the rest 
of my life.
’ It’s just what I lived and what I 
wanted to do all the time, and it just was the 
thing that guided me.
”
Orshalimy served in the IDF, including 
a summer assignment at a youth camp in 
Wisconsin, where she first met her future 
husband. She began 
college studies in Israel 
but transferred to the 
Berklee College of Music 
in Boston during August 
of 2004, where she recon-
nected with Low, and 
continued to “put one 
foot in front of the other” 
on her career path. Along 
the way, Orshalimy, who 
moved to New York in 
2006, refined her philos-
ophy toward music as a vocation — and a 
business.
“
At some point, I realized I was in it for 
the music and the love of music and the way 
it made me feel when I would create and 
perform and collaborate,
” she explains. “I 
realized it wasn’t about the fame, and I didn’t 
really care about pursuing a record deal or 
a publishing deal — I did at the beginning, 
but I realized it wasn’t about that.
”

ARTS&LIFE
MUSIC

Hadar 
Orshalimy

Hadar Orshalimy’s new album “Witchcraft” 
is a tribute to the women artists who did not 
necessarily get their due.

GARY GRAFF CONTRIBUTING WRITER

Celebrating 
Jewish Women

