Jalda_Rebling
Jalda Rebling
German hazzan
Jalda Rebling (born 1951 in Amsterdam)[1] is a German hazzan.
A year after birth, she and her parents moved to East Germany in 1952.[2] Her parents survived the Holocaust, and Rebling's mother and aunt, Janny Brandes-Brilleslijper, were the first to tell Otto Frank of his daughters' deaths.[2][3] Her mother Rebekka Brilleslijper, also known as Lin Jaldati, was a well-known singer of Yiddish music while her father, Eberhard Rebling, was a musicologist. Her sister Kathinka Rebling is also a musicologist.[4] In 1987, Rebling helped organize a Yiddish culture festival in Germany, which occurred every year into the 1990s.[5] Rebling herself eventually became one of the best known Yiddish singers in united postwar Germany.[5] She also acted in Yiddish at the Hackischer Hoftheater.[6]
In 1979, the Anne Frank Kindergarten in Berlin had Rebling and her mother perform for the fiftieth anniversary of Anne Frank’s birth; the production was shown on GDR TV and sold as a record, and it became the family’s signature production on tour.[2] They performed it at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, and Rebling noted that while “we sang in Yiddish, there was also a German song by Paul Dessau. In fact, we brought the first two pieces of German-language music into Yad Vashem.” [2]
Rebling wrote "Yiddish Culture — a Soul Survivor of East Germany," which was included in the book Speaking Out: Jewish Voices from United Germany, published in 1995.[7][8]
In 2007, she became the first openly lesbian cantor ordained by the Jewish Renewal movement.[4] That year, she also became the first woman to lead the High Holiday services in Lund, Sweden.[9] She also led the first egalitarian service in the traditional Jewish community of Hamburg, Germany.[10] In a Norwegian synagogue of Trondheim, she became the first Jewish female cantor who (together with Rabbi Lynn Feinberg) led Shabbat Services and read the Torah in public.[9]
In 2009 and 2011, she performed during the Program in Jewish Studies’ Week of Jewish Culture at the University of Colorado, Boulder.[11][12]
She is now the cantor (and one of the founders) of Ohel Hachidusch, "The Tent of Renewal", Berlin's Jewish Renewal community.[2][13] She lives in Germany with her partner, Anna Adam, and three sons.[4]