Photo: Dalya Levy
Rahel Jaskow was born in New York State and studied music from an early age. As a child, she studied acting in the Neighborhood Playhouse School of the Theatre’s youth division and learned her first Sabbath songs at Cejwin Camps in Port Jervis, NY. She loved to create harmonies for the various tunes used in the prayer services, and used the eight weeks of the camping season to learn all the songs she could. These melodies, with the harmonies Rahel created for them, provided the inspiration for her disc, Day of Rest, which was recorded and mixed by singer-songwriter Ray Scudero, owner and chief recording engineer of Israel’s Argaman Studios. Day of Rest was released in November 2000 and subsequently won the 2001 Just Plain Folks music award for best ethnic music CD. In January 2002, Rahel’s website was chosen as the Jewish Music WebCenter’s featured site of the month.
After studying English literature at the University of Rochester (and keeping up with her music at the same time), Rahel moved to Jerusalem, Israel. She serves as a prayer leader for the women’s prayer groups Shirat Sara and Women of the Wall, and also participates regularly in the Leader Minyan as a Torah reader. Rahel especially enjoys assisting at bat mitzva services, and is dedicated to helping Jewish women find their voices within the tradition.
Rahel uses her voice in many venues including healing treatments, music, and the spoken word. Her film narration credits include The Power of Hearing: The Story of Dr. Daniel Ling and I Am Joseph Your Brother (Tal-El Productions), a documentary about relations between Israel and the Vatican.
Rahel’s publishing credits include articles in Horizons magazine and the anthology More of Our Lives (Targum Press). Two of her stories appear in Small Miracles for the Jewish Heart in the Small Miracles series, edited by Yitta Halberstam Mandelbaum and published by Adams Publishing. Her writing also appears in Women of the Wall: Claiming Sacred Ground at Judaism’s Holy Site, edited by Rivka Haut and Phyllis Chesler (Jewish Lights).
Rahel appears as a guest vocalist on the following CDs: Hanna Yaffe’s Lullabies from Jerusalem, Shuly Nathan’s Open Roads and Mostly Carlebach, and Ray Scudero’s With the Help of Angels, all available at CD Baby.
Along with her many activities, Rahel works as a masseuse and energy healer. She founded the on-line International Directory of Women’s Tefilla Groups and created and maintains the home pages for Jerusalem’s women’s tefilla group, Shirat Sara, the Leader Minyan, and Shira Hadasha.
True to Rahel’s concern for the environment, she is a distributor for the Keeper, a women’s product that is friendly to the earth, women’s bodies and their wallets.