Music by Orthodox Jews has tended to be a pretty male-dominated thing. While male Orthodox Jews are in plentiful supply, the number of female Orthodox Jews following suit can probably be counted on the fingers of one hand.
For the last couple of years Helena Lieber, a London-based Baal Teshuva, who's married to a Rabbi, has been cooking up a mighty mix of roots reggae with a Jewish flavour under the name Sista Warrior. With American Jews putting reggae to the fore, can this daughter of a Holocaust survivor make it too?
Given that she has been recognised, albeit in a small way in the Jewish community, we think she has a good chance. She is a recipient of a Jewish Music Institute Milennium Award grant for her project From Ashes Towards Teshuvah. In 2004 she took part in the annual Limmud Festival in Nottingham.
And she's put her money where her mouth is and released her own single. Two tracks are on offer, Stop The Suicide Bombers and The Seven Laws Of Noah. While the first track has a political edge, the second is, as the name suggests, the seven Noahide laws which God gave to all people to follow.
If you're not tempted to fork out $6.00 for the two-track ($3 a track) CD single (currently available via the CD Baby website), you might want to wait for Helena's album, which she is calling Valiant Woman, and which according to the site will be released soon. Hopefully not at the cost of $3.00 per track, which would make a ten track album $30.
For more information on Sista Warrior, visit: http://cdbaby.com/cd/sistawarrior
