Multilingual, multicultural and multitalented

Haaretz interviews prolific folk and multicultural musician, Jill Rogoff. Born to a Polish Jewish father and NZ mother, Rogoff was born and grew up in Wellington before leaving for Jerusalem in 1979. She sings in English, French, German, Yiddish, Ladino (Sephardi), Arabic, and Persian, as well as over 30 Celtic languages. Her areas of musical interest range from the medieval period and Renaissance, to 18th-century Scotland and the Golden Age of Jews in Spain. “My father and mother really collected friends,” says Rogoff. “They liked to get to know people of different cultures, and they influenced me and my sisters to do the same. One could say that we learned to admire difference. Not to fear difference – but to wonder at it. Until I was 18, I thought that everyone was that way – that they loved the other.”