Indie rocker shares new song about Jewish refugee grandfather

Acclaimed indie rocker (and gender nonconforming Shabbat-observant Jew) Ezra Furman isn’t shy about expressing his Jewishness in his music. But he just released his most explicitly Jewish song yet.

Furman told the Consequence of Sound website that “The Refugee,” which he uploaded to the SoundCloud music streaming site on Wednesday, is his “first song entirely concerned with my Jewish background and present, a song dedicated to my grandfather who fled the Nazis as well as to all of the refugees desperate for a home today.”

The song follows a character who is displaced from “frosty green Poland,” and is forced through a difficult migration, which involves “sleeping in churches” and eating grass “like a goat.” The song is an apparent reference to the journey his own grandfather made, fleeing Nazi-occupied Germany during World War II.

“This is the sound of the Jew who refuses to die,” Furman sings at one point in the folky waltz, which features Eastern European-sounding string and clarinet melodies.

It’s safe to say the 29-year-old is probably the only publicly visible musician who navigates the worlds of both Orthodox Judaism and gender nonconformity. Though Furman doesn’t identify as strictly Orthodox, he observes Shabbat and reads the Torah portion on tour each week. Most notably, he no longer plays shows on Friday nights nor travels on Saturdays — prime times for working musicians.

The new song will be part of his upcoming six-song EP “Big Fugitive Life,” which is set to be released on August 19 on the Bella Union record label.