Wings and a prayer

Paul McCartney spotted rocking Yom Kippur services in Chile

The British music legend, whose wife is Jewish, has attended High Holiday prayers in the past, and has been described as having a ‘love affair with all things Jewish’

Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell leave a Yom Kippur service at Circulo Israelita de Santiago, Oct. 12, 2024. (Courtesy Circulo Israelita de Santiago)
Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell leave a Yom Kippur service at Circulo Israelita de Santiago, Oct. 12, 2024. (Courtesy Circulo Israelita de Santiago)

Beatles great Paul McCartney was spotted attending Yom Kippur services in Chile alongside his Jewish wife Nancy Shevell on Saturday, in the British music legend’s latest dalliance with all things Jewish.

Photos and video on social media showed the iconic ex-Beatle wearing a kippah at the Círculo Israelita de Santiago, a synagogue and community center in the Chilean capital.

McCartney, who is not Jewish, is in South America as part of his “Got Back” tour. He had performed a concert in Santiago on Friday night.

News that McCartney and his wife went to the holiday services quickly went viral, with Israel’s Foreign Ministry among those sharing images and video on its official X account.

Ariela Agosin, president of Chile Jewish Community, told JTA that McCartney had arranged his attendance at the Círculo Israelita Synagogue through a friend but that very few in the congregation had been aware in advance that he would be present.

“It was very moving to have the presence of Sir Paul and his wife Nancy Shevell among us,” Agosin said. “Of course, as a community we feel honored by their company and respect the moment of recognition they wanted to give by attending Yizkor, the memorial service of the deceased.”

Shevell’s father, Myron, died in 2022; her mother Arlene, a cousin of Barbara Walters, died in 1991.

Photos taken in Santiago show McCartney and Shevell entering and leaving the modernist synagogue building, designed by Chilean Jewish architect Jaime Bendersky Smuclir, as well as wearing a white kippah while inside. McCartney left shortly after the service for Brazil, where he is due to play several concerts this week.

Former Beatle member Sir Paul McCartney and his wife Nancy Shevell on March 7, 2016 in Paris. (Patrick KOVARIK / AFP)

Claudio Epelman, executive director of the Latin American Jewish Congress, the regional branch of the World Jewish Congress, told JTA that McCartney’s participation had provided valuable visibility for Jewish life in Chile, home to an estimated 18,000 Jews.

“Paul’s presence in a Jewish religious ceremony contributes to the consolidation of the interreligious diversity that Chile has,” Epelman said. “That is a very valuable asset.”

It is not the first time that McCartney has surprised Jewish worshippers by showing up at services with Shevell, a New York Jew whom he married in 2011. The day before their civil wedding, they attended Yom Kippur services at St John’s Wood’s Liberal Jewish Synagogue in London, close to the famed Abbey Road Studios, the Jewish Chronicle reported at the time. He has also reportedly attended Yom Kippur prayers at New York City’s Temple Emanu-El in the past.

Music critic Seth Rogovoy suggested in 2019 that McCartney had displayed a half-century “love affair with all things Jewish — including collaborators, business associates, girlfriends and wives.”

In the run-up to the wedding, there was speculation that McCartney — a self-confessed “never very devout” Catholic — was intending to convert to Judaism, but this rumor proved baseless.

McCartney’s first wife Linda Eastman was the granddaughter of Russian-Jewish immigrants to the United States. The couple had four children and were together for over 30 years until her death from breast cancer in 1998.

Former Beatle Paul McCartney, during his concert in Tel Aviv on September 25, 2008. (Nati Shohat/FLASH90/File)

The most famous of McCartney’s four children with Eastman, fashion designer Stella McCartney, identifies herself as Jewish.

“My mum was Jewish,” she told British Glamour magazine in 2002. “Maybe I’m a really bad Jew because I’m always so excited to say that I am, but I don’t live and breathe the religion.”

In 2008, shortly after starting to date Shevell, a former member of New York’s Metropolitan Transit Authority board, McCartney performed in Israel, saying while there that he supported a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. His current tour, called “Get Back,” has no planned stops in Israel, which banned The Beatles from performing in 1965 out of concern about the moral influence of the band.

Among the thousands of fans at McCartney’s Friday night concert was Chilean President Gabriel Boric, a harsh critic of Israel and of Chilean Jews who support it.

Robert Philpot contributed to this article.

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