How Jewish is Noah Kahan? - The Jewish Chronicle

The self-described “Jewish Ed Sheeran”, chart-topping folk-pop star Noah Kahan is performing his debut Glastonbury show this summer. This is especially good news for anyone who missed tickets to his long-sold-out headline show at British Summer Time festival at Hyde Park this July, with Gracie Abrams supporting.

The name Noah Kahan certainly suggests the musician is Jewish… but how Jewish is he really?

From Strafford in the American state of Vermont, Kahan started writing his first songs at age eight and got a record deal in his teens (2017). But the singer-songwriter had to wait a few more years before his breakthrough success.

The now 28-year-old’s Stick Season became the UK’s first No1 single of 2024 and stayed top of the chart for seven weeks, going on to shift 2.4m copies and be the UK's biggest-selling song of 2024, certified four times platinum by the BPI. It also racked up 217m streams. A cover by his friend and collaborator Olivia Rodrigo on Radio 1’s Live Lounge sent the track viral on the internet.

His album of the same title topped the chart in February 2024. Kahan won the Top Rock Album award at the 2024 Billboard Music Awards and has so far been nominated for two Grammys and two BRIT Awards.

Family

Born to a Jewish father Josh Kahan and Christian mother Lauri Berkenkamp, Kahan is the third of four siblings, named Sasha (now a doctor), Simon and Richard.

He grew up on a 133-acre tree farm and attended Hanover High School in New Hampshire. His father, who studied at MIT, taught him guitar, while his mother, who attended Boston College and has written bestselling parenting guides and children’s books, taught him to write. His parents later divorced during the pandemic.

What Jewish things does he say or do?

Well, he has definitely inherited some Jewish humour. Aside from calling himself the “Jewish Ed Sheeran” – in his TikTok bio no less, Kahan has also been known to tell crowds at his live shows that he is the “Jewish Capaldi” and that “sometimes I just feel like Larry David walking around”.

He told Billboard that being Jewish is integral to his identity: “Growing up half Jewish and having this face on me… it has kind of been a big part of my identity. I’m not going into a song, ‘Let’s get this one extra Jew-y.’ But I think it plays into the cultural aspect of [my music] – into the humour. And down to my diet. Like, I got the acid reflux stomach, just like my dad.”

In 2018, he asked on social media: “When’s somebody gonna man up and make a Hanukkah album”

His prayers were answered the following year in the form of Hanukkah+, a compilation of original songs by indie artists including HAIM, Yo La Tengo, The Flaming Lips and Jack Black.

What about the music?

He cites the Jewish Paul Simon, Ben Howard and The Lumineers as musical inspirations, and says his mother’s music collection, which also included Counting Crows and Cat Stevens, was a great influence. “I remember listening to those songs as a really young kid and just wanted to write like that,” he said.

Meanwhile, his father was a great guitarist, and Kahan has said that having so much music around him in the home inspired him to write from such a young age.

His hometown of Vermont – home to Ben and Jerry’s ice cream (founded by Ben Cohen and Jerry Greenfield), the Jewish children’s book charity PJ’s Library, and 19 Jewish congregations – has also influenced the artist’s music. Released in July 2022, Stick Season is a tribute to his hometown and its desolate period between autumn and winter. It’s also one of the tracks in which he tackles his struggles with depression and anxiety, something he claims to have inherited from his father, as he sings on Stick Season: “I thought that if I piled something good on all my bad/ That I could cancel out the darkness I inherited from dad.”

Noah Levine, a Jewish 20-year-old singer-songwriter known as Noah in the Open from Austin, Texas, has toured with him as his lead guitarist.

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