Britney Spears and the Jews
By Mikhail Blokov
23.01.2026
Kabbalah, tattoos in Hebrew and Jewish men. What Britney Spears does in the circle of New York Hasidim - and why she seeks salvation in Judaism.
In the fall of 2025, Britney Spears again made everyone talk about her connection with Judaism. The singer posted a photo of New York Hasidim playing chess on social networks. She accompanied the picture with the caption: "I like a beard!" - and thus launched a whole wave of assumptions and rumors.
Fans of the pop star guessed: maybe Spears got a Jewish fiancé? Otherwise, how did she end up in the company of hasidic chess players?
In 2024, Spears divorced her third husband, model and fitness trainer Sam Asghari. Since then, she has kept the details of her personal life secret. There is no mention of new hobbies in her social media accounts - although, from time to time, paparazzi catch her on the street with men. This was the case, for example, in the spring of 2025, when the singer was credited with an affair with 38-year-old Paul Soliz. The media called him a "criminal boyfriend": in the past, Soliz was repeatedly prosecuted for possession of weapons and minor offenses. Since 2022, he has worked for Spears as a "housekeeper": allegedly, mutual feelings between him and the singer arose at a time when she was experiencing loneliness after her last divorce. Britney herself did not comment on the rumors about this relationship - but it was done for her in the press by numerous anonymous sources and "insiders", allegedly having access to the pop star.
Interest in Britney's picture with Hasidim chess players was also heated by the fact that the singer noted the account of the COLLive organization, associated with the Khabad movement and the cultural life of the Chabad community. It got to the point that the post was commented on by Jewish comedian Ethan Levin ("Britney has some kind of fetish for "HABAD?", he wrote) and David Bashkevich, a representative of NCSY - the American Association of Orthodox Youth. The latter even said that Spears' post gives a positive in dark times. According to Bashkevich, the singer was not afraid to openly show sympathy for the Jewish people in front of her 42-million audience in social networks - and already deserves respect.
Interestingly, in the past, Britney Spears has repeatedly shown interest in Judaism and Jewish culture. She first talked about it at the peak of her fame: at the beginning of the "zeros" the singer admitted that she was studying the mystical tradition of Kabbalah. "I was introduced to this teaching by Madonna. And it was just such a period in my life when it was especially necessary. Kabbalah helped me get rid of many negative influences that led me on the wrong path," the singer said. She added that at that moment neither her family nor advisers could give her the necessary advice: "The answers I was looking for were in my heart. Through Kabbalah, I was able to look inside myself, cleanse the negative energy and change my life." However, after the birth of children in 2005 and 2006, Spears publicly abandoned Jewish mysticism - she said that she had stopped studying it. According to the pop star, children have become a new and most important religion for her.
In 2007, the media suggested for the first time that Britney Spears could accept Judaism. The reason was the singer's romance with a Jewish male model Isaac Cohen. Spears herself did not comment on these rumors, and the romance turned out to be short: the couple broke up about a month later. In 2009, a source in a Hollywood studio told Vanity Fair that Britney was negotiating filming in a Holocaust movie. His working title was "The Yellow Star of Sophia and Eton". The film told about a woman who gained the ability to travel in time: the heroine got to Poland during World War II and fell in love with a Jewish concentration camp consoner there. As a result, the film was never shot, and the reaction of Jewish communities around the world turned out to be ambiguous. Charlotte Knobloch, president of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, criticized Britney's idea and participation. "It is necessary to choose the script and cast very carefully in the films about the Holocaust," said Knobloch. "Speculation is unacceptable - as well as attempts to attract the audience and funding, thanks to such an ambiguous person as Britney Spears."
Charlotte Knobloch
Charlotte Knobloch
At that time, the singer's name was already rattle in the whole world in connection with the legal dispute for children. The singer's ex-husband, dancer Kevin Federline, claimed to be brought up. Britrini was nervous and behaved in such a way that her loved ones attributed "psychosis" to her. As a result of these misadverses, the singer's father received custody of her. For 13 years he controlled the finances, personal life and all legal aspects of his daughter's life. Later, Spears admitted that it was like a prison. "I was isolated, pumped with medicines, used for money," she said at the trial in 2021, where she challenged the right of custody. At the same time, during the years of "confinement" she earned more than $131 million on just one world tour, and in addition to it, she released four albums. All the profits fell into the hands of the father.
Britney Spears with her father
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Britney Spears with her father
Fans guessed that something was wrong with Britney. Back in 2019, they launched the #FreeBritney movement on the Internet - demanding to release the singer from custody. At the same time, sources close to the guardian called the current situation "dangerous" and "catastrophic". Allegedly, the father canceled the singer's new tour after her refusal to take medication: it was about powerful antidepressants - they were prescribed by a circle of doctors close to the guardian. The singer was also restricted from all exits outside the house and banned from using social networks. At the same time, conspiracy theories about the "yellow top" appeared. Under one of the videos on social networks, the fans left Britney a message: "If you need help, wear yellow in the next video." After that, she really put on a yellow top in the new video. Later, in one of the posts, the singer quoted Arundati Roy's book "God of Little Things", the plot of which is built around the heroine's attempts to escape from her tyrant father. Fans also saw this as a cry for help.
All these years - trying to get out of her father's influence and rebuild her life - Britney has repeatedly sought salvation in Jewish symbolism. She has repeatedly published an image of the star of David in social networks, and since 2009, she began to regularly appear in a necklace with this symbol. In 2017, she visited the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem. And even the sual won against her father in 2021, Spears noted by getting a tattoo in Hebrew. The words written on her neck meant "healing".
Not all members of the Jewish community accept these cultural reverences. One of the readers of Heyalma, which writes about the life of Jewish stars, wrote in the comments under the article about Britney: "There is no more embarrassing genre than "let's try to attract Judaism to where it has nothing to do with it. It would be better if you stopped doing that! It does not contribute to either Jewish culture or knowledge - and makes most of us frown." But at the same time, another part of the Jewish community continues to admire Britney's actions. For example, in December 2025, the authoritative Jewish edition Forward placed the singer's post with a picture of Hasidim chess players in the first place in the list of "the main events of the year that inspire optimism in the near future". The journalist of the publication also ironically suggested that in 2026 the new husband of the singer will become an Orthodox Jew - a man Mendel Bilbaum from the New York "Hasidic" district of Crown Hates. However, this name hides not a real person, but a collective image. This is a kind of analogue of the Russian Vovochka from jokes - in New York, "Mendel Bilbaum" is called a conditional typical man-Jew from an orthodox environment.