Mama Doni’s rock band performing in Closter and Washington Township

In the early 1980s, clarinetist Margot Leverett wanted to infuse her classical and avant-garde career with something more danceable. Around the same time, Temple Israel Community Center in Cliffside Park wanted to infuse its midnight Selichot service with something more accessible.

They both found klezmer. And this year, they’ve found each other.

Leverett, who got her foot-shuffling fix by helping to found the Klezmatics in 1985, will perform with her “Jewgrass” band, Margot Leverett and the Klezmer Mountain Boys, at TICC on Sept. 12 at 9:30 p.m. The free concert and subsequent dessert social are part of the synagogue’s annual William Golub Memorial Selichot Concert and Social, a program designed to draw people to late-night Selichot services.

If the picture of bluegrass had long ago substituted sunflower seeds for chewing tobacco and a stone balcony for the rickety porch, then perhaps Americana’s signature genre would have made its way to Israel a long time ago. These days, with a growing number of American transplants living in Israel, music that was once staunchly American is becoming more common in Israel’s bars and music houses.

With the slogan “Puttin’ a little South in the Middle East,” the band HOLLER! is everything a band in Israel never was: one Atlantan, four New Jerseyans, and one Israeli who call Israel — and bluegrass — their home. Their name is a market-ready, pithy exclamation, and the music is equally emphatic, a synthesis of loyal Kentucky soul and lyrics that are both ubiquitous and Israel-conscious.

With the opera season approaching, it’s time for a test: Which of the following five singers was not Jewish?

1. Natalie Dessay, 2. Elisabeth Rethberg, 3. Alma Gluck, 4. Friedrich Shorr, 5. Jennie Tourel.

Answer: Elisabeth Rethberg. (Dessay converted and married Jewish bass-baritone Laurent Naouri.)

Here are a few even more challenging questions:

1. Why have there been so many Jewish opera singers?

2. Who was the greatest Jewish opera singer of all time?