Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
The Schmooze

Justin Bieber Makes Jewish Teen a Star

The new Etta James is… 13 years old?

Well, according to Justin Bieber she is. With a few flicks of his fingers last week, the teen heartthrob changed the life of Madison Beer — a 13 year old Jewish singer-songwriter. The twitter correspondence went a little something like this:

Justin: “wow. 13 years old! She can sing. Great job. #futurestar”

Madison: “OMG. I CANT BREATHE. IM GONNA PUKE! IS THIS HAPPENING!?!?!?”

The result?

By the next morning she had 18,000 Twitter followers. Over the course of the week, that number rose to 30,000. Scrolling through her Twitter feed feels like an experiment in scary adolescence.

Online Twitter personas such as Follow me, Justin!, Justin Bieber Fans and The Only Mrs.Bieber can be seen on her twitter feed pleading with the 13 year-old to follow and befriend them. One particularly eager individual, who calls himself The Swag King (@jbiebsswagboy), tweeted at Beer that he “can’t sleep because you haven’t retweeted and followed me yet. It would mean so much to me <3”

Referring to her 30,000 new followers as her “best friends,” the young star-to-be seems to be enjoying her first few minutes in the limelight.

Singing Etta James’s “At Last” in a sparkly silver dress, Beer has come a long way from the first recording she posted on her YouTube page — which shows her singing Christina Aguilera’s “Hurt” while sitting cross-legged in bed, dressed in printed flannel pajamas. Though Bieber lauded her Etta James cover in his tweet, the Shmooze was pretty impressed by her earlier cover of “Killing Me Softly.” Her deep soulful eyes and a mature vocal range make it hard to believe that Beer hasn’t even entered high school.

Rumor has it that she may have been signed to Bieber’s label, and media outlets have dubbed her the next Carly Rae Jepson.

How did we found out she was Jewish? On Twitter, of course!

A concerned fan, Austin Mohane, asked her if she was Jewish, citing the multiple pictures she had posted on her account at various bat mitzvahs.

Beer responded, as any 13 year old on Twitter would, with an enthusiastic, “yes haahha! #mazeltov”

Listen to Madison Beer Sing “Killing Me Softly”:

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.

Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.