Performer Aoife Clancy, best known for her fusion of traditional Celtic and American music, will be headlining this year's Jacob's Ladder Winter Weekend on December 8 and 9. Clancy, the daughter of Irish music legend Bobby Clancy of the popular 1960s Irish folk music singing group the Clancy Brothers, is traveling to Israel for the first time to perform at the Nof Ginosar festival.

A biannual event also known as the Anglo Mimouna, Jacob's Ladder has been holding a spring festival geared towards folk-music lovers in Israel for nearly 30 years. This is their third indoor winter festival and is considered more intimate than the large-scale production that will take place in May.

The festival will also feature Kahol, an Israeli Celtic band led by Uri Miles that fuses Irish and Scottish tunes with Middle Eastern rhythms and sounds. Eitan Glickman, vocalist for Slipjig, will perform Irish pub songs with members of Black Velvet.

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This year's festival will host six artists from the Galilee, including Diane Kaplan in a tribute to Bob Dylan and 1970s American folk music together with Shay Tochner, as well as Bracha Ben-Avraham. Ben-Avraham, a mainstay of the local Irish music scene who spent much of the recent war performing in bomb shelters throughout the north, lives in Moshav Ben Ami near Nayariya. She has played in many Irish groups in Israel, including Irish Cream and Emerald.

Like other Jacob's Ladder festivals, the Winter Weekend will be kid-friendly, with children's workshops as well as a playroom. Square-dance and Irish dance workshops will be available for adults throughout the weekend.

"People wanted much more music and the Jacob's Ladder crowd loves concerts, so I've done my best to bring more music than ever," Yehudit Vinegrad, who has been organizing the festival together with her husband Menachem since its inception, said. For more information or to order tickets, call (04) 685-0403.