Shani Chamovitz, 22, flew in on a 10-hour flight from Israel, landing at Newark Airport at 3:30 a.m. on July 9 for the annual North American Jewish Choral Festival, held this year in Tarrytown, NY. She didn’t get much sleep but said the hassle was worth it. “It’s been life changing fort me,” said Chamovitz, who attended for the first time last year. “It was an amazing experience, singing with such a range of people of all ages, beliefs, outlooks on life and outlooks on Judaism.”

For five packed days, from July 9-13, singers attended a slew of workshops on music and Judaism, rallied together for informal community sings, attended concerts, and formed choirs on site organized by sight-reading skill. The festival is unique because of the number of Jewish singers all in one place — about 400 — and also because it brings together Jewish people of all ages, abilities, beliefs and politics for a single purpose — to make music.

Matthew Lazar founded the festival in 1990, envisioned as a venue for gathering hundreds of Jewish choral singers. At the final concert, audience members swayed, wept, hummed along, and responded to the program, sung almost entirely in Hebrew, with standing ovations.

And there’s another plus, said Saydie Grossman, 18, “There’s a shared humor among the group. You don’t have to explain what you mean when you say, ‘this meshugenah.’ We get it.”

 

— Adapted from an article by                                                                                                                        Kathryn Post in Religion News Service