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CassensNIN urphy

There are 12 Hazamir choirs in
different cities made up of high
school students from across the
United States. Lazar said the Jewish
backgrounds of the singers vary
greatly. "Some kids know" Talmud
by heart, he said, "while others don't
know Hatikvah," Israel's national
anthem.
Lazar says Jewish teens' unfamiliar-
ity with their musical heritage led
him to create the group — but a
modern form of advertising gets him
some of his singers.
"We reach the NPR (National
Public Radio) type of kids who hear
about Hazamir through the Net," he
says.
Members of Hazamir are also
recruited through cantors, high
school choir music teachers and par-
ents.
The groups generally meet once or
twice a week and are led by a con-
ductor — a cantor or someone else
in the community.
Leora Skolnick, a 16-year-old
member of Hazamir in New York,
says, "It's a really fulfilling experi-
ence to be able to sing together with
other people who love to sing and
are talented."
Skolnick hopes to continue
singing in college.
The experience, says Lazar, teaches
the chorus members more than just
singing.
"The kids understand what com-
munity means from the start because
their choir experience is the oppor-
tunity to witness how the whole is
greater than the sum of the individ-
ual parts. Yet the singers know that
without them there is no process.
The individual and community need
each other. This is what our Creator
wants from us anyway," Lazar says.

Song Festival

The culminating event for
Hazamir is its performance at the
annual Mid-Winter Festival around
Presidents' Day weekend in
February. It lasts five days and 200
teen-agers from all over North
America gather to sing, attend work-
shops, do social activities and per-
form at a gala concert. All of
Hazamir's members attend, as well as
individual singers and Jewish

teenagers who love Jewish music.
Hazamir occasionally performs at
concert halls. Zamir, an adult chorus
in New York, sang along with the
National Jewish Chorale, Hazamir
and other first-ranked choruses at
Carnegie Hall in 1998 in front of
2,500 people.
Hazamir also sponsors a summer
tour of Israel, where teen-agers both
sing and learn about the Jewish
state.

For bookings call (866) 727-7898
or visit www.cassensmurphy.com

Hazamir `gives
teens the
message that
they can love
music and their
Judaism together."

Lazar says Hazamir "gives teens
the message that they can love music
and their Judaism together." Alumni
from Hazamir become cantors,
music teachers, conductors and even
join Zamir. Some have established a
Jewish a cappella group of their own.
Hillel Skolnick, Leora's 18-year-
old brother, will graduate from
Hazamir in a few months. Skolnick
says that performing for the Texas
bat mitzvah was the best trip. It gave
the group a "chance to bond in addi-
tion to singing beautiful music."
He says he developed a sense of
history being in Hazamir because
the group sings songs such as those
of Solomoni Rossi, a Renaissance
Italian composer of Jewish choral
music.
Skolnick plans on joining an a
cappella group in college.
At the El Paso bat mitzvah, Lazar
and Hazamir spent the entire
Shabbat with the bat mitzvah girl's
family at a hotel. "It was very mov-
ing because people were around the
table singing in harmony," Lazar
says.

3/28

2003

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