One Voice

Beth Emeth choir's Eastern European tour unites many hearts.

KAREN SCHWARTZ
Special to the Jewish News

Ann Arbor
years ago, Temple Beth Emeth Cantor Annie
Rose stopped in the middle of choir rehearsal
to ask the performers how they felt about
taking their show on the road.
"When I heard the sound coming out of the
choir I don't know what made me say it, but I
stopped the piece and said, 'Wouldn't it be an
incredible thing to take this music that we have as a
gift, to take it to some people in places where it has-
n't been so easy to be a Jew, where it hasn't been easy
to be free and do music and have a full life,"' she
said. 'And the choir responded instantly and said,
`Yes, that's exactly what we want to do.'" _
So started the project that took the group of 70,
which included 40 choir members, on a 12-day tour
of Romania, Bulgaria and Greece this summer. They
gave multi-lingual concerts, sang in synagogues and
broke into spontaneous song as they connected with
audience members during and after their shows.

„r

Above: Young Romanian girls
applaud the choir's first concert
in Choral Temple, Bucharest.

Right: After the concert,
Cantor Annie Rose
tries to cool o

They overcame language barriers through their
common voices" — music and Judaism, Rose
said.
"In Bucharest, that first moment, when the
audience started singing along with us and we
realized at that moment exactly why we had
come, that was the defining moment of the tour
for us," Rose said. "We felt that complete bond
with the audience and knew that's what the rest
of the trip would be about."
Kol Haley, the Temple Beth Emeth Adult -
Choir, worked with local musicians and also
partnered with an area Jewish choral group dur-
ing their trip, bringing the communities together
through music.
Kol Haley member Jack Billi, who has been
singing in the choir for six years, hopes to return
to the spots the choir visited either on a future
trip with the group or with his family. He was
impressed with how welcome the group was in
the various communities and the warm reception
their performances received.
"I think that it is a special connection to sing
religious music with a community in another
country — a special way of connecting with
those people, with our brothers and sisters in
those countries," Billi said. 'And I hope that our
choir will make another trip, to perhaps another
part of the world or back to that area in the
future.
Henry Velick's solo, sung in Ladino, was received with
"We learned so much about the people, the
enthusiasm.
culture and their history and I think they learned
about us too, that we were friendly and had great
interest in their lives and their Ann Arbor resident Jennie Lieberman. Choir mem-
bers went out into the crowd during concerts, and
story."
were greeted with kisses, handshakes and hugs as
He felt the group, which
they sang the often familiar tunes. It was an emo-
also sang in Yiddish and
tional experience that Lieberman said "went beyond
Ladino, was in a way giving
just giving a concert or performance."
back to the community many
At one concert, an older man stood up as a Kol
American Jews came from.
Haley
duo prepared to begin a Yiddish tune. People
"So many people we've met
were
crying,
she recalled, as he took the microphone
since we came back said, 'My
and
began
to
sing.
mother came from that city,'
It was one of the many moments from the trip
`My mother or father came
that stand out as powerful and moving, Lieberman
from Bulgaria or from
said.
Romania or from Bucharest,
"It was a beautiful, beautiful, people-to-people
so I felt like we were coming
experience
and I think any of us that were on the
back on their behalf, making a
trip
would
say
definitely that we should have more
visit back to their homeland
of
these.
And,
in
a small way, I think it did some-
and sharing some of our
thing to unify the world a little bit, or at least the
music," he said.
Jewish community."
And it was music that
touched people's hearts, said

"

JAN

8/20
2004

57