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Princeton Jewish choir performed spring concert

By Michele Alperin
Special to Thew Jewish State


LASHIR, the Jewish Community Choir of Princeton, presented a program of mostly Hebrew music, with a smattering of Yiddish and Ladino, to about 150 people at its spring concert June 10 at Princeton University's Richardson Auditorium.

Gianni Donati, who just ended his second year as LASHIR's music director, was very pleased with the event. "There was a great response from the audience and a lot of energy from the singers," he said. Donati plays the French horn and studied composition at Amherst College, where he also had a chance to do instrumental conducting.

With an amateur choir like LASHIR, he feels the biggest challenge is making everyone learn the notes and feel confident in them. The next step, of course, is "making the music feel like music; putting emotional content into it." This means attention to musical dynamics of loud and soft as well as developing among the singers a sense of being an ensemble, that is, "everybody listening to everyone else so that all are feeling the music at the same time."

LASHIR, established in 1981, states its mission as follows: "Serving as a cultural representative of the Jewish community, we are dedicated to preserving, promoting, and transmitting our Jewish cultural heritage." Conversations with many of the singers suggest a strong commitment to LASHIR and its ideals.

Art Miller, who has been with LASHIR since the mid-1980s, joined because he likes to sing-and that drive to sing has inspired many of LASHIR's members to sign up over the years.

LASHIR, said Miller, used to meet on the Princeton campus in the basement of Stevenson Hall, and at that time was more of a multiethnic group. When that practice room became unavailable, the group moved to the Jewish Center and since then has become more uniformly Jewish. Miller plays guitar, banjo, and autoharp, and is also active in the Princeton Folk Music Society.

When Bobbie Parmet heard about LASHIR a couple years ago, she thought to herself, "I grew up singing Hebrew. I'll know these songs." Except for Adon Olam, the mix of music at LASHIR was decidedly not what she grew up with in Newark, but she likes it. Parmet is also a member of the Kingston Women's Chorus and the Hopewell Valley Chorus. "Out of all the music I do, I like this music best," she said.

Karen Bartels has been with the choir since 1983 when she came to Princeton, newly married and newly a member of the new Jewish Community Center of Belle Mead. She's been through 24 years and four directors: first Jan Hamer, then Raanan Shefa, Moshe Budmor, and now Donati.

Bartels has studied voice since third grade. She joked that she had "done the Messiah three times," and she was looking for a different outlet--music she wasn't used to. She found it with LASHIR, where the music is challenging and the Yiddish can be a mouthful. At the same time, she admitted, LASHIR "is sort of like a comfortable home."

Margie Atwater was looking for a choir for her daughter, Ilana, and found the Sheket children's choir, an offshoot of LASHIR, conducted by Robin Wallack, a central figure in the group. Atwater herself had sung with the 100-voice choir Shira, and when Wallack asked, "Do you sing?" Atwater said, "I came along for the ride." Coming to a smaller group-LASHIR has ranged from 18 to 30 singers over its life-she feels a greater responsibility than she did at Shira. "It's a little scarier because they rely on my voice more. With 30 altos, it was not such a big deal," she said.

Atwater also enjoyed her fellow singers so much that, she said, "I started to hang around more, and that's the reason I joined the Jewish Center."

Judy Levine has been singing with the group for about 17 years. "I love to sing," she said, "and I love the fact that we have such a rich and varied tradition, and I wanted to explore it." She joked that LASHIR's music ranges "from Baroque to folk," from Rossi to the more folksy tunes of Yiddish and Ladino. At LASHIR, she explained, "you get to experience our culture in a very personal way and all the contributing parts of that culture."

Phyllis Teitelbaum saw a little notice in a newspaper 11 years ago about a LASHIR concert, and the performance hooked her. As a child, she sang Israeli folk songs, was in her synagogue's children's and adult choirs, and was a member of Habonim. "I had a lot of Jewish music and singing in my background," she recalled.

Though she has lived in Princeton for 28 years, she does not belong to a synagogue, and her husband is not Jewish, so LASHIR functions as her primary Jewish connection. "It helps me retain my Jewish ethnic identity and heritage," she said.

Brad Harrington, a convert to Judaism, fell for LASHIR at a choral concert at his in-laws' synagogue in Metuchen. In a way, he has grown as a Jew with the music. "I didn't grow up singing Jewish music," he explained, "and spiritually it has come to mean more and more because of the feeling implicit in all the pieces."

Stuart Lehman, who has been with the group 15 years, was recruited by a couple of men in the bass section. He had been singing with a choir in New York, and when he moved to central Jersey, he was happy to find LASHIR. "It's an additional way to be connected in the community, and it is rewarding music," he said.

For Lehman, LASHIR is also a way to reach out to the broader community, beyond the synagogue. The group has brought Jewish music to Greenwood House, schools, and sings yearly at the Princeton Clergy Association's Martin Luther King Day commemoration. "We think of ourselves as a Jewish community integrated with the larger community," he observed, "and it's nice to be able to show what that means."

Teitelbaum urged interested singers to give her a call at (609) 921-6365 if they would like to join. "We would love to have new members," she said, "and there are no auditions." The only requirement is a love of singing Jewish music.