Catskills Are Alive With the Sound of Music
Singers and choral aficionados from across North America and Israel are warming up their vocal cords and practicing scales in anticipation of a summer pilgrimage to the Catskills. This year marks the 18th annual North American Jewish Choral Festival, an event beginning July 8, held by the Zamir Choral Foundation. Some 500 participants will attend the five-day program, which is open to amateur and professional musicians, conductors, choirs and artists.
“This is the seminal event that created the [Jewish] choral movement,” said the foundation’s founder and director, Matthew Lazar. “Singing all day… makes people feel like they’re part of a community,” and the event allows for “individual expression in the context of a group experience.”
This year, legendary musician Theodore Bikel will be presented with the festival’s Hallel V’Zimrah Award, which is given to a leader in Jewish music (past recipients have been Velvel Pasternak, Gil Aldema and Yehezkel Braun).
“I’ve known Theo for a long time,” Lazar said. “He’s a great Jewish leader, a cultural leader and a moral leader. He was a shining light when others weren’t really promoting Jewish music.”
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
