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(New York Jewish Week) — All throughout the nation, teams of Jewish youngsters meet every week to rehearse as a choir. In teams as small as two and as giant as 18, they collect in synagogue basements and Jewish neighborhood facilities to sing collectively. For a lot of, it’s their solely involvement with Jewish life.
These 450 younger individuals, who vary in age from 13 to 18, are members of HaZamir, a global choir for Jewish highschool college students. With 26 chapters in america and 10 in Israel, they convene annually for a spring live performance in New York Metropolis.
However this coming live performance — to be held on Sunday, March 19, at Lincoln Heart’s Frederick P. Rose Corridor — will likely be completely different than most years. This weekend’s celebration, which incorporates greater than 300 pupil and alumni singers, will commemorate HaZamir’s thirtieth birthday in addition to the seventy fifth anniversary of the founding of the State of Israel.
“The thought behind the creation of HaZamir was to present Jewish youngsters the chance to have a high-level music expertise and to precise their Jewish selves and their music selves,” stated Mati Lazar, HaZamir’s conductor and founder. “At that time, and even now, [that] is just not actually a given.”
Sunday’s live performance will embody performances by the whole ensemble, in addition to songs carried out by the Israeli cohort and members of the Chamber Choir, an elite group of HaZamir singers. (College students need to audition to hitch HaZamir, and choose singers are invited to audition for the Chamber Choir.) The spotlight is at all times the “senior tune” — “Yachad Na’Amod” (“Collectively We Stand”), stated Vivian Lazar, Mati’s spouse and the director of HaZamir.
“It is a downside with any highschool trainer — you fall in love together with your twelfth graders,” Vivian instructed the New York Jewish Week. “They’re adults already. They’re sensible, and so they’re intuitive after which they go away you. For the final verse, they put their arms round one another. A few of them don’t sing as a result of they’re crying so onerous.”
HaZamir singers on the 2013 Gala Live performance. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Mati Lazar, who declined to supply his age, based HaZamir in 1993 as the highschool arm of the Zamir Chorale, knowledgeable Hebrew-language choir and Jewish choral efficiency group in North America that was established in 1960. A local of Brooklyn, he had been a member of Zamir Chorale as a teen, and needed to create a chance for different younger individuals to have the identical expertise.
Beginning with only one small chapter in New York — which Mati personally ran — he watched it develop, and develop, over the subsequent three a long time. “I knew it will be necessary — I knew it will evolve into what it has advanced into,” Mati stated. “The shock for me was how profitable it will be in Israel.” The primary Israeli chapter was based in 2006.
He’s additionally the founder and director of Zamir Choral Basis, the umbrella group that operates HaZamir and Zamir Chorale, in addition to a choir for center schoolers and a choir for younger adults of their 20s and 30s.
Although HaZamir is an extracurricular exercise for these excessive schoolers, the Lazars place severe calls for on their members. “We empower these youngsters,” Vivian Lazar stated. “After they go and have free time collectively, they’re youngsters. After they’re sitting in rehearsal, we deal with them like professionals, and they also behave that approach.”
Consequently, taking part within the choir can typically develop into a lifelong dedication — and generally even a household affair. Sophie Lee Landau grew up in New York listening to her mom carry out as a member of Zamir Chorale. Landau joined HaZamir in seventh grade and stayed with the group all through highschool. In faculty, she turned a member of Zamir Chorale for plenty of years till she moved out of New York in 2015.
For the previous six years, Landau, 29, has been the conductor for the Houston-based chapter of HaZamir. “It’s a chance to attach together with your friends who’ve come from an identical religion and to attach extra to Jewish textual content,” Landau instructed the New York Jewish Week. “It’s actually particular to have the ability to give [students] an outlet to connect with their heritage and to search out friends and friendships with related pursuits and related backgrounds. It’s about not feeling such as you’re alone.”
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HaZamir singers carried out a live performance on the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to commemorate the one yr anniversary of the lethal taking pictures that took the lives of 11 synagogue members. (Courtesy HaZamir)
The Lazars see the choir as “an on-ramp to Jewish life” with an emphasis on pluralism, neighborhood and Zionism. HaZamir is just not designed to be non secular, Vivian defined, although she advised that singing collectively in concord is commonly a religious expertise.
Nevertheless, “to be Jewish is to be literate,” Vivian stated, including a part of being within the choir and studying to sing the Hebrew music contains studying the texts and their meanings.
“The extra you recognize about your historical past and your custom and your tradition, the higher human being you might be,” Vivian stated she tells her college students.
For members, these ideas culminate throughout “Pageant,” a Shabbat sleepover that takes place within the days main as much as the annual live performance. This yr, the group will congregate at a resort in Upstate New York.
“Pageant” is the primary time chapters from world wide meet after having rehearsed the identical songs as particular person teams all year long. “It’s a religious type of expertise singing music collectively: You’re respiratory collectively, you’re eager about the identical textual content on the identical time, and also you’re making concord,” Mati Lazar stated. “All variations actually subside.”
In keeping with Landau, the weekend is particularly rewarding for members who hail from smaller Jewish communities. “That is the one alternative for the youngsters to all get collectively,” she stated. “When you get collectively and also you sing with 300 different youngsters, the sound is overwhelming. It’s the factor that they stay up for most, after working onerous all yr they lastly get to place all of it collectively and listen to what the music can do.”
Over 400 college students attended HaZamir’s “Pageant” in 2019. (Courtesy HaZamir)
Although it’s meant to be a rehearsal boot camp for the youngsters, Pageant additionally goals to nurture the cross-country and worldwide friendships which can be made on Zoom all year long. Actions embody a Thursday-night jam session, hours of rehearsals throughout the day and a variety of Shabbat companies on Friday night time and Saturday morning — egalitarian, Orthodox, Reform, and all-women companies are among the many choices. For a lot of members, Vivian stated, it’s the primary time they will discover these several types of Jewish non secular expression.
For Milo Shaklan, a senior in HaZamir’s Brooklyn chapter, whose ninth and tenth grade concert events have been canceled on account of COVID-19, going to Pageant and the Gala live performance for the primary time final yr was “a second of understanding,” he stated.
“I acquired to attach with all these different Jews,” Shaklan stated. “I had no thought how massive the neighborhood was. After I’m interacting with individuals in my synagogue neighborhood, I’m interacting with individuals who roughly observe like me. At HaZamir, I’m interacting with Individuals who’re much less observant than me and Individuals who’re extra observant than me, after which Israelis who’re each extra and fewer observant than me.”
Landau concurs. “To have the ability to set up such a community is de facto unbelievable, and that’s why this weekend is so necessary,” she stated.
For the Lazars, it’s alumni like Landau — who has maintained a long-term relationship with the choir — who’re the largest reward for the efforts. This yr, 14 HaZamir alumni are actually conductors of their very own chapters, and all HaZamir alumni will likely be invited on stage to sing throughout the second half of the two-hour live performance.
“It’ll be a really, very lovely second,” stated Vivian.
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The HaZamir thirtieth Anniversary Live performance will happen on March 19 at 3:00 pm. Purchase tickets right here.
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