TEMPLE SHIR TIKVA

Friday, Feb 10th at 6:15, we will be offering a special service to celebrate Black History Month with a musical Shabbat service featuring the choirs of Temple Shir Tikva and the United Parish in Brookline, under the direction of our shared and beloved Choir Director, Susan DeSelms.  

We have long been proud of the deep connection and musical collaboration between our communities and our choirs, in particular. We are grateful to Susan for giving us the opportunity to participate in her visionary  “Negro Spirituals Royalties Project,” drawing attention to Negro Spirituals as sacred art and the unacknowledged intellectual property of enslaved Africans in America. To learn more about this project, click here.

In recognizing Negro Spirituals as a body of sacred music created to fuel survival and maintain hope for a people suffering under brutal oppression, Susan asked what Jewish music might have served a similar purpose in Jewish traditions – what songs would we consider to be our “Jewish spirituals?” To that end, in addition to singing music from the Negro Spirituals repertoire we will also be singing a few songs in Yiddish that share these themes of hope, resilience, and survival in the face of persecution.

If you would like to contribute to the Negro Spirituals Royalties Project, click here and select “Special Gift Negro Spirituals”.