Course Description

Music of the Jewish People, like their history, can reflect both the pain of tragedy and the joy of celebration. Jewish music spans biblical to modern times (from Isaiah to Arlo), and often includes musical genres such as traditional and modern religious, Russian-Jewish folk, Israeli folk, American folk, American folk-rock, Big Band, jazz, American Songbook, Sephardic, Klezmer, Hollywood, Broadway, and popular. Singing duo Friedenberg and Bowen, will present commentary about Jewish music and Jewish musicians, and will perform their favorites in English, Yiddish, Hebrew, and Ladino, while the audience views the lyrics on the screen and sings along. Their commentary, accompanied by slides, contains fascinating well-researched facts, blended with heartfelt revelations about Friedenberg’s 30-year search for lost family, an odyssey that included trips to Cold-War U.S.S.R, the Hungarian countryside, and to German concentration camps in Poland, which led to astonishing discoveries that proved both heart-breaking and heart-warming, strengthening Friedenberg’s connections to some of the Jewish music many grew up with.