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Cantor Carol Chesler
There are many advantages to being Jewish and living in the New York
Metropolitan area. To name a few, there are great kosher restaurants
and a wealth of places to buy all kinds of kosher products.
Incredible cultural choices abound, from Yiddish theater to comedy
to all sorts of topname Israeli entertainers who perform here
annually. There are more synagogues and Jewish houses of learning
than could fit in the phonebook. For me, it’s the sheer number of
cantorial colleagues and friends I can call who are close by,
available for support, advice, and best of all, musical suggestions
and performance opportunities. This past fall I participated in a
concert honoring a friend in Massapequa, who was celebrating his
“Bar Mitzvah” year of service to his shul. This month, another
friend and colleague, Cantor Moshe Bear, is hosting a concert at his
shul, in which I will participate along with a number of youngsters
from the HJC, as well as approximately three dozen other cantors and
youth choirs from around the New York area. Sunday evening, March 13
promises to be a phenomenal evening of entertainment at our
neighboring Dix Hills Jewish Center, at 7:00 p.m.
My friend, Moshe, asked me to choose a song for our kids to sing
during the concert, and I chose a piece I learned last summer at
Camp Ramah in the Berkshires, titled “Shir Lismoach,” or “Malki’s
Song.” I first heard it on a new CD, called “Voices for Israel,”
while driving to the Catskills for a Cantors Assembly Convention
last spring. The tune is upbeat and joyous, and it was written by a
teenage Australian Olah, named Malka Chana Roth. Simply put in the
refrain, “You’re alive, breathing, movingthat’s a good beginning.”
Here is a message of honest and sincere gratitude, the fact that
being alive is something to be noted and appreciated. Tragically,
however, Malki was killed in the suicide bombing of the Sbarro
restaurant in the heart of Jerusalem in August, 2001. She had
written this song, hoping to enter it into a contest the previous
winter, but submitted it too late. She was just 15 when she was
killed. During the Shiva period following her burial, some of her
friends shared her song with Malki’s family. “In a spontaneous
expression of sympathy and sadness, Malki’s friends fanned out
across Israel during that mourning week in the summer holidays of
August, 2001, and taught Malki’s song to hundreds of children and
teenagers attending the Ezra youth group summer camp and in other
summer youth camps throughout Israel. Since then, the words and
music of this lovely creation have continued to be passed along via
an informal network of teenagers in Israel and beyond.” (from the
Malki Foundation website).
Some time later, the song was given some air time on a radio show,
during which Malki’s father, Arnold Roth was interviewed. The
producer of the “Voices for Israel” CD heard this show, called
“Jewish Moments in the Morning” (JM in the AM) and secured
permission to record this song, even using two of Malki’s favorite
performers to sing it.
I have been helping run the camp-wide Zimriah, or song festival at
Camp Ramah in the Berkshires since 2000. All 700+ people gather in
one building to sing and dance and celebrate together through Jewish
music. Each year, Mara, the music director of the camp, chooses one
song that everyone will learn and sing together at this event, and
then throughout the summer. To put it bluntly, the song has to be a
winner, a keeper, from the moment you first hear it. “Malki’s Song”
was that song last summer. Later on in August, well past the Zimriah,
a professional recording was made of 13 of the favorite hits of
camp, including this selection. I would urge you to hear it for
yourself, both on March 13, at this extraordinary concert, and also
on line, at www.kerenmalki.org. (a foundation created in memory of
Malki, to assist families caring for the severely disabled).
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Return to Malki
Wrote A Song
This article was originally published in the March
2005 edition of
The Cantor's Voice by Cantor Carol Chesler |
