On Monday, September 10th and Wednesday, September 19th Jews of all denominations searching for a vanguard place to celebrate the High Holidays will be offered a jazz service with vocals led by Rabbi Cantor Steven Blaneaccompanied by saxophone, piano, flute, drums, bass and fiddle.
The participatory service will elate the spiritual uplift of new beginnings, welcoming the Jewish New Year with the raw emotion of jazz arranged from songs of Jewish liturgy. For those who will be in New York City, tickets are available for purchase for the live service to help defray the program cost. It also functions as a fundraiser for the nonprofit organization. As with all Sim Shalom Online Synagogue programming, the services will be streamed live with worldwide participation via chat. Individuals can simply visit SimShalom.com at the scheduled times.
Rabbi Blane expressed the pioneering program this way, “The Days of Awe symbolize a time to awaken our senses, a rebirth of ourselves and our relationship to each other. Music is a perfect vessel to create a world synthesizing all the beautiful diverse sounds into pure harmony and joy.”
Sim Shalom has brought the jazz High Holidays to New York’s Bitter End before a sold out audience with online congregants participating from across the United States to Europe, Asia and South America for the last seven years. Joining Blane again this year will be Jack Glottman on piano, Carol Sudhalter on sax and flute, Frank Levitano on drums, Kevin Hailey on bass and Liz Taub on fiddle.