We are a warm, enthusiastic and friendly group of singers led by a professional choir director, Rachel Segman.

We sing music based on Jewish tradition in Hebrew, Ladino and Yiddish (and sometimes English!).

We rehearse weekly in Cambridge, on a Thursday evening. Please get in touch if you would like to join us, we welcome all, regardless of religion or musical knowledge.

Performances

We generally perform locally around Cambridge, and with other choirs and groups. please get in touch if you would like to have us perform some of our beautiful repertoire for your event.

We also perform regularly for the Jewish community, including appropriate songs for the seasons and festivals.

Our Repertoire

The Jewish world is one filled with music. Synagogue services are full of melodies often composed by choir leaders of the past.

Some of the earliest works are arrangements of psalms and other liturgical writings by Salamone Rossi who was composer at the court of Mantua in the late 16th, early 17th century. His baroque pieces are particularly ornate and beautiful.

Many of our pieces were written in the mid to late 19th century by rabbis and synagogue choirmasters from Germany and Britain. Among those are many arrangements of synagogue prayers by the Berlin-based Louis Lewandowski.

Our previous conductor, Danielle Padley, studied an English (non-Jewish) composer, Charles Verrinder, for her PhD, who was choirmaster for both a church and a synagogue. We also sing pieces written in the 20th and 21st centuries including a setting of a prayer by Joseph Finlay and music by contemporary composer Malcolm Singer (Hinei Ma Tov, Meditation and Osei Shalom).,

While some of our music is taken from synagogue liturgy, other pieces are arrangements of Israeli Hebrew folk songs, songs from the Yiddish (Ashkenazi) tradition and melodies written in Ladino, from the Sephardi Jews (originally from Spain and Portugal).

Our conductors search for pieces that will be enjoyable to sing and entertaining to hear.