BHS welcomes special guest lecturer Robert Cohen for THREE exciting classes IN PERSON at Brooklyn Heights Synagogue, 131 Remsen. (Zoom option available)

Robert Cohen has been lecturing on Jewish music and American folk and popular music for some 30 years – including at the Fifth Avenue New York Public Library (Jewish Division Lectures), the New England Conservatory of Music, New School University in New York and Hebrew College in Boston, Boston College's Center for Christian-Jewish Learning and School of Theology & Ministry, the Cantors Assembly and the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Afro-American Historical & Cultural Museum in Philadelphia; for some fifteen years, he was one of the most sought-after presenters in the Speakers in the Humanities and Speakers in the Schools programs of the New York Council for the Humanities. He has produced and hosted over 100 radio programs on Jewish identity and culture; wrote the NPR documentary "One People, Many Voices: American-Jewish Music Comes of Age" (now in the permanent collection of the Paley Center for Media in New York); and produced the compilation CD Open the Gates! New American-Jewish Music for Prayer.

Thursday March 9, 2023 @ 7:00pm

American-Jewish Music & African-American Music: Bridges of Song.

Listening in on the ongoing musical conversation between Blacks & Jews, incorporating African & African-American musical idioms (blues & jazz, reggae & world music, even gospel & rap) as well as Jewish texts & Jewish musical themes, thereby exuberantly illustrating Ralph Ellison's observation that “America is not made up of separate, free-floating cultures but, rather, of a constant interplay and exchange.”

Tuesday March 14, 2023 @ 7:00pm

The Music of the Psalms: From King David’s Time to Our Own.

The place of the Psalms in Jewish, and the world’s, liturgy; their spiritual scope and characteristic poetic expression; and what we know of their musical rendition in different times and places. We’ll listen to settings of the Psalms from Second Temple times to the Renaissance to Colonial, and contemporary, America; in English, Hebrew, and other languages; and in styles ranging from cantorial and art music to American folk and bluegrass, from orchestral to a cappella, from gospel to "world music," from funky to Hasidic.

Thursday March 23, 2023 @ 7:00pm

Songs of Liberation: Old & New Music for Passover.

The first thing the Jewish people did at their moment of national liberation was Sing. We’ll consider what they sang and listen to varied musical settings of that song; to other songs, from many lands and many styles and traditions, that Jews have sung at Passover seders and throughout the Passover holiday; and to songs of liberation that the world has sung inspired by the Exodus from Egypt: freedom songs, songs of praise and thanksgiving, songs of spring and songs of love. Singing, it turns out, was what free people wanted to do with their freedom.

All sessions of Cantor Porzecanski’s classes are © (copyright) Lowell Milken Fund for American Jewish Music at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music.