This concert is made possible by the generous support of Mark and Minna Seitelman, and is presented by Golden Land Concerts and Productions.
Special introduction by Congressman Ritchie Torres and Peter A. Geffen, Founder, Heschel School and Founder/President, The Kivunim Institute
Soul to Soul is inspired by the historic partnership between the African-American and Jewish communities during the Civil Rights Era of the 1950s and 60s, as embodied by the deep friendship between Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel and the young Freedom Riders and activists who selflessly risked their own safety and freedom in service to safety and freedom for all.
The moving and uplifting selection of songs include Yiddish and English songs written and performed by Jewish and African-American artists as an expression of their lament and protest against racism and anti-semitism as well as songs of hope for a better future. The concert culminates in a celebration of songs that accompanied the sit-ins and marches of the Civil Rights Movement.
The songs are accompanied by historic and artistic imagery as well as video selections from historic speeches, marches and commentary from those who were there.
Yiddish songs are accompanied by English translation supertitles.
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Now is the time for men and women to cast aside their prejudices. It’s time to look and really see; listen and really hear; talk and have something important to say.” That is what Soul to Soul does, by giving people of all faiths, creeds, colors, and religions an opportunity to come together and better understand our common experiences.
Soul to Soul has become an annual favorite of NYTF audience in New York City and has brought its uplifting message of unity and hope to cities across the United States and internationally including Los Angeles, Houston, Denver, Pittsburgh, Washington D.C., Baltimore, Boca Raton, Jacksonville, Chattanooga, Montreal, Winnipeg and Bucharest.
Conceived of by musical director Zalmen Mlotek
Narration and images curated by Motl Didner
Starring Lisa Fishman, Cantor Magda Fishman, Elmore James, Zalmen Mlotek, and Tony Perry
with musicians Yoshie Fruchter, Brian Glassman, Matt Temkin and Michael Winograd.
The performances feature: Lisa Fishman (Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish), renowned Cantor Magda Fishman (Senior Cantor at B’nai Torah Congregation); Broadway veteran Elmore James (Disney’s Beauty and The Beast on Broadway; Big River); Sam McKelton; along with an all-star ensemble including , Yoshie Fruchter, Brian Glassman, Matt Temkin and Michael Winograd. Musical direction by Zalmen Mlotek.
Featuring the Children’s Choirs of The Samuel Wise Free Synagogue, IMPACT Repertory Theatre and The Abraham Joshua Heschel School.
At this performance Sam McKelton will appear in place of Tony Perry and Michael Winograd will appear in place of Dmitri Zisl Slepovitch.
2025
Soul to Soul
January 19, 2025
7:00 PM
Stephen Wise Free Synagogue
30 West 68th Street
New York, New York 10023
Ticket Prices:
$36/individual, General Admission
$72/families (2 adults + children)
Congressman Ritchie Torres is a fighter from the Bronx who has spent his entire life working for the community he calls home. In 2013, at the age of 25, he became New York City’s youngest and the Bronx’s first openly LGBTQ elected official. A true friend of the Jewish community and a strong advocate for the Jewish state, Rep. Torres represents NY-15 and is a member of the Committee on Financial Services and the House Select Committee on the Chinese Communist Party.
In the summers of 1965 and 1966, Peter A. Geffen served as a civil rights worker for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s Southern Christian Leadership Conference. In 1968, he accompanied Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel at Dr. King’s funeral. Peter is the founder of the Abraham Joshua Heschel School and The KIVUNIM Institute, an international gap-year program that explores and experiences Jewish life around the world. A lifelong social activist, he has been particularly dedicated to advancing efforts in Arab-Jewish relations.
National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s Soul to Soul Streams Martin Luther King, Jr. Day | Playbill
Photos: National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene Presents SOUL TO SOUL (broadwayworld.com)
2024 Soul to Soul Concert Recap – Beth Shalom (bethshalompgh.org)
NYTF Presents “Soul to Soul” – Mann About Town (mannpublications.com)
Soul to Soul Concert – Saturday, February 17 – Classrooms Without Borders (cwbpgh.org)
During the darkest days, we sing. When light shines upon us, we sing. While seeking justice and answers, we sing. This musical tradition is one shared among African Americans and Jews for centuries. It is in the music of Soul to Soul, National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene’s annual Martin Luther King, Jr. Day commemoration concert, that we find and give voice to our common experiences: a history of oppression, struggles for justice, finding humor in pain, passion for faith, and joy in community.
To Tony Perry, one of its four veteran performers, “Soul to Soul is an expression of how souls can speak to one another on a deeper level—what separates us is what society highlights, but underneath that are our commonalities.”
Soul to Soul takes audiences on a life-affirming journey from deep oppression to hope, employing centuries of musical traditions of Ashkenazi Jews and African Americans. In the lyrics and music, we deepen connections and celebrate differences.
“It’s an emotionally charged exploration of each community’s joyful, optimistic hopes for the future and the deep mourning for suffering they’ve faced; and interspersed is humor, which is often the only mechanism people have to stand up to their oppressors,” says Motl Didner, Assistant Artistic Director at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene.
The continued demonstrations in support of Black lives remind us that our work is far from over. We recall the Civil Rights movement and alliances that Jews and African Americans formed amid calls for justice, and we know the fight must continue until we are all free of the racism and anti-Semitism that threaten to destroy us. The music featured in Soul to Soul illustrates how each of our people has endured physical and emotional pain and struggle and achieved triumph through adversity.
Enslaved Africans brought to America against their will learned biblical stories when they were converted to Christianity. They connected with the book of Exodus, and the promise of deliverance from slavery is echoed in uplifting and heartfelt spirituals like Go Down Moses—which many Jews today sing during Passover—and Didn’t My Lord Deliver Daniel.
These songs and their themes of freedom and overcoming struggle continued to resonate through the Civil Rights movement, when Jews—who joined voter drives, protests, and lawsuits in support of African Americans—envisaged their own people’s struggles toward freedom.
“Doing the show has made it clear to me why there was so much Jewish participation in the Civil Rights movement,” Perry says. “The Holocaust had just happened. Of course, they understood!”
The poem-turned-song, Es Brent (It Is Burning), written by Mordecai Gebirtig about a pogrom in Poland, challenges witnesses to act, to protect and defend a town and its inhabitants. Soul to Soul veteran performer Elmore James, whose resonant bass reinforces the seriousness of the song, says, “There’s a parallel history with the pogroms of Russia and Eastern Europe and the massacres of thriving Black communities in America.”
In the Greenwood District of Tulsa, known as Black Wall Street, residents suffered a land and air assault by white civilians. Dozens were killed, thousands displaced, and the community suffered millions of dollars in damages without redress. Soon after, a white mob attacked Black people in their homes and burned churches, buildings, and occupied houses in the all-Black town of Rosewood.
“In high school, my best friend’s parents were Auschwitz survivors,” Elmore James says. “I used to sit with his father, and he’d tell stories of the pogroms. I think of them and of the Black people who went through the massacres. I hold all of them when I sing this song. It moves me because it really moves the audience. We are in this together—in history and in the moment.”
Many American Jews can trace their family’s arrival to the decades before World War I. These Jews were escaping anti-Semitism, pogroms, and poverty in search of safety and financial security in the United States. Their dreams were not unlike those of African Americans during the Great Migration, which began in 1916 with individuals and families moving from southern states—where they experienced racism, state-sponsored violence, poverty, and terror—to northern states for the same security sought by immigrant Jews.
These parallel experiences are explored in New Colossus and Ellis Island, a Yiddish song that highlights why Jews left their homelands and the rejection they encountered upon arriving here.
Singer, songwriter, and producer Sam Cooke began his musical career in gospel, but crossed over to mainstream pop with tunes like You Send Me and Twistin’ the Night Away. While he may be best known among white audiences for these musical hits, he also incorporated gospel in concerts, ensuring that all his fans would hear the music of his heart. Later in his career, he chose to risk losing his largely white fan base by composing A Change Is Gonna Come, expressing his experience with racism. Soon after he performed it only once, on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, he was killed and never saw the song grow into the Civil Rights anthem it has since become.
Perry says, “He paved the way for more commercially successfully Black musicians—like the Temptations and Marvin Gaye—to create protest music and use their platforms to express their experiences of being Black in America. If Cooke hadn’t done that, it would have taken longer until there would be more open and honest music.”
Martin Luther King, Jr. once said, “Now is the time for men and women to cast aside their prejudices. It’s time to look and really see; listen and really hear; talk and have something important to say.” That is what Soul to Soul does, by giving people of all faiths, creeds, colors, and religions an opportunity to come together and better understand our common experiences.
“The songs show the parallels between African American history and Jewish history and remind us that, while the world may try to tear us apart, we are more alike than we are different. We share the same hopes and desires,” says Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director at the National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. “Though imbued with songs that illustrate a difficult history, Soul to Soul is wonderfully soul-lifting, energizing, and joyful.”
Lisa Fishman Singer, actress, songwriter, and guitarist Lisa Fishman has performed throughout the U.S. and Europe – starring in Off-Broadway and Regional Musical Theater, singing and recording her own original music, performing Jewish music, starring in Yiddish Theater productions, and concertizing in a broad range of musical styles. Highlights: “Fiddler on the Roof” in Yiddish – dir. Joel Grey, “The Golden Bride” (Toybe), “Cabaret” (Sally Bowles), “On Second Avenue” (Principal), “Oliver” (Nancy), “Tintypes” (Fanny Brice/Emma Goldman), “Bruce Adler, A,B,C” (principal). Singer – Chicago’s Maxwell Street Klezmer Band. Concert Highlights: Carnegie Hall, Town Hall, Barbican Centre (London), Wiener Konzerthaus (Vienna). Singing featured in the film, “Dummy,” starring Adrien Brody. www.LisaFishman.com www.LisaFishmanJewishMusic
Cantor Magda Fishman A graduate of the Jewish Theological Seminary’s H.L. Miller Cantorial School in New York. As cantor and singer-musician, Cantor Fishman, a mezzo-soprano, brings a vibrant and unique experience to Jewish music and synagogue life through a unique blend of traditional and contemporary styles. Over the years, she has built a large and loving following among a wide spectrum of audiences. Her repertoire includes liturgical masterpieces, Israeli songs, jazz, musical theater and her own compositions.
Prior to her investiture in May 2011, Cantor Fishman served in the Israeli Army Orchestra as vocal soloist and trumpet player. She has performed extensively in Israel and Europe, the United States and Canada including the Kennedy Center, the National Gallery of Canada, the 92nd Street Y Festival, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, the Walter Reade Theater, Prague State Opera, and the Israeli Embassy in Washington, Rose Theatre-Lincoln Center and Central Park summer stage.
She is part of the group: Divas on the Bimah and Soul to Soul of the Folksbiene Yiddish Theater with maestro Zalmen Mlotek. She is the recipient of the prestigious America-Israel Cultural Foundation scholarship.
Cantor Fishman lives in Boca Raton, Florida, where she is the senior cantor of B’nai Torah congregation, the largest conservative synagogue in Florida.
Yoshie Fruchter Yoshie Fruchter is a guitar, bass and oud player whose playing and composing combines a unique blend of rock, jazz, experimental, and Jewish styles. Fruchter is notable for his work in composing and interpreting Jewish music, and has forged new directions with his performance, regardless of genre. His current project, Sandcatchers, in which he plays oud and is joined by lap steel player Myk Freedman, vocalist Jean Rohe annd many others.
Elmore James Elmore James has spent a lifetime in the theater as an actor, Broadway musical performer, international opera singer, and director. He has performed at all the major musical venues in New York City, including the Metropolitan Opera House and Carnegie Hall, as well as in the opera houses of Europe.
Zalmen Mlotek is an internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music as well as a leading figure in the Jewish theatre and concert worlds. For the past 20 years, he has been the Artistic Director and conductor at National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. He brought Yiddish-Klezmer music to Broadway and Off-Broadway stages with the Tony-nominated Those Were the Days and Drama Desk Nominated Amerike – The Golden Land. He serves as Music Director for most NYTF productions, including the Drama Desk Nominated musical, THE GOLDEN BRIDE. His music can be heard in over two-dozen recordings and films, has taught and performed all over the world and worked with countless singers including Jan Peerce, Theodore Bikel and Mandy Patinkin. He is currently the musical director and conductor of critically acclaimed, award-winning Fidler Afn Dakh (Fiddler on the Roof – In Yiddish), directed by Joel Grey. He received his musical training at the Juilliard School of Music and studied under Leonard Bernstein.
Sam McKelton whose lyric tenor led the New York Times to exclaim him “a model Mozart tenor…” and went on to say that “…there was a natural elegance to the sound”, has traveled throughout the world delighting audiences in both the classical and pop worlds.
Mr. McKelton has appeared around the world with many major symphony orchestras and chamber ensembles and, for three years, he traveled the world with superstar Harry Belafonte with whom he was featured in the 1997 PBS Special, Harry Belafonte and Friends. He starred in an off-Broadway revival of the Broadway and London hit musical Five Guys Named Mo’, and is an original Broadway cast member of the Tony Award winning Disney musical The Lion King.
Mr. McKelton has often been seen in the role of Sportin’ Life in Porgy and Bess with the Opera Company of Philadelphia; the Indianapolis Opera directed by Henry Miller, and at the Royal Danish Opera, Denmark, among others. He sang the title role of Udu in the light opera by Judas and the Black Messiah composer/trombonist Craig Harris and poet, the late Sekou Sundiata. He sang the role of The Stranger in the New York premiere of Carlisle Floyd’s opera Markheim with the Center for Contemporary Opera (CCO). As well, Mr. McKelton sang the world premiere of Donald McCullough’s Let My People Go with the Master Chorale of Washington at the Kennedy Center.
A native of Detroit, Michigan, Mr. McKelton currently resides in the New York city area with his wife, Rachel, and continues to make concert and solo appearances around the country. He is a co-founder of Honorific Entertainment, an entertainment production and development company, which he operates with his business partner, Christopher Jackson of Hamilton the musical fame. As well, he is Adjunct Professor of Voice at the Manhattan School of Music and the NYU-Tisch School of Drama.
Brian Glassman One of NYC area’s most in-demand double bassists, BRIAN GLASSMAN is best known for his work in Jazz, and Klezmer musical styles. Some of the Klezmer and Jewish music stars that Brian has worked with include Andy Statman, Frank London, Zalmen Mlotek, Alicia Svigals, Mandy Patinkin, Sid Beckerman, Pete Sokolow, Theodore Bikel, Adrienne Cooper, and Neshama Carlebach. Jazz greats like; Paquito d’Rivera, John and Bucky Pizzarelli, Lionel Hampton, Kenny Burrell, Benny Golson, Randy Brecker, Gene Bertoncini, Billy Cobham to name just a few. Brian and his historic c.1820’s Prescott American double bass are featured on new recorded releases from, Neshama Carlebach, Woody Mann, Carol Hall, Andy Statman, Klezmerfest, Liza Minnelli, and the Johnny Rodgers Band. Brian is an Ambassador of American Music for the U.S. State Dept. and Instructor of Jazz Bass at Princeton University.
Zalmen Mlotek is an internationally recognized authority on Yiddish folk and theater music as well as a leading figure in the Jewish theatre and concert
worlds. For the past 20 years, he has been theArtistic Director and conductor at National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene. His vision brought the critically acclaimed award-winning Fidler AfnDakh (Fiddler on the Roof in Yiddish ) directed by Joel Grey , for which he served as music director to NY, and will serve as musical supervisor for the International and National tours being planned.
He brought Yiddish-Klezmer music to Broadway and Off-Broadway stages with the Tony-nominated Those Were the Days and Drama Desk Nominated Amerike
– The Golden Land. He serves as Music Director for most NYTF productions, including the recent New York Times Critics Pick The Sorceress and Drama
Desk Nominated musical The Golden Bride. His music can be heard in over two-dozen recordings and films, has taught and performed all over the world and worked with countless singers including Jan Peerce, Theodore Bikel and Mandy Patinkin.
Michael Winograd (Clarinet) Clarinetist Michael Winograd is a celebrated performer and composer of Klezmer music. He makes
records and tours the world with his band, the Honorable Mentshn, and has played alongside many of
the world’s leading performers of Jewish Music. His music has been featured in films, TV, theater and dance performances. He is currently in the cast of Cabaret at the Kit Kat Club on Broadway.
National Yiddish Theatre Folksbiene
At the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust
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