our teachers

Our teachers are the basis for the cultural transmission that happens at Let My People Sing! We are deeply honored to be part of helping to foster this network of musicians and song carriers. Learn more about our teachers below!

Rabbi Dr. Koach Baruch (KB) Frazier

Songs for the Soul Series (Virtual), Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2018

Rabbi Dr. Koach Baruch (KB) Frazier, is a transformer, heartbeat of movements, healer, musician, founder of the Black Trans Torah Club, co-founder of the Tzedek Lab, and co-founder of Black Folks Beit Midrash. A collaborative leader, rooted in tradition, curiosity and love, Koach strives to dismantle racism, actualize liberation and transform lives both sonically and spiritually.

Marques Hollie

Program Faculty, Songs for the Soul Series (Virtual)

Marques Hollie (they/he) is an operatically-trained vocalist, ritual leader, and theatre maker, who has been telling (and singing!) stories for as long he can remember. Marques believes that Jewish practice and ritual are expansive, resilient containers and they enjoy exploring their identities as a Queer, Black, Jewish person through original songs and niggunim, liturgy, and theatrical work. Following a two year course of study, Marques received ordination as a Maggid (sacred storyteller), and is now a rabbinical student at the Reconstructionist Rabbinical College. In his spare time, Marques takes pole and aerial classes, plays dodgeball with Stonewall Sports, serves on the board of SVARA: A Traditionally Radical Yeshiva, and dreams about playing the Baker in Into The Woods. For more information about Marques and what they're up to, check out www.marqueshollie.com.

Laura Elkeslassy

Program Faculty, Morroccan Nusach for High Holidays Series (Virtual), Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2023, Virtual Teacher 2020

Paris-born Brooklyn artist Laura Elkeslassy is a singer of Judeo-Arab music. Her work draws inspiration from her Sephardi and Moroccan roots exploring North-African folk, Andalusi nubas, Ladino canciones and Maghrebi Jewish liturgy. In 2019, Laura went digging into Arabic music theory and stumbled onto a treasure trove of profound family truths. Laura’s ongoing journey of self-discovery–which includes forgotten ancestors, wild synchronicities found in dusty old bookstores, and the reclaiming of a lost family name–is the inspirational heart of her latest project, Ya Ghorbati: Divas in Exile. Developed in collaboration with music director Ira Khonen Temple,Ya Ghorbati unearths the stories of Judeo-Arab divas from the last century, weaving original recordings with new performances of folk and sacred music. Laura has performed music at countless venues including Lincoln Center, the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the World Music Institute. She was the lead singer of the NY Andalus Ensemble for 5 years and has toured across the US, Canada, the UK and France. Laura is a multiple recipient of prestigious music, theater and social justice grants. In 2023, Laura was selected as New York Jewish Week’s 36 to Watch, a distinction honoring leaders and changemakers in New York’s Jewish community. More info at www.lauraelkeslassy.com

Dodie Whitaker

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2024

Dodie Whitaker, a seasoned singer, composer, and conductor, channels over 40 years of musical expertise into her work, shaped by her professional singing career and diverse teaching experiences. As a racial justice facilitator with Holistic Resistance and co-author of "Who is Community Sing For?", Dodie's international acclaim as a song leader reflects her unique blend of influences from her biracial Jewish background. To learn more about Dodie and her latest initiative, Voices Rising Song Circles, visit www.voices-rising.com

Rabbi Shir Meira Feit

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2024

Rabbi Shir Meira Feit is a musician, award-winning composer, ritual facilitator, and spiritual director. They have released several solo and collaborative albums of sacred music and facilitated countless circles of communal ritual and song, helping people of all backgrounds connect with their inner wisdom and joy. Shir worked as a serial spiritual entrepreneur for twenty years in the Jewish Renewal movement, and in the Zen Peacemakers Order, co-facilitating their Bearing Witness Retreats in Auschwitz-Birkenau. Today, Shir offers teachings as an independent educator, musician, and spiritual director, helping others grow and flourish at the dynamic edge of spiritual emergence. In the last several years, Shir’s work and life have been heavily influenced by the spiritual practice of parenting three children, interpersonal neurobiology, somatic psychology, neuroqueer theory, artificial intelligence, and the wisdom of plant medicines. They live with their family in Lenapehoeking, aka New York’s Hudson Valley.

Yoni Avi Battat

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2024

Yoni Avi Battat brings Arab music into the soundscape of American Jewish life through composition, education, prayer, and performance on viola, violin, oud, and vocals. Described as "an education for the ear and the soul," his debut album Fragments seeks to find new pathways to connect with ancestry and find healing around our fragmented identities. Yoni's newest project is Kedmah: The Rising Song Piyyut Project. Their first album Simu Lev emerges this April on Rising Song Records. From 2021-2022 Yoni toured nationally as an actor and violinist with the Tony Award-winning musical, “The Band’s Visit.” Yoni lives in Boston, MA, working locally and nationally to uplift Mizrahi identity in American Jewish communities. www.yonibattat.com

Anat Halevy Hochberg

Program Faculty, Summer Retreat Concert Organizer, Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2019

Anat Halevy Hochberg is a Brooklyn-based musician, teacher, and ritual leader. Anat grounds her practice as a ba'al tefila (prayer leader) in her study of traditional Jewish text and connection with the Earth and the Divine. She is influenced by her training as a classical musician, earth-based experiential Jewish ritual and education, and family and community traditions (from Israel, Poland, Hungary, Yemen, Boston, and beyond). Anat has a passion for leading song and seeks to empower and back others in raising their voices. Anat performs as a solo artist and with collaborators, and has recently recorded with artists such as Joey Weisenberg, Miriam Marges, and George Mordecai. She recently completed two years of study at Yeshivat Hadar and was a Fellow in the Rising Song Institute. Learn more about her work at anathalevyhochberg.com.

Shula Pesach

Trans Voices 2023 & 2024

Shula Pesach is a Jewish educator, community ritualist, and trans theologian. Shula lives on Nipmuc Land in Northampton, Massachusetts where she is the founder of B’yameinu Beit Midrash. Shula also serves as the program director for Taproot and as co-facilitator of Re-Calling Our Ancestors. Shula is an apprentice of bird-language, the tarot, and stretching strudel dough.

Mazal Masoud Etedgi

Trans Voices 2023 & 2024

Mazal Masoud Etedgi is a trans and arab jewish artist, community herbalist, facilitator, and drama therapist living on Lenni-Lenape land (Philadelphia, PA). Their remedies, teachings and sessions are offered through their apothecary, B'samim Apothecary, and more recently on the Integrative Practitioner team at Charlie Health. Maz finds home in plants, silliness, and slow-moving creatures. 

Nomy Lamm

Singing the Mother Letters: Being together as sick & disabled folks in song (Virtual)

Nomy Lamm is a musician, illustrator, kohenet, and the Creative Director of Sins Invalid, a disability justice based performance project. Nomy creates ritual tools for embodied queer Jewish feminist practice, including the Dreaming the World to Come planner and the Omer Oracle deck. They are dedicated to anti-colonial, anti-racist practices, and to witnessing a Free Palestine in their lifetime. They live on occupied Squaxin land in Olympia, WA, with their partner Lisa and their animal companions Dandelion, Momma, and Romance. www.nomyteaches.com, @nomyteaches

Sol Weiss

Singing the Mother Letters: Being together as sick & disabled folks in song (Virtual)

Sol is an artist, song maker and cultural organizer whose work explores how land, kinship and tradition can support us in overcoming oppression, healing from colonization and building new worlds. They work in relief printmaking, bookbinding, illustration and design, and collaborate to co-create visual representations of social change and cultural transformation. When not in the print shop, the kitchen or the garden, Sol works with Tzedek Lab as Director of Communications and Resource Sharing, supporting a network of visionaries and changemakers moving the Jewish world to fight antisemitism, racism and white supremacy.

Arielle Rivera Korman

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2023

Arielle Rivera Korman played violin for Simchat Torah for the first time in the second grade (those hakafot don’t feel any less endless now that she is an adult.) Jewish music has always been a part of the air she breathes. She remembers standing in the middle of her living room as a child discovering that she could belt out the niggun-inspired parts of Fiddler on the Roof most successfully when in character, adopting an over-the-top cantorial-ness. She has since changed her singing vibe quite a bit, but after a l’chaim or two, who knows what might come out? For the past few years, Arielle has been writing her own Jewish melodies and songs, sharing several at Kehilat Romemu where she is a periodic davening leader. She is a violinist, singer-songwriter, and sometimes visual artist. In 2019, she co-founded Ammud, the Jews of Color Torah Academy and served as its founding Executive Director. She has an MA in religion from Columbia University. She is now a rabbinical student at the Jewish Theological Seminary. Arielle gets her inspiration from loved ones, love, pre-colonial Pilipinx practice, the Hebrew language, and every dog ever.

Itai Gal

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2023

Itai Gal writes songs, plays piano, sings, and sometimes plays guitar, accordion and percussion. Their songs are inspired by the words of Jewish prayers and texts, their own spiritual experiences, and music made in this part of the world and others, and often include full verses of interpretive translations in English as prayers for the Earth, justice, wholeness, and balance. He released the album Arise in 2019 with Itai and the Ophanim, a band that lasted for two shows right before he left Boston (The Ophanim are the wheeled beings in Ezekiel's vision, one of Itai's favorite texts.) Arise is available on all major streaming platforms. Itai is working on recording their newer songs, which you can find on itaiandtheophanim.bandcamp.com,* and also plays keyboard outside of Jewish music, currently in their local Grateful Dead tribute band, Bigfoot County.

April Centrone

Summer Retreat Featured Teacher 2023

April Centrone April Centrone is a multi-instrumentalist, teacher, composer, film producer/director and music therapist based in the NYC area. She is a Carnegie Hall World Explorer musician and educator, Paul Simon Music Fellow, founder of 10PRL arts/film/event space, and co-founder of the New York Arabic Orchestra, non-profit organization specializing in the performance and education of Arabic music. Listen to her debut album here, or her December 2022 podcast interview here.  www.linktr.ee/aprilcentrone

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell

North Carolina Sings! Teacher 2024, Advisory Circle Member, Virtual Teacher 2020

Twelve years after making his professional operatic debut, Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell is now a vocalist, composer and arranger specializing in Yiddish song. This work has brought him to stages in Toronto, Montreal, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Boston, Miami, New York, Tel Aviv, London, Berlin, Warsaw and Krakow, Symphony Space in New York City and the Kennedy Center in Washington DC. Anthony's recent EP with klezmer trio Veretski Pass, Convergence, combines a century of African-American and Ashkenazi Jewish music. He also performs in a Yiddish songwriting duo called Tsvey Brider with accordionist and keyboardist Dmitri Gaskin. Anthony lives in Massachusetts with his husband, Rabbi Michael Rothbaum.

Rahel Musleah

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2019

Rahel Musleah Through the vivid prism of her family's story, Rahel Musleah introduces audiences to the distinctive heritage of the Jews of India and Iraq. The seventh generation of a Calcutta family, she traces her roots to seventeenth-century Baghdad. Her multi-media visual, song, and story presentations and Shabbat programming featuring Baghdadi-Indian tropes and melodies offer a rare and intimate view of a rich culture little-known to most. Rahel is an award-winning journalist, author, singer, speaker, and educator. She also leads tours of Jewish India informed by her distinctive “insider’s” perspective. Her next tours are scheduled for Nov. 7-20, 2019 and Feb. 13-26, 2020. Rahel is a graduate of Columbia University and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. She sings with New York’s Zamir Chorale and enjoys Israeli dancing. She lives in Roslyn Heights, NY, and is passing down the legacy of the Indian Jewish community to her two children, Shira and Shoshana. Please visit her websites: www.rahelsjewishindia.com, and www.explorejewishindia.com.

Naftali Ejdelman

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2019

Naftali Ejdelman, a native Yiddish speaker and lifelong teacher, uses Yiddish education as a way to connect people to each other and to their roots. He currently teaches Yiddish and runs a Yiddish Havura in Northampton, MA and teaches middle school math at the Lubavicher Yeshiva Academy in Longmeadow, MA. Naftali will be sharing Yiddish songs from his great-aunt and great grandmother, both of whom were renowned Yiddish singers.

Galeet Dardashti

Mizrahi/MENA/SWANA Consultant, Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2018

Vocalist and scholar, Galeet Dardashti, is the first woman to continue her family’s tradition of distinguished Persian and Jewish musicianship. She has earned a reputation as a trail-blazing performer of Middle Eastern Jewish music as founder and leader of internationally renowned all-female musical group, Divahn, and through her multi-disciplinary commissions, The Naming (Six Points Fellowship), and Monajat (FJC Inaugural Music Commission). Time Out New York has called Dardashti’s work “urgent, heartfelt and hypnotic,” and The Huffington Post described it as “heart-stopping.” As a scholar, she holds a Ph.D. in anthropology, specializing in cultural politics and contemporary Mizrahi music and culture in Israel; she is currently Assistant Professor of Jewish Music & Musician-in-Residence at the Jewish Theological Seminary in Manhattan.

Taya Mâ (Taya Shere)

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2018

Taya Mâ (Taya Shere) plays passionately in the realms of transformative ritual and embodied vocalization. Taya Mâ is co-founder and co-direct of the Kohenet Institute. Her chant albums Wild Earth Shebrew, Halleluyah All Night, Torah Tantrika, and This Bliss have been heralded as “cutting-edge mystic medicine music.” She is co-author of The Hebrew Priestess: Ancient and New Visions of Jewish Women’s Spiritual Leadership and Siddur HaKohanot: A Hebrew Priestess Prayerbook, and is a practitioner of Ancestral Lineage Healing and Somatic Experiencing. Taya Mâ is faculty at Starr-King School for the Ministry, co-leads Makam Shekhina, a multi-religious Jewish/Sufi spiritual community, and mentors emergent spiritual leaders in embodied presence and counter-oppressive devotion. She makes home, music and other magic in the California East Bay, and regularly both teaches and offers private session work online.

Josh Waletzky

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2018

Josh Waletzky is a world-leading Yiddish songwriter, deeply rooted in traditional Yiddish song. For over 50 years Josh has been singing, teaching, and composing Yiddish songs in a variety of settings, this year at the Uriel Weinreich Yiddish Summer Program and at Yiddish New York. Over the past decade, Josh has mentored several of the younger talents on the Yiddish song scene under the auspices of the Center for Traditional Music and Dance (with support from the New York State Council Folk Arts program). And this year marks the start of a new, ongoing project: the Yiddish Singing Society, where Josh leads weekly song-learning sessions.

Aviva Chernick

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2017

Aviva Chernick is an award-winning musician who has brought her voice and presence in performance and prayer to audiences and congregations in North America and across the globe for over a dozen years. She garnered critical acclaim and a devoted following as the lead singer of the twice JUNO-nominated group Jaffa Road and was nominated for a Canadian Folk Music Award for her solo music project, a collection of original songs for prayer entitled Eili: When I Arrived You Were Already There. Inspired by her work as a Ba’alat Tefilah (prayer leader), and by her study of the Balkan Judeo-Spanish tradition under the tutelage of the legendary Flory Jagoda, Aviva has crafted a unique new sound defined by her distinctive vocal presence.  Aviva brings her meditation practice and training in the teaching of this practice to all of her work.  It is in her teaching where Aviva integrates all of her learning, facilitating adventures for freeing the voice and studies of the relationship between song and silence in both secular and faith-based contexts.

Yosef Goldman

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2017

Yosef Goldman is a spiritual artist, musician, pastoral caregiver, and activist passionate about building sacred community. Yosef was ordained as a rabbi in 2013 by the Jewish Theological Seminary with a concentration in pastoral care and counseling and hold a Masters in Sacred Music for JTS and a BA from Yeshiva University.  Raised Orthodox in NYC, Yosef has since taught and facilitated sacred prayer space in communities throughout the Jewish denominational spectrum, including B’nai Jeshurun, Romemu, The Carlebach Shul, and Congregation Beit Simchat Torah. As a singer and percussionist, Yosef has performed and recorded with a wide range of Jewish artists, including Basya Schechter of Pharaoh’s Daughter, Shir Yaakov, Kirtan Rabbi and The Miami Boys Choir, and has curated showcases for the Sephardic Music Festival. He currently performs as a vocalist with Joey Weisenberg and the Hadar Ensemble, and with the Middle Eastern Jewish music ensemble the Epichorus. He is a founding member of the Philadelphia Jewish music collective the Shir Singing Circle, and Creative Advisor to Mechon Hadar’s Rising Song Institute. Yosef is a rabbi at Temple Beth Zion-Beth Israel in Philadelphia where he lives with his wife, Rabbi Annie Lewis, and their daughter, Zohar.

Ramón Tasat

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2017

Ramón Tasat was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina and has studied at the Latin American Rabbinical Seminary, the Manuel de Falla Conservatory of Music and the University of Texas at Austin, where he received a Doctorate degree in Voice Performance. Ramón has toured Europe with world-renowned Dr. Robert Shaw, and he has participated in international festivals on both sides of the Atlantic. In addition to television and radio appearances, Ramón has been the recipient of numerous awards including First Place at the Montpelier Cultural Arts Center’s Recital Competition and a National Endowment of the Arts Grant.

Daphna Mor

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2016

Daphna Mor has performed throughout Europe and the United States as both a soloist and ensemble player. Mor’s “astonishing virtuosity” (Chicago Tribune) has been heard in solo recitals in the United States, Croatia, Germany and Switzerland. She has performed as a soloist with the New York Collegium, the New York Early Music Ensemble and Little Orchestra Society, and as a member of the orchestra with the New York Philharmonic, New York City Opera and Orchestra of St. Luke’s. Mor was awarded First Prize in the Settimane Musicali di Lugano Solo Competition and the Boston Conservatory Concerto Competition, and has appeared in a duo with Joyce DiDonato on the singer’s promotional tour for the album In War and Peace. Devoted to new music, Mor has recorded on John Zorn’s Tzadik label, and has performed the world premiere of David Bruce’s Tears, Puffes, Jumps, and Galliard with the Metropolis Ensemble. Also active in the world music community, Mor has performed in festivals and on stages worldwide, including New York’s Summer Stage and Munich’s Gasteig. She can also be heard on Sting’s album If On A Winter’s Night for Deutsche Grammophon. Mor serves as the Music Director of Beineinu, a New York initiative dedicated to the modern cultivation of Jewish culture, and is a performer and teacher of liturgical music of the Jewish diaspora. She leads programs for the Education Department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Hazzan Jessi Roemer

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2016

Hazzan Jessi Roemer is a composer, prayer-leader, leader of community song, and performer of Jewish World Music. She has performed and taught, solo and with her ensemble, EZUZ, in several U.S. cities, in Israel/Palestine, Europe, Canada, and New Zealand. A second-generation hazzan, Jessi grew up in the Washington D.C. area, surrounded by her mother's Yiddish, Hebrew, and American Folk music, cantorial melodies, and the Bluegrass-Klezmer music of the Fabrangen Fiddlers. Her music is also influenced by American blues, pop, and jazz, and Sweet Honey in the Rock. Reflecting her roots, influences, studies, and travels - which include having spent the 90s living in Jerusalem - Jessi's music is a 21st-century hybrid of European, Middle Eastern, Sephardic, North and South American styles. A founding member of the Philadelphia Shir Singing Circle and a member of several other Philadephia music organizations, Jessi has been delightedly involved with Let My People Sing since 2016. Ordained by ALEPH: The Alliance for Jewish Renewal, Jessi is the Hazzan of Society Hill Synagogue in Center City Philadelphia, PA. More information, recordings, and video at www.jessiroemer.com.

Joey Weisenberg

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2016

A virtuosic multi-instrumental musician, singer, and composer, Joey Weisenberg has devoted himself to opening up the sounds of people singing together in community. The founder and director of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute, which aims to cultivate the grassroots musical-spiritual creativity of the Jewish people, Joey works to educate and train communities around the world to unlock their musical-spiritual potential and make music a vibrant, joy-filled force in Jewish life. Joey is the author of Building Singing Communities, a practical guide to bringing people together in song, as well as The Torah of Music, a treasury of Jewish teachings and insights about the spiritual nature of music, which received the National Jewish Book Award in 2017. A devoted student and teacher of ancient and traditional Jewish melodies, Joey composes new nigunim that have moved and inspired Jews around the world. He has released eight albums of original music, most recently L’eila, available on Rising Song Records.

Cantor George Mordechai

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2016

Cantor George Mordechai weaves his rich cultural heritage into his work as a performer and cantor. Born in Sydney, Australia to Iraqi Jews from India and Singapore, he was immersed in the musical and liturgical traditions of his family. Prior to receiving Cantorial investiture from the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York, George worked for many years at the Emanuel synagogue.

George has performed Sephardic and Judeo-Iraqi liturgical repertoire in concert halls and synagogues around the world and was also a member of the Renaissance Players, a Sydney based renowned early music ensemble.

Katie Down

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2015

Katie Down is a licensed music psychotherapist and sound meditation teacher in NY. She also is a multi-instrumentalist, playing in a variety of genres including Sephardic, Balkan, jazz, classical and improvised music and is the co-founder of the Sephardic ensemble Sofie Salonika and the infamous ukulele group The Ukuladies! Katie plays glass and other homemade instruments with NewBorn Trio which has been commissioned to create a sound score for the theatrical production of Haruki Murakami's short story, "Sleep" to be premiered at the BAM Next Wave Festival in 2017.  Katie taught traditional songs in Ladino at Let My People Sing with her collaborator Jessica Lurie in 2015. 

Rabbi Andrew Hahn

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2015

Rabbi Andrew Hahn, Ph.D. has pioneered Kirtan in the Jewish world, offering communal call-and-response chant concerts and meditation seminars around the world. He has been teaching tai ch’i and related arts for more than forty years. He seamlessly combines chant, movement, meditation and text study into a positive, holistic experience. He is resident faculty at Clal in New York. KirtanRabbi.com 

Shoshana Jedwab

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2015

As a child, Shoshana would drum on parked cars, plates, tables, books and other people's bodies. Hailing from a family of rabbis and community leaders decimated by the Holocaust, Shoshana became a prize winning Jewish Studies Day School teacher, and the Jewish Life Coordinator at the A.J. Heschel School. Shoshana also holds down the beat as ritual drummer and worship leader for Kohenet, Romemu, LabShul, Kirtan Rabbi and the Isabella Freedman Jewish Retreat Center. Shoshana Jedwab is also a liturgist and singer-songwriter. The original songs of Shoshana's July 2016 album, “I Remember”, and upcoming recording, “Where You Go”, are being sung in churches, synagogues, weddings and marches across the country.  Shoshana Jedwab was included in Jewish Rock Radio's Jewish Women Who Rock the Worship World.

Jessica Lurie

Advisory Circle, Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2015

Jessica Lurie (ALTO SAX /FLUTE /ELECTRONICS ) is a multi-instrumentalist performer and composer based in Brooklyn, NY and Seattle, WA. She embraces a wide range of musical influences, including funk, blues, eastern-European folk musics and improvisation-heavy jazz. She leads the Jessica Lurie Ensemble, Tiptons Sax Quartet & Drums and several other groups.Jessica participated in LMPS’s first summer retreat as an instructor of Sephardic music with Katie Down and has been an enthusiastic supporter ever since! She has performed and collaborated with musical icons in the traditional and experimental Jewish music scene, including John Zorn, Frank London, Jenny Romaine, Susan Watts, David Krakauer, Michael Winograd, Basya Shechter, Jon Madof’s Zion80, Jewlia Eisenberg, Shira Kline and Naomi Less of LabShul. She currently finishing Sofie Salonika's album of Sephardic and original compositions to be released in 2023. www.jessicalurie.com

Dr. Samuel Torjman Thomas

Summer Retreat Lead Teacher 2015

Dr. Samuel Torjman Thomas teaches ethnomusicology, jazz studies, Sephardic (Jewish) studies, and interdisciplinary studies at the City University of New York (John Jay College and Hunter College). He is a professional multi-instrumentalist (saxophone, oud, vocals, nay, clarinet, percussion), composer, and bandleader. As an artist-scholar, his work centers on musics of the Middle East and North Africa, worldwide Jewish musical traditions, jazz traditions, American popular music, and social justice movements and music. Dr. Torjman Thomas is bandleader of ASEFA, ASEFA-Jazz, and Traveling in Pairs, as well as artistic director of the New York Andalus Ensemble – a multiethnic large ensemble featuring a choir and instrumentalists performing traditional musics of North Africa and Spain, in Hebrew, Arabic, and Spanish.

Dr. Samuel Torjman Thomas is also a faculty member in both the ALEPH and Academy of Jewish Religion Cantorial Programs, as well as Director of Musical Arts at Brooklyn’s Sephardic Community Center (JCC). He is a frequent guest speaker and facilitator in ecumenical spaces, cultural institutions, and music and spiritual retreats worldwide.