Learn with Cantor Ayelet Porzecanski in the third class of a three-part music series, presented by renowned musician and educator, Robert Cohen, at BHS. Do songs have the power to change the world? Or do people — from participants in social change movements to people in power — believe they can? We’ll consider these questions as we listen to songs from Colonial America, the Abolition movement, and the Civil Rights struggle; anti- (and pro-) war songs; and songs from the labor and environmental movements — and, perhaps, songs from a few unexpected sources as well.  Along the way:  What makes a protest song "effective" — and what do we mean by that, anyway?

About Robert Cohen: Robert 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, the Jewish Theological Seminary and the Cantors Assembly, and Boston College's Center for Christian-Jewish Learning and School of Theology & Ministry, and at numerous libraries, JCCs. and synagogues — including, numerous times, at this Synagogue! (For some fifteen years, he was also 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.