Learn with Cantor Ayelet Porzecanski in the second class of a three-part music series, presented by renowned musician and educator, Robert Cohen, at BHS. “In the highest heavens, there is a certain Temple with gates that can be opened only by the power of song” — So goes a characteristic Hasidic teaching about music. We'll learn and sing Hasidic melodies from various traditions, along with contemporary spiritual melodies (niggunim) — for prayer, meditation, and healing — inspired by Hasidic tradition. Devotional melodies, with and without words, in Hasidic philosophy and spiritual practice — and how such melodies can empower us spiritually. 

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.