In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing
About the dark times.
- Bertolt Brecht
Singing in the Dark: A Miknaf Chanukah Fundraiser
Thursday 22nd December, 7:30pm GMT, on Zoom
Here we are, in the dark times, edging towards the longest night of the year, a quarter of the way through Kislev, the Hebrew month of dreams. Kislev's Torah is about what can be revealed from the murkey depths - dreams for instance, the extraordinary brilliance of funghi.... The dark a blanket and an invitation, allowing us to dream deeper, to incubate, to rest. And of course to gather with loved ones and to sing round fire and candlelight.
Well, we have an invitation for you... On the 22nd December, on the fifth night of Chanukah, we will be gathering community close for a virtual night of song and story. We will be joined by some very special guests from across these isles, including renowned storyteller Kohenet Rachel Rose Reid, wonderful Klezmer musicians Ruth Nicholson and Maya & Benjamin Brown, Yiddishist and rising Kohenet Annie Cohen, Yiddish singer and song collector Rachel Weston, and more TBC!
We will be fundraising to support the work of Miknaf Ha'aretz in building wild, radical-diasporist Jewish community in the UK and we'd love to see you there!
Tickets are available here, and are sliding scale, from £7. We ask that you pay whatever amount feels most comfortable to you, there is also an option to add a donation to support our work into the future. No one will be turned away for lack of funds. If these options are not within your budget at this time, please get in touch for a free ticket at: miknafhaaretzzine@gmail.com
If there’s anything else we can do to support your access, presence and comfort at these sessions please let us know at miknafhaaretzzine@gmail.com
**** Artist Bios ****
Rachel Rose Reid
Rachel's work as a writer, storyteller, ritualist, and Kohenet, is bound together by her love of shaking the dust from old narratives and lost histories, so that we can find new connection and understanding in the present. She is Spiritual Educator for Sadeh, England’s only Jewish environmental and farming community, and an award-winning artist who has worked with Billy Bragg, BBC Radio and the London Symphony Orchestra. Rachel is a Rabbinical Student with ALEPH Rabbinical College. Find her work at yelala.co.uk and rachelrosereid.com
Annie Cohen
Annabel Cohen is a 3rd year PhD Student in Modern Jewish History at the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, focusing on the interwar Jewish anti-fascist left. She teaches Yiddish for the London-based language school Babel's Blessing. She is a Yiddish Book Center Yiddish Pedagogy Fellow and has taught and led sessions at the 2022 KlezKanada digital intensive as a Freed Fellow. Alongside her PhD research, Annabel researches and translates materials relating to Jewish women’s religiosity in Eastern Europe, publishing her work on the blog www.pullingatthreads.com. She is teaching a workshop on this topic at Yiddish New York 2022. Her essay on feldmesterins – cemetery measuring women – was published in the recent anthology Strange Fire: Jewish Voices from the Pandemic, published by Ben Yehuda Press in 2021.
Ruth Nicholson
Ruth Nicholson is a pianist and violinist from Sheffield whose wide portfolio of work spans collaborative performance projects, community work, music for dancing, accompaniment, teaching and recording. They collaborated with poet Genevieve Carver to write spoken-word-gig-theatre show A Beautiful Way to be Crazy, which they toured in 2019 and early 2020. Since late 2020 Ruth has been working with queer Jewish performance company Homos and Houmous, and is working on music for the show INCONSOLABLE!, a hilarious tragedy holding a trans lens up to Jewish grief rituals.
Maya & Benji Brown
Maya and Benji Brown are a sister-brother duo whose lives occasionally converge to advance the cause of klezmer music. Maya is a musician currently based in Sheffield, where she teaches violin and works as the Community Development Worker for Sheffield Reform Synagogue. She performs regularly with The Heist Ceilidh Band and Retinal Circus. Benji is based in Edinburgh, where he writes, agitates, and plays guitar and mandolin with the anarcho-klezmer band Och Vey.
Rachel Weston
Rachel Weston is a London and New York based Yiddish singer and song collector. She is currently in her final year training as a Chazzan at New York's Hebrew Union College, where she is the recipient of the Koret Foundation Scholarship, Atara Scholarship for Merit and a Masters in Sacred Music. In the UK she has coordinated and taught Yiddish song and niggunim workshop programmes for the Jewish Music Institute, SOAS, KlezNorth, Klezfest London, WOMAD festival, Limmud, the London Yiddish choir as well as on retreats, conferences and as a private coach. As a performer, she has travelled internationally, including Montreal, Toronto, New York, Weimar, Berlin and Krakow, and hosts cabarets for festivals Klezkanada and Yiddish New York. Rachel is a community workshop facilitator and leads music workshops for elders, particularly people with dementia and their caregivers. She has served as student cantor at Garden City Jewish Center in Long Island for the past three years, as well as being part of the clergy team at Manchester Reform Shul and Edgware Reform Shul in the U.K.