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 past lead teachers below!

2024 Lead teachers

Dodie Whitaker, a dynamic vocal artist from Viroqua, Wisconsin, blends a diverse musical background with infectious enthusiasm and passion for singing into her extensive body of work. A racial justice facilitator with Holistic Resistance since 2021, Dodie has created her latest initiative, Voices Rising Song Circles, to connect and empower communities through collaborative singing, cooperative principles and creative expression. She spent many years as an Artist-in-Residence in the Chicago Public Schools, has held teaching positions at Youth Initiative HIgh School and Western Technical College, and currently serves as an assistant conductor with the RidgeTones community choir. Dodie’s original compositions are heavily influenced by her lived experiences as a biracial Jew of color, while traversing the realms of classical and operatic music, African American spirituals, theater and International folk music to create a truly unique singing experience. Co-author of "Who is Community Singing For?" Dodie has showcased her music at venues and events like Village Fire, House of Blues Chicago and Girls Rock Camp Madison. Excited for her second Let My People Sing retreat, you can connect with Dodie and learn more about her work at www.dodiewhitaker.com.

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 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

2023 Lead Teachers

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 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.

Laura Elkeslassy is a singer, spiritual leader and educator based in Brooklyn. Born and raised in France, with Moroccan and Israeli roots, Laura blends Judeo-Arab, Middle Eastern, and Andalusian repertoires in her music. Her work focuses on reclaiming Moroccan Jewish liturgical traditions and North African musical heritage from a feminist standpoint.

In 2019, Laura began researching Maqam (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 recent release, the multimedia project Ya Ghorbati: Divas in Exile. Developed in collaboration with Ira Khonen Temple, Ya Ghorbati weaves together the stories of Judeo-Arab divas from the last century with original recordings and new performances of folk and sacred music.

Laura has performed music at countless venues including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, El Museo del Barrio, the World Music Institute and has taught sacred as well as folk music across the country. As a spiritual leader, Laura has been active in developing egalitarian Sephardi practice in New York, Boston and Paris over the last fours years.

Laura holds an MFA in Acting from Columbia University and is a multiple-time recipient of Rise Up! Fellowships, New Jewish Culture Fellowship, Rising Leader Fellowship with the Open Society Foundation. This year, Laura was selected as one of New York Jewish Week’s 36 to Watch, a distinction honoring leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers who are making a difference in New York’s Jewish community. Learn more about Laura's work at www.lauraelkeslassy.com

2023 Featured teacher

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

2020 virtual TEACHER

*Anthony Russell was a lead teacher in 2020, and was sadly unable to join us in person for the 2023 retreat due to family obligations. We’ll miss him, and hope to bring Anthony back in person another year!*

Anthony Mordechai Tzvi Russell: 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.

2019 Lead Teachers

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.

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.

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.

2018 Lead Teachers 

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) 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 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.

2017 Lead Teachers

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.

Koach Baruch Frazier, a BlackQueerTransJew is a healer and musician who is working towards the day everyone experiences liberation. He spends his days helping people reconnect with the world around them through better hearing and providing love and support through revolutionary listening. Koach’s heart beats to the rhythm of tikvah, t’shuvah and tzedek.

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 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.

2016 Lead Teachers

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 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: 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 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.

2015 Lead Teachers

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, 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: 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 (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 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.