Alumni Chorale Weekend

Martha Moody Jacobs

Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

There are 30-odd chairs on the bima at Beth Abraham. Behind them hangs a blue and white banner that reads: Beth Abraham Youth Chorale, Dayton, Ohio. G-d respects me when I work, but He loves me when I sing.

Former youth choir members, a number of them with tears in their eyes, come down the aisle to fill the chairs. Accompanying them is the man they are honoring, Cantor Jerry Kopmar, the chorale’s founder, guiding light, and sometime taskmaster — who appears pretty emotional himself.

On this Saturday night, the Selichot service is part of the Beth Abraham Youth Chorale alumni weekend, a series of celebrations organized by Elaine Arnovitz and five other choir alumni.

The next day, there will be a reunion with singing, reminiscences, and tributes to Kopmar and his wife, Goldye.

Choir members have come from all over the country for the event, memorializing, as Marsha Golieb Weisel of St. Louis says, “the best thing that most of us ever did.”

“It’s Cantor Kopmar’s 70th birthday,” says Janice Cohen Krochmal, another alumna. “We wanted to honor his dedication and hard work.”

The Beth Abraham Youth Chorale existed from 1971 to 1983 and was arguably the preeminent Jewish youth choir in the nation. Members, ages 9-18, came from all the local synagogues. Girls outnumbered boys, three to one.

The chorale comprised three ensembles: a Shabbat choir of 60-70, a tour choir of about 40, and a smaller chamber choir. The choir performed all over the United States, in England, and on two trips to Israel.

Each year, the chorale commissioned, premiered, and recorded a new work of Jewish music.

“It was what I did,” Kopmar says of founding and maintaining the chorale. “I was young and ambitious.”

Chorale members had to be committed. Practices were Sunday afternoons and up to two other days a week; members could be kicked out for misbehaving. Kopmar admits he was demanding.

The payoff was pride, public appreciation, a bevy of prizes, and, perhaps most importantly, experience. On its second trip to Israel, the chorale performed for an audience that included Moshe Dayan, Golda Meir, and Menachem Begin.

“We were kids,” Weisel says. “We didn’t realize what a big deal it was.”

“We really weren’t great singers,” she confides.

“They were ordinary kids,” Kopmar concurs. “I think my selection (in auditions) was very, very generous. But they had to work, and they worked hard.”

“I called (the choir) education through the back door. Teaching them without being force-fed, they learned through music. The Holocaust, High Holidays, Shabbat, Yiddish — there isn’t a subject in Judaism we didn’t cover.”

For the choir members, the group was an immersion experience.

“It was singing, traveling, being a family, learning to live Jewishly,” Krochmal recalls. “Even in high school, I knew that this was forever.”

“The choir was our life,” says Krochmal’s sister, Leslie Cohen Zukowsky, who sang with the chorale from 1971-77. “Those years…the beginning…. was amazing — basically our Jewish education.”

The choir supported itself through sales of bagels and their own records. Their 1977 trip to Israel cost $100,000 — “a lot of bagels,” says Kopmar.

Randy Goodman, now living in South Carolina, calls the choir “our Jewish identity.” To stay in the choir once his voice changed, Goodman learned to sing falsetto. He recalls being staggered when, after a performance of I Never Saw a Butterfly — a piece including six poems by children who died at the Terezin concentration camp — a member of the audience who’d survived Terezin stood up.

Choir members learned responsibility and leadership.

“High school kids looking after 9- and 10-year-olds,” muses Kopmar. “It was a beautiful thing to see.”

Kopmar disbanded the choir in 1983. “I was burned out, in a sense. I wanted to explore new things. I always said, ‘If I’m going to end it, I’m going to end it when it’s still good.’”

At the choir reunion on Sunday, Kopmar stands in front of his former students. The room feels like a bubbling soup pot of happiness, affection, and eagerness to please. Certain “Kopmarian” phrases are recalled, to peals of laughter:

• “You need to sing with your kishkes.”

• “If you can’t carry it, don’t pack it.”

• “If you can’t reach the note, just mouth it.”

“I used to hear only the flaws in our records,” Kopmar says. “Now, I listen and I can’t believe it. It just blows my mind.”

© 2006 The Dayton Jewish Observer