An Ethnic Jewish Event

I like a wide variety of cross-cultural events, but am quite pleased when I find an enjoyable Jewish-oriented event that doen't require religiosity. I looked over the event calendar at the Combined Jewish Philanthropies web site for something interesting to do last weekend and found a listing for a Jewish a cappella festival at Brandeis University in Waltham, MA. I had never heard of Jewish a cappella. Surprisingly, I found out when I got there that it is a major phenomenom sweeping college campuses across the nation with significant Jewish enrollment. There was a large crowd of mostly college-aged people trying to get into the large auditorium where the concert was to be held. Arriving 15 minutes early, I managed to get a seat in the last row, but people kept coming in. The concert started 20 minutes late because of the continued arrival of attendees. Rows of chairs were added wherever there was room and latecomers had to stand along the walls. I estimated a crowd of about 450. The first group was called Jewish Fella A Cappella (JFA), from Brandeis University, which got tremendous cheers. However, I was somewhat disappointed in the 8-man group because I didn't hear any outstanding voices and the group did a lot of silly mugging and imitation of Motown chorus steps. The gigantic ovation they got made me wonder if they were popular because they represented the host school or if young strongly-identified Jews (religious and/or ethnic) craved some youth-oriented Jewish entertainment. The next group, Pizmon, was made up of both male and female students from Columbia, Barnard, and the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York. They were clearly better than JFA and used vocal artistry rather than silliness to win over the audience. However, I felt they were pretty good, but not excellent. I had the same feeling about The Shabbatones, a male/female group from the University of Pennsylvania. However, I was very pleasantly surprised by the next group, Manginah, a male/female group from Brandeis. They were truly excellent, and I left feeling good about the event. All the groups sang at least half their songs in Hebrew, and I surmised that they were Israeli popular songs. I missed the last two groups because I had to get home. They included Kaskeset of the University of Binghamton and Varsity Jews from the University of Toronto. The next day, I searched YouTube for Jewish a cappella music and came across the Moscow Male Jewish Cappella group whose version of Adon Olam totally blew me away. I hope you will view and enjoy it. My conclusion about my Jewish a cappella experience is that there's a great craving among strongly-identified Jewish young people for youth-oriented Jewish music (I guess Britney and Beyonce might not appeal to them). There's also rising Jewish art in the former Soviet Union after the fall of Communism. As an ethnic Jew, my heart feels good!