Voices of Joy at Adath Israel

This Sunday afternoon at 1 p.m., Congregation Adath Israel presents "A Jewish A Cappella Concert" featuring Magevet (Yale) and Shir Appeal (Tufts).  Both groups have a long history of performing on campus, in Congregations and concert halls in the United States and around the world.  The concert takes place in the small sanctuary on the first floor of the synagogue.  If you look closely at the poster above, you'll see that the concert is being billed as "Elephants and Towels" -  read on.

Shir Appeal (pictured above) was founded in 1995 and is the only mixed-gender vocal group on the Tufts campus.  They perform a wide range of material, from Israeli classics (such as "Yerushalayam Shel Zahav" to Sabbath prayers ("Lecha Dodi") to contemporary songs ("Like The Dawn" by The Oh Hellos) by arranged by members and former members of the ensemble.   The mix of voices, harmonies, beats, and more makes Shir Appeal's music attractive to listeners of all ages and faiths. The ensemble has issued 10 CDs with the latest being 2016's "Perspective."  To find out more, go to www.shirappeal.com.  Tufts University mascot is Jumbo the Elephant - go to www.tufts.edu/about/jumbo to find out more about the monicker and the story behind it.

Magevet (above) has also been in existence since the mid-1990s, one of many vocal groups on the Yale campus.  Their repertoire also ranges from liturgical melodies to contemporary Israeli pop songs to pieces sung in Ladino (a combination of Spanish and Portuguese with Hebrew, Aramaic, Ottoman Turkish languages) to Yiddish classics.  Various versions of Magevet, (a Hebrew word that translates to "towel" - maybe they will explain - well, they better), have recorded eight albums since 1995, the latest being "Naveh Katan (a Small Oasis)" released in late 2016.  For more information, go to magevet.weebly.com.  

The concert is free and open to the public.  Thanks goes to the Edythe and Arthur Director Family Music Fund for sponsoring the concert. The goal of the Fund is to provide members of the Adath Israel community as well as the Greater Middletown community access to entertainment from around the world, artists and performers who work to illustrate the great scope of Jewish culture.  

Parking directly behind Adath Israel, 8 Broad Street, is not allowed but there is plenty of free on-street parking as well as several parking lots in the area (for instance, the lot behind the former Wesleyan bookstore on William Street or several lots off of Church Street). 

For more information, call the Synagogue office at 860-346-4709.  

Middletown Resident Taken Into Custody In Yale Slaying Case

A Middletown man, Raymond Clark, was taken into custody last night by New Haven police at his apartment in the Wharfside Commons development on Ferry Street.

Cheap Date

In the last month Middletown friends recommended to my husband and I that we to go to New Haven and see "Endless Forms: Charles Darwin, Natural Science and the Visual Arts," an exhibit at the Yale Center for British Art. Acting on that tip, my husband and I took a day off of work and went to New Haven for lunch and stopped in at a couple of the museums on the Yale campus. Being a procrastinator it’s taken me longer than I hoped to pass on that same tip to you to go see the Darwin Show, which runs through May 3. To quote the British Art Center literature “this interdisciplinary exhibition focuses on the interchange between the theories of Charles Darwin and art of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.” The exhibit includes quite a few items from the Yale Peabody Museum as well as Darwin’s notes, photographs from other scientists working at the same time and beautiful paintings and sculptures that illustrate Darwin’s theories. On the day we spent in New Haven we also went to the recently renovated Yale Art Gallery, across the street from the British Art Center. Currently on exhibit is "Tea Culture of Japan: Chanoyu Past and Present," which ends this coming weekend.

Yale University Galleries are free and if you hurry down by this Friday, April 24, you can catch restaurant week in New Haven. A prix fixe lunch can be had for $16.38 (the year New Haven was founded) and $29 will get you dinner. My only experience with a restaurant week was during a recent trip to Boston during their restaurant week. I can only say the food we had was fabulous and the price was right. While I’m thinking about this – could we put together a restaurant week in Middletown?


When looking up the dates for these exhibits in New Haven, I found the website http://www.infonewhaven.com/that lists all the happenings in New Haven . The website also has more information on which restaurants are participating in restaurant week with links to their websites.