Looking up from their black binders filled with sheet music, members of the Gunn High School choir were moved by a very special guest in the audience: a Jewish Holocaust survivor from the Czech Republic had come to hear the beautiful melodies ringing out over Prague’s Spanish Synagogue on June 17.
“He was both surprised and deeply touched to hear American students, mostly non-Jewish, singing these songs in a synagogue,” wrote Glen Rosendale, one of the students’ chaperones, on the trip’s blog. “It was a very moving and amazing performance.”
Chorus members, dressed smartly in black and white (tuxedos for the boys, long black dresses and white shawls for the girls), were equally touched.
For Jewish choir member Lauren Hart, the chance to sing for a Holocaust survivor was “incredible.”
“I met him at the end, and it was really great, because my grandparents came from the war in Germany at that time too,” she said.
From June 14 to 22, nearly 100 members of Palo Alto’s Gunn High School choir, along with school staff and chaperones, visited Prague and Vienna to take in the sights of Central Europe — and to perform in some of the cities’ most beautiful venues. Everyone in the choir, from freshmen to seniors, was invited along.
In addition to the Spanish Synagogue (named for its distinctly Spanish architecture), the group sang in Prague’s St. Nicholas Church and St. Peter’s Cathedral in Vienna.
But for Jewish members of the choir, the chance to sing in a synagogue in Prague, where most of the Jewish community was wiped out during the Holocaust, was the experience of a lifetime.
Once numbering 92,000, Prague’s Jewish community now stands at around 1,600. Approximately 200 people came to hear the choir sing in Hebrew and English.
“There were not many Jewish people left in the city, and to have them come to our concerts was really touching,” said Ronit Roodman, who is Jewish.
The Spanish Synagogue is no longer a functioning prayer space, but serves as a concert hall and part of Prague’s Jewish Museum.
Choir director Bill Liberatore put the synagogue on the itinerary at the suggestion of a student’s mother.
The choir has performed in a number of different religious spaces, but being in a synagogue was a new experience. Singing in Hebrew, however, wasn’t.
“I do Hebrew songs all the time — I like the sounds of it,” said Liberatore, who has been the choir director at Gunn for 20 years.
At the synagogue, the choir sang traditional songs such as “Havah Nashirah,” “Lo Yisa Goy” and “Shalom Chaverim,” as well as English songs such as “Go Down Moses” and “City Called Heaven.”
For Hart, a June graduate on her way to Cal Poly San Luis Obispo in the fall, singing in Hebrew has been part of her life for a long time. She became a bat mitzvah at Congregation Beth Am in Los Altos Hills, where she has also led services.
The biggest challenge of singing in the Spanish Synagogue was the absence of a piano, which presented the choir with the opportunity to learn how to sing a capella. Now, noted Liberatore, “we could manage another concert in a place with no equipment.”
Having visited several churches with the group, Jewish choir members were happy to get a chance to sing in a familiar setting — even if it was thousands of miles from home.
“Everything in the synagogue felt familiar, and it was nice to be in contact with a piece of history I could actually connect with instead of looking in from the outside [in the churches],” said Sam Stein, a junior.
The students also visited Jewish historical areas such as Prague’s Jewish cemetery and the Pinkas Synagogue in Prague’s Jewish Museum.
“You’re going to Vienna and Prague, places with huge Nazi history,” Liberatore said. “We didn’t want to go there and ignore that. We didn’t just want to go to cathedrals and sing in Latin.”
Such opportunities do not come cheap; the trip cost $3,000 per student. But Liberatore was determined to take all who wanted to go, regardless of their financial circumstances.
So students raised $50,000 for the trip by doing what they do best — singing.
“Any time anyone was having an event — church services for Martin Luther King Day, Christmas caroling concerts, a huge show in February,” the choir would perform for a fee, Liberatore said. They also sold CDs and asked for donations.
A proponent of helping students get a taste of the world beyond their own community, Liberatore has taken previous Gunn choirs to England, Italy and even Australia.
For Hart, the trip was unforgettable.
“It was interesting to see all the different cultures and get a small taste of it all,” she said.
Staff writer Amanda Pazornik contributed to this report.