Every person’s life journey is propelled by their unique families, geographies, experiences, and traditions. In Hebrew, this concept is captured by the phrase l’dor v’dor, literally translated as “from generation to generation.” While the L’dor V’dor prayer directly addresses the imperative to continue to praise G-d into the next generation, modern Jewish practice expands the concept to include imparting customs, collective memories, family lore, recipes, beliefs, and songs. The music in this program was selected with love to reflect my life journey — a journey that started long before I was born by immigrants to the United States from Eastern Europe, Russia, and Italy. The musical selections echo the voices and music of my ancestors and carry on our shared heritage. As we move through the program, I hope you will hear the voices that have shaped my journey and those that will guide my journey forward.

As do many journeys, ours begins at my favorite starting place: My House. The great Jewish American composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein offered this vision of home for a 1950 stage adaptation of Peter Pan that was not intended to be a musical. Yet, his simple lyrics capture not only the home Wendy envisions, but the place we all seek – a shelter of trust, faith, peace and love – and an inspiring start to our journey.

My house was home to more than peace and love; it also was the start of my faith. The next two pieces, both composed by George Frideric Handel, retell foundational Jewish stories that my family celebrates every year. The first selection is from Israel in Egypt, an English oratorio composed in 1738, which captures the tragedy and triumph of the Exodus – a defining journey celebrated and remembered by Jews during morning and evening prayers, weekly Shabbat services, and the annual festival of Passover. Thou Didst Blow in the Wind, from the second act of the oratorio, captures the climatic moment when the Israelites escape to freedom across the Sea of Reeds. The story of the Exodus is central to the Jewish people and to my family’s own traditions, which include a theatrical reenactment of the opening of the Sea of Reeds during our annual Passover seder.

The second Handel piece comes from the first-ever English oratorio, Esther, and retells the story of Purim. This holiday commemorates Queen Esther saving her people from genocide when a King’s advisor, Haman, ordered the brutal extermination of all Jews in the kingdom. Praise the Lord with Cheerful Noise is sung in the second scene of the oratorio by an Israelite woman, thankful that a Jewish woman had become queen. The story of Esther is one of the earliest historical stories that celebrates the bravery and leadership of a woman, and has served as an inspiration to women throughout the world. It also is one that I have been retelling since I was in first grade in various Purim shpiels, which have been musical parodies of Broadway shows such as Mary Poppins, Wicked, and Hamilton. Indeed, the Purim shpiels were my first regular musicals, performed in my synagogue just before we delivered homemade holiday gifts (mishloach manot) to friends and family.

The next stop on our journey takes us to Italy, the home of my grandfather until, alone at 21, he immigrated to the new Promised Land of America. La Promessa (the Promise) was composed by Gioachino Rossini, and features a poem written by Pietro Metastasio in which the speaker professes deep and enduring love, the type of abiding love that transcends distance and generations . . . and that may explain why so many immigrant children and grandchildren remain nostalgic for a homeland they never knew. Written as part of Soirées Musicales, the first collection of songs developed by Rossini after he intentionally stopped writing for the stage, the piece is nonetheless quite a theatrical canzonetta, a light vocal work of a style that originated in Italy but soon spread to much of Europe.

Although the canzonetta became a notable Italian export, we cannot leave Italy without acknowledging a different Italian innovation that would become a foundational element of Western music tradition. Opera originated in Florence near the turn of the seventeenth century, and soon, like our next composer, became known the world over. Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart composed Un Moto di Gioia (An Emotion of Joy) during a 1789-90 Viennese revival of what remains one of the world’ s most performed Italian operas, Le Nozze di Figaro (The Marriage of Figaro), in order to accentuate the vocal talents of a particular leading lady. Though its lyrics are those of Figaro’s affianced, their hope that “happiness is coming in spite of my fears” is the prayer of immigrants everywhere – that today’s struggles shall lead to dancing tomorrow.

The final Italian stop on our journey even more directly captures the joy of the dance – and another part of my Italian heritage. La Danza, our second work from Rossini’ s Soirées Musicales, features the tarantella, a dance originated in the Kingdom of Two Sicilies that always verges one step from chaos. When I first visited my Italian relatives, I was struck by how they, from the toddlers to the grandmothers, would break into dance given the slightest musical provocation. So this quintessentially Italian patter song is my tribute to festive family gatherings, as well as how the tarantella inspired derivative works as diverse as American big band hits to piano classics by Franz Liszt and Frederic Chopin.

The connection between the Italian tarantella and Frederic Chopin mirrors my own lineage, which includes both Italy and eastern Europe. Like the great Chopin, our next composer – Max Helfman – was born in what once had been, and is now again, Poland. And like my paternal grandmother’s Polish grandparents, Helfman was one of millions of eastern European immigrants to the United States during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Despite leaving Europe when only eight years old, Helfman would continue to remember his ancestral homeland. One of his most memorable works would be a cantata recounting the heroic but doomed World War II uprising of the Jewish ghetto in Warsaw against the Nazis. Over his long career at notable posts with synagogues and Jewish institutions, Helfman also regularly preserved the distinctive sound of traditional eastern European religious music. For example, our next piece, Helfman’s Sh’ma Koleinu (Hear Our Voices), emulates the emotional and mystical style of many traditional eastern European hazzans. Its opening phrase is an unapologetic cry to the heavens, an expressed yearning for G-d to hear and to accept our prayers.

Helfman is not alone in having preserved the Ashkenazi musical heritage of Eastern European Jews. Michael Isaacson, a founder of the Milken Archive of Jewish Music, composed hundreds of works that have helped to define the music of American Reform Judaism. One example of Isaacson’s incorporation of Ashkenazi tradition into American Jewish music can be found in the opening lines of Isaacson’ssetting for the prayer of Sim Shalom (Grant Us Peace), which is commonly sung toward the end of the morning and afternoon service in some traditions, and asks G-d to grant peace, blessing, goodness, grace, loving-kindness, and mercy.

Robbie Solomon’s Yismechu (They Shall Rejoice) also integrates traditional Ashkenazi chazzanut (melodies). Famed for both his liturgical choral works and synagogue repertoire, Solomon has successfully integrated Jewish musical traditions into the modern Jewish liturgy, including his rendition of this ancient Hebrew text. A personal favorite, Yismechu is a joyful prayer that reminds us to rejoice in Shabbat, for G-d hallowed it as the most precious of days. For the past three years, leading Kesher, Princeton’s Reform community, in this prayer has been the epitome of Shabbat joy for me. Solomon’s rendition of Yismechu embodies the happiness of the holiday through its upbeat tempo and dramatic verses reminiscent of so much of the Reform cantorial tradition.

Just as Solomon used dynamic lyrics and a driving chorus to capture the meaning of Yismechu, Canadian composer, conductor, and educator Ben Steinberg used a sweet melody and a more gentle, flowing style to symbolize the peace that is the hope of Shalom Rav (Abundant Peace) and of generations of Jews. Steinberg, who passed away just last year, is perhaps the most commissioned composer of Jewish music, including choral arrangements of the complete Torah Service. His Shalom Rav (the original prayer was thought to have originated with Ashkenazi Jews in about the 11th century) is now sung in synagogues across North America, and beloved for its lilting ¾ time as well as its use of call-and-response to encourage participation in this essential prayer for peace by all who may hear it.

An even more powerful work – Stephen Richards’ R’tzei (Please Accept These Prayers) – draws upon the emotional intensity common to eastern European Jewish music. Richards, with a background in both musical theater and liturgical composition, expertly combines traditional Ashkenazi tropes with a melody and choral line that could just as easily be heard on a Broadway stage. He uses long, legato lines to embody the prayer’s messenger: asking G-d to receive and accept our prayers. This particular rendition of R’tzei holds a special place in my heart, as it has followed me from my time leading services at my home congregation of Temple Rodef Shalom, to High Holy Day services at Princeton, to Temple Emanu-El in NYC, to my audition for cantorial school, and now, to my Senior Vocal Recital– and it continues to speak to me as a reminder of what matters.

Just as the R’tzei pleads with G-d to treat our prayers and offerings as acceptable, millions of nineteenth century Jewish immigrants hoped that America – unlike so many other countries throughout history – would accept their presence and what they had to offer. Indeed, even as my relatives from Poland, Lithuania, and Russia were hoping for acceptance in their new homes in Rhode Island or New York City’s Lower East Side, the children of eastern European Jews, like Irving Berlin, George and Ira Gershwin, Harold Arlen, Yip Harburg, Irving Caesar, and many others, were offering their musical traditions to Tin Pan Alley. Their collective heritage and genius helped to shape the music beloved by Americans for decades. As the great American songwriter Cole Porter (himself born in Indiana, wealthy and Episcopalian) once remarked to Richard Rodgers, the secret of success in American music was simple: just “write Jewish tunes.”

Two of these great Jewish American songwriters were Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick. Although both Bock and Harnick were born in the United States, their families were eastern European Jews. Their master work, Fiddler on the Roof, depicts the struggles of the Jewish milkman Tevye and his family in a small shtetl in czarist Russia. In our next song, Far from the Home I Love, Tevye’s middle daughter, Hodel, agonizes over one of the most painful choices of many immigrants – to stay with their family in the only place they have ever known, or to join a beloved somewhere far away. Its complex and haunting melody shifts between minor and major keys, with a challenging diminished fifth in its penultimate interval, which musically expresses the dilemma of two loves in two different locations before the unhappy resolution, or resignation, of the final note.

The sorrows of Fiddler do not end with Hodel’s departure. Growing antisemitism, a violent pogrom, and, ultimately, a czarist decree compels what remains of Tevye’s family to risk the dangerous journey to new lands, including America. Indeed, these last scenes recall the tale of my maternal grandmother’s family, when the intentional destruction of their business – a flour mill – forced the survivors to risk the journey to America.

Later Jewish American songwriters recognized that hate was not limited to small towns in czarist Russia. Despite Tony Awards for best book and best score in 1999, Parade debuted to only a brief run on Broadway. The emotionally charged story of the unfair conviction and subsequent lynching of a Jewish man in Georgia during World War I remains uncomfortable today, perhaps because discrimination and antisemitism remain all too relevant. Jason Robert Brown’s music and powerful lyrics contributed to the musical again winning this year’s Tony for the best revival, including our next song, You Don’t Know This Man, in which the wife of the wrongly convicted man chastises a reporter for not telling the real story.

Still, Jewish American lyricists and composers have continued to recognize that, with all its challenges, the United States remained a land of hope. The great musical team of Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein, both of Jewish descent, defended this sentiment in their musical South Pacific and the song Cockeyed Optimist, which challenges the conventional wisdom to disparage hope in a cheerful number set, in all places, in the middle of World War II.

But these Jewish American creators did not forget their heritage. Sheldo Harnick related that Jerry Bock wrote the music for their charming 1963 musical, She Loves Me, set in Budapest, largely based on his own family’s Jewish Hungarian memories – which apparently included joyful insights about love over a bowl of Vanilla Ice Cream. On a personal note, this show also holds many happy memories for me; it is my senior project for my Music Theater certificate here at Princeton, and I would be delighted if you could join our incredible cast on March 29, March 30, April 5, or April 6, to see our modern take of this real musical in a virtual world.

Finally, no journey through the generations of what has become Jewish American music would be complete without a mention of one final musical genius. Stephen Sondheim learned to write musicals from one of his neighbors, who happened to be Oscar Hammerstein. He took the musical into the next generation, exploring places such as nineteenth-century Japan and a murderous barbershop in eighteenth-century London, where his unyielding craftsmanship was able to inspire a new generation of creators. Our last song is a love song set in New York City, in what would have been Sondheim’s first Broadway musical, Saturday Night, if its production was not unexpectedly delayed by 40-plus years. Not coincidentally, New York City is also where I will spend most of my next five years, training to become a cantor, a Jewish clergyperson, at Hebrew Union College. While my future Saturdays may be spent singing prayers, rather than Italian opera or Broadway musicals, they will nonetheless be enriched because of the coming together of cultures that has made my family, religion, and country what they are. And with all that love and joy, What More Do I Need? Thank you all for being part of my journey.

Madeleine LeBeau hails from Chantilly, Virginia, and began her classical voice journey studying with Nancy MacArthur Smith. Madeleine has placed in national and international vocal competitions and adjudications, including the National Association of Teachers of Singing (NATS), the National Federation of Music Clubs, the Bland Music Scholarship Competition, and the American Fine Arts Festival International Music Competition in Romantic Music. These competitions brought her to perform on many stages, including Carnegie Hall in 2019. At Princeton, Madeleine is currently a Senior in the History Department receiving certificates in Judaic Studies, Theater, Music Theater, and Vocal Performance. She has studied voice with Martha Elliott for the past four years. Madeleine was a member of the Glee Club for two years before she joined Playhouse Choir in 2022, where she is currently serving as the Performance Director and Student Conductor. Madeleine is very active in theater and performing arts on campus and serves as the Chair of the Theater Program Student Advisory Committee, the immediate past Vice President of the Princeton Triangle Club, a writer for the Triangle Club, an executive board member of the Princeton University Players, and the prior President and Music Director of Koleinu, Princeton’s oldest and only Jewish a cappella group.

Outside of performing arts, Madeleine is very active in the Kesher Reform Jewish community, leading weekly services and serving as President/Co-President for four years. Madeleine has served as a cantorial soloist at her home synagogue, Temple Rodef Shalom, and at Har Sinai Temple in Pennington, New Jersey. She is also an Undergraduate Research Fellow for the Princeton Center for Culture, Society, and Religion. Madeleine has been accepted to Hebrew Union College -Jewish Institute of Religion, Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music for their cantorial ordination program where she will continue her studies after Princeton.

Vince di Mura is a concert jazz pianist, composer, arranger and musical director; appearing on concert stages and theatres throughout North America, Canada, Europe and Latin America. He is currently the Resident Musical Director and Composer for the Lewis Center of the Arts at Princeton University, where he has served since 1987. He has an extensive history as a musical director and has conducted seasons in virtually every region of the United States. Best known for his arrangements for Summerwind Productions, including “My Way. A Tribute to the Music of Frank Sinatra,” which has had over 1200 production since its creation in 2000. Mr. di Mura has fulfilled numerous compositional commissions from universities and arts organizations and has authored “A Conversation With The Blues: ” A 14 part web instructional series on improvisation through the Blues, produced by Soundfly Inc. He holds composition and jazz fellowships from the William Goldman Foundation, Meet the Composer, the New Jersey State Council on the Arts and the Mid-Atlantic Arts Foundation. Mr. di Mura has 8 CDs on the market including his most recent releases “Nostalgia” and “Serendipity” with Summer Breeze, Chinese Jazz Fusion Ensemble for whom he serves as the arranger/ musical director and pianist.