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Adults and children will gather at Ansche Chesed for a joyful Havdalah service led by our youth leaders. We'll then work together to prepare sandwiches and assemble meal packages for people in our neighborhood who are hungry and homeless.

We will buy most of the supplies, but we would like to request that attendees who can do so contribute $10 per person (or $25 per family) to help defray the costs. (If you cannot attend but would like to make a donation in support of this program, it would be very much appreciated. To do so, please go to the bottom of this form and enter your donation in the "Additional Donation" field.)

All ages are welcome. We ask that younger children be supervised by their adult during the food preparation.

Join Hazzan Natasha Hirschhorn in spirited congregational singing of the beloved Friday night service melodies enhanced by the rich harmonies provided by the Shirei Chesed Community Chorus at Ansche Chesed. Stay for dinner with friends and raise the roof with soulful and rousing sounds of Zemirot and Niggunim, celebrating love and Shabbat!

With sufficient registration of our younger members, the gym be open for supervised play.

Kabbalat Shabbat Services begin at 5:30pm, followed by dinner and song.

As part of our weekend focusing on the American Jewish Theater experience, join us for Shabbat Dinner and to hear from Ansche Chesed member, and Senior Scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Alyssa Quint for a talk entitled "The Accidental Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater".

As the history books tell us, the modern Yiddish theater was founded in Iasi  Romania in 1876 by Avrom Goldfaden who drew on an energetic tradition of shtetl-bound folk performance.

Indeed, this narrative explains some of this cultural milestone. What other historical factors gave rise to the modern Yiddish theater? Who was Avrom Goldfaden?

And why was a historical accident crucial to the Yiddish theater’s rise?

Alyssa Quint, Senior Scholar at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research and author of The Rise of the Modern Yiddish Theater (Indiana 2019), just named a finalist for the National Jewish Book Award.

Kabbalat Shabbat Services begin at 5:30pm, followed by dinner and the program.

As part of our weekend focusing on the American Jewish Theater experience, please join us for The Ancient Law: A Cine-Concert, with Alicia Svigals and Donald Sosin With an original live score composed and performed by renowned klezmer violinist Alicia Svigals and silent film music legend, pianist Donald Sosin.

Director E.A. DuPont’s 1923 silent film, The Ancient Law (Das Alte Gesetz) is about a rabbi’s son who runs away to become an actor and is disowned by his father. Digitally restored in 2017, it paints a complex portrait of the tension between tradition and modernity, and is an outstanding example of the creativity of Jewish filmmakers in 1920s Germany.

Alicia Svigals (violinist and composer) is the world's leading klezmer violinist and a founder of the Klezmatics. She has performed with and written for violinist Itzhak Perlman, the Kronos Quartet, Debbie Friedman, Osvaldo Golijov, Robert Plant and Jimmy Page, playwrights Tony Kushner and Eve Ensler, filmmaker Judith Helfand, poet Allen Ginsberg and many others. Her live silent film scoring projects, the award-winning The Yellow Ticket and her new score, The Ancient Law (co-composed with Donald Sosin) are touring the world to acclaim. Her CD Fidl (1996) reawakened klezmer fiddle tradition. Her newest CD is Beregovski Suite: Klezmer Reimagined, with jazz pianist Uli Geissendoerfer - an original take on long-lost Jewish music from Ukraine.

Donald Sosin (pianist and composer) has performed his silent film music at Lincoln Center, MoMA, the Kennedy Center, and major film festivals in the US and abroad, including the Denver Silent Film Festival where he was recognized with a lifetime achievement award. He records for Criterion, Kino, Milestone and TCM.He created piano improvisations for Alexander Payne’s Downsizing and has written for network television and radio.  His one-act opera for families, Esther, was performed at the National Yiddish Book Center. Other Jewish music includes a short children's opera, A Parakeet Named Dreidel, Yiddish folk song arrangements, and Three Psalms, premiered in 2009 by the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra.