December 11, 2025 Hidden Light: Hannukah Melodies Lost and Found

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Hidden Light: Hannukah Melodies Lost and Found with Yosef Goldman, Hankus Netsky, Jessica Kate Meyer, Abigale Reisman, and Nadav Brenner

Join us on Thursday, December 11, 2025 for a Soul Sounds Hannukah concert. Bless darkness, seek light, and play in shadows with twinkling melodies and stories from around the Jewish world. Featuring Yosef Goldman, Jankus Netsky, Jessica Kate Meyer, Abigale Reisman, Nadav Brenner, and Grant Smith.  

6:30 PM Latkes and sufganiyot
7:00 PM Concert and song circle

With deep gratitude to our series sponsors Jack, Joseph and Morton Mandel Foundation; Suzanne Priebatsch; Susan and James Snider; Diane Troderman; and an anonymous donor.

musicians

Rabbi Yosef Goldman is a composer, vocalist, educator, and prayer leader whose work bridges ancient Jewish devotional traditions with contemporary spiritual creativity. He accompanies congregations and clergy in cultivating vibrant prayer and musical-spiritual life, drawing on deep rabbinic experience in chaplaincy, education, and communal leadership.

As a ritual artist, Yosef blends sacred music from his Mizrahi and Ashkenazi heritage with contemporary American and Israeli Jewish sounds to inspire healing, connection, and social transformation. His two acclaimed albums—Open My Heart (2019) and Abitah (2023)—were released on Rising Song Records and are sung in communities and camps across North America and Israel. A longtime member of the Hadar Ensemble, Yosef has contributed to dozens of recordings across the Jewish music landscape. He teaches Sephardic and Mizrahi piyyut at the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music at HUC-JIR in New York City.

Yosef is co-founder of Kedmah, an ensemble and educational initiative dedicated to elevating the spiritual and artistic legacy of Jews from Arab lands through ancient poetry, music, and story. Their debut album, Simu Lev (2024), was met with wide acclaim. Yosef lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Rabbi Annie Lewis, and their two children.

Hankus Netsky is multi-instrumentalist, composer, and ethnomusicologist. He is co-chair of New England Conservatory’s Contemporary Musical Arts Department, founder and director of the Klezmer Conservatory Band, and former Vice President for Education at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, MA. He has composed extensively for film, theater, and television, collaborated closely with Itzhak Perlman, Robin Williams, and Joel Grey to name a few. He has taught at McGill University, Hampshire College, Wesleyan University, Hebrew College, and for Silkroad’s Global Musician Workshops. His essays on Jewish and improvisational music have been published by the University of California Press, the University of Pennsylvania Press, Indiana University Press, the University of Scranton Press, Hips Roads, and the University Press of America. He edited “The Hoffman Book,” a collection of 161 klezmer tunes that formed the basis of Philadelphia’s early 20th Century klezmer repertoire published in 2023, and Temple University Press published his book Klezmer, Music and Community in 20th Century Jewish Philadelphia in 2015.

Rabbi Jessica Kate Meyer `14, Hebrew College Rosh Tefillah & Artist-in-Residence, is a prayer leader, storyteller, vocalist, and rabbi, who served as rabbi-hazzan at Romemu in NYC, and most recently, at The Kitchen in San Francisco. She has studied sacred Jewish music with masters from Ashkenazi and Mizrahi traditions and has performed as a vocalist with ensembles in the United States and Israel. In a previous life, Jessica appeared in film, theater, and television projects in Europe and the United States: most notably, as a principal role in the Oscar-winning film, The Pianist.

Abigale Reisman is a violinist, composer, improviser, and educator. She is a co-founder of Thread Ensemble, an experimental trio that creates music out of interactions with their audiences. She is a member of Tredici Bacci, which was featured in Rolling Stone’s “10 Artists You Need to Know: November 2016”. She is also a composer, arranger, and performer in the International Jewish Music Festival award winning band, Ezekiel’s Wheels Klezmer Band. Abigale earned her Bachelor’s degree at The Manhattan School of Music in Classical Violin Performance and went on to receive her Master’s degree at The New England Conservatory in Contemporary Improvisation. She has toured the world performing klezmer, classical, pop, and experimental music. Abigale has had the privilege to share the stage with great musicians such as Father John Misty, David Krakauer, Amanda Palmer, Jeffery Zeigler, Sarah Jarosz, Hankus Netsky, The Ballroom Thieves, and Anthony Coleman.

Nadav Brenner is a Boston-based guitarist, composer, and songwriter blending jazz, folk, and improvised music. A graduate of NEC, he’s led projects from duos to big band, and played top venues in Tel Aviv, Boston, and New York. His debut album מרחוק (From Afar) features originals songs and composed poems in Hebrew, recorded live with a jazz piano trio & string quartet.

Grant Smith studied drumset with Alan Dawson, Arabic drums with Jamie Haddad, tabla with Kazi Jalal, Afro-Cuban percussion with Enrique Pla, and Handance with Glen Velez. The Boston Globe calls him a “brilliant improviser.” The Boston Phoenix has noted his topflight “cross-genre ” abilities. He has toured extensively, including Thailand, Australia, and both Europes, and is involved in many world music, jazz, classical, and dance projects in Boston and New York. His theatre credits include the American Repertory’s “The King Stag”, and “Shlemiel The First”, as well as Joel Grey’s “Borscht Capades”. He is also a contributor to Trish Cibree’s “Lounge Life”. Mr. Smith has toured globally from Crakow to Thailand and New Zealand. He has performed with Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Don Byron, the Violent Femmes, Garrison Keillor, and Jane Wang.

​This concert is the first event of a Boston Shabbaton with Rabbi Yosef Goldman co-sponsored by Temple Israel, Congregation Kehillath Israel, Congregation Mishkan Tefilah, and TBZ.  For a full list of happenings, visit here.