I am extremely proud to be honored this month for 20 years of service as Temple Micah’s music director. The Shabbat morning service of May 28th will be a musical happening, featuring the Adult Choir, the Youth Choir and Makheilah, our new middle school choir. In addition, the Temple Micah Mini Pickup Band will join in to create a very special service.

The service will include many pieces that I have written or arranged over the years. We will open with my setting of Psalm 100, written on the occasion of the birth of Shira Zemel in 1986. In the place where Psalm 150 usually occurs, the choir will sing Micah, which I wrote to mark the 25th anniversary of Temple Micah in 1988. It is a setting of Micah 4:1-5, which includes the famous text, "…and they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks. Nation shall not take up sword against nation…."

The youth choirs will reprise their rousing rendition of Meir Finkelstein’s Mi Chamocha. We will end the silent meditation with Danny Maseng’s Elohai N’tsor (O God, keep my tongue from evil). Our special prayer of the morning will be Priestly Blessing, which I wrote for my son Aaron’s bar mitzvah in 2001. Toward the end of the service, we will present Shomeir Yisraeil, written in graduate school some 25 years ago. And the service will end with my rendition of Ein Keiloheinu.

Thank you to the entire Temple Micah community for all of the good wishes on this special occasion.