>> From the Library of Congress in Washington, DC. [ Silence ] >> Sharon Horowitz: Good afternoon. Welcome to the Pickford Theater. On behalf of the Hebraic section, African and Middle Eastern Division, let me thank you all for coming to today's program. I want to acknowledge the presence of our division chief, Dr. Mary-Jane Deeb. Thank you for coming. My name is Sharon Horowitz. I'm a reference librarian in the Hebraic section. The Hebraic section marks its beginnings in 1912 with the receipt of 10,000 Hebrew books and pamphlets whose purchase was made possible by a gift from New York philanthropist Jacob Schiff. From those humble beginnings, our collections have grown from around 250,000 items in Hebrew, Yiddish, Ladino, Judeo-Persian, and other Hebraic script languages and our holdings also include an important collection of Amharic books. The section's holdings are particularly strong in the areas of Bible and Rabbinic liturgy, Hebrew language and literature, responsa, and Jewish history. Two of our missions are to publicize our collections and to bring people into the library and one way we do this is by holding lectures and performances such as this. Kolot Halev, which means voices of the heart, is the only independent community choir in the Greater Washington Area focusing on Jewish choral music. They are the choir in residence at Shirat HaNefesh Congregation and draw their members from the Washington-Baltimore Metropolitan Area. The choir director of Kolot Halev is Hazzan Ramon Tasat. Hazzan Tasat will tell us about today's program. Now please join me in giving a warm welcome to Hazzan Tasat and the Kolot Halev Choir. [ Applause ] >> Hazzan Ramon Tasat: So good afternoon everybody. Thank you so much for coming. We are really honored to be here at the Library of Congress. It's a dream come true. The music is also a dream come to true, is music that perhaps you haven't heard, most likely you haven't heard. We have identified a number of compositions, some of them of liturgical content, some of them that are related to the Shirat, to the holocaust, and some music that has been created as purely Russian folk songs that have been actually translated into Hebrew by Israelis through this last six decades. In any case, we could not dare to say that what you're going to hear in an hour or so this morning is an essential part of the heritage of Russian-Jewish music, far from it. We have worked really, really diligently and hard to put together a program that would actually represent some of the music. We hope that this program is a powerful incentive for you to continue looking into more of this music that I'm sure is going to touch your hearts. [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Inaudible Comment ] [ Applause ] >> Hazzan Ramon Tasat: The composer of the next composition as well. [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Music ] [ Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] >> A few years ago I had an opportunity to work with a remarkable artist, her name is [inaudible], to work with something called the Theatre of Witness. [Inaudible] would gather together a group of people who would share their life stories. It could've been women who were in prison or refugees from [inaudible], sometimes [inaudible]. In this case it was a group of six immigrants from the former Soviet Union. I was one of them. My mom was another one and we were telling our stories and from our stories she wove together monologues and dialogues and [inaudible] and that was our sharing our play. And for that play, when I was writing music for it, I realized that most of us had very little Jewish connection growing up but one of the few things we could rely on was our names. Our names, even if it got changed somewhat to accommodate and be a little bit safer in this environment that we were living in, the names usually held a connection to a Jewish family member, to something Jewish and that was often the only thing we brought with us. So I wanted to share with you a song called "They Call Me" that weaves together all these names and their significance for us. [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] >> Hazzan Ramon Tasat: The next two selections are Russian popular songs, folk songs that have been translated to Hebrew and have become adored and Israelis find them like their own. The first one is called [inaudible] with its Russian counterpart of the Russian counterpart of the original Hindu [inaudible] the translation. [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Silence ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] >> Hazzan Ramon Tasat: Thank you very much. So Kolot Halev is a choir that doesn't require audition. That means anybody that wants to sing can come. You have to show up for rehearsal every Thursday from 7:15 to 9:15 or call this congregation, Chevy Chase [inaudible]. I hope you come, you sing with us, and if you don't, please remember March 29, 2015, we're having our next annual concert pre-Passover music. I hope you come and join us again. In the meantime, we're going to end-- I think we're going to end with a Russian very, very, very wonderful [inaudible] that is with some hope, cleverly translated into one of the most popular, if not the most popular of all Jewish religious poems called [inaudible]. >> And there is a sign-up sheet outside, where you can put your name and email address. [ Music ] [ Foreign Language Singing ] [ Applause ] >> This has been a presentation of the Library of Congress. Visit us at loc.gov.