Singing with the kehillot: a new disk

Seven months of work: hours and hours of rehearsals, 17 singers who hardly knew one another, 3 musicians from 3 different countries… and finally, we succeeded to accomplish a project built upon a great aspiration: to publish a first disk with a selection of songs from the Hebrew speaking Catholic community in Israel.

For a long time now, groups passing through Jerusalem, friends close and distant, people from overseas, have been asking us to record our songs. They have argued: "It is a pity that we cannot play your songs in our communities back home". This dream remained buried in our hearts for almost two years until we felt that finally the time had come to start working in this direction…

But from where should we begin? We have so many beautiful songs… and then Father David had an idea: to publish a disk that could accompany the children's religious education book on the Catholic feast days, which he had just finished writing.

We began. We had almost no means. No studio, no professional equipment, no editing possibilities… just a few friends in the chapel of the Jerusalem kehilla and a microphone in their midst.

Then the love of God began to work and He sent us many angels: Magali, a very talented musician, who became absolutely essential to the production of the disk, Christina, Morritz, Father Rafic, Brother Alberto and many others who were enthusiastic about the project and consistently attended the meetings to learn the songs and to rehearse them until late in the night.

I remember each of these rehearsals: the exercises to heat up the voice, proposed by Magali, the arguments about tonalities, the mistakes, the frustrations and sometimes the sense that nothing is going to come of all this… and then the prayer and the handing everything over to God including the success of the project. Everything changed at that moment. Song after song and we fulfilled the quota. 24 songs sum up the seasons of the liturgical year.

Today, we present the finished product before the public of listeners.

We want to thank the Lord Jesus Christ who was among us, ever present on this voyage, and we want to thank in a special way all who worked hard on the recordings. We want to thank the John Paul II Foundation in Italy which helped with the finances and Mr. Issa Majlaton who worked on the processing of the disk and the graphic design at a surprising speed.

To everyone and one and all thank you from the bottom of our hearts.