As all eyes are on London, we offer this setting of Yigdal in the British tradition, composed for a British synagogue by Abraham Saqui (1824–1893). We pray for every blessing on King Charles and Queen Camilla, and on the many peoples and nations around the world the King serves as head of state. ...

In memory of Harry Belafonte, who passed away this past week, Cantor Schwartz sings Ein Keloheinu to the tune of "The Banana Boat Song" (Day-O), which was performed live during these past Shabbat services. May his memory be for a blessing.

As an exclamation point to Israel week, here is a setting of Adon Olam in a Middle Eastern style, commissioned by PAS from our Composer-in-Residence, Oran Eldor. If you think of some of your favorite Shabbat melodies, chances are that Eldor has written more than one. He and Cantor Schwartz form p...

These two weeks are the modern “Israeli High Holidays”, including Yom HaShoah, Yom HaZikaron, and Yom Ha’atzmaut, and so we bring you a song from one of Israel’s most renowned composers. This song bridges Yemeni musical heritage with a Western sound world, an Eastern melody with orchestral accomp...

We have just said the Yizkor memorial service on the eighth day of Passover, and we are preparing for Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Remembrance Day, on April 17. Therefore, those who are no longer with us are very much on our minds during this time. We hope this psalm, with its images of green pastures ...

As we conclude the Passover Seder, an evocative phrase from the Haggadah captures our imaginations, a phrase that also appears at the end of Yom Kippur: “Next year, in Jerusalem.” Many might have different feelings when we think about Israel this year. Whatever your emotions are, we can always pr...

Cantor Schwartz and David Enlow recently visited our sister Conservative congregation, B'nai Torah, in Boca Raton, celebrating Jewish music with their newly installed cantor, Magda Fishman. As you prepare for Passover, we hope you enjoy this song of resilience and hope, sung as a duet for over 1,...

Dayenu is more than a word, it evokes an attitude of thankfulness and consideration of blessings. In this new arrangement of the jolly, familiar tune, Cantors Schwartz, Davis, and Michaeli list all the blessings that would have been enough. This Passover season, let us reflect on our blessings, n...

As spring arrives in New York with just a few weeks before Pesach, let’s celebrate with this icon of the Seder that also shows up at Hallel, B’tzet Yisrael. This psalm, 114, is full of powerful images with its internal questions: Why does the sea flee? Why do the mountains skip like rams? There i...

With Purim behind us, we transition to Passover in the coming weeks. One text from the Haggadah, V’hi Sh'amda, addresses a common thread between these two holidays – the ancient hate of the Jewish people that persists “in each generation,” including our own. This melody newly commissioned for our...

It is often noted in popular culture that many faiths have a version of “v’ahavta l’rei-acha kamocha” at their foundation – “You shall love your fellow as yourself,” or as Rabbi Cosgrove once expanded, “You shall love your neighbor as they would wish to be loved.” These lyrics ask a follow-up que...

Park Avenue Synagogue celebrates an expansive tapestry of Jewish music, and one thread running through it is the sophisticated Ashkenazi cantorial style. While the original idiom relies on the power of a single, unaccompanied voice for expression, this new arrangement deploys choral sound creativ...

When tragedies occur in the world, we say it is “heartbreaking;” we feel something in our very center. Those feelings find expression in music and prayer, as in this song by the young Israeli singer-songwriter Hanan Ben Ari, which we presented at Kol Nidrei services this year in a new English-lan...

When we created this special version of a hit song, we didn’t realize it would be performed at the Grammy awards the next day, let alone from Album of the Year! Observing Tu BiShvat, a holiday in honor of the trees, we decided the Eitz Chayim, “Tree of Life,” text would go best with this energeti...

Every Shabbat is marked by music, but on Shabbat Shira we read the story of splitting the Red Sea and the special song that accompanied this event. In this tune, V’Shamru, we affirm and renew our tradition of sanctifying the Shabbat with singing. Wishing you a Shabbat Shalom and a “Shabbat of Son...

Songs that were sung to us as children, and those that we in turn sing to little ones, are written on our hearts. This Yiddish lullaby, “Raisins and Almonds,” was written in 1880 for the Yiddish-language theater in Eastern Europe, and was revisited by Cantor Schwartz at our concert of Yiddish mus...

As International Holocaust Remembrance Day approaches, imagine the world in 1914, a generation before the Shoah: The state of affairs that had persisted in Europe and the Mediterranean since the Congress of Vienna is about to be violently undone, and all of Europe, including European Jewry, is ab...

“In every generation, one must look on oneself as though one had personally come out of Egypt.” Mishnah Pesachim 10:5

This week, we begin the Book of Exodus the same weekend we honor Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. This is a unique opportunity to remind ourselves of our personal and spiritual respo...

In this week’s parashah, we read of some of the most famous parental blessings ever given. Here, Cantor Schwartz blesses two of his own children, and sings a newly-commissioned setting of Y’simcha. Whether you are a parent, child, or other member of the community, we know you can appreciate this ...

When people of faith build bridges across communities, the most wonderful things can happen, like when Cantor Schwartz and Reverend Ian Johnson take the stage together and exhort the audience to shine their light to the world. In return, the audience responds with joy, knowing that the state of h...

Through the whimsical imagination of childhood, think what it must be like to be a latke, one of the foods made with oil that attend the Festival of Lights. At our Debbie Friedman tribute concert this past summer, Cantor Schwartz and his daughters, “the two most precious latkes in the room,” sang...

Ya Ribon is a prayer that connects the universal to the particular, from the immeasurable scale of the ruler of rulers to the local sacredness of Jerusalem. It is included in the siddur for home use – as Rabbi Cosgrove says in this video, “It's traditional on a Friday night and Shabbat day that y...

Speech, the choice of which words we speak, and perhaps even those we do not, is a tremendous power and responsibility, one we do not always recognize and appreciate. If we think of the times we have given or received a word of encouragement or blessing and compare them with those occasions when ...

Can you think of a time when a voice affected you deeply and powerfully? It may not have been singing – imagine the voice of an authority figure speaking your name, the voice of a loved one calling out. We recognize in the voice the identity and intentions of those we know, and their state of bei...