So says our prayerbook and we like the idea very much. In our prayers, celebrations, memorials and holidays, music is an essential tool for expressing what words alone cannot.
Our Adat Shalom musicians – both professional and lay – regularly lead traditional davening (praying), lifting up new versions of Jewish prayer, offering musical settings of Jewish folk melodies, singing with our choir, performing with our home-grown klezmer group, and many other special times that invite the magic of music into our communal life.
Rabbi Lizzi Heydemann founded Mishkan Chicago in 2011 as a young rabbi only a year out of rabbinical school, with the goal of leading people toward greater purpose, connection and inspiration through dynamic experiences of Jewish prayer, learning and community building. Rabbi Lizzi was born and raised on the South Side of Chicago, and graduated with Honors in Religious Studies and Philosophy from Stanford University.
Lizzi was ordained by the Ziegler School of Rabbinic Studies as a Conservative Rabbi, though now is unaffiliated as she officiates at interfaith weddings and finds community in many different rabbinic affinity and Movement spaces. She is currently in the prestigious Shalom Hartman Institute Rabbinic Leadership Intensive (RLI), and is a Schusterman Fellowship Senior Fellow. She has sat on the boards or cabinets of T’ruah: The Rabbinic Call for Human Rights, JStreet, Avodah, and was an ROI and Schulsterman Fellow. Rabbi Lizzi was the first rabbinic fellow at IKAR in Los Angeles and was one of the founding rabbis of the Jewish Emergent Network, a network of 7 national path breaking communities reimagining Judaism for the next generation. She is one of a dozen people married to someone they met at Mishkan, and Lizzi and Henry’s children are growing up in a community where Judaism pulsates with joy, harmony, justice and love.
In a Yelp review posted early in Mishkan’s existence, someone described High Holidays as a cross between a traditional Conservative synagogue and a Grateful Dead show. This vibe has everything to do with the influences that have shaped Rabbi Lizzi religiously and musically, some of which we’ll explore and experience this weekend at Adat Shalom. She was taught guitar as a high school sophomore by her then-youth-advisor at KAM Isaiah Israel in Chicago, Andy Rehfeld (now Dr. Andrew Rehfeld, President of HUC-JIR in New York). Lizzi spent high school song leading in the Reform style, then in college became more familiar and comfortable with traditional nusach and and services, and ultimately made her spiritual home at Nava Tehila in Jerusalem, IKAR in Los Angeles and Romemu in New York, all of which have Renewal, neo-Chassidic, secular and orthodox influences. Over the past 15 years she’s been part of the Rising Song community, has played and sang alongside Joey Weisenberg, Josh Warshawsky and Deborah Sacks Mintz, as well as has cultivated a new generation of musicians and signers in the Davening Team at Mishkan. She’s excited to make music with you this weekend!
Allan Schwarz passed away on the 18th of Cheshvan/October 21 at the age of 91. He was born in Berlin and his childhood was deeply affected by the rise of Nazism.
Just two weeks before Kristallnacht, at the age of 16, he made his way to the United States as a result of the efforts of his uncle, Cantor Chaskel Gewirtz, his Aunt Bertha and Uncle Sam.
He lived with Bertha and Sam in Brooklyn until he enlisted in the U.S. Army and returned to the European theater to fight in WWII. His mother and younger sister died in the Shoah. His father survived the war in an Italian POW camp and later came to live in New York. His other sister was rescued through Youth Aliyah and raised a family in Israel.
He is survived by his wife, Judy (Brand), to whom he was married for 62 years and his three children, Mindy Stern, Rabbi Sidney Schwarz and Rena Schwarz. Allan played many leadership roles in the Jewish community, including serving as the President of the Franklin Square Jewish Center, a Board member at the JCC of West Hempstead, and a docent at the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County. A devout Jew and a proud Zionist, he worked professionally for the Israel Bonds organization until his retirement.
Allan Schwarz’s life tracked the tragedy and triumph of the Jewish people’s experience of the 20th century. He was an outstanding student in Berlin but the war did not allow him to finish his formal education.
A self-taught man, Allan was a voracious reader who could engage any and all on a wide range of topics. He also was a first-class athlete excelling at soccer, first in Germany and then in New York club leagues. Making his living as a salesman, he made sure that his children had access to quality Jewish educational experiences.
2023 – Jacob Spike Kraus
2022 – Rabbi Deborah Sacks Mintz
2021 – Rabbi Josh Warshawsky
2020 – Micah Hendler
2019 – Galeet Dardashti
2018 – Joey Weisenberg
2017 – Shir Yaakov Feit
2016 – Naomi Less
2015 – Rabbi Noam Katz
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