Joyful return

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This article was published 09/11/2024 (612 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Over the past six months, Randi Berman has become a teenager again.

She hasn’t found the fountain of youth, but by reconnecting with the folk music that helped forge her Jewish identity, Berman has rediscovered a joyful chapter of her life — the section defined by her connection with the Chai Folk Ensemble.

A teacher who now lives in Montreal, Berman is one of dozens of alumni who will perform tonight at Club Regent Event Centre as part of Full Circle, a concert organized by Chai to celebrate its 60th anniversary.

Founded in 1964 by Sarah Sommer and now co-directed by her granddaughter, who shares the same name, Chai — which translates to “life” — is a consistent and powerful reminder of the value of cultural continuity, preserving through performance and folk song the sounds and the joys of Jewish life around the world.

Berman’s initiation into Chai came when she was in Grade 8 at Joseph Wolinsky Collegiate.

“My mother picked me up and said, ‘We’re not going home. We’re going to Y for the Ruach audition.’”

A training ground for future Chai members, Ruach — which translates to spirit or wind — helped carry Berman through high school, until she joined the Chai dance corps in 1994.

“Chai was such a big part of my life, from Grade 8 to age 25, so I have my mom to thank for that,” she says.

Stories such as Berman’s could be told by hundreds of Jewish people in Winnipeg and across Canada, including Sarah Sommer (the founder’s granddaughter), Tracy Kasner and Tamar Barr.

Kasner, a childhood best friend of Berman’s, started singing with Chai at 15. Tonight, she’ll take the stage with her daughter and son.

“I’m the chair of the board of directors, but this is my first time coming back as a performer in years, and it’s absolutely amazing,” says Kasner, the cantor of Congregation Etz Chayim.

“It’s about the music and it’s about everything that was so much fun in my childhood. Tamar and I were just joking about people who take things very seriously, and I was definitely one of those as a kid. Now in my old age, it’s amazing to feel the joy of it and be able to do this with other people I remember from my past and connect it to all of these kids who are doing it now.”

“There’s a pure joy about getting together and celebrating this group that’s 60 years old now,” says Barr, who was one of the ensemble’s longest serving choreographers, with several of her original pieces still in the repertoire.

“I remember our parents were heavily involved, schlepping, doing the lights, doing whatever they had to. Everybody pitches in to do what we have to do to put on a show.”

The show features many of the ensemble’s most enduring numbers, as well as six newly commissioned pieces, says Sommer, who with Jesse Popeski serves as Chai’s co-artistic director.

One number, Ukrainian Klezmer, is a collaboration with the Sopilka Ukrainian Dance School. Alumni and current ensemble members unite on stage.

A performance of This Land by Yael Deckelbaum & the Mothers — a song sung in Hebrew and Arabic with choreography by Chai’s alumni dance director Rachel Cooper — will be dedicated to the memory of Vivian Silver, a Winnipeg-born peace activist who was killed in last October’s attacks on Kibbutz Be’eri by Hamas. Chai executive director Reeva Nepon says the number is a commitment to unity and peace between Jewish Israelis and Palestinians in commemoration of Silver’s humanitarian bridge-building efforts.

The concert also coincides with the 86th anniversary of the Kristallnacht attacks.

For Sommer, the connection to Chai is especially meaningful, given her grandmother Sarah’s role in founding the group. She led the first troupe in rehearsals in her Garden City basement in 1964.

“As a young person, getting into Chai, you don’t always know what you’re getting into until you’re already in deep, and then it’s too deep to get out,” laughs Sommer, a vocal teacher and cantorial artist.

“Once you’re in, you’re stuck there forever in a very good way.”

ben.waldman@winnipegfreepress.com