VIN News: Miami Boys Choir Takes on the Siyum Hashas

Miami Boys Choir Video Highlights Siyum Hashas

By:  Sandy Eller

New York – With just under seven weeks remaining until the iconic twelfth Siyum Hashas celebration, a newly released music video, the first ever released by Yerachmiel Begun’s Miami Boys Choir, highlights the importance of involving children in this historic event.

“The Siyum is all about families, as fathers learn with their sons and mothers do their part to be supportive in any way they can,” Begun told VIN News.  “It seemed appropriate to have some kind of musical inspiration about this event and since the Medrash talks about our children being the guarantors of the Torah, it made sense to get the choir involved in a project like this.”

The music video, titled When The Siyum Calls, clocks in at just under five minutes and the original Begun composition depicts members of the choir learning in a Beis Medrash as well as gathering outside MetLife Stadium, site of the upcoming Siyum Hashas.

When The Siyum Calls is the title track of a two CD album, newly released by Nigun Distributors.  While the second disc of the album features two new songs as well as sixteen newly re-edited and re-mastered Miami classics that go hand in hand with the theme of the Siyum, the first disc contains the music video as well as four tracks, each approximately fifteen minutes in length, featuring Divrei Torah from Rabbi Paysach Krohn, Rabbi Dovid Goldwasser, Rabbi Dovid Weinberg and Rabbi Noach Oelbaum.

“While each of the speakers spoke about something else related to the Siyum, a key theme was the achdus of Klal Yisroel in light of the upcoming Siyum, with the Torah binding us together no matter where we come from,” said Begun, who insisted on professional quality audio for recording the speakers.  “Shouldn’t we treat our recorded Torah lectures in as professional a way as we treat our music?”

When The Siyum Calls is a project of Shirainu, created by Begun, who in recent years has been vociferous in his insistence that Jewish music maintain its traditional sound and not be colored by secular influences.  Begun hopes to create other projects that would mix Torah learning with Jewish music.

“Mixing learning with music is something I have wanted to do for years,” said Begun.  “I look forward to using the respective kochos of each of these two mediums to help further the other.”