We, the Hava Nashira (choir/vocal group) of Temple Sinai under the direction of Cantor Michael Kruk, spent a little more than an hour on Christmas Day entertaining a group of residents in the Imperial House, a senior retirement facility.

I thought we were unprepared to do a "professional" job but it seemed not to be necessary.  We were appreciated by the folks who walked in or were rolled in to a room with a piano and lots of chairs.  There was one man who appeared to sleep throughout the performance but, I will get back to him later.

Our performers were led off by a brother and sister, grandchildren of one of Hava Nashira's sopranos who were visiting from England.  They both had violins and played together and separately and were terrific but, going first, I don't think the audience was either in the sound range or fully ware they were starting off a program. The "seniors" soon began to respond and participate.

The Cantor led us through a list of songs in English, Hebrew and Ladino which were mainly about Chanukah.  We knew most of them and as a vocal group/ choir were at last loud enough for the hearing aid crowd to hear and they applauded appropriately.  For me with two hearing aids that were unreliable for all locations, I could not hear the choir/vocal group except for my own voice which I hoped was not too out of sync with the rest of the group.

A daughter of one of our singers sang children's songs about Chanukah and the audience reacted most favorably and sang along with her.  The sleeping man continued to slumber but most in the audience were fully alert and interested.

When it came to patriotic songs like Hatikva, one woman to my left arose and proudly stood and sang along.  When we sang God Bless America, many stood and the sleeping man was among them.  They proudly proclaimed that they were both Jewish and American.  The Cantor was asked at the end to sing a solo which he did in Russian.

All in all it was an interesting and satisfying experience for us.  I hope it was the same for our audience and I think this was so.  We were applauded and stopped on our way out for one or another to comment and ask about us.

I can't think of a better way to spend Christmas Day. It was a Mitzvah!