The Birthday Present

I always loved to sing. As a tiny tot, I would “practice” so that I could “perform Friday nights for my family. As a little five-year-old I sang for the Jewish War Veterans. Choir and glee clubs were an integral part of my life until I learned as a student at Stern College, about “Kol Isha.” I was so upset that I had been unknowingly “oveir” on this halacha, that I clammed up for decades.

Then in 1986 N’Shei Chabad decided that for the Annual Kinus HaShluchos they would have a women’s choir. It took guts for me to try out but I did and Baruch Hashem I participated. I had just completed the year of aveilut for my dear father, obm, who loved to hear me sing, so I felt, in a sense, that I was singing for him.

For a time, some women would get together to sing for Rosh Chodesh but that was decades ago. Since moving to the Monsey area some five years ago, I had tried mightily to encourage the women that I have befriended in the area, to get together to sing, but pressing responsibilities have made that an impossibility that is, until one of them sent me a flyer a few weeks ago, informing me that there is a women’s choir here in Monsey.

I wondered: can I still sing? My vocal cords are so rusty. I have to admit that it took guts for me to make the call. The lovely lady in charge asked me to sing “Happy Birthday” over the telephone. I noted that that night, Rosh Chodesh Tammuz WAS actually my birthday. I sang and I was accepted.

I remain humbled and grateful to Hashem Yisborach and to Sora for sending me the flyer and being “responsible” for “introducing” me, or should I say, “to re-introducing me,” to an integral part of my being.

Baruch Hashem: What a wonderful birthday present, indeed!