Rising Song Circles

Rising Song Circles are groups of music lovers in Jewish communities around the world who join together regularly to study nigunim, nusach, and Jewish musical wisdom, guided by Joey Weisenberg's master classes.

Here's how to get started:

1. Subscribe yourself to the master classes!
2. Let us know you're interested in building a local Rising Song Circle, and we'll help you set it up! [email protected]

You can start with just a few friends and grow over time.  We offer study guides to help you all on your path!  

You can have as many people as you’d like in your group.

You can start on your own with a handful of friends, but if at least 10 people subscribe as part of your Rising Song Circle, Joey will be happy to join your group for a private session.  

Are you interested in organizing a Rising Song Circle? Here are some steps:

1. Subscribe (yourself) to Joey's master classes and begin to explore. Get to know what's offered there! So much to study! Subscribe now.
2. Identify your role. Will you be the facilitator? What kind of facilitator would you like to be?  Do you want to be a “coordinator,” who brings people together and helps schedule things, or do you want to be a “teacher-guide” who takes an active role in bringing your own musical wisdom to the group, using our resources as a guide? Here are some ideas and helpful tips for group facilitators. 
3. Request your first Rising Song Circle Study Guide. Have a look at how we are structuring the teachings.  The study guide gives a concrete first path for you to follow in your community.
4. Request your custom landing page - RSI will set up a special web-page for your community, which can help you explain the Rising Song Circle concept to prospective participants from your community and recruit people to get onboard!.
5. Identify 10-20 people who you think might want to study musical prayer in your community or among your friends.  Reach out to 3-4 of them individually to “feel out” if people would want to join you.  Send them the custom landing page to see what they think.  If they’re interested, then you’re ready to go! Individuals can subscribe to the site through this custom page.
6. Select 6 dates over the course of 3 months for meeting with the group for the initial course of song and study. (This is our recommended structure for beginning to learn the material in Joey’s video library of master classes in Jewish song, but you can decide if a different schedule of sessions will work better for your community.) 
7. Invite all 10-20 people to participate, using your custom landing page. We can provide suggested text. Just ask! [email protected] 
8. Create Zoom links for your meetings.
9. Share a schedule of sessions and the study guide with your Rising Song Circle members, including Zoom links for the first 6 meetings.
10. Set up a virtual visit with Joey Weisenberg. When 10 or more people are active members of the group, Joey will join you for free for a private, customized workshop!  Or, at any point you can reach out to schedule additional sessions for a workshop fee.
11. Enjoy the singing and the musical Torah! Enjoy spending time with each other studying and eventually singing together.
12. Repeat! When you’ve finished the first round of study, we’ll send you your next study guide, and you can continue your musical study for years to come.
13. Be a part of the larger Rising Song Community:  As subscribers to Joey’s video library, in addition to the hundreds of videos on the site and the group sessions you are organizing locally, members of your Rising Song Circle will also have access to monthly live webinars and weekly Open Studio Sessions that Joey leads for the wider virtual community.
14. Influence your musical-prayer community.  Whether you are a ba’al tfilah (prayer leader), a singer, a community builder, or a lover of song, you can bring the Rising Song music and ideas into your home community and see beautiful developments!

One person in the Rising Song Circle becomes a point person and organizer who brings others together.

All this takes is a good organizer!  Even if you don't have very much musical experience, you can still facilitate a Rising Song Circle - just bring people together and follow our study guides, and you and everyone can learn together! 

If you also have experience as a music teacher, a cantor, a song leader, a musician, a ba’al tefilah or a ba’al neginah, you can bring all of those skills with you to leading a Rising Song Circle!

In addition to the 500+ videos, we can craft a tailored landing page to help you recruit people. It will be based off the page you are reading now but can include any and all information specific to your community. Our team will work with you to craft it!

Though it’s difficult and unadvisable to sing close together and make really beautiful music in person during the ongoing pandemic, we view this situation as a great opportunity to study and enjoy Jewish music online, to learn nigunim and sing them in our living rooms, and to study the nusach of Jewish prayer chant so that our spiritual lives do not become stagnant. 

The material on this site give us the tools to create powerful moments of prayer at home with our families or even to lead intimate backyard gatherings with our closest friends. 

We believe that taking advantage of this unprecedented time to study (Jewish) music will make it all the more exciting and meaningful when we’re able to gather together in song again. 

Each member of the circle subscribes to Joey's Music Prayer Artistry master class series for $18 per month. This subscription grants a person access to all the videos (more than 500!) on this site.  There is no additional fee to organize a Rising Song Circle, and Joey will lead a free custom workshop for your group when 10 or more people subscribe.

Part of the mission of Hadar’s Rising Song Institute is to inspire musical growth in the Jewish community worldwide. As founder and co-director of RSI, Joey wants to see that happen. So, in partnership with him, we’re investing our time and energy to make it happen. When we see potential and musical-spiritual organizing power in a community, we want to support it,  and that’s the point of this resource.

Music is now more important than ever. Song reminds us of our essential humanity and it will have the power to rekindle communal bonds after so many months spent social distancing.

Get in touch with us! We'll connect you with a group, ideally in your local area, or with a group facilitator who can help you join virtually.

Email us at [email protected]