A Brief and Incomplete History of the Menschen

The illustrious history of the Menschen began before we knew we were so Honorable. Back in 1997, a group of Boston-based men who had sung a cappella at various colleges, including Princeton and MIT, decided they didn’t need to stop singing just because they stopped studying. They formed an a cappella group and sometimes called themselves “Teiku” and sometimes “They Might Be Jewish”, but mostly didn’t have a name. Members included Yonah Schmeidler, Ezra Robison, and Justin Miller.

A year later, in 1999, the group membership dwindled and these men came up with the inspired idea of adding women to the group. Their decision lagged Princeton’s decision to admit women by only 30 years. Luckily, they knew a few women in town who had also sung a cappella at Princeton, and asked them to join in the fun. New members included Julianne Hackman, Justin’s fiancee (who had started a Jewish a cappella group at Princeton), her friend Lauren Sager, and Karen Livescu, Julianne’s roommate (who had joined Julianne’s new college group).

The group continued for a few years as such. They remained mostly nameless, although they met regularly and recruited extra people to the group, including Tamar Engel and soon after Alison Auderieth. They performed a few times, including one gathering of family and friends in Julianne and Karen’s apartment, and one MIT concert where we opened for Techiya.

Before their 2001 MIT concert, the group spent several months and much brainpower trying to come up with a name that would stick. They had all sorts of options, from Chai Notes, to the Canterbridgeans, to the Melafefones. They took votes of all kinds, including non-integer ones like square root of pi and 1/e, and had vetos and recounts until we settled on Mi Va Mi. No one was too excited about it, but no one hated it. Then as we were warming up for our MIT concert, Justin came up with the name Honorable Menschen. All the group members liked it, and in mid-concert, they erased our name “Mi Va Mi” on the chalkboard, and wrote up “Honorable Menschen”. It’s a much longer name to write, but despite such hardships, the name stuck.

At the end of that season, in the summer of 2001, many members became parents, moved away, or both, and thus left the group. Lauren recruited her sister, Deborah Sager, to sing with us too. So, the existing Menschen (as from this point forth, we were Menschen) numbered only 8, and rallied together to recruit and continue the group. And recruit we did. At the beginning of that season, we added 8 more people to our group, doubling to 16 and our biggest size ever. Members who joined in this wave included Deb Melkin, Jay Hancock, and David Sadownick. We never asked them whether they wanted to keep the name.

In the 2001-2002 season, Tamar became our President. Rather than have one conductor for all songs, we agreed to split musical responsibilities by song to lighten the load on conductors.

Because of a technical snafu, Tamar missed an email from some guy named Adam who wanted to try out. She was in France at the time and her inbox overflowed. Luckily Adam Roberts persisted and asked one more time, and after tryouts were over, we managed to correct what would have been a dire mistake and admit him to the group as well.

The year 2002 was a momentous one for our group. The new members got up to speed, and we all learned new songs, including “Uf Gozal” and “Mitachat Lashamayim”. Under the musical leadership of Karen Livescu, we held a larger friends and family concert at Peabody Terrace, where Lauren lived. We had our first retreat that year, in North Conway. We created new roles to help the President including Event Manager, and Librarian. And we set up our now famous web portal.

By 2002-2003, we shrunk a bit. We did admit some new basses including Daniel Ozick. Tamar continued as president, this time with much help from Karen as musical coordinator, Adam as Events Coordinator, Deborah Sager as Librarian, Karen as Membership Chair. We hosted a Jewish A Cappella Fest at Harvard, together with MIT’s Techiya and Harvard’s Mizmor Shir. We returned to North Conway for our second annual retreat.

The next year, Erica Schultz joined the group and opened our world to connections at the Tremont Street Shul. David Sadownick staged a coup and took over from Tamar as President. Deborah Melkin followed the momentum and replaced Karen as musical coordinator. For our retreat, we convened at Packard Manse, and to avoid further political upheaval, we also ratified our group’s Constitution there.

Alison stepped up as President and Adam as Musical Coordinator in our first Constitution-backed elections for the next year. In January 2005, in the dead of winter, we strategically held tryouts and found that only committed souls bothered to trudge through mounds of snow and sing for us despite the cold. We were very grateful to find such good talent in such dire conditions: Betsey Gardstein, Joe Mazor, Richard Samuels, and Matt Ringel joined our ranks.

By the spring of 2007, one of our tenors (Jay Hancock) had decamped for parts up north, and we were also running short on altos. So it was our good fortune to hold another round of auditions, which brought us Michelle Mason, Akiva Holzer, and Rachel Brown.

And thus the history of the Menschen continues, we hope for a very long time.