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SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
I t was only a matter of time before Avi Wisnia carried on his fam-
ily’s three-generation dynasty of making music.

Wisnia is the grandson of the late David Wisnia, a Holocaust
survivor and the former cantor at Temple Shalom in Levittown and
Har Sinai Hebrew Congregation of Pennington, New Jersey. He’s the
son of Rabbi Eric Wisnia, who served as rabbi at Congregation Beth
Chaim in Princeton Junction, New Jersey, for 42 years.

Attending Shabbat services every Friday and Saturday, Wisnia
drew deeply on the family’s tradition of singing among their
community. With the release of his second album “Catching Leaves” last year,
Wisnia, an East Kensington resident, is cementing his musical legacy,
branching out in his own jazz, folk and piano pop style, while deep-
12 NOVEMBER 3, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
ening the musical roots his family has
laid down for nearly a century.

“I quite literally grew up in a syna-
gogue, and most of my time was spent
in synagogue: seeing my father and
grandfather at their respective pulpits,
and recognizing that community was
always a big part of my life and that
Judaism really fostered that sense of
community, that being in a synagogue
was where people came together,”
Wisnia said.

“Music was the way I connected to
Judaism,” he continued. “Because I
saw people making music together and
making harmony and listening to the
choir and listening to the cantors.”
Wisnia, 39, became resistant to stage
fright and learned to thrive in front of a
crowd, enjoying the energy of bringing
people together. He started the Philly
Songwriters Circle with his friend Aaron
Nathans seven years ago, a project which
evolved from local songwriters meeting
in Wisnia’s living room to a community
of more than 500 artists showcasing and
workshopping their pieces as part of
Philly Songwriters in the Round.

On Nov. 5, Wisnia will launch his
Catching Leaves tour, playing at the
New Jersey West Windsor Arts Council
in his hometown of Princeton Junction,
the place his musical journey began.

The youngest of three, Wisnia was
eager to learn to play piano, following
in his siblings’ footsteps.

“Being a third child, by the time he
was three years old, [he] was saying,
‘How come I’m not taking piano les-
sons, too?’” said father Eric Wisnia.

Wisnia tinkered with the sounds
of Elton John, Carole King and James
Taylor, but his taste and sound matured
to later emulate jazz philosophies and the
Brazilian bossa nova style of Tom Jobim.

“It was that kind of combination of
the freedom to improvise with jazz with
the really accessible melodies and sto-
rytelling of pop music that I really liked
being able to combine,” Wisnia said.

Wisnia’s formal training took him to
New York University, where he studied
music theory and composition, though
he always had a soft spot for playing
music closer to home. He recorded his
debut EP “Avi Wisnia Presents” in the
sanctuary of his father’s New Jersey
synagogue after graduation.

After his first album “Something
New” was released in 2010, Wisnia
went on tour and played alongside Ani
DiFranco and The Roots, among oth-
ers. And while “Something New” was
symbolic of Wisnia’s green musical
prowess, his sophomore album repre-
sented a different season of his life.

Released over a decade after its
predecessor, “Catching Leaves” was
defined by Wisnia’s struggle to process
the death of his brother, who died at 33
of a brain tumor almost a decade ago.

“He was the first person I ever really
can remember playing music with,”
Wisnia said. “We would jam all the
time; we would improvise together. ...

He was always getting people together
in a room, playing music, improvis-
ing, having fun with music, celebrating
with music. And so my joy of music
was really tied up with him and my
relationship with him.”
After his brother’s death, Wisnia had
to reconstruct his relationship to music.

For a while, he didn’t want to make
music again, but Wisnia found cathar-
sis in providing the piano accompani-
ment to his grandfather’s singing. The
two went on tour together in 2015.

“One of the ways he survived was
through music because he was singing
as a young boy in Poland,” Wisnia
said of his grandfather’s time during
the Holocaust. “Singing actually helped
him survive in Auschwitz. Singing sus-
tained him after the war when he came
to the United States, and he was able
to pass along a lot of his music to me.”
Through playing with his grandfa-
ther, Wisnia learned a lesson in using
music to process pain, which he chan-
neled into the sounds and lyrics of his
second album.

Though “Catching Leaves” cap-
tures Wisnia’s journey back to music
through struggle and grief, his future
projects, while tonally different, are
still inspired by his brother.

“His passion made me think about my
own identity as a musician, as a person in
the world,” Wisnia said. “He was always
such a confident person, and without
him, I feel like a way of honoring him is
to be more confident in myself and to put
that out in the world.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com Photo by Derek Brad
Avi Wisnia



nation / world
Israel to Build a Museum Dedicated to Albert Einstein
An $18 million museum dedicated to the legacy of Albert Einstein will be built in
Jerusalem, JTA.org reported.

The Israeli government approved a plan on Oct. 23 to establish a new home for
Einstein’s extensive materials, including some 85,000 documents, on the campus
of the Hebrew University, which Einstein helped found a century ago.

It’s the world’s largest collection of papers and objects related to Einstein and
includes his Nobel Prize and the original notes he produced while developing the
general theory of relativity in 1916, according to Benyamin Cohen, who is writing
a biography of the physicist.

“Albert Einstein is an asset, the biggest brand name in the world for intelligence,
science and genius,” Israel’s alternate prime minister, Naftali Bennett, said, adding
that he expects the museum to become “a pilgrimage site for anyone who wants
to become familiar with Einstein, Jewish intelligence, and intelligence in general.”
A third of the funding for the museum will come from the Israeli government
and the rest from the university and its donors, including art collector Jose Mugrabi.

Taliban Approves Conservation Work on Historic Afghan Synagogue
Though the Jews of Herat in western Afghanistan haven’t lived there in decades,
the city’s historic synagogue, thought to have been built around the turn of the
20th century, is set to undergo a conservation project with the backing of the
Taliban government, JTA.org reported, citing the Art Newspaper.

The 16-month project, set to start in November, is aimed at preventing the col-
lapse of the Yu Aw synagogue’s structure. It is being planned by the Herat munic-
ipality and other local organizations, and it is being funded with nearly $500,000
from the Aliph Foundation, a Swiss group aimed at protecting cultural heritage
sites in conflict areas. The community mikvah, known as the Hammam-e
Mosaie, will also be repaired as part of the project.

The synagogue last underwent a two-year restoration project that was com-
pleted in 2009, with funding from another Swiss organization. For a few years,
it served as an educational center for women and children, but it was shut down
again in 2014 due to seepage from a “poorly constructed, UN-funded municipal
drainage channel in the adjoining road,” the Art Newspaper reported. It is also
not explicitly a Jewish heritage project.

“This is a cultural and historic site, which is not used as a place of worship,
and the local government will support its preservation,” Zalmay Safa, the head of
Herat’s monuments department, told the Art Newspaper.

IDF Adopts All-female Tank Crews for Border Defense
The Israel Defense Forces announced on Oct. 27 that it will permanently adopt
the model of all-female tank crews for border defense missions, JNS.org reported.

In a statement, the military said the decision follows a lengthy and comprehen-
sive examination process that began two years ago, and which included a training
period and a significant operational activity period.

An initial pilot program began in 2018, but the IDF chose to launch a second
program in 2020.

Tank crew members are chosen according to clearly defined criteria and must
undergo an exam based on professional parameters, the IDF stated, before being
placed in border protection tank deployments.

The first four female tank commanders in the IDF completed their grueling
training course in 2018, before beginning operational duties.

Israel Ranks Sixth Worldwide in Marriage Rate
An analysis conducted by Confused.com of Organisation for Economic
Co-operation and Development data showed that Israel has the sixth-highest
marriage rate in the world, The Jerusalem Post reported.

Israel was the highest-ranking country outside of Europe, tallying 5.3 marriages per
1,000 people. That ranks just ahead of the United States at 5.1 marriages per 1,000.

Cyprus topped the list with 8.9 marriages per 1,000 people in 2019.

Hungary ranked second at 6.9 marriages per 1,000 people, followed by Turkey
at 5.8. JE
— Compiled by Andy Gotlieb
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