to the 2022 Young Leadership Award recipients, who were honored on
October 12 for their incredible achievements within our Jewish community:
(L to R): Sarah
Vogel (Myer and Rosaline Feinstein Young Leadership Award winner),
Carly Zimmerman (Blanche Wolfe Kohn Young Leadership Award winner) and
Julie Perilstein Mozes (Jack Goldenberg Young Leadership Award winner)
Know a Jewish professional that is passionate about
enhancing local Israel education and engagement
efforts in the Greater Philadelphia community?
The Venture Israel Fellowship will bring together local
educators, rabbis, leaders and activists to deepen their
knowledge of Israeli culture, society and politics and to
learn essential tools to design and deliver innovative Israel
education experiences within their own communities.

Learn more at jewishphilly.org/venture-israel
Applications close November 1, 2022
A Jewish Federation of Greater Philadelphia Fellowship
in partnership with Jewish Learning Venture
8 OCTOBER 20, 2022 | JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



YOU SHOULD KNOW ...

SASHA ROGELBERG | STAFF WRITER
C omposer Ari Sussman’s “I mean you no harm,” a 43-minute
mixed chamber ensemble piece, begins with a long pull of
strings, followed by the clang of a bell, then more humming
strings and a tentative, almost discordant piano. A quiet collection of
voices emerge from the backdrop and crescendo.

The piece — Sussman’s dissertation when he received his doctorate
in composition at the University of Michigan in 2021 — is hardly the
melodic euphony of sounds that chamber ensemble music has been
associated with, but, according to Sussman, it’s not supposed to.

Composed during COVID, “the general gist of the piece was to alle-
viate stress and anxiety by means of different meditative and healing
practices, so I used some from both in the medical field and some in
the spiritual field,” Sussman said.

In addition to using binaural sounds (played in both ears) at slightly
different hertz to create different
pitches — a strategy used to decrease
heart rates — Sussman employed spir-
itual techniques from Buddhist medi-
tation, but also from Kabbalah, using
10-note chords to mirror the 10 Sefirot,
or divine emanations, described in
Jewish mysticism.

Sussman, 29 and a Fairmount resident,
has made room for Judaism in his com-
positions throughout his career: He’s a
professor of composition and music the-
ory at Temple and West Chester univer-
sities; he won the University of Michigan
Brehn Prize in Choral Composition
and the Leonard Bernstein Fellowship
in composition from the Tanglewood
Music Center, among other recognitions
for his compositions throughout his for-
mal music education.

“The first music I was ever writing
were campy liturgical songs ... doing
settings to Hallelujah/Psalm 150, to
just different texts throughout Shabbos
liturgy or daily liturgy,” he said.

Sussman graduated from the Debbie
Friedman and Rick Recht-esque guitar
and keyboard arrangements to Jewish
liturgical choral music and then con-
temporary takes on classical Jewish
music. He makes his goals as an artist clear.

Sussman tells his students, “Not as
much what can you copy in our field,
but what can you add to our field? What
is something unique about you, your
life, your circumstances, your back-
ground, that no one else on the face of
the earth can say on your behalf?”
Born and raised in Elkins Park,
Sussman grew up “in a house full of
Yiddishkeit,” the factor in his back-
ground that would define his musical
voice. Resembling the path of many
Jewish kids in the area, he attended
Perelman Jewish Day School-Foreman
Center, the Robert Saligman Middle
School (which later merged with Jack
M. Barrack Hebrew Academy) before
attending Barrack for high school. In
the summers, he was a camper, and
later counselor, at Camp Ramah in
the Poconos. A longtime member of
Congregation Adath Jeshurun, Sussman
was the head gabbai in high school,
responsible for assigning Torah readings
to congregants.

But what was most influential about
Sussman’s Jewish upbringing was the
synagogue’s “strong music tradition.”
Sussman, who took classical piano les-
sons for most of his childhood, looked
up to Adath Jeshurun’s Cantor Charles
Davidson. “For a lot of synagogues, regardless
of where you live in downtown Philly
or Wisconsin or Vegas, I just assumed
that any city would have a cantor of the
caliber of Charles Davidson, someone
who’s written such incredible music that
has received thousands of performances
worldwide,” Sussman said. “I just
thought it was a foregone conclusion.”
Though always a proud Jew, it was
Sussman’s grappling with God that
eventually led to how Judaism features
in his music.

Before Sussman found new ways to
connect with Judaism during his time
at Boston’s New England Conservatory
of Music, where he pursued his bach-
elor’s and master’s degrees, he became
frustrated with the literal and physical
descriptions people would give God.

Combined with his identity as a gay
man, Sussman took issue with a diety’s
personification as a man or a king on a
throne. When Sussman began studying
Kabbalah and Sefirot, his perceptions
of God were allowed and encouraged
to become untethered from a physical
form, something he had struggled with
since high school.

“It was a good-things-come-to-those-
who-wait situation,” he said. “That’s why
Kabbalistic teaching has meant a lot to
me when it comes to my own struggles
with my Jewish identity.”
As his relationship to Judaism
changes, so does Sussman’s music.

Sussman has noticed that the horizontal
elements of his music have evolved: how
he plays with time and tempo to create
different effects. But some things stay
the same. He still relies on similar chord
structures and harmonics, techniques
he’s favored since beginning his journey
as a musician over two decades ago.

“A lot of the chords I enjoyed playing
on the piano at the Barrack auditorium
I still play in my office, at Temple or at
West Chester,” Sussman said. “Still play-
ing those same chords.” JE
srogelberg@midatlanticmedia.com JEWISHEXPONENT.COM
9 Courtesy of Ari Sussman
Ari Sussman