Teruah Music Blog
Rebecca Teplow's Kaveh

Teplow has a painterly approach to song writing, one that layers the tiny precise brush-strokes of her clear and controlled voice over large voluptuous brush-strokes of shifting musical genres and textures. Which means that she can do the neat trick of swinging between cabaret, folk, and rock sounds without sounding contrived, clearly drawing on the different emotional strengths of each."

Zalman Mlotek
Rebecca Teplow Releases Kaveh/Hope

Zalmen Mlotek, Artistic Director of The National Yiddish Theatre-Folksbiene, states: "Rebecca Teplow’s new CD "Kaveh/Hope," is a must for anyone with interest in new music to the holy scriptures. Always from the heart, musically interesting, I found myself engaged, as did members of my family. Haunting as well as soothing, her songs resonate on a deep emotional level. Fresh and new, evoking the ancient and deeply spiritual, her songs move you and in some cases force you to move. Melodic, rhythmic, the CD is well produced and has the added charm of having her children sing and play on one of the tracks. That particular track has been played so many times in our home that we need to buy a new CD."

The Jewish Music WebCenter
Rebecca Teplow Releases Kaveh/Hope

Rebecca Teplow's latest CD "Kaveh, Hope" has just been released. The songs are all in Hebrew and composed and arranged by Rebecca on liturgical texts. Rebecca's strong embrace of text is clear and distinct. She has interestingly even composed variations of her own songs and presents "Gam Ki Elech" twice in different styles. I liked the Joni Mitchell clarity and simplicity of her word painting in "Esa Einei" and that is one of her real strengths. The rock idiom predominates as in pieces such as "Hinei Kel," which also includes some fun instrumentals. Teplow's use of contemporary musical idioms are muted but used in a effective way, as in the introduction to "Peyrasti," which starts out in one idiom but morphs into a rock sequence with some nice guitar riffs. The songs showcases Teplow's vocal range and ends the entire album with a quiet dieout. Many will enjoy this album. It's available through CD Baby.com.

Berkshire Jewish Voice
Seth Rogovoy Review

on her new, self-produced CD, “Kaveh/Hope,” Teplow tackles fifteen scripturally based numbers in folk-pop, piano-based arrangements with hints of rock, new-age, jazz, and the classical training she received as a student violinist. Her music has an intimate, highly personal quality — meditative and straight from the heart — and it’s as likely to appeal to fans of Sarah McLachlan and Tori Amos

New Jersey Jewish Standard
‘Pop diva with a hint of Barbra Streisand’

“Kaveh,” the title of Teaneck singer Rebecca Teplow’s newest album, is Hebrew for hope. A collection of psalms and other liturgy set to original arrangements, “Kaveh” also marks the step that follows hope: breakthrough.

For the first time in her life, after grappling with halachic questions and personal ambivalence, Teplow has begun to sing in public. On May 31, in her most public appearance to date, Teplow performed as a soloist with the Ne’imah Jewish Community Chorus of Albany.

“It was an incredible, liberating experience,” said Teplow, who released “Tefilot” (“Prayers”), her first CD, in 2004. “At the end of the performance, people came up to me with tears in their eyes, thanking me for moving them so deeply.”

Teplow traveled through a number of musical mediums on her way to singing. She took up the piano as an 8-year-old student at the Yeshiva of Flatbush, then adopted the violin when she moved on to the High School of Performing Arts in New York. Under the tutelage of Israeli master Itzhak Perlman, Teplow earned her degree in music performance.

If not for a turbulent airplane later in her life, however, Teplow might never have decided to sing.

Said Teplow, “I did not start composing until I was in my mid-30s, when I was caught in turbulence on a plane. I though it (my life) could have been over, and something about the intensity of the moment and the adrenaline pushed me to take out my [Book of Psalms], and I started composing a melody.

“I promised myself that if I lived through the flight I would not wait until I think it is my last moment to compose more music.”

Teplow began voice lessons shortly thereafter.

“I wanted to give life to the original compositions that I started composing,” she said. She began to cultivate a voice that writer Seth Rogovoy would later describe as that of a “pop diva with a hint of Barbra Streisand.”

Teplow’s vocals sail easily through alto and soprano sections on “Kaveh.”

With her formal music training, Teplow is also able to arrange music that best accentuates the lyrics. On “Shema,” for instance, she employs a dramatic, marching melody and adds an extra beat to each measure to increase the tension. The title track boasts an ironic opening, as a dissonant piano and whining violins accompany Teplow as she invokes the word “Kaveh” five haunting times.

“I did not find my true expression until I started composing and singing. However, the training that I received in both piano and violin were incredibly important to the whole process and my eventual composing,” said Teplow.

Listeners can buy “Kaveh” or any of its 15 tracks on iTunes, cdbaby.com, or www.rebeccateplow.com.

The album is available locally at Zoldan’s and the Judaica House on Cedar Lane in Teaneck.

Although Teplow began her singing career with the release of “Tefilot,” she felt, as many in the Orthodox community do, that kol isha — the law that prohibits men from hearing a woman sing, unless that woman is his wife or a child — precluded her from public performance.

She did make one exception: At her son’s bar mitzvah in Teaneck, she decided to sing. A few guests got up and left right as she started. That was “the first and only time I sang in Teaneck,” said Teplow. Still, she began in-depth research on kol isha about a year ago, after she saw a choral performance at SAR High School, which both of her sons attend.

“The girls were given solos and it was both inspiring and beautiful,” she said. With the aid of her husband, Teplow found a number of sources and historical accounts that permitted females to sing in certain public contexts.

The deal-breaker was a responsum by Rabbi David Bigman, the head of Yeshivat Ma’ale Gilboa in Israel. Bigman concluded that “it is permitted to be lenient with regard to listening to the voice of a woman singing when there is a clear sense that the listening is innocent and the singing is innocent.” Teplow’s current stance echoes the responsum.

“Considering all the historical mentions of women singing in the chumash [Bible] and [other scriptures] and the responsum, I think there is absolutely nothing wrong with women singing appropriate songs in appropriate settings.”

Whether her public singing career will sit well with the Orthodox community — or even her neighbors — remains to be seen. Said Teplow, “Everyone has the right to decide what is comfortable and ‘right’ for them. My decision to sing publicly is so recent I cannot tell whether the community will embrace my decision. But there is a whole world out there ready to embrace my decision.”

Written by Joseph Leichman

The Forward

Seth Rogovoy in the "Forward" listed Rebecca's previous album "Prayers" among the best CD's of 2004. He states "Teplow boasts the voice of a pop diva with a hint of Barbara Streisand, well suited to her dramatic, cello-flecked, pop-rock arrangements of Psalms and passages from Jewish wisdom literature

Jewish Week
Rebecca Teplow's Prayers/Tefilot

George Robinson in the "Jewish Week" exclaims "well, she certainly has my attention. Teplow's voice is lovely. A little Norah Jones, a little Neshama Carlebach, with a good cabaret singer's flair...She's definitely someone worth keeping an eye and ear on."

New Jersey Jewish Standard
Rebecca's 'Tefilot'/Prayers

One of the most striking things I noticed about Rebecca Teplow when I first met her was her soulful, green eyes, eyes which seem to find meaning and music in everything around her.

Rebecca is in her late thirties, and lives in Teaneck with her husband and three beautiful children. Her first CD entitled “Tefilot -- Prayers” is a collection of Rebecca’s original compositions that she both arranged and performed.

Since purchasing it four weeks ago, I have become addicted to it and have been listening to it incessantly -- in spite of the plethora of other music options available to me. Each song seems to have its own ethereal quality, and as such, is both inspirational and experiential -- to the point where even the five year old girls in my carpool now request 'the Rebecca CD' when I drive them to school on Friday.

For Rebecca, the CD is the culmination of a dream she had dreamed for many years. Her early childhood years were spent at the Yeshiva of Flatbush Elementary School. However, when it came to selecting a High School, Rebecca's father allowed her to interview at the prestigious School of Performing Arts -- the famous school which acted as the backdrop for the movie 'Fame'. Although 3,000 people applied to this school annually, only 200 were accepted, and Rebecca was one of them. The next few years saw her perfecting her skills at the violin, and although she and many of her classmates were invited to feature in the movie 'Fame' she had to decline the offer because of her Sabbath observance -- a hard thing to do for an ambitious and talented 14-year old, especially when many of her classmates were enjoying the experience.

Following her graduation from the School of Performing Arts, she obtained her music degree, and one of the most important and lasting lessons she gleaned from the Master classes she took with Yitzchak Perlman was the importance of 'singing with the violin' not just playing it. This desire to sing became an important leitmotif in Rebecca's mind and heart in the years that followed, especially as she realized that the human voice is the most original musical instrument of all, one that, in fact, predates all others.

Rebecca started composing her own music about four years ago, the decision to do so coming spontaneously during a turbulent flight to Los Angeles. Interestingly, the in-flight turbulence seemed to coincide with a period of emotional turbulence as one of Rebecca's family members was sick and she was anxious to see a recovery. As she sat on the plane confronting her own mortality and the preciousness of life, she jotted down some music notes on a piece of paper, and on her arrival home, composed these into a song which now appears on her CD as “Im Ein Ani Li” (If I am not for myself..). The song's words, taken from Ethics of the Fathers, reflect her appreciation of the fragility of life, the importance of self-worth, and the acknowledgment that, when possible, people should attempt to realize their dreams before it is too late to do so.

It was after this turbulent, thought-provoking plane ride that Rebecca started taking voice lessons with Jocelyn Rasmussen. She has since become a powerful mentor, friend and voice encouraging Rebecca to develop her singing talent -- in spite of what might be perceived as some of the traditional restraints in the Modern Orthodox community with regard to the issue of women singing and/or acting in public.

Over the past two to three years, in conjunction with these voice lessons, Rebecca has also found herself to be increasingly compelled to sit down and compose music -- particularly at those times when she is moved by a personal event, experience or a touching story heard on the communal grapevine.

Like so many others, Rebecca was deeply affected by the events of 9/11, and in the wake of this tragedy, started thinking about the legacy people leave behind. She then decided that she, too, wished to create something to give to her own children so that they would, one day, have a tangible piece of her -- even if she were no longer there in person. Her 'Tefilot' CD is the first piece of her tangible legacy to her children, yet it simultaneously seems to serve as a physical symbol of the possibility of a person reaching for a dream and realizing it....

Rebecca confesses that the support she received from her family and friends -- especially her husband Josh and three children -- helped fuel her desire to fulfill her dream to find and express her voice. The fortitude shown by her parents over the years as well as the strength, perseverance and dignity displayed by her mother-in-law also served as guiding lights to her, she says, and enabled her to find the strength to develop her own voice and create the new CD.

During our interview, she admitted that she first conceived of this CD as a private piece of music that she would share with only close family and friends as she tends to be a modest, unassuming person who shies away from the limelight. Moreover, her modern Orthodox education had taught her that Kol Isha -- the voice of a solo woman singer -- is often frowned on by religious males.

However, when a cancer patient stopped her on the street and told her what great meaning and comfort she had found when listening to one of Rebecca's songs, she then decided to publicize her music in the hope that it might also bring emotional sustenance to others in need. A conversation with a local rabbi also assured her that it was totally acceptable for her to make the CD.

Regardless of whether one is religious or not, the songs found on her CD tend to be those which stir the soul, her voice emerging as a unique and touching blend of heartfelt passion and feeling, one non-Jewish colleague of mine even spontaneously describing her powerful and mellifluous voice as reminiscent of Barbara Streisand's.

The first song on the CD is a heartfelt rendition in which Rebecca uses a line from the Hallel prayer to thank G-d for listening to her prayers -- in her case, she says, this is her thanks to G-d for granting her a husband and children whom she loves and cherishes, although the song is relevant to anyone, anywhere, anytime who feels that they have what to say Thank You for.

One of the other stirring songs on her CD is the one which she composed for the late mother of her piano students -- Rivka Rosenwein -- who was struggling with her fight against cancer. The song is sung with a passion and fervor that clearly suggests that Rebecca is, in fact, using her beautiful and strong voice to beg G-d to perform a miracle and save the mother of her students.

Going forward, Rebecca expresses the hope that this CD will encourage other women - whatever their religious background and affiliation -- to feel empowered to reach out and fulfill their personal dreams, and mothers, to merge these with the responsibilities of parenthood.

While she is still grappling with the Kol Isha issue, she admits that she is certainly still eager to explore the potential for singing opportunities in the future.

Tefilot is available for purchase in local Judaica stores, West Side Judaica, Great Neck Judaica and online at www.cdbaby.com/rebeccateplow.

Written By Tanya Krim