Nearly a year after seven Israeli teen musicians visited Washington, D.C., for a week, Thelma Yellin High School of the Arts students are back triple in number.
“Last year, a seven-person jazz band came and it was a wonderful experience,” said David Solomon, the director of arts education at Charles E. Smith Jewish Day School. “This year, the program grew and we had 21 students from Thelma Yellin.”
Robert and Carol Burman are the Potomac philanthropists who hosted the seven Thelma Yellin students in 2025 and helped coordinate again this year. After visiting Thelma Yellin in Givatayim, Israel, and seeing the Big Band perform, Robert Burman decided it was a “no-brainer” to bring the entire band to the States, according to Josh Stevens, a Jewish communal professional and friend of the Burmans.
“Go big or go home, right?” Stevens wrote in a statement to Washington Jewish Week. “The energy shifted from something that felt like a small garage band to to a legitimate, professional jazz ensemble, because that’s exactly what they are.”
A Concert for the Books
Members of the Thelma Yellin Big Band visited CESJDS from Jan. 7 to 9, where they were “treated like rock stars.” They performed in a community jazz concert with CESJDS instrumental ensembles and Shir Madness a cappella group at the Julia Bindeman Suburban Center of Washington Hebrew Congregation on Jan. 8.
“That was new this year, so I’m thrilled that it was such a success,” Solomon said of the community concert. “I think that everyone was blown away by Thelma Yellin [and] by our JDS students.”
The young musicians performed American jazz hits from the Great American Songbook. “I recognized many of these numbers and some of these numbers were even done in Hebrew,” Solomon said.
Stevens spoke to the “sheer caliber of talent on stage,” and the nearly 300 audience members “left feeling joyful,” Solomon said.
“There was so much optimism and hope and idealism that came out of this amazing concert that united the community that was much needed,” Solomon said. “We walked away from that concert talking about the music and the beauty and the talent and the hard work. We’re not walking away from that concert talking about politics or war or all of the other difficult things that are in the news.”
An ‘Instant Connection’
Once the 21 students arrived in the D.C. area on Jan. 6, Stevens and local business owner Guy Berliner served as “trip leaders,” shepherding the students between mall runs, Guitar Center and “nonstop jam sessions,” Stevens said.
“Tripling the number of students, of course, came with real challenges,” said Stevens. “Transportation gets harder, programming becomes less intimate, and feeding that many teenagers is no small feat. So instead of trying to visit as many places as possible, we decided to focus more deeply on partnering with one or two institutions with strong existing relationships and broad communal reach.”
Those two institutions were WHC and CESJDS, the latter of which hosted Thelma Yellin in January 2025.
During what Burman called a “magical three days of music and friendship,” the Thelma Yellin Big Band performed for the CESJDS middle and high schools.
“When they performed for our high school, it’s the first time I’ve ever seen our high school in an assembly [give] a standing ovation unprompted,” Solomon noted.
They also got the “CESJDS experience,” from jamming with fellow student musicians and creating in the Maker Space to being interviewed by CESJDS students in Hebrew.
The goal, Solomon said, was to foster friendships.
“There were so many opportunities throughout the three days for their students, our students, to get to know each other,” he said.
He noticed an “instant connection” between them, especially as students from both schools jammed together in the music room.
“To watch these students just immediately jump into improvising music together was just, ‘Wow,’” Solomon said. “They all picked up their instruments and just started jamming.”
“Music is a universal language,” Solomon said. “When a music student meets a fellow music student, there is an instant connection and they bond through the creative process. Music is a language that connects people and moves people and brings joy.”
This visit wasn’t a program stemming from layers of bureaucracy, committee approvals or marketing campaigns, Stevens said: “Instead, Robert, Guy and I were fortunate to find organizational leaders who believed in the idea, and nearly 300 people who registered for a concert simply trusting that they’d be part of something special.”
“What stood out most to me was how achievable meaningful, impactful programming can be when the conditions are right,” Stevens said. “What emerged were real friendships, a sense of allyship, and a reaffirmed understanding that there is very little separating us from our Israeli counterparts beyond some land and water.”
This allyship is important to the moment, Stevens said, adding that Jewish identity has “always been tied to Israel.” “At a time when antisemitism and misinformation are having real and painful impacts on Jews in the diaspora, it’s essential that we strengthen those connections through experiential, tangible opportunities, not transactional or one-off engagements, but relationships that have space to grow,” he added.
Solomon said he was glad to see the students from Israel and Rockville connecting over a shared passion, forming connections that are especially meaningful for the 12th graders, who will travel to Israel at the end of the academic year.
“I loved how easily they bonded together,” Solomon said. “They connected on social media and I’m fairly confident that when our seniors go to Israel, they will reconnect there. I think that some friendships developed from this that will last for years and years to come.”
