Shir Appeal

Shir Appeal is Tufts University’s only mixed-gender Jewish a cappella group. Founded in 1995 with assistance from the Jewish Agency, Shir Appeal is one of the nation’s oldest collegiate Jewish a cappella groups. The group sings music from a wide range of genres, including Israeli rock and pop, traditional and liturgical Jewish songs, Jewish world music, and English music with strong Jewish themes. Though based at Tufts University outside Boston, Shir Appeal has gone on tour to numerous areas in the United States, including New York City, Philadelphia, Washington DC, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Miami, and Chicago, as well as the New England and Boston areas. Shir Appeal has been on Best of College a Cappella (BOCA) four times. It was the first non-secular a cappella group to be recognized on BOCA, and the only Jewish group to have ever been featured on it.
History.
The group was founded in 1995 by Liz Perlman Bodian, Jenn Madan Cohen, Jessica Cooper and Jonathan Oriole. It is formally a student group at Tufts University Hillel, and the presidency of the group is a position on the Hillel student board. In the same year it was founded, Shir Appeal hosted a Jewish A Cappella festival at Tufts University. Shir Appeal was the first group to have an album produced by John Clark, himself a graduate of the Tufts Amalgamates. Many of Shir Appeal’s early arrangements were composed by John Clark ("Laila Tov Europa", "Yamei Hatom"), as well as members of the Tufts Beelzebubs. Being at Tufts, a “fertile crescent” of a cappella, Shir Appeal quickly gained expertise in all aspects of a cappella. Tufts’ University president, Lawrence Bacow (2001–2011), also hosted the group on numerous occasions at the president’s house (Gifford House) on the Tufts Campus. Shir Appeal is also a regular participant at an annual Jewish A Cappella festival at the Jewish Theological Seminary in New York City, held in February. The group does not participate in competitions, but has received praise from the Recorded A Cappella Review Board (RARB) for its CDs. Their album Linguistics received an honorable mention for best album of 2015 from the Recorded A Cappella Review Board.
Name.
The name ‘Shir Appeal’ (Heb: שיר הפיל) is a pun on the group’s "sheer appeal" and the Hebrew meaning of the words “Shir haPeel,” which means ‘Song of the Elephant’. Tufts' mascot is Jumbo the elephant.
Religion.
While Shir Appeal is a Jewish a cappella group, their repertoire draws on both religious music and secular Israeli rock and pop music. The vast majority of their songs are in Hebrew, though it has sung in Hebrew, English, Yiddish, Spanish, Ladino, Russian, Portuguese, Arabic, and Luganda. The members of Shir Appeal come from different religious backgrounds, including Jews of different levels of observance as well as non-Jewish members.
Albums.
As is common in collegiate a cappella, many of Shir Appeal’s album names are puns.