History

Organized in 1994, Techiya is the newest a cappella group on the MIT campus. At the same time, we are among the older Jewish a cappella groups, as Jewish a cappella is a completely new (with the exception of Pizmon) and fast-growing phenomenon. The idea and the name of Techiya go back a little further, to 1992 (give or take a year), when Shulamit Lerner organized a group of people to sing a few Chanuka songs at the annual lighting of the test tube Chanukiah (candelabrum).

Meet Techiya 1994-95. In our first year, we started by singing some simple four part arrangements of Chanuka and Purim songs. We also came up with our own brands of the Dreidel song and O Sing Praises as only engineers could write them. In the spring we added songs like Bei Mir Bistu Shein and Cuando El Rey Nimrod, expanding our repertoire to four languages. In April we hosted a Boston Jewish a cappella concert, and performed with the other two groups that existed at the time, Manginah (Brandeis) and Mizmor Shir (Harvard).

In our second year, we performed on parents' weekend with the other MIT groups, and we performed at the General Assembly of Combined Jewish Philanthropies with another new group, Kol B'yachad (Brown). In January, we visited Yale to perform with Magevet. By the spring, we were able to put together a long enough program to host our own concert.

Meet Techiya, fall 96. This year, we hosted a fall concert at which the two newest Boston area Jewish a cappella groups, Kol Echad (BU) and Shir Appeal (Tufts), performed with us. Also in November, we performed at Hebrew College together with all five of the Boston area Jewish groups. In March, we performed at BU with Kol Echad, Kol Hakavod (Michigan), and Beat'achon, a semi-professional group from New York. We will soon be giving our first paid concert, for the Boston Chapter of the Womens' Division of the American Technion Society, and are preparing to record our first album.

Last updated April 19, 1997
Written by Daniel Thumim