Jane Myers will share what she learned from her 50-year relationship with Rabbi Ben-Zion Gold, including the power of music and memory to sustain a person. Rabbi Gold’s life began in the rich traditional educational and cultural life of Radom, Poland. After experiencing the Nazi invasion and barely surviving Auschwitz, he eventually came to America as his family’s sole survivor. Although his traumatic experiences haunted him throughout his entire life, with his brilliant, open mind, he possessed the unique ability to grasp and illuminate a coherent path from his roots in Eastern Europe to initiating and building an egalitarian, intellectually and spiritually rich Conservative community at Harvard University as Director of Hillel until 1992. Jane met Rabbi Gold when she was a freshman in 1966 and after graduation became a close friend until his death.

Their shared love of traditional Jewish music later led Jane to encourage him to record, from 1976 to 2010, dozens of songs and Chassidic niggunim that would otherwise be lost to history if not for his fine voice and his outstanding memory. Jane will share video clips, archival photographs, and his singing from the CD she published, titled Touching the Memory: Songs Remembered from a Childhood in Poland. Annotated CDs will be available for purchase. 
Jane Myers has been a teacher in secular and Jewish settings, a Conservative cantor, and an editor. She has also composed many melodies for the Psalms and liturgy.