RUACH

YES has worked with RUACH, a nonprofit, Milwaukee-based Jewish arts and music organization, for over eighteen years, teaming together to provide our students with multiple creative opportunities.

The relationship began with after-school and extracurricular programming, including music and visual arts classes and music lessons from Wisconsin Conservatory of Music faculty and other local instructors. Students studied such instruments as guitar, drums, piano, violin, flute, recorder, clarinet, and saxophone.  These music lessons, in tandem with a thriving RUACH visual arts program, involved an estimated two-thirds of the student body at one time.

Over time, as RUACH became more invested in the Greater Jewish and non-Jewish communities in Milwaukee, and, more recently, in the Sherman Park neighborhood of which YES is a part, YES and RUACH began to explore and collaborate on arts activities that would touch more students at once.  

Efforts in more recent years include boys choirs, girls choirs, a girls musical theater production, K4-2nd grade visual arts classes, a boys ukulele ensemble, and boys musical theater.

In recent years, YES has also teamed with RUACH to integrate curricular music and arts programs into the school day, including professional instruction of RUACH's new all-Jewish-music recorder (songflute) method book, Recorders Play Jewish Music, for fourth grade boys and girls, among other classes. RUACH has also provided guitar and mandolin classes featuring Jewish music, drum circles, music appreciation workshops, K4-2nd grade general music classes, vocal technique classes, and visual arts residencies.

The end-of-year celebration of YES-RUACH programs, now called 'Nachas YES, Nachas RUACH,' remains a highlight of the YES and RUACH calendar years, even as the YES-RUACH dynamic has evolved.

YES and RUACH look forward to continuing to discover new ways to enhance our students' learning and growth through music and the arts!

Watch the RUACH recorder video below. Click here for more details.