The University of Maryland has many student groups. Like most large state schools, there is a club for everyone, including one for musically-inclined Jewish students.
Kol Sasson is UMD’s Jewish a cappella group. For nearly 30 years, the group has provided students a place to join in their love of Jewish culture and song.
“It’s really kind of a home for some people, for me,” said sophomore Zach Dankowicz, who serves as musical director. “Being able to make music with my friends and family is really meaningful.”
In 2026, Kol Sasson will celebrate the beginning of their third decade in existence. They are recording their 12th studio album this year, too. Each year, the group performs at Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s Chanukah party, as well as synagogues across the area. Every spring, they go on tour, choosing a different city and playing venues within it.
“It’s a really nice space to connect with Jewish life on campus without it being an inherently religious activity. You can come in just trying to engage with Jews culturally and we don’t ask anything in terms of the religious aspect,” said the club’s outgoing president, senior Tekoa Sultan-Reisler.
The group usually has around ten members at a time, performing a mix of English and Hebrew pop music. While that may sound challenging, performing in other languages can be broken down in the same way that performing in English can be, Sultan-Reisler said.
“What I’ve heard from people who don’t have so much of a background [in Hebrew] is that they’d either be learning the Hebrew syllables or they’d be learning the a capella syllables, which either way, you’re learning a bunch of kind of senseless sounds, but strung together. But they definitely struggle with the ‘ch’ sound. Always, we have to workshop that a little bit,” she said.
While many of the pop songs in English are familiar to American audiences, not everyone is as up to date on Israeli pop as Kol Sasson. Dankowicz nominates many of the songs, and said a lot of what the group ends up singing comes from things that he and other members happen to hear during their daily listening.
“I come from a dance background and a very strong Jewish household, so a lot of the music that I listen to in my daily life is Israeli,” he said. “We work together as a group to select songs based on our shared interests.”
Running and participating in a group that performs frequently, records albums and travels every year is not easy. Kol Sasson has to choose songs, arrange them and rehearse, as well as market themselves and coordinate logistics with the places they perform.
They also collaborate with other student groups on campus, including an Israeli dance troupe club. For Sultan-Reisler, one of the most powerful moments each year is when outgoing seniors get to choose a song that the group sings together.
“That’s always a really powerful and sad moment, because [a lot of] your friends are graduating,” Sultan-Reisler said. “We keep in touch with our alumni and have them over multiple times a semester whenever we can. But obviously the group changes every single semester, so I feel like [the song they choose] always marks the end in a really bittersweet way.”
Dankowicz’s best memory with Kol Sasson took place last year during the annual spring break trip. Kol Sasson traveled to Phoenix and sang at synagogues and other Jewish and non-Jewish institutions in the area over the course of a week.
“That was really just an awesome experience,” Dankowicz said. “Getting to be in an Airbnb for a week with some of my favorite people in college was just so exciting.”
Dankowicz said that it was a microcosm of what makes Kol Sasson special, and why he and others have enjoyed the experience so much.
“Getting to do this and make music, especially Jewish music, is such a happy experience for me, because that’s really what I’m in the group for,” he said.
The group doesn’t require members to be Jewish, but makes sure to accommodate those who are. Sultan-Reisler said a key reason she joined is that Kol Sasson doesn’t require people to perform or travel on Shabbat. If they do, they can opt to go without technology to observe the rules of the sabbath.
For three decades, Kol Sasson has helped Jewish students find their identity and grow together. Sultan-Reisler said that this was her experience, and she will be sad to go at the end of the year.
“This has allowed me to explore [Judaism] on my own terms and figure out where I want to be religiously, which I think is really important for me to figure out in college. There’s no pressure, there’s no obligation in terms of the religious aspect, it’s just a way to explore kind of freely, and I think that’s been true for almost 30 years now,” she said.
