One night a month · nothing missing
The Shelayma
Project
Single-night music gatherings — a fire in a clearing, a basement full of candles, a loft that sings until the sky changes. Whole songs, whole rooms, whole nights.
The Nights
Three kinds of night.
Pick your door.
Every Shelayma night is its own room with its own rules — the only constants are the songs, the small size, and the basket your phone sleeps in. Step through a door below; each one keeps its own weather.
Motzaei Shabbos Aug 8
The Melave Malka Sessions
A candlelit listening room under a Crown Heights shul. Havdalah at the door, forty chairs, soup at midnight.
Take a chair →Thursday Aug 20
The Fire Circle
A kumzitz around one fire in a Catskills clearing. Forty log seats, bus from Brooklyn, nigunim until the wood runs out.
Enter the clearing →Motzaei Shabbos Aug 22
Ad Alos עַד עֲלוֹת
Music from nightfall to alos hashachar in a Greenpoint loft — three watches of the night, and the last niggun ends when the sky does.
Enter the night →Motzaei Shabbos Sep 12
The Loud One
Everything the quiet nights hold back — horns, a wall of amps, two hundred people standing in a Gowanus warehouse. Ends acoustic. Trust us.
Plug in →Where it's all going · spring 2027
The Shelayma
Music Festival
Every night above is a rehearsal for one long weekend on a lake upstate — in through a Thursday-night fire circle, through a full Shabbos, out through the stage show and a 2 am Ad Alos that ends at actual sunrise. The whole songbook. The whole person. Shelayma.
Walk the whole arc →
What It Is
Whole, like in
ani maamin
Shelayma is the word from b’emunah shleimah — whole, complete. That’s the entire idea and the entire pitch: one night a month where nothing is missing and nothing is extra. Real instruments, real voices, rooms small enough that yours matters.
No stage in the usual sense, no openers, no merch table. You come off a broken week, you sing until it isn’t, you go home. The details change by night; the shape never does.
- PhonesInto the basket at the door — every night, no exceptions
- SizeForty to a hundred twenty, never more
- FareChai math: $36 or $54, everything included
- WordOne email a month. If a night fills first, we just don’t write.
Past Nights
The proof is what you hum
on the walk home
We don’t record the nights — that’s the deal that makes them work. A few frames survive anyway.
- 11nights so far
- 508chairs & logs filled
- 3,400tealights burned
- 0encores — on purpose
The Players
A small bench, on purpose
The same hands keep showing up across the nights — that’s not a budget decision, it’s the sound. You learn a room faster when the room already knows you.
- Akiva Bergvoice & guitarstarts what needs starting, at the fire and everywhere else
- Dov Lieberharmonium & voicecarries the basement on motzaei Shabbos; collects nigunim like records
- Rivka Steinviolinthe line above the room — you hear her before you find her
- Zev Halpernclarinetthe loud hour’s loudest argument, retired by 2 am
- Nachum Adlerframe drumwill not sit still until the floor does
- Shmuel Vogelupright bassthe floor itself
The List
Most chairs go to the list
before we post anything
On the first of the month we write to the list, in order, until the month’s nights are spoken for. Most months that’s the whole marketing department.
One email a month. Nothing else, ever.