Shirley Cohen Steinberg
Shirley Cohen Steinberg helped make the Jewish holidays fun and interactive for children with her Holiday Music Box albums, featuring “One Morning” (popularly known as the Passover “Frog Song”). Steinberg began performing on the New York radio show the Horn and Hardart Children’s Hour at age five and in her twenties sang Israeli music on WEVD’s Shirei Moledet radio program. She studied languages and psychology at Brooklyn College and Hebrew studies at the Jewish Theological Seminary before earning a master’s in early childhood education from New York University. She went on to teach in Jewish and secular preschools. In 1951 she recorded the popular Holiday Music Box albums, which became an instant classic—at the time, there were few ways for children to engage playfully with the tradition. After moving to Canada in 1970, she continued teaching music to children and adult, but also served as music director for an Israeli music group, Israella, for thirty years. Following her lifelong interest in languages, she also became active in the local Yiddish scene, leading Yiddish language workshops and founding Die Folkshpieler, a Yiddish Theatre Company in 2002. She directed, wrote, and acted in plays there for many years, despite the fact that there were few people in the Ottawa area who spoke the language fluently. In 2014, she published her first children’s book, Frogs in the Bed, based on her hit song. She passed away in April 2024 at the age of 97.