Russian composer Alexander Weprik (1899-1958) was as a child trained at the Conservatory in Leipzig, Germany. In the 1920:s he was considered the great hope of Jewish music. Hardly ever has another composer come so close to he spirit of synagogue music and has spiritualized it as much as Weprik. He was arrested in 1950, maltreated in prison and deported to the Gulag where he had to organize an amateur orchestrta among the prisoners. This is almost symbolic for the short history of Jewish music in Russa: the career of a composer, that had started on stages in Moscow, Berlin and Vienna, ended in the Gulag with arrangements for a balalaika orchestra.