The illustrious history of the Menschen began before
we knew we were so Honorable. Back in 1997, a group of
Boston-based men who had sung a cappella at various
colleges, including Princeton and MIT, decided they
didn't need to stop singing just because they stopped
studying. They formed an a cappella group and
sometimes called themselves "Teiku" and sometimes
"They Might Be Jewish", but mostly didn't have a name.
Members included Yonah Schmeidler, Ezra Robison, and
Justin Miller.

A year later, in 1999, the group membership dwindled
and these men came up with the inspired idea of adding
women to the group. Their decision lagged Princeton's
decision to admit women by only 30 years. Luckily,
they knew a few women in town who had also sung a
cappella at Princeton, and asked them to join in the
fun. New members included Julianne Hackman (who had started the Jewish a cappella group Koleinu at Princeton, and was soon to be Justin's fiancee), her friend Lauren Sager, and Karen Livescu, Julianne's roommate at Princeton and in Boston (who had also sung with Koleinu).  The group rehearsed at Julianne and Karen's apartment in Porter Square.

The group continued for a few years as such. They
remained mostly nameless, although they met regularly
and recruited extra people to the group, including
Tamar Engel and soon after Alison Auderieth. They
performed a few times, including one gathering of
family and friends in Julianne and Karen's apartment,
and one MIT concert where they opened for Techiya.

Before their 2001 MIT concert, the group spent several
months and much brainpower trying to come up with a
name that would stick. They had all sorts of options,
from Meshuganotes, to the Cantorbrigians, to the
Melaphephones, to Kol Porter. They took votes of all kinds, including ones with
non-integer scores like square root of pi and 1/e, and
had vetoes and recounts until we settled on Mi Va-Mi.
No one was too excited about it, but no one hated it.
Then as they were warming up for the MIT concert, Justin
came up with the name Honorable Menschen. All the
group members liked it, and in mid-concert, they
erased the name "Mi Va-Mi" from the chalkboard, and
wrote "Honorable Menschen" instead. It's a much longer name
to write, but despite such hardships, the name stuck.

At the end of that season, in the summer of 2001, many
members became parents, moved away, or both, and thus
left the group. Lauren recruited her sister, Deborah
Sager, to sing with us too. So, the existing Menschen
(as from this point forth, we were Menschen) numbered
only 8, and rallied together to recruit and continue
the group. And recruit we did. At the beginning of
that season, we added 8 more people to our group,
doubling to 16 and our biggest size ever. Members who
joined in this wave included Deb Melkin, Jay Hancock,
and David Sadownick. We never asked them whether they
wanted to keep the name.

In the 2001-2002 season, Tamar became our President.
Rather than have one conductor for all songs, we
agreed to split musical responsibilities by song to
lighten the load on conductors.

Because of a technical snafu, Tamar missed an email
from some guy named Adam who wanted to try out. She was
in France at the time and her inbox overflowed.
Luckily Adam Roberts persisted and asked one more
time, and after tryouts were over, we managed to
correct what would have been a dire mistake and admit
him to the group as well.

The year 2002 was a momentous one for our group. The
new members got up to speed, and we all learned new
songs, including "Uf Gozal" and "Mitachat Hashamayim".
Under the musical leadership of Karen Livescu, we held
a larger friends and family concert at Peabody
Terrace, where Lauren lived. We had our first retreat
that year, in North Conway. We created new roles to
help the President including Event Manager and
Librarian. And we set up our now famous web portal.

By 2002-2003, we shrunk a bit. We did admit some new
basses including Daniel Ozick.  Tamar continued as
President, this time with much help from Karen as
Musical Coordinator, Adam as Events Coordinator,
Deborah Sager as Librarian, Karen as Membership Chair.
We hosted a Jewish A Cappella Fest at Harvard,
together with MIT's Techiya and Harvard's Mizmor Shir.
We returned to North Conway for our second annual
retreat.

The next year, Erica Schultz joined the group and
opened our world to connections at Tremont Street
Shul. David Sadownick staged a coup and took over from
Tamar as President. Deborah Melkin followed the
momentum and replaced Karen as Musical Coordinator.
For our retreat, we convened at Packard Manse, and to
avoid further political upheaval, we also ratified our
group's Constitution there.

Alison stepped up as President and Adam as Musical
Coordinator in our first Constitution-backed elections
for the next year. In January 2005, in the dead of
winter, we strategically held tryouts and found that
only committed souls bothered to trudge through mounds
of snow and sing for us despite the cold. We were very
grateful to find such good talent in such dire
conditions: Betsey Gardstein, Joe Mazor, Richard
Samuels, and Matt Ringel joined our ranks. And thus
the history of the Menschen continues, we hope for a
very long time.