Ami has had a lifelong love of Jewish music, liturgy and language. He led the San Francisco-based monthly Kumzits for 10 years, and in recent years has been a student of Yiddish while singing and spreading Yiddish and Ladino music. He has served as a Ba’al Tfila and loves to explore and teach in-depth studies of the prayers. He has a BA from Rice University, a BHL from the University of Judaism, and an MD from Baylor College of Medicine. He is a retired pediatrician and neonatologist, and lives in San Francisco with his wife, poet and physician Abby Caplin. They have two grown children.