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When Sylvie Braitman sings, history comes alive.

A few years ago, the San Francisco mezzo-soprano wanted to honor her late father, Abram, who fled the Holocaust as a young boy only to return as a soldier to revenge himself on the Nazis. She did it through "My Father's Journey," a performance that wove oral history with Yiddish song.

Now, in honor of the 50th anniversary of Israel, Braitman has put together "Longing for the Land," a mini-chronicle of the early years of Zionism. A highlight of the recent Jewish Music Festival in Berkeley, where it was presented in an abbreviated version, the full work will be performed at 3 p.m. Sunday at Cinnabar Opera in Petaluma.

The piece mingles theater and song to tell a story. Braitman will be accompanied by violinist Daniel Hoffman and pianist Michael Grossman.

The tale, which follows the young emigre Leah from Eastern Europe to Palestine and spans four decades of her life, was sparked by a suggestion of Braitman's daughter Maissa.

"I wanted to celebrate Israel's 50th anniversary," the singer said last week, "but I don't sing in Hebrew — I do French, Yiddish and opera, and that's enough.

"I was very curious to know how it felt in 1881 to all of a sudden decide to go to Palestine, who went and why they did. I did a lot of reading and, in one book, I found a bunch of Yiddish songs sung by the early settlers. Well, the songs were OK, but they were kind of boring by themselves — like `Who cares?'"

Stymied, the singer brought her problem to her 11-year-old daughter, who said: "Mommy, you've got to do a diary," Braitman related.

"So I did and, of course, it begins with an 11-year-old girl."

That vehicle seemed to breathe life into a historical movement, and she was able to weave actual pioneer figures into the fabric by making them members of the family or friends of her fictional heroine. The story begins with the first Zionist immigrations of the late 19th century and ends in 1925, "because that's when they stopped speaking Yiddish in Israel," she said.

Braitman herself is an emigre. Born in Paris, where she received her initial classical training, she moved to San Francisco from France nine years ago with her husband and daughter. Her son Reuben was born here.

Since completing vocal studies at San Francisco Conservatory of Music, she has been a frequent soloist and recitalist in the Bay Area. She especially enjoys performing new work and sang the role of the wife of General Vallejo in David Conte's "The Dreamers," an opera about early California that premiered in Sonoma in 1996.

The upcoming performance is her third collaboration with Cinnabar Opera. In August, she will perform a concert "from folk songs to art songs" on the Old First Concerts series in San Francisco. The focus will be on how Yiddish music has contributed to the classical tradition.

"I don't know if Yiddish is going to survive [outside of libraries and archives] or not," she said. "But basically I feel that the best justice we can make to the Holocaust victims is to continue.

"There is this great hole in history caused by the Holocaust and maybe we can help to fill it up with what was there before."