December 6, 2016
6 Kislev 5777
Dear Friends,
This past November was a difficult month for lovers of Jewish music.
Early in the month, on November 7th, the great Canadian Jewish poet, singer, and songwriter, Leonard Cohen, passed away.
Leonard Cohen's loss hit many Jews hard. Over the decades, his so-called "Jewish" songs (such as "Not By Fire," "Halelujah," or the most recent, "You Want It Darker" --
arguably his "most Jewish song yet")
had earned him adulation from many Jews who appreciated the way he expressed Jewish themes in his work. A good example of this can be seen in the teaching of an acquaintance of mine, Dr. Stephen Hazan Arnoff. Take a look at the on-line materials for his course on Leonard Cohen by clicking here. If you have time, watch the opening video for the course, which gives you a good taste of the deep love and esteem that Arnoff and many others had for Cohen.
For a somewhat different yet equally informed perspective, there's the view of Dr. Ruth Wisse, who went to school with Leonard Cohen at McGill University and later became a distinguished scholar of Eastern European Jewry and eventually a Professor of Yiddish Literature at Harvard. She had hoped that Cohen would have tried more consciously to influence modern Jewish culture, but she nonetheless acknowledged the great impact he had on modern Jews. Take a look at her recent essay here.
Then, toward the end of the month, came news of the death of another great Jewish musician, someone who composed over 500 melodies. Within the traditional, Orthodox circles in which he lived and worked, he was highly venerated, yet, unlike Cohen, he was virtually unknown throughout the rest of the Jewish world, and for that reason, I would like to tell you about him. I'm referring to the great American Jewish composer and musician, Rabbi Ben-Zion Shenker, who died on November 20th at the age of 91.
Born in Brooklyn in 1925, he was musically inclined from his youth. At the age of 13, he had his own radio program in Brooklyn. (He tells the story of how he had to approach first his teacher and then his school principal for permission to leave class early once a week to go to the radio studio. Needless to say, they found it hard to believe him at first.) At the age of 14, Shenker happened to encounter the Rebbe (or, Grand Rabbi) of the Modzitz Hasidic sect, who had recently escaped from Poland shortly after the Nazi invasion. (The name of the community is pronounced, "MUD-itch"). The Rebbe saw Shenker perusing a music book and heard him humming some tunes and realized that the boy could read musical notation. He hired him to be his musical secretary, and charged him with transcribing the hundreds of melodies that the Rebbe remembered from his soon-to-be-destroyed community in Europe, saving them from oblivion.
In time, Ben-Zion Shenker created the "Neginah" record company to record and distribute Hasidic melodies, and he also continued to compose his own. Several of these have become very widespread, and yet, because Rabbi Shenker didn't always copyright his work, many people are unaware that he composed them.
I'd like to highlight three of his most widely known melodies. If you don't already know them, I urge you to learn them! The first is endearing; the second, ecstatic; and the third, consoling.
First
, since the sixteenth century, it has been a Jewish practice for husbands to sing "Eishet Hayil" ("A Woman of Valor") to their wives on Friday nights, prior to reciting Kiddush. Eishet H
ayil consists of the last 22 verses of the last chapter of the Book of Proverbs. It is an alphabetical acrostic, each line beginning with a subsequent letter of the Hebrew alphabet. Apparently, there was no specific melody used for this recitation until Rabbi Shenker married his late wife, Dina, in 1953. In her honor, Rabbi Shenker composed the melody for Eishet Hayil now heard all over the world.
If you don't know the words of Eishet Hayil or Shenker's melody, I suggest that you first watch the following Youtube video, in which appear the text, transliteration, and translation of each verse as it is sung. Note that this rendition is not a Hasidic one; the pronunciation of the text, as well as the instrumentation and arrangement, are modern Israeli. (Try not to get distracted by those flowers!)
(If you already know the words of
Eishet Hayil and would rather watch the array of musicians who recorded that version instead of those flowers, click
here.)
Then, if you are a romantic, take a look at the following very touching (in my opinion) video of a groom singing Eishet Hayil to his bride toward the end of their wedding celebration. Note that, as when this passage is chanted on Friday evenings, it's customary to accentuate the verse beginning with the letter resh: "Rabot banot asu hayil, v'at alit al kulana," "Many women have done valiantly, but you exceed them all." Unlike the bride, you may be able to watch and listen to this rendition to the very end without crying, but then again ....
Second,
speaking of weddings, Ben Zion Shenker wrote a lively wedding song that has become an essential melody in any "simcha" mix. The lyrics are "Yasis alayich elohayich, k'm'sos hatan al kallah" -- "Your God shall rejoice over you, as a bridegroom rejoices over a bride." (The passage appears in the great medieval hymn sung on Friday nights, L'cha Dodi.) Here's one nice rendering:
The third melody is the familiar, soothing tune to Psalm 23, "Mizmor L'David." Rabbi Shenker wrote this melody in Eretz Yisrael (the Land of Israel) in 1946, prior to the creation of the State of Israel. He tells the remarkable story of how he came to write it in an interview with Hankus Netsky, the great Klezmer musician, in the following Youtube clip:
There are many renditions of Mizmor l'David on-line. Listen to the following, as the great Cantor Yitzhak Meir Helfgott is accompanied by the great violinist, Itzhak Perlman:
(Note: there are other Youtube clips of this performance that include video as well, but I believe that the sound quality on this one is superior.)
Although he served as a cantor at a Modzitzer synagogue in Brooklyn for almost sixty years, Ben-Zion Shenker made his living from business, not from his music. He often agreed to sing at weddings and other simchas of families who lacked the means to hire a musician. Sometimes, he would compose new niggunim for the occasion.
Alas, Ben-Zion Shenker has composed his last melodies. But I hope that you have gotten a sense not only of his great skill but also of his warmth, humility and menschlichkeit. I hope that we will all remember those qualities -- and seek to emulate them -- as we continue to sing this gentle soul's wonderful melodies for many years to come.
