Featuring

J.Hershy Worch, vocals.

~~~~

Rob Bethel, cello.

David Blanchet, drums

Fishel Bresler,  flutes, clarinet, saxophone, guitar,    mandolin, mandocello.

Richard Cherlin, trombone.

Mark Davis, guitar.

Laura Gulley, violin.

Rick Massimo, string bass.

Pam Murray, trombone.

Alan Rosenberg, viola.

Devoirah Worch, piano.

Arranged and conducted by Fishel Bresler.

About the music

1.Tish Nigun (table song)

2. Waltz  

3. Libi-Libi  (My Soul Thirsts)

4. Reb Meir Leib's Yom Ze Mechubod

5. Ki B'Simcha  (Joy and Peace)

6. Pokoyd-Yifkoyd  (Remembering)

7. Kinder-Nigun  (Children's Song)

8. The March. 

9. Reb Mendel's Ein K'Elokeinu.

Price: $15.00 (includes p&p)

 All Hasidic melodies have one thing in common: they are meant to be sung, not merely listened to. Singing, like praying, is something you must do for yourself.

                 I remember, as a small boy, sitting between my father and the gabbai (sexton) on a cramped wooden bench in our little neighborhood synagogue during shalosh-sheedes (the mystical third Sabbath meal). As daylight faded, the room grew darker and the singing became more beautiful. We didn’t know if we were on earth or in heaven until Kel Mistater was sung, and it was time to turn the lights back on.

                 In our shtibl (one-room synagogue) there were Hasidim from Hungary, Poland, Galicia and Romania. Every Sabbath at dusk, they gathered together to sing the traditional z’miros (songs) which, more than any other Jewish music, express the soul’s deepest longing for wholeness and attachment to G-d. Over the years, members of our shtibl settled into an easy familiarity with each other’s tunes. Leibel sang this song, Yossel that one. Avrum’che sang his late father’s heart-stirring Yedid Nefesh, and the butcher had three different melodies for Shir HaMa’alos. My father sang Oideh to the famous Rizhiner melody, in a variation I have not heard elsewhere. These men, exiles of a lost world, were my first teachers.

                 There are thousands of hassidic nigunim (melodies) of which only a fraction  have been recorded or otherwise preserved. It is an oral tradition; therefore, many of these nigunim might seem to have been lost. But actually they have been reabsorbed into the fabric of the tradition to become new songs in the same style and idiom. Like folk tales, nigunim share common motifs, phrases and rhythms.  There are hasidic nigunim with lyrics in Hebrew and Aramaic, Yiddish, Ukrainian and Magyar. Others begin where there are no more words.

Cover Art: “The Sanzer Kloiz - Tsfat”

Watercolor on Rag Paper by J. Hershy Worch