The backstories of those favorite albums that still frame our memories
Cheryle Knobl and I were teaching parallel classes of Pre-1A at Yeshiva Toras Emes, Kamenitz in Brooklyn. We made up a lot of lyrics to teach the boys the parshah, and we’d put them to tunes and sing them with the kids. We used to get notes back from parents: “Great songs!” “Great parshah notes!” and we’d give out the songs to other teachers of younger grades too.
Eventually, we said “Hey, let’s make a record!” This was 1977, but no, we were not the first frum children’s records. Morah Blanka Rosenfeld of Monsey/New Square came before us with her Mitzvah Tree series, and actually, she too was preceded by Seymour Silbermintz (Josh Silbermintz’s older brother) who produced Jewish Children Sing back in the 1950s.
Our idea was to approach Yisroel Lamm, who really gets a lot of the credit. He helped us with the tunes, wrote and arranged the music, and brought the entire project up to professional level. On the first two records, 613 Torah Avenue — Bereishis and Shemos, Rabbi Shmuel Kunda a”h wrote the narration and did all the funny voices, but after that he decided to work independently, writing and producing his own material. Reb Yitzy Erps then took over on the forthcoming albums.
We needed child soloists and were very grateful to Yerachmiel Begun of Miami Boys Choir who allowed his stars like Shloime Dachs, Mendy Wald, and Sruly Williger to sing on our records. Shmuel Borger of Amudai Shaish also sometimes helped us out. We did some of our recordings in Reb Eli Teitelbaum’s basement studio, and our distributor Mendy Werdyger made sure 613 Torah Avenue was distributed all over the world.
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