“Baruch Hashem it’s Shabbos,” Abie’s composition as sung by Shloime Gertner on Journeys, is a beautiful way to segue into Shabbos
There are certain songs that I can sing continuously in order to more deeply integrate the messages. Those are songs such as my “Lulay,” about how lost we would be without Torah and how integral it is to our lives, or Rabbi Shmuel Brazil’s “Bilvavi,” or Eitan Katz’s “Ki Karov.” These and other such songs use the medium of niggun to help us internalize very powerful truths and live by them.
The classic vintage Pirchei “Ani Maamin” still does it for me, as well as Abie Rotenberg’s “Acheinu.” Songs like those widen my lens and connect me to the bigger picture of Klal Yisrael’s story. When you zoom out to the bigger picture, the connection itself offers comfort.
“They rose from the ashes.” It’s an incredibly poignant piece of imagery sung by the Maccabeats in “From the Ashes” on Journeys V, celebrating rebirth after the Holocaust. It’s also a pun, because our nation is compared to a rose. Abie Rotenberg has said on occasion that Moshe Yess a”h inspired him as a lyric writer. Moshe had that gift of crafting moving imagery in English, with great lines such as the memorable “Who will be their zeidies if not we?”
I actually don’t use music to unwind. I use it to connect or to communicate.
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