“Most of these songs are what we sang in yeshivah over Shabbos back in the day”
It’s an album designed to take you back to those days of singing around the Shabbos table in the yeshivah dining room — no matter how many years ago that was. Of course, NAFTALI KEMPEH’s latest album, SHABBOS YESHIVAH, isn’t only for yeshivah graduates, and with its warm and Shabbosdig feel, it’s a great mood enhancer and a bit of a nostalgia trip no matter where you were. Still, Naftali wanted to create another yeshivah kumzitz album in the style of last year’s Zman Elul release, this time with a Shabbos theme.
“Most of these songs are what we sang in yeshivah over Shabbos back in the day,” Kempeh relates. “I have strong musical memories from my yeshivah ketanah days in Yam HaTorah, and later in Kol Torah. We chose these tracks because they’re pretty much the standard Shabbos soundtrack in yeshivos all over.”
Today, Kempeh is popular in the American yeshivah world as well as in his native Eretz Yisrael. While he’s aware that the soundtracks differ slightly, he hopes this album will be a kind of bridge. For example, Ari Goldwag’s beautiful Kah Ribbon is quite popular with the American crowd but not so known yet in Israeli yeshivos, while the vintage Anim Zemiros composed half a century ago by Israeli chassidic music composer Avi Maslo never really caught on in America.
“I wanted to offer each crowd a new song,” says Kempeh.
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