Keeper of the Songs

MUSICAL MESORAH Reb Ben Zion’s music belongs to everyone yet he was the guardian of the musical mesorah of his rebbes: Rebbe Shmuel Eliyahu (the Imrei Aish) Rebbe Shaul Elazar Yedidya (the Imrei Shaul) Rebbe Yisrael Dan (the Nachalas Dan) and Rebbe Chaim Shaul (the current Rebbe) (Photos: Mishpacha Archives)

When I heard the news of Reb Ben Zion Shenker’s passing, it became clear to me why the interview from a most inspiring day I spent with the legendary composer and singer back in 2006 was still sitting in my personal archives. Reb Ben Zion was a young 82 then, his fingers dexterously flitting over the piano keys in his cozy Flatbush living room. A harmony of enchanted notes filled the house, accompanied by that distinctive name-brand voice, expressive, stirring, and pleading.

“Oy, oy, simchah l’artzecha… oy, oy, sasson l’irecha…” His voice got stronger as the song continued, until it enveloped us, penetrating deep into our hearts, pulling us into this shiras malachim, song of angels.

That’s how on an ordinary Tuesday morning, we found ourselves taking part in a kumzitz. Reb Ben Zion, his confidant and noted mechanech Rav Aharon Moshe Orlander, and I all closed our eyes and sang song after song — the original Modzitzer “Hayom Haras Olam” flowing into “V’ye’esayu” and the Imrei Shaul’s famous Rosh Hashanah nigun. These are among the hundreds of niggunim Modzitz is famous for, classics of chassidic music in particular and Jewish music in general, and inseparable from Ben Zion Shenker himself, the voice that made them loved for decades by Jews all over the world.