"The koach haneginah truly connects with the regesh of the words"
R
abbi Ephraim Schwartz is the rabbi of Young Israel of Karmiel as well as a sought-after tour guide in Eretz Yisrael. He is also a longtime music lover, baal tefillah, composer in his free time, and a Mishpacha contributor.
Moishe Mendlowitz’s Nostalgia album. Moishe has a beautiful voice, and his album features the songs I grew up on 30 years ago and before — classic niggunim everyone connected to until what I call the new “bang-bang music” took over. I’ve listened to it like a million times, and it never gets tired. The album also gives each song its time and doesn’t just tease with a few seconds’ fragment of a beloved song.
In the early years, probably Country Yossi’s “And then he potched me, in a way I’d never been potched before…” But on a more serious note, I learned in Stamford, by Rav Simcha Shustal, and there was a special song he would sing with us, an old tune for “Veomar bayom hahu hinei Elokeinu zeh kivinu Lo vehoshiainu.” The whole yeshivah sang the first part together, then Rav Shustal would sing the high part alone — “Zeh Hashem kivinu Lo, nagila ve’nismecha biyeshuaso.”
I think “Oifen Pripetchik” has a lot of the atmosphere of the shtetl era. As a kid, my grandparents sang it, taking themselves back to the world they grew up in, but back then I didn’t understand the words at all. Yaakov Shwekey brought it back to life, singing it on his first Those Were the Days collection.
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