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s we move through the ordinary and special events of our days, there always seems to be a melody playing in the background. Over the years, those tunes become forever connected to a moment or mood.
An English song that strikes a special chord
I’m always moved by “Hineni,” the title song from MBD’s first album back in 1974. The lyrics were originally written for Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis’s Hineni organization. I remember the first time I heard it, I was in the middle of reading Diary of Anne Frank for school, and the song seemed to form a background score to my experience of that book: “So my brother, put your faith in the above; Say hineni, I am ready to serve You with love… our Father Abraham was called by G-d to sacrifice his son… now what will become of our fathers’ devotion if we won’t say hineni… The cries they began will never cease; the words they cried shook the heavens above, they said hineni we are here with love…”
My favorite Yiddish song
One of them is “Eizehu Mekoman shel Zevachim,” a song about our longing for the avodah of the Beis Hamikdash, expressed in the daily recital of korbanos. It’s a truly heilige niggun, I believe also written by Reb Yossele Mandelbaum. Mordche sang this one too, on his album The Yiddish Collection. [Many people are familiar with the niggun, as it’s been adapted to other songs as well — Bnei Heichalah, for example, which is sung at Seudah Shlishis.–Ed.] Another one is “A Gutte Voch,” a Yomtov Ehrlich ballad-style song which my father a”h taught me, and which I recorded with Avraham Fried on his Melave Malka album.
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