Not Just for Kids

Looking back on Pesach, I can’t help but smile as I think about my favorite part of our Seder — singing the “Ten Makkos” song to the tune of Dayeinu from the classic 613 Torah Avenue. Granted, kids’ tapes might not have had the star-power of popular singers of the day, but in the last 40-plus years, children’s songs — even the more simple ones with the corny rhymes — have made some amazing contributions to the world of chinuch.

The 613 Torah Avenue series was a definite trendsetter, created by Cheryle Knobel and Rivka Newman, preschool teachers with Pre-1A classrooms next door to each other in Brooklyn’s Toras Emes Kamenitz. One day it happened that the door to another classroom was open, and they overheard a teacher frightening the children by telling them if they don’t make a brachah, Hashem will punish them. This, they knew, would not do. And so they embarked on a method of giving over our mesorah with fun and love, ultimately producing a series of eight albums – from 1977 until 1987 — on the parshios, seasons, and Yamim Tovim, bringing the stories and concepts alive with rhyme and song.

I remember when I was a young kid, there was Morah Blanka Rosenfeld, with her creation of The Mitzvah Tree. How can anyone forget the amazing Shavuos song, “Hashem gave us a present, do you know what it was?” Then there was the brachos song, “Ari knows it, Ari knows it, and we know it too…”

Skipping a decade, there was the Uncle Moishy Pizza song, written by yours truly (to the tune of the Bostoner “Yibaneh Hamikdash”). What better way to teach children appropriate manners? Truth is, I wrote the lyrics purely for fun, and sang it to Suki as a joke. He listened and said, “What a great song!” I thought he was kidding. I asked him, “Are you serious?” I guess he was.