Sing It Together

Rebbe Mordechai of Nadvorna was known to have said that there is a certain angel with a thousand heads, every head has a thousand mouths, and every mouth has a thousand tongues, and every tongue sings beautiful shevach v’hoda’ah to HaKadosh Baruch Hu. However, when a Yid starts singing, HaKadosh Baruch Hu asks the angel to stop, so that He can hear the beautiful singing of His beloved nation. Especially when it comes to singing Shabbos zemiros.

If Rebbe Mordche had lived in this generation, he would surely have included my upstairs neighbors, the Hellmans. They have four sons, all blessed with beautiful voices. Sometimes, after the Friday night seudah, I fall asleep on the living room couch, wake up a few hours later, and can still hear their harmonies long into the night.

My longtime friend and past collaborator Zale Newman tells me that his father-in-law, Rav Pinchus Hirschprung a”h, the chief rabbi of Montreal, and one of the last surviving talmidim of Rav Meir Shapiro, was makpid to sing every song in the siddur and bentsher, because he said it has a strong, positive impact on the children at the table. Zale himself, a longtime kiruv personality, finds that singing Shabbos zemiros is the number one catalyst in getting people to open up to explore their Jewish heritage.

One of my personal favorite Shabbos songs is Mordechai Ben David’s Kah Ribon, which he wrote in the early ’70s and released on his early I’d Rather Pray and Sing album. MBD shared with me that he once met a grandson of Rav Elyashiv at an Agudah convention. This grandson recounted to MBD that when he was a young boy, he would eat at his grandfather’s seudah every Shabbos. Rav Elyashiv was known for his good ear for music, and when that Kah Ribon came out, he brought it to Rav Elyashiv on a small cassette player for him to hear, and from then on, his grandfather would sing it every Friday night. On the last Friday night of Rav Elyashiv’s life, he and his grandson sang the song together.