The Niggun Lives On

Reb Yitzchok took his father’s words to heart. A few years after his father was niftar in 1915, he left Poland and came to America with his young wife, first settling on the Lower East Side.

His voice and his musical compositions impacted others in an unforgettable way. In 1943, three days before Yom Kippur, over 400 rabbanim traveled to Washington, DC and marched to the steps of the Capitol in the famous Rabbi’s March, demanding that the Roosevelt administration do something to help save the Jews of Europe. Among those rabbanim was a younger Rav Moshe Feinstein, RavYosef Dov Soloveitchik, the previous Boyaner Rebbe, and so many others. The most moving part of the march was when the Melitzer Rebbe sang “Kel Malei Rachamim” and united this holy group of rabbis in prayer.

In 1954, the Rebbe traveled to Eretz Yisrael for the fourth Knessiah Gedolah. During that week, he was invited to a demonstration in the area of Jerusalem’s Kikar Shabbos in protest of anti-religious government actions. The crowd got so large that it spilled over onto Rechov Yaffo. At that point, the Rebbe led the entire crowd in his most famous composition. The rousing niggun and words from Tehillim — “Omdos hayu ragleinu, beshe’arayich Yerushalayim” — carried the swelling crowd in song.

The Rebbe traveled for many a Shabbos to Lakewood, New Jersey, where there would be a Melitzer reunion at the Bodner Hotel. He was always a guest of Rav Aharon Kotler at Shalosh Seudos. It was known that Rav Aharon looked forward to those visits, which would invariably include the Rebbe singing his classic repertoire, capped off with “Omdos Hayu.”