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We like to think of Irving Berlin as one of the most quintessentially American songwriters, but like so many of them, he had his roots elsewhere. He wrote this little-known tune for Fanny Brice in 1925, soon after legislation had been passed placing quotas on...
The High Holy Days have arrived yet again, the busiest time of a cantor's year. I find that a song without words (Hebrew: nigun) puts my heart and mind at ease more than any other. When composing this one, my friend and teacher Joey Weisenberg was inspired by the...
Jews liken the oral and written tradition to an ever-living, ever-flourishing source of inspiration. The text of "Eitz Chayim" is always sung when returning the Torah scrolls to the ark, along with a prayer to "renew our days as of old." The late composer, teacher and...
A vast canon of what Israelis consider to be "folk" songs were actually composed in the last 80 years by real people. Eliyahu Gamliel's famous setting caught the attention of none other than Nina Simone, who recorded it in 1962 from the piano with her band and,...
Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel was one of the 20th century's most renowned teachers, philosophers - and, as it turns out, poets! Heschel's early Yiddish poetry inspired the contemporary cantor and performer Basya Schechter to compose Songs of Wonder, an entire album set...
On the second day of Rosh Hashanah, we recount how Abraham bound Isaac to an altar and nearly sacrificed him. Sephardic Jews precede the Biblical chanting of the story with this 12th century piyyut (liturgical poem) expressing the same story through dramatic imagery...