MUSICAL MESORAH Reb Ben Zion’s music belongs to everyone yet he was the guardian of the musical mesorah of his rebbes: Rebbe Shmuel Eliyahu (the Imrei Aish) Rebbe Shaul Elazar Yedidya (the Imrei Shaul) Rebbe Yisrael Dan (the Nachalas Dan) and Rebbe Chaim Shaul (the current Rebbe) (Photos: Mishpacha Archives)

When I heard the news of Reb Ben Zion Shenker’s passing, it became clear to me why the interview from a most inspiring day I spent with the legendary composer and singer back in 2006 was still sitting in my personal archives. Reb Ben Zion was a young 82 then, his fingers dexterously flitting over the piano keys in his cozy Flatbush living room. A harmony of enchanted notes filled the house, accompanied by that distinctive name-brand voice, expressive, stirring, and pleading.

“Oy, oy, simchah l’artzecha… oy, oy, sasson l’irecha…” His voice got stronger as the song continued, until it enveloped us, penetrating deep into our hearts, pulling us into this shiras malachim, song of angels.

That’s how on an ordinary Tuesday morning, we found ourselves taking part in a kumzitz. Reb Ben Zion, his confidant and noted mechanech Rav Aharon Moshe Orlander, and I all closed our eyes and sang song after song — the original Modzitzer “Hayom Haras Olam” flowing into “V’ye’esayu” and the Imrei Shaul’s famous Rosh Hashanah nigun. These are among the hundreds of niggunim Modzitz is famous for, classics of chassidic music in particular and Jewish music in general, and inseparable from Ben Zion Shenker himself, the voice that made them loved for decades by Jews all over the world.

Each time he mentioned a song, Reb Ben Zion would knock once or twice on the table and begin to sing. We spoke and we sang, we sang and we spoke. “It all started one Shabbos morning,” said slipper-clad Reb Ben Zion as he recalled the day he went from being a typical Brooklyn teenager to a true chassid, a Modzitzer to his core and more than anyone else, a symbol of the beautiful music of the chassidus.

“We davened in a Polish shteibel in Bedford-Stuyvesant,” Reb Ben Zion recounted, going back in time to Shabbos Parshas Noach of 1940. “The news spread quickly — the Modzitzer Rebbe, the Imrei Shaul (Rav Shaul Yedidya Elazar Taub), had just come to Williamsburg, having arrived through Japan via San Francisco. My father wasn’t a Modzitzer — he was a Trisker chassid — but we walked to the Rebbe’s tish after the seudah on Shabbos night.

“There was a big oilam — the shul was packed. I even remember the derashah Rav Levi Yitzchak Kahana gave. He ascribed the pasuk about the dove, velo matza hayonah manoach lechaf raglah, to the Rebbe, whose family name was Taub — Yiddish for a dove (yonah). ‘The Rebbe came here from his exile,’ he said, ‘halevai that he will find rest for himself here.’

“A few months later, the Rebbe was invited to our neighborhood. The tish at night was open to the public but the next morning’s was by invitation only, and the Rebbe pointed to my father who, eager to reattach himself to a rebbe from his native Poland, had become very close to him and tried never to miss a tish even though it meant a long walk.

“I remember it like yesterday. I was together with my father and brother, crowded with dozens of others into the Rebbe’s room, and there was a couch behind the Rebbe’s seat where I spotted a book of sheet music for the Modzitzer niggunim by chassidic music expert Moshe Shimon Geshuri. I was pretty good at reading music, and without thinking I picked up the book and began humming the tunes. Suddenly, the Rebbe turned and asked, ‘Who’s that singing?’

“Me,” I answered meekly, trembling in fear.

‘You know how to read notes?’ he asked me.

“A little,” I replied.

‘Keep singing!’ he instructed me, and so there I was, a teenager singing in front of the oilem.”