S
hloime Cohen, the chassidish singer best known for his warm, dynamic singing of Pinky Weber’s compositions “Lemaaloh, Lemaaloh,” and “Kadsheim, kadsheim bi’kedushas haShabbos… Kah echsof noam noam Shabbos…” has just released a new album, Metzapim, produced and arranged by music duo Eli Klein and Yitzi Berry.
Berry says that arranging the studio time was easy — because Shloime Cohen prefers to come and record late at night. “Shloime would come over to our Har Nof studio to sing when he was full of energy, after singing at a wedding all night. We always turned the studio lights off, because he prefers the darkness in order to lose himself in the meaning of the words he’s singing.”
One night, however, when the singer had driven in from Bnei Brak, it got a little too dark. There was a blackout in Har Nof, and the electricity was down in the studio. “It was one o’clock on a Motzaei Shabbos and we couldn’t record. We spoke and sang and had Melaveh Malkah by candlelight in the studio. Then, as we finished, the lights went on.” But Shloime decided not to begin work. ‘Hashem didn’t want us to record tonight. We’ll come back another time,’ he told us.”
It was that late-night energy that fueled one of the album’s hit compositions, too. After he had finished performing at a wedding, Cohen received an email from Eli Klein, and attached was a new demo, a moving niggun entitled “Kasheh Preidascha” which uses the words of a prayer written by the Ohr Hachaim to express the soul’s yearning for the return of the Shechinah. In the song, the second track on the new album, Cohen’s voice rises in the poignant entreaty, “Zechor ahavaseinu… Remember our love, restore Your Presence,” and then it seems almost melted by tears, in an admission of our vulnerability and our pain: “ki kasheh preidascha — because Your departure is difficult.” Then the music takes over where words leave off. A krechtz for the pain of galus, and a timely reminder that all our suffering stems from the Shechinah’s exile.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 712)
