Echoes of song, fragments of emotion, wisps of memory. It’s a melody that still replays in your mind, years after its chorus first captured your heart.

What’s that tune that, when you hear it, brings you back to another place, time, and association? Or perhaps it’s an old, long-forgotten Jewish song, maybe one that never conquered the limelight but conquered your neshamah?

We asked readers and public figures to share some of those memories intertwined with old and forgotten songs — because when it comes to a niggun, past and present merge into a timeless inspiration

Rabbi Paysach Krohn

Song of My Heart: “A Succaleh, A Kleineh”

Album: Old Yiddish song, featured on Yiddish Classics Volume I

When I was a little boy of four or five, we lived on the second floor of a tenement apartment building in Williamsburg. The only place we could build a succah was on the fire escape, and only my father, Rav Avrohom Zelig Krohn, and my Uncle Label Ackerman could sit inside. I had a place on the windowsill that opened from the house, so that my feet were dangling in the succah. My aunt, Mrs. Chana Ackerman a”h, used to sing an old Yiddish song “A Succaleh, A Kleineh.” The words are about a small succah, and how the winds cannot knock it down nor blow out the Yom Tov candles within. The succah in the song is both literal and metaphorical — but in my childish perception, it described our own tiny succah. Sixty years later, the memory of my Tante Chana singing “A Succaleh” still brings tears to my eyes. The “succah” still hasn’t blown down, and this is a song that is a real source of inspiration for our times.

Charlie Harary

Song of My Heart: “Da’agah Minayin”

Album: The Double Album (MBD)

Growing up, my favorite song was MBD’s “Da’agah Minayin.” The song translates loosely as “the past is gone, the future is not here yet, and the present is like the blink of an eye.” It just seemed so true. What happened happened, I’m not in charge of the future, and whatever school or camp issues I’m in the middle of right now will be over soon — so why worry?

This song is a truth that still rings true, and we have to hear it. Yes, we can live with concern or care, but worry is out. If you fully believe that HaKadosh Baruch Hu runs every aspect of this world, da’agah minayin?

Yisroel Besser

Song of My Heart: “Modeh Ani”

Album: London Boys Choir

This song from the early 1970s is personally meaningful to me, because it was composed by my uncle, Mr. Doody Rosenberg of London, but that’s not the only reason. Musically, it’s sophisticated, an emotional journey, and of course, like all London Boys’ songs, it’s blessed with Yigal Calek’s stamp of brilliance on the arrangements and presentation. Our minhag is not to say the Ribon Olamim tefillah between “Shalom Aleichem” and “Eishes Chayil” on Friday nights, so the words, which are taken from there, are even more precious since I don’t get to articulate them each week. It’s the idea of thanking Hashem for what He’s done and also for what He will do for us and our families. It’s the emotion of Friday night before Kiddush, gratitude at what was and hope at what will be. Ultimately, though, it probably comes down to what, I’ve discovered, lies at the heart of most favorite songs: nostalgia, a longing for people who are no longer with us, happy memories. Modeh ani lifanecha.

Nachum Segal

Song of My Heart: “Mimaamakim”

Album: Shema Kolenu Volume III

There is a forgotten song I would like to share, simply because I would love more people to be inspired by it. The song is “Mimaamakim” from Shema Kolenu Volume III, back in 1981. That tune is a favorite because it’s so deep and colorful and it reflects the meaning of the pasuk absolutely perfectly — ”From the depths I call You, Hashem, listen to my voice.”

Shoshana Friedman

Song of My Heart: Mrs. Fayge Loewi’s “Lullaby”

As a teenager I was lucky to attend Camp Shira, a camp that resonated with memorable music. Mrs. Fayge (Braunstein) Loewi was the resident composer, and she created the most beautiful and meaningful theme songs for our performances, tailoring the melodies and lyrics to fit the message of the evening. If there’s one song I’d choose to share with the world, it would be the lullaby she composed for a concert celebrating Klal Yisrael’s leaders. The way she described it, she had a newborn baby at the time, and during a long, late night, she pulled out her guitar and created a sweet waltz that is both soothing and uplifting. The song is a mother’s message to a newborn baby: “Sleep, little one, pure little one, reach for the highest star / our leaders were once young as you are.” It expresses the dreams and hopes of Jewish mothers through the ages with simple charm and a hypnotic chorus that has put many of my own children to sleep through the years.

Miriam Israeli

Song of My Heart: In the Mountains

Album: JEP II

In years gone by there was less Jewish music available, so we listened to the same albums again and again. One of those albums was JEP. As a ten- or eleven-year-old, I remember the deep impression left on me by “In the Mountains” on JEP II, the tale of a father and son in Russia. The song describes how a father secretly gives his son a bris and is caught and killed. The years pass, and the son has his own baby boy — and gives him a bris milah too. It ends:

In the mountains, on the Russian plains

In the streets and on the subway trains

We will always keep the Torah.

The battleground is very different today, but the message of the mesirus nefesh echoes down the years.

Shlomo Yehuda Rechnitz

Song of My Heart: “Shimru Shabsosai”

Composed by: Rav Yisroel Belsky ztz”l

Recorded by: A-Team, Levi Falkowitz and Shira Choir

A song that I wish the world knew? “Shimru Shabsosai.” My shver, Rav Chaim Yisroel HaLevi Belsky, composed several songs, and this is one of them. A flicker of his tremendous love and depth of avodah for Shabbos Kodesh can be felt in this zemer. It was one of his many compositions, which he sang every Shabbos. Fortunately, the niggun was made public after his passing in 2016, so those of us familiar with it could hold on to the memory.

Readers’ Picks

Song of My Heart: “Bonai”

Album: Bonai (Nochi Krohn Band)

I’d choose this amazing yet little-known song sung by the sweet and sincere voice of Reb Yosef Karduner, which describes Hashem Yisbarach’s reaction to our good deeds and His ongoing encouragement to us. It captivated me the first time I heard it. As I listened a few more times, I thought that the majestic and beautiful words must have been taken from one of the sifrei mussar or chassidus. However, my research has concluded that all the words were actually written by the composer, Reb Nochi Krohn himself, based on words found in Chazal.

Get a hold of the song, turn it on, close your eyes, and allow the words to penetrate to your essence. “Mi shehu oseh mitzvah achat, meivi geulah l’olam…”

Here is a loose translation: “My precious children! My important children! The entire world exists and continues to exist only for your actions. Never stop, always fortify and strengthen yourselves!”

Is that not one of the best and most meaningful lyrics ever written? The best part is that Hashem really feels that way about us.

Boruch Leff, Baltimore

Songs of My Heart: “My Dear Nicholai”; “Yakob”

Albums: JEP Volume II; Reb Yom Tov Ehrlich / Yiddish Gems Volume I

There are two deeply stirring songs that I’d like to hear played again today. Both seem emblematic of the longings and struggles that a Jew experiences. And both are displays of lyrical genius.

One is “How are you, my dear Nicholai” from JEP, the letter to a Russian child from a Brooklyn child who empathizes with the Russian child’s deep emotional pain and yearning for true connection to Hashem, and shares his own emotional high of a Torah-infused day. The sweet voice, the feel of a personal letter read aloud, make the song transcend the bounds and limitations of cool intellect into the heartfelt realm of deep feelings and yearnings of connection.

The other is Reb Yom Tov Ehrlich’s “Yakob” — a ballad that transports you to the depths of a bochur’s loneliness on the isolated fields at night to the emotional tsunami a local marriage proposal created within him. It lets you feel the battle of the forces of sweet temptation versus emes, and reaches a crescendo in the eventual triumph of what is right and what is good, ending with his dramatic escape.

Moshe Brog, Lakewood, NJ

Song of My Heart: “Oifn Pripitchik”

Composed by: M.M. Varshavsky in the late 1800s

I cannot think of a more appropriate song for Shavuos than “Oifn Pripitchik.” Although the song is yet to be forgotten, it’s rarely sung in its entirety.

I always knew the tune, some words, echoes of this haunting masterpiece. Then, one Shabbos, a guest from Moscow sang us some beautiful classics in Yiddish, Russian, and Hebrew. It was incredible to hear a young man sing authentic Russian Yiddish. The elders in his childhood community were able to teach him Yiddish but not much more.

And now here he was, raising a frum family together with a lovely wife who had similarly returned to roots that seemed so impossibly severed.

When he sang “Oifn Pripitchik,” we were all in tears. In a rich, melodic voice, he sang of the warm hearth, the rebbi learning with the kids, promising them flags if they learn their nekudos well.

And then he sang “Ir vet, kinder, elter vern, vet ir alein farshtein, vifel in di oysyes lign trern, un vi fil geveyn.” (“When you grow older, children, you will understand by yourselves, how many tears lie in these letters, and how much lament.”)

It’s hard to estimate how, many generations back, a melamed taught some ancestor of our guest that these holy letters encompass the history of our People, but many frigid decades later, the fire in the hearth was rekindled.

Yaakov Shwekey, in his nostalgia album Those Were the Days, sings part of “Oifn Pripitchik” but doesn’t get to the part of the flags or about the tears in the letters. I would love if someone did a real reboot of old Yiddish songs, sung in the authentic dialects in which they were composed.

Nechama Friedman, Jerusalem 

Song of My Heart: “The Bais Yaakov anthem”

I’d love to hear today’s generation singing the Bais Yaakov anthem. The prewar song composed in Yiddish in Poland, or the English language Bnos “anthem” from Williamsburg Bnos of the ’50s and ’60s, beginning with the words “You are the daughter of a people proud and true.” An unforgettably warm memory of Shabbos afternoons in Bnos lingers between those lines.

N.G., New York

Song of My Heart: “Sunshine”

Album: One by One (Miami Boys Choir)

I love the song “Sunshine” by Miami Boys Choir; it brings home such a powerful message. Every time I hear it, I get inspired anew to change the world — not by saving the whales, or helping starving kids in Africa, but by living a true Torah life. This song brings home how Torah makes the whole world brighter. Sometimes we may think that the people learning are getting Olam Haba for themselves, but not doing much for the rest of the world. This song puts it into perspective. We need to always remember that we are “Spreading rays of hope with Torah’s sunshine,” and that’s how we change the world.

Relly Raskin, Ramat Eshkol, Jerusalem

Songs of My Heart: “Eilecha”; “Kavei”

Albums: Pirchei Boys Choir (1967); Regesh Volume II

I’d like to share with today’s world of Jewish music listeners two songs that gave me a lot of chizuk many years ago when I was going through a difficult time: “Eilecha,” a Carlebach composition originally on the first Pirchei album of the same name, and “Kavei” from Regesh. The words are strong and the tunes have become classics. Yonasan Schwartz later used the Regesh tune for an inspiring Yiddish ballad called “A Yid Is Kein Mul Nisht Alein” — a Jew is never alone.

Tamar J., Tzfas

Song of My Heart: Akdamus Tune

I don’t know if this is long forgotten but it sure is old!

Dun. Tah Dah Dun. Tah Dah La La La…

Complex niggunim were the first association I made with tefillah, as I grew up davening in Modzhitz. I must have been two or three when I requested, in self-invented terminology, to go to hear the “bim-bums.” I was taken by the Akdamus opera. At four, I looked Reb Ben Zion a”h in the eye and told him that he sounds like — in 1980s technology — the tape recorder. Too much of a good thing can be dangerous though, and things changed. I lost patience with lengthy niggunim, and only tolerated the melodies. I still listened to the intricate Akdamus, heralding Hashem giving us the Torah, but it was long. Too long. Eventually, my musical tastes matured, and Modzhitz complexities captured my curiosity. I started to appreciate what had been boring during my teenage years. One year I went away for Shavuos and subconsciously expected the Dun. Tah Dah Dun. I wondered how one could lein kabbalas haTorah without that glorious niggun. After that disappointment, I was up early the next Shavuos, standing proudly, waiting to hear Reb Ben Zion Shenker lead the glorious opera before leining. Reb Ben Zion is now in the Olam HaEmes, and I held my breath before Akdamus last year. It was hard. But the men in shul sang. And there it was. The Akdamus opera. Dun. Tah Dah Dun….

Dr. Raizy Nathan, Brooklyn, NY

Song of My Heart: “The Return”

Album: No Jew Will Be Left Behind (Avraham Fried)

There’s a beautiful Fried song that never seems to have gotten publicity. It has a haunting instrumental intro and emotional lyrics and melody, and I’ve loved it since I was a kid: “The Return” — featured on his first album. (“Open your heart, Hashem awaits to enter… His helping Hand will bring you ever higher, and lead you on the road to your return…”) I recently found out that the composer was a good friend of Avraham Fried, Shmuly Goldman. It’s baffling that people don’t know this song.

S.G., Lakewood, NJ

Song of My Heart: “Le’olam Lo Eshkach”

Album: Achva (Abie Rotenberg)

It was March 1987, and we were engaged to be married. We looked forward to the future with stars in our eyes, toward the privilege of building a life in kollel and in chinuch. The song that captured our hopes, dreams, and appreciation for each other was “Le’olam Lo Eshkach Pikudecha,” on a tape entitled Achva by Abie Rotenberg and friends. With Hashem’s help, we continue to live our dream, sharing the love of Torah with our children, grandchildren, and talmidim.

“Mah ahavti sorasecha” is most definitely a truth that only gets truer as the years go by.

R.Mintz, Lakewood, NJ

Song of My Heart: “Ki Liyeshuascha”

Album: Haneshamah Lach (Shlomo Carlebach)

A song from yesteryear that really packs a punch today is “Ki liyeshuascha kivinu kol hayom... We anticipate Your salvation all day, every day.” Shlomo Carlebach has a hauntingly, beautiful rendition of this song, simple, but so powerful. I remember singing it in Camp Naarah many years ago, certainly not appreciating the words back then. Today, 50 years later, I got it.

It’s been a long galus. Although many of us are living in a “malchus shel chesed,” it’s still galus. There is so much lacking in our world, a void waiting to be filled by the Shechinah. Our youth are being lured by the materialism that’s so apparent all around us, while the pull of technology has ensnared too many. It’s hard to be a holy people living in an unholy world. We yearn for a universe where Hashem’s Presence will be strong and apparent. There have been many songs written about our yearning for Mashiach. But to me, this particular song, with its words from our daily Shemoneh Esreh, says it all.

Miriam Leibermann

Song of My Heart: “Bobinyu”

Album: Brooklyn (8th Day)

My mother spent the last few years of her life in Heathlands, a nursing home in Manchester. My wife and I and children used to visit her quite often. Because of the title of the song, one of my children put the song onto a phone and we used to play it for her. She loved the song, and sang along to it, and knew nearly all the words. However, she always got two words wrong. Instead of singing “my shtetl’s calling,” she sang “my sheitel’s falling,” which had us all in hysterics. She passed away in Sivan, four years ago, at the age of 92. The song will always have special memories for me.

Yisroel Brown, Manchester, England

Song of My Heart: “Achakeh Lo, Achakeh Lo”

It’s time for an old favorite to come back — “Achakeh lo, achakeh lo b'chol yom sheyavo” (circa 1958–59). My late uncle, Dave Wakely, was one of the first band leaders for weddings and bar mitzvahs and he used to sing it at all the affairs. It seems even more relevant than ever before! Everyone is awaiting the Geulah — and this timely old song says it so beautifully — even though he tarries, I will still eagerly await his coming every single day! ?

Sheryl Prenzlau, Jerusalem

Song of My Heart: “Bekol Shofar”

Album: Those Were the Days (Noam Singers)

Speaking of forgotten oldies, this album from a previous generation that most readers have probably never heard of, was part of my childhood (The Noam Singers had several albums in the late 1960s and early 1970s). All their songs were catchy and inspiring, but there was nothing like the haunting “Bekol shofar yashmiah yeshuah,” about how the mesirus nefesh of Akeidas Yitzchak will herald the Great Shofar of Geulah. The words are taken from two Sephardi piyyutim: The first line is from “Hashem Bekol Shofar,” and the rest are from the last two stanzas of “Eit Sha’arei Ratzon Lehipate’ach,” with the lines slightly rearranged and occasionally paraphrased. The singing is intertwined with an English-language narrative about how Avraham and Yitzchak ascended Har Hamoriah together (“u’shneihem halchu yachdav”). Listening to it nearly half a century later, even as the quality of music today has become infinitely more sophisticated than back then, I still get a shiver down my spine.

Daniel Katsman, Petach Tikvah

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 710)