It’s certainly time to give credit where it’s due and set the record straight

Everyone wants to make sure composers get the credit they deserve, but even with the best efforts to attribute songs correctly, errors still creep in. This happens mostly in songs from the pre-digitalization era, as original recordings aren’t always available, and the origins of the compositions can become murky. When mistakes are printed on album covers and in articles, they can be innocently perpetuated until they spread across the Jewish world, and occasionally, well-known songs are mistakenly linked to the wrong composers.

One such instance, says Jewish music curator Yaakov Brown, is the error linking Rav Boruch Ber Leibowitz, rosh yeshivah of Kamenitz and leading talmid of Rav Chaim Brisker, to the song known as “KOL DODI DOFEK PISCHi LI” (“Ani Yesheinah”). The niggun was actually composed by RABBI SHLOMO WEITZMAN, a prominent Gerrer chassid and school principal who lived in Bnei Brak until he passed away in 1999.

Rabbi Weitzman, who had absolutely no known connection to Rav Boruch Ber’s descendants or yeshivah, released this song in 1980 as the ninth track of his second record of original compositions, entitled Lev Tahor, arranged by Mona Rosenblum. Yet album covers consistently attribute the stirring niggun from the words of Shir Hashirim to Rav Boruch Ber. How did this happen?

“My fellow researchers and I dug into this one,” says Yaakov Brown. “A dear friend and esteemed colleague named Elazar Marks tracked down and spoke to Rabbi Weitzman’s grandson, Reb Bezalel Einfeld of Ashdod, and he shared the story behind the composition and how it ended up being linked to Rav Boruch Ber.

“He said that it was one Pesach night back in the 1950s that his grandfather was learning with his chavrusa, Rabbi Shlomo Zilberstein. After they had learned the Sfas Emes on Shir Hashirim for a few hours, Rabbi Weitzman came up with this now world-famous niggun for the words ‘Ani yesheinah v’libi er’ (Shir Hashirim 5:2). It was eventually recorded and released on his second record, Lev Tahor, in 1980.”

Reb Yaakov explains that a bochur who was learning in Yeshivas Be’er Yaakov sang the new niggun for Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro ztz”l, and the Rosh Yeshivah loved the song. Rav Shapiro would sing it regularly in the yeshivah, and, since many of the songs he sang were niggunim of Reb Boruch Ber, it was assumed by those who heard it that this song was one of those, too.

Mona Rosenblum, the original arranger, has no doubt about where the song really came from. “I remember when Rabbi Weitzman came into the studio and sang me this composition,” Mona says. “Music went very deep with him, and he was full of emotion about this song. While all of Rabbi Weitzman’s songs were good material, none of them caught on like this one. It became so popular and so widely sung that people didn’t know where it came from, and because Rav Moshe Shmuel Shapiro sang it in his yeshivah, it was associated with Rav Boruch Ber.”

By now, it’s certainly time to give credit where it’s due and set the record straight.

My Elul Soundtrack

I love the song that my rebbe, the Pittsburgher Rebbe ztz”l, composed and sang before tekiyos, “Veyeida Kol Pa’ul.” On Rosh Hashanah of 5758 (1997), the Rebbe was with his kehillah in Ashdod, while the Rebbetzin stayed in the hospital with their gravely ill daughter, Hinda Yocheved. Yom Tov was on Thursday and Friday, followed by Shabbos Shuvah, creating a three-day separation. When the phone rang on Shabbos afternoon, the Rebbe understood this to mean that the hospital was calling to inform him of his daughter’s passing. On Shabbos it is forbidden to mourn, and instead, he began to sing a beautiful new melody with his sweet voice, one that, personally, made me cry every time I heard him sing it. As it turned out, the call was from a non-Jewish company, and his daughter was still alive. Sadly, she passed away the next day, on the fourth of Tishrei. The niggun was first sung at Shalosh Seudos that Shabbos, and after Yom Kippur, just after completing shivah, the Rebbe sang it again.

When I hear it, I know that Elul is here.

—GERSHY SCHWARCZ

Marketing producer, sound designer, and host of On Edge News, a Yiddish news platform

Mic Drop

Full Speed Ahead

Today’s technology can often blur the lines between “real” music and computer-generated sounds. Arranger YEHUDA GLILI shares that on one song on the album MIZRACH TISH, in which he masterfully blended Eastern influences with Yosef Moshe Kahana’s chassidish musical style, he wanted something complex from the string section, which the musicians couldn’t achieve. The timing was simply too tight for them to play the sequence of notes he wanted. In the end, he slowed the timing of the song for the musicians to play those bars in the studio, then increased the speed on the computer to create a faster playback.

“If you listen,” says Glili, “you’ll hear that it sounds right, but it’s illogically fast. No one can really play like that.”

Back In Time

Budding Business

“One of the early influences on my music was a musician and teacher named Yaakov Braude,” says prolific producer DONI GROSS. “My father, who is musically gifted and sang on JEP and Miami albums, heard me playing piano, and asked Yaakov to teach me. We started piano lessons every Sunday night. Yaakov, who was close to Shlomo Carlebach, gave me so much, including an intricate knowledge of and attachment to Shlomo’s songs. Through him, I gained the skills and confidence to play keyboard at mesibahs in yeshivah and camp. I was in eleventh grade when my father asked me, ‘If you can play music, why can’t you compose?’ and I started to dabble in writing songs for friends and family. My parents laid out the money for my first recording equipment when people asked me to record my songs. I’d spend hours upon hours, and charge $65, paying my brother $25 to sing.”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1075)