"The Rebbetzin never used the song, but I didn’t want it to go to waste — I recorded it on my album instead"

I originally wrote the song “Hineni,” the title track on my second album from 1974, for Rebbetzin Esther Jungreis’s pioneering kiruv organization, Hineni, which she founded in 1973. She asked me to write a song on the theme of the mesirus nefesh displayed by Avraham Avinu as he was ready to sacrifice his beloved only son, and answered Hashem with that special readiness implied in “Hineni.” In the end, the Rebbetzin never used the song, but I didn’t want it to go to waste — I recorded it on my album instead.

—Mordechai Ben David

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 892)