"Wake up to serve the Creator”
T
he fifth song on Yanki Daskal’s popular Nor Mit Emunah album is an impassioned Modeh Ani with a chassidish, optimistic view of the day ahead. Introducing the song, Daskal chants in Yiddish “Kinderlach, kinderlach, shteitz off far avodas haBorei — wake up to serve the Creator.” The phrase, he says, is a memorial to his own father, who died of cancer when Yanki was just ten. “It’s one of my treasured memories,” says Yanki. “My father, Reb Yisroel Daskal, would come into our room to wake us kids in the morning with that line, and to me, it was always the intro to Modeh Ani.” Including it on the CD was the idea of producer Shua Fried, after Daskal composed the song in his house.
(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 764)
