“I

f my work changes just one person’s life, it’s already worth it,” seems to be a motto of so many artists out there. Yet for songwriters and composers who don’t perform their own material, the ripple effect of their inspiration is significantly further from their range of vision.

Chayala Neuhaus’s uplifting song “Im Atem Meshamrim Neiros shel Shabbos” — released on the Miracles album in 2015, then subsequently as a music video by Dovid Pearlman — was actually written a decade ago, when Chaya was a high school senior. The song, with its soaring English lyrics, was widely sung in girls’ camps, schools, and shabbatons, but the feedback the composer valued most was when a lady contacted her to say that she had divorced and her children were living with her irreligious ex-spouse. Every Friday, the woman would call them and together, they sang this song — taking them back to the warm camp Shabbos memories of girls singing with assurance and faith.

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 753)