Some are universally sung classics, others vintage Breslover, Skulen, or Vizhnitz niggunim

Just Out: New Releases, Fresh Takes

Just Like the Tish

It’s an album JOEY NEWCOMB created in order to transport his listeners, but not on a world tour of Morrocco, Poland, and Costa Rica as he did on his Big Avoidas album. This time, it’s to the holy court of Rav Itche Meir Morgenstern in Yerushalayim. Yet as much as listeners can feel themselves drawn there, Joey Newcomb says he really recorded his latest album, HISKASHRUS, for himself. It’s a collection of the niggunim he’s heard at the davening and tishen of the London-born mekubal at his yeshivah, Toras Chochom, on Rechov Ohalei Yosef.

“I was zocheh to get connected to the tzaddik over the past few years,” Joey says, “and I wanted the music to bring me back to the special experience of being in his presence.”

Joey’s first encounter with this special personality was in the summer of 2022, when Rav Itche Meir came to New York for a wedding and the Kehal Mevakshei Hashem community in Lawrence hosted a parlor meeting for his mosdos. Joey was asked to come and provide music, but throughout the evening he found he could barely remove his eyes from the Rebbe’s face.

“Yet when he looked at me, I looked away,” Joey relates, “and I left without talking to him.” The next day, Joey was sitting on a domestic flight, and noticed the person next to him learning a sefer he had never seen before.

“I asked, ‘How aw ya Reb Yid?’ and then I got to asking what he was learning. He replied that this was a sefer written by his rebbi, Rav Itche Meir Morgenstern. I couldn’t believe it,” Joey says. “I opened the sefer, and I was hooked. When I got home, I made sure to get those seforim, and began to learn them on Shabbos and Yom Tov.”

One Shabbos, Joey’s wife asked who this “Reb Itche Meir” whom he kept quoting was, and then suggested he go to spend a Shabbos with the Rebbe in Eretz Yisrael.

“The first time,” Joey says, “I just observed. It was otherworldly. Since then, I’ve been back a few times, just taking in the tzaddik’s presence and his avodah. I’d sometimes sing the niggunim I heard there when I was back at home, and I wanted to record them in order to transport myself back there.”

It started with just three medleys, but grew into 26 songs. Some are universally sung classics, others vintage Breslover, Skulen, or Vizhnitz niggunim, and there are meditative and joyful selections, too. There’s even the Sephardi piyut “A’ufah Eshkonah,” and the “Meron niggun.” Yet with all that, Joey says that he and his producer Doni Gross are still getting feedback from people who are disappointed that their own favorite songs from the tishen weren’t included.

Joey says the process was completely different than recording his own compositions on his solo albums. “Because these are not my songs, I wanted to record them meticulously, as close as possible to how they are sung in Toras Chochom, in order to capture the experience there. At some points we even had the Rebbe’s gabbai on the phone. And because these are holy songs, we also had to get into the right frame of mind.”

In order to recreate the swept-up-in-singing-at-tish feel, there were plenty of choir sessions, and some songs had to be taught to choir members from scratch. Finally, on Chanukah, Joey decided that no more songs could be added. It was time for the album to be born.

“If there are songs missing, we can put them aside for Volume II,” he avers.

Mic Drop

Diamond in the Fish

While there are many songs about Yosef Mokir Shabbos, the famous character in the Gemara who honored Shabbos by buying a large and beautiful fish and was rewarded by finding a precious diamond inside, 8th Day’s Bentzi and Shmuel Marcus have come up with a new angle with their song “Shabbos State of Mind.”

“Finding a diamond in a fish doesn’t make you Yosef Moker Shabbos,” Bentzi says. “But there are still people today like Yosef Mokir Shabbos who live in a world more precious than diamonds, holy people whose faith is more valuable than any gem. In a climate and culture where fame and wealth are glorified, we remind ourselves that there are things in life more important. To be in a ‘Shabbos state of mind’ is to live with dedication, faith, and holiness.”

The cartoon-style accompanying video, relays the message from the salmon about the importance of swimming upstream and even gives a recipe for delicious fish l’kavod Shabbos, is accompanied by a lyrics video.

Nothing Like Mamma Loshen

What’s your favorite Yiddish song?

Several favorites come to mind: One is MBD’s “Pharaoh in Mitzrayim,” from his Let My People Go album back in 1985 (and rereleased two decades later on The Yiddish Collection). It’s a powerful song about shibud Mitzrayim, and every time I hear it, it takes me to the crux of exile and geulah. Then there are two Avraham Fried classics that I find very meaningful: “A Tatteh Bist Du,” and “Nisht Gedaiget Yidden.” And then there’s the vintage Dveykus’s “In a Vinkele Shtait,” that Yaakov Shwekey tweaked in Yiddish and English on his Leshem Shamayim album. All of those songs are potent, because they take listeners to special times in Jewish history.

–Composer and choir director YITZY BALD

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1096)