Back in 1973, a young man named Mordechai Werdyger slipped on to the Jewish music scene with a little-known album called Original Chassidic Melodies. While that early album never took off, listeners sat up when they heard Mordechai Ben David’s next album, Hineni, the following year. The magic of his new-old musical style and the sheer power of his voice soon won a place right at the heart of the frum soundtrack.

For over four decades, we’ve sung and danced, swayed and prayed, to hundreds of iconic MBD songs, the ones he wrote himself and those collaborations he made famous. And now we’ve asked our readers:

Which one of Mordechai Ben David’s songs has touched your life?

K.P. | “Al Tisyaesh” (Tomid B’Simcha, 1994)

During a three-year battle with cancer, my mother a”h once visited a cosmetician in Manhattan who dealt specifically with the effects of chemotherapy. The woman, a young Israeli baalas teshuvah, was also a cancer survivor, and she taught my mother MBD’s song, “Al tityaesh... ki mei’Hashem tivakesh... afilu cherev chadah munachat al tzavaro shel adam.” The false eyelashes that the cosmetician applied to my mother’s eyelids didn’t survive the evening, torn off by her curious toddler, but the song she sang fueled her throughout the remainder of her battle.

MBD'S TAKE

“This song was composed by Mona Rosenblum at the bedside of a young cancer patient in Gush Katif, and it has given hope and strength not only in a medical crisis but in the shidduch crisis as well. It teaches us never to lose hope even in the most dire situations.”

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 738)