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Lecha Dodi, the quintessential prayer welcoming the Shabbos Queen (the “Bride”), written by 16th-century Tzfas kabbalist Rav Shlomo Halevi Alkabetz, is at the center of the Kabbalas Shabbos tefillah. In virtually every community, it’s recited in song — either a standard tune specific to that kehillah, or a weekly selection from a collection of familiar niggunim.

Singer Shloime Cohen

If I’m davening in my own shtibel, Seret Vizhnitz, there’s a certain Gerrer march tune which I like to use. If I’m not in the shtibel, I sing Reb Dovid Werdyger’s “Lo—o-oo Saivoshi.” By the way, in Vizhnitz, the Lecha Dodi tune is customarily changed at Vehayu Limshisah, not Lo Saivoshi, as is the minhag elsewhere. I’ve heard that this started when the Vizhnitzer Rebbe moved to Grosswardein after World War I. The shul in Grosswardein was nusach Ashkenaz, and when the Rebbe went to daven from the amud there, they told him that their minhag is to sing Lecha Dodi, which was not done in Vizhnitz until then. So the Rebbe sang. He didn’t change to a more leibedig song for Lo Saivoshi, though, and the crowd only reminded him to do so when he reached Vehayu Limshisah. Nothing happens by chance — and so that became the Vizhnitz minhag.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 714)