Echoes of song, fragments of emotion, wisps of memory. It’s a melody that still replays in your mind, years after its chorus first captured your heart.

What’s that tune that, when you hear it, brings you back to another place, time, and association? Or perhaps it’s an old, long-forgotten Jewish song, maybe one that never conquered the limelight but conquered your neshamah?

We asked readers and public figures to share some of those memories intertwined with old and forgotten songs — because when it comes to a niggun, past and present merge into a timeless inspiration

Tamar J., Tzfas

Songs of My Heart: “Eilecha”; “Kavei”

Albums: Pirchei Boys Choir (1967); Regesh Volume II

I’d like to share with today’s world of Jewish music listeners two songs that gave me a lot of chizuk many years ago when I was going through a difficult time: “Eilecha,” a Carlebach composition originally on the first Pirchei album of the same name, and “Kavei” from Regesh. The words are strong and the tunes have become classics. Yonasan Schwartz later used the Regesh tune for an inspiring Yiddish ballad called “A Yid Is Kein Mul Nisht Alein” — a Jew is never alone.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha Issue 710)