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he courts of the Boston dynasty brim with uplifting melody. But despite the treasured heritage of Boston niggunim, it’s hard to find many samples of Boston melodies in the contemporary Jewish music market. Hundreds of niggunim were composed to be sung during simchahs, tishen and on Yamim Tovim, but few were released to the outside world.

In 1964, the Bostoner Rebbe of New York, Rav Moshe Horowitz ztz”l (son of the first Bostoner Rebbe, Rav Pinchos Duvid Horowitz ztz”l, and brother of Rav Levi Yitzchok Horowitz ztz”l, the Bostoner Rebbe of Boston and Har Nof), made an exception, allowing Jewish musicologist Velvel Pasternak to produce the first known record of Boston music. The record cover features a micro-calligraphy version of “Al Naharos Bavel,” with an illustration of musical instruments hung up on trees. According to sources within the chassidus, this encapsulates the Boston philosophy toward music: that really, all joyous song should be quelled as long as we are in galus — unless music is used as an inspiration for avodas Hashem. The niggunim sung in Boston were always a vehicle for avodah and elevation.

Boston chassidus is partially rooted in Lelov, as the first Bostoner Rebbe was raised by his uncle Rav Duvidl Biderman, the Lelover Rebbe of Jerusalem. Since the early Lelover rebbes were followers of the Karlin dynasty, many of the traditional niggunim and pieces of nusach heard in Boston are similar to the tunes sung at the Karlin and Lelov tishen. When Rav Levi Yitzchok Horowitz of Boston returned the court to Jerusalem, he sparked a renaissance of these melodies.

The first Bostoner Rebbe, Rav Pinchos Duvid (1876–1941), was of the opinion that since the family were Leviim, his children should learn instruments so they could take part in playing the music of the Beis Hamikdash. His wish was fulfilled, and several of his descendants, notably his son Rav Moshe of New York, were prolific composers. Most of the niggunim remained within the chassidus, but among the ones that became widely known are a melody for “Mah Navu al Heharim” and “Torah, Torah, Torah, Tzivah Lanu Moshe.” Still sung in communities in Eretz Yisrael is the Lecha Dodi tune that Rav Moshe composed during a visit together with his brother Rebbe Levi Yitzchok when they went back to visit Batei Varsha where the family lived in Jerusalem’s Old Yishuv before moving to America in 1915.

Rav Moshe’s son, the Bostoner Rebbe of Boro Park (and later Beit Shemesh), Rav Chaim Avrohom Horowitz ztz”l, and his family were once between homes for a time and compelled to rent a cramped one-room apartment. On his way home from shul on Friday nights the Rebbe would often compose a happy niggun to cheer his young family up. One week he created a new, upbeat melody that he set to the words “Meheirah, meheirah, meheirah, meheirah, meheirah, meheirah yibaneh haMikdash.”

Soon afterward, Suki Berry asked the Rebbe for a melody, and received permission to take this one song out of the confines of the court. The rare permission gave Mordechai Ben David his hit “Meheira,” which he performed at HASC in 1988 and released on his Solid MBD album in 1990.

“Al Chomosayich Yerushalayim,” which was the title track of an early Pirchei record, was also composed by the Bostoner Rebbe, as was “Sheyibane Beis Hamikdash” sung by Shlomo Simcha on That Special Melody.

The belief that niggunim of dveikus should be composed and sung even in times of profound pain also characterized Boston. When one of Rav Moshe’s daughters-in-law was on the TWA plane hijacked in the beginning of Elul 1970 and diverted to a military airfield in the Jordanian desert for several weeks (Rav Yitzchok Hutner and his family, and other prominent rabbanim were among the other hijacked passengers on that plane), the Rebbe spent his days wrapped in tallis and tefillin, davening — and composing a new niggun for “Lulei Soras’cha Sha’ashuai.” The last hostages of the group were freed in time for Rosh Hashanah.

Over the years, the powerful niggunim of Boston have inspired crowds of chassidim, students, and newcomers to Yiddishkeit. Klezmer musician Andy Statman won a Heritage Music award with his rendering of the Rebbe’s classic Yedid Nefesh; and one chassid recalls a black Jewish student who once joined the crowd at the Rebbe’s tish on the West Side. After witnessing the hours of singing and swaying, he commented, “Who said that white men don’t have no rhythm?”

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 724)

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he one song I’ll always be singing during Elul, both in public and at home, is Yigal Calek’s classic London School of Jewish Song ‘Chamol al Maasecha’ [the one with the rain and thunder as part of the intro in the original recording, and which begins with an emphasis on the first syllable of Cha – mol…al ma’asecha… —Ed.]

“As for a niggun that brings home to me the magnitude of these days, that’s Rav Shalom Schwadron’s niggun/nusach for the words from Unesaneh Tokef, ‘Ubashofar gadol yitoka.’ It originated in Yeshivas Chevron, where Rav Shalom was the baal tefillah, but has now spread throughout the litvishe yeshivah world.”

—Arranger Yoeli Dickman

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 724)

"It has to be Chaim Banet’s ‘Machnisei Rachamim.’ I released that unforgettable niggun with the words of Selichos on my first album, That Special Melody, in 1993. It was the last song we added, but the niggun made such an impact that I believe it was a vehicle to launching my career. Many others have recorded it since, and when Reb Abish Brodt selected it to sing at the Siyum HaShas years ago, it catapulted the song still further. All these years later, many still sing it to help them enter the realm of these Holy Days.”

—Shlomo Simcha

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hen I was a bochur in Yeshivas Toras Moshe in Yerushalayim, we sang Rabbi Shmuel Brazil’s ‘Kavei el Hashem’ from the first Regesh tape at our Elul Oneg Shabbos. We used to sing it kumzitz style, 20 or 25 rounds. That song still takes me back there and always helps me to get into the Elul mode. Another beautiful song for this time of year is Abie Rotenberg’s ‘Shema Koleinu’ from Dveykus IV.”

—Baruch Levine

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 722)

The Story Behind the Song

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y father never really understood why his composition ‘Raza D’Shabbos’ — on Michoel Streicher’s1991 Don’t Give Up album — was less popular than the classic ‘Ein Aroch,’ which Michoel released the following year on Thank You, even though ‘Raza D’Shabbos’ was more musically sophisticated,” says Meir Hershkowitz, son of composer Reb Binyomin Hershkowitz a”h, who passed away at age 69 in December 2015.

Reb Binyomin himself preferred “Raza D’Shabbos,” which was originally written as a chuppah niggun for the marriage of a close relative, before he added the mystical words from the Friday night “Kegavna” tefillah. “My father was a real Shabbos Yid,” Meir says, “So it’s no wonder that he was drawn to these words. One of his favorite shtiklach of chazzanus was Chazzan Pierre Pinchik’s renowned ‘Raza D’Shabbos.’ So that was also an influence.”

In fact, Reb Binyomin Hershkowitz had a rule that is worth repeating for the benefit of would-be composers: If you can’t sing a song at the Shabbos table, it’s not a Yiddishe niggun.

Reb Binyomin’s parents left Hungary for Eretz Yisrael right before World War II, where his father, an artist, created artistic wood carvings for shul furniture in Jerusalem and atzei chaim for sifrei Torah. That business is still in the family today. Having settled in the Batei Ungarin section of Meah Shearim, they were one of the first families in the neighborhood to have a phonograph. By the time Binyomin was born, music was part of the background noise.

Reb Binyomin originally began to compose without any commercial intent. “My father would sit and play on his keyboard for hours undisturbed, usually at night after his shiur. I would often sit there listening to him, and I noticed how attached he was to the music, and how it came from his soul,” Reb Meir remembers. “One of those songs was ‘Raza D’Shabbos,’ in which my father’s deep emotions were carried into the higher notes. My father himself had a very wide singing range, so he didn’t find it difficult to sing, but I believe the song didn’t reach its full potential at first, because when people sang it, not everyone could reach those high notes. One arranger who worked with my father once said as a joke that he would bang a board over the high notes of my father’s keyboard because they were so unreachable.”

Still, people loved listening to the song, even if they couldn’t sing it perfectly.

Around ten years later, Reb Binyomin changed the high part when he and his friend, Yiddish singer and lyricist Reb Yonoson Schwarz, sang it together at the Friday night tish of Rav Moshe Wolfson at Emunas Yisrael in Boro Park. In 2004, Reb Binyomin put out his own release, Hamenagen, where the new version was sung by Shlomo Simcha.

“But the feedback we got was that the song was a lot more powerful in its original format,” says Reb Meir. Later, Benny Friedman and Shloime Daskal both recorded it in the stronger original version, appropriate for their gifted, wide-ranging voices. The song also plays in the final Shabbos siren in some areas in Eretz Yisrael. (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 722)