A few months back, our Chanukah EndNote question asking readers to submit their most meaningful MBD songs drew an avalanche of responses. For some, though, it wasn’t songs that left a lasting impression, but times in which they actually performed together with Mordechai Ben David, experiencing their own 15 minutes of fame.
A selection of those special memories

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any of MBD’s songs have touched our hearts, but “Daddy Dear” is special to us. Many years ago, Mordechai came to perform in Chicago. The organizer of the event asked the school to have some boys join him on stage, and a few children were asked to sing with him, including our son, who sang the “Daddy Dear” duet with MBD on stage — although they did practice a little right before so it wasn’t totally spontaneous. It was a very exciting experience for him, and we still talk about it — and sing the song!

—C. Weiss, Chicago, IL

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e sang together in 1980, he as a budding star and me as a seven-year-old along with my choir mates. It was a show produced by Yigal Calek and Sheya Mendlowitz at Felt Forum of Madison Square Garden in New York. The songs that stand out in my mind, aside from the Yigal Calek selections, are “Shevach” and “Memories,” both from MBD’s Memories album. The show’s finale was Yigal’s famous “Kol Berama Nishma,” and the choir was accompanied by Yigal’s legendary choreography and harmonies. MBD contributed by harmonizing with the choir, something we didn’t practice, and closed the song with an impromptu, classic finish that still resonates with me.

The show ended with another unrehearsed routine, as MBD asked me, over the mic, where I was from. I answered, “New York.” “Where in New York?” he asked, and I answered “Brooklyn.” Getting more personal, he asked “Where in Brooklyn?” but at my age and in front of 5,000 people, I got flustered and couldn’t pin it down. We went round and round a few times until he helped me blurt out “Flatbush!” Every time I saw Mordechai subsequent to that show, he smiled and recalled the encounter that some thought was a staged finale between the seven-year-old wannabe and the legendary MBD.

—Yehoshua Michaeli, Lakewood, NJ

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grew up in Seagate right next to the Werdygers, and many songs come to mind when trying to pick my favorite MBD song. However, “Ko Amar Hashem,” composed by Reb Chaim Banet, is the song that holds a very special place in my heart. When Mordechai asked me to sing on his album Yerushalayim Our Home, I couldn’t have been more excited. As a ten-year-old boy, it was a unique opportunity. I sang “Haben Yakir Li,” which is the intro to “Ko Amar Hashem,” with Mordechai’s harmony in the background. The strong message of Hashem’s love for his children has stayed with me till this very day, over 30 years later.

—Dovid Lederman, Brooklyn, NY

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 756)

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ast year before Pesach, badchan and singer Sruli Adler, son of Chazzan Chaim Adler of the Jerusalem Beit Knesset Hagadol, released a new single called “Lechtig,” written by Pinky Weber. Based on the last line of the Seder night piyut “Vayehi Bachatzi Halailah,” the song is a plea for Hashem to light up the darkness of this night of galus — “Ta’ir ke’ohr yom cheshchas lailah — light up the darkness like day,“ and it includes the Yiddish lyrics “Ven vet shoin zahn lechtig?” The song was also the title track on a CD distributed with last year’s Pesach Hamodia.

Right after Yom Tov, Reb Pinky received a call asking him to be menachem avel the father of Yisroel Levin, who was tragically killed together with his kallah on Chol Hamoed. “I didn’t know the family at all, so I didn’t know why they wanted to see me, but I went along to Flatbush,” the composer recalls. “It turned out that Rabbi Levin had wanted to meet me because he had received the terrible phone call about his son while he was listening to “Vayehi Bachatzi Halailah.” Somehow, the refrain of the song “Ven vet shoin zahn lechtig — when will it be light already?” kept replaying in his mind and gave him chizuk and hope for light during this dark time. You just never know who a song will reach and what it can do for the listener.”

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 756)

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ot too many Jewish music followers have heard of composer Michael Shapiro or his albums, which he began putting out in the 1980s (the first was Beyond Twelve Gates, followed by another five). But Shlomo Katz, who came across Shapiro’s music as a teenager in Los Angeles, was one old-time fan who was familiar with the heartfelt niggunim, a blend of stirring pesukim and English lyrics.

A few years later, the first time Shlomo was a guest at the Shabbos table of Rav Moshe Weinberger of Aish Kodesh in Woodmere, the name Michael Shapiro came up in conversation, and the Rav shared Shlomo’s excitement. “We couldn’t stop singing the songs around the table,” Shlomo recalls. “They arouse a certain feeling which your heart just can’t ignore.”

In fact, when Rav Weinberger first heard Michael Shapiro’s music about 35 years ago, he contacted the composer and told him he was crying when he heard the songs. Michael replied, “I was crying when I wrote them.”

In honor of Aish Kodesh’s 26^th anniversary, Shlomo has collaborated with a team of artists and musicians to release a collection of Shapiro’s little-known songs. Participating artists include his brother Eitan Katz, Zusha, Chaim Dovid, Yosef Karduner, Dovid’l Weinberg, Raz Hartman, and Yaakov Klein. (Shapiro, who was part of the broader Carlebach community and did a lot of teaching and kiruv back then before basically vanishing for decades, told the team he can’t believe his music is making a comeback.)

The album is called Only You – but there’s one song on the album that Shapiro didn’t write. It’s called “Meshorer Hateshuvah.” Shlomo composed that song last year as a gift for Rav Weinberger’s 60^th birthday, with the words taken from a poem by Rav Avraham Yitzchak Kook, which Shlomo says was the first piece of Rav Kook’s Torah that Rav Weinberger learned. (“Meshorer Hateshuvah – Singer of Teshuvhah – have you been born yet? And if your neshamah is still held in the heavens, I beg you to quickly descend and awaken your harp…”)

Still, Rav Weinberger’s students decided that it would be an appropriate inclusion for an album of Michael Shapiro’s songs, since he too was a “meshorer hateshuvah,” a “singer of return.” Shlomo says that non-religious musicians in the Israeli studio where most of the songs were recorded were mesmerized by the sound. “They remarked that whoever composed this music must have been praying while he composed, since the settings are so perfect.”

 (Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 756)