Ruach Am'Cha Niggun Library

We encourage you to listen and download these niggunim, and get them into your head!  

To listen to an MP3 below, please click on the link. To download the MP3, right-click on the link and choose "Save Link As."

Link to our niggun for March 2011 : Refa Tziri (Heal my Pain) – a piyut (liturgical poem) from Egypt/Morocco.  This month, we join together as a Shaare Zedek family to pray for the healing of our Rabbi and teacher, Mark Fasman, as he continues his cancer treatment. In this piyut we feel the pain of the poet and the people of Israel. He speaks of pain, suffering and affliction and pleads for mercy, healing and consolation. The request is not in the physical sense only but in the spiritual as well - give strength to my soul.  The poet addresses God in a rather uncommon term - expert healer, and thus emphasizes the dependence of the individual and the nation God to heal the wounds of the exile and of the personal suffering. God is described as faithful, following the verse in Deuteronomy (7:9): "Know, therefore, that only the Lord your God is God, the steadfast God who keeps His covenant faithfully". The Aram Tzuba tradition attributes this piyut to R. Refael Antebi, the greatest poet among the Jews of Aram Tzuba, whereas the Moroccan tradition claims it was written by the poet R. Refael Edrei, who lived in Morocco in the 20^th Century.

January 2011 Niggun: Adon Olam from Yemen (MP3)

November 2010 Niggun: Kadsheinu (MP3)

November’s niggun is from a synagogue close to my heart, a place that was a spiritual home for me when we lived in New York City. I speak of B’nai Jeshurun (or, BJ), located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan.  At BJ, the Music Director, Ari Priven, has created a truly singing congregation, who celebrate Shabbat each week with services that are musically and emotionally rich, and extraordinarily moving.  While I taught Bar and Bat Mitzvah students at BJ as a Cantorial student, I became captivated with the way the entire congregation participated in the worship both Friday night and Shabbat morning.  Everyone sings with such full hearts, and such full voices, that the walls of the shul seem to vibrate.  Cantor Priven composed this tune that is sung every Friday night at BJ after the silent amidah: The words mean, “Make us holy with Your mitzvot, and gladden our hearts with Your salvation.”  It’s part of the prayer that sanctifies Shabbat, sung evening and morning. The melody is repetitive and hypnotic, and can be sung fast or slow with equal effectiveness.  The voices you will hear are that of Cantor Priven, and his two Rabbinic cohorts, Roly Matalon and Marcelo Bronstein.

October 2010 Niggun: Beragovsky (MP3)

This month’s niggun is attributed to Moshe Beragovsky, who transcribed this tune in 1920’s Ukraine. The voice on the recording is of Joey Weisenberg, Music Director at Kane Street Synagogue in Brooklyn, who teaches us the niggun as he goes along.  Imagine him sitting at your Shabbat dinner table: the joy that emanates from Joey’s voice is infectious, and the warmth and uplifting spirit of this niggun draws you in immediately. I learned this tune from him at the Legacy Heritage Seminar for synagogues receiving Innovation grants in music, and serendipitously enough, Kane Street Synagogue and Shaare Zedek were the only two synagogues out of 15 who were granted a second year of funding for our music initiatives.

September 2010 Niggun: v'ha'eir eineinu (MP3)

The niggun of the month for September is slow and contemplative, with waves of melody that wash in and out.  I call it the V’ha’eir Eineinu niggun because it goes beautifully with the text we read right before the Sh’ma that calls on God to open our eyes to Torah, to cleave  to mitzvot, and to unite our hearts to fully praise God’s name.  Thanks to our phenomenal Ruach Am’cha Ambassadors for lending their voices to this niggun.

The process of teshuvah that we focus on so intently during the Holy Days is often referred to as “repentance” but its Hebrew translation is more accurately, returning to ourselves: the self-examination of our actions over the past year that demands the effort of our minds, bodies and souls to complete in its fullest expression.

Each morning before we say Sh’ma, we enact a mini teshuvah – a returning to our essence.  We reflect on the interconnectedness between us, God, the teachings of Torah, and one another, and only then are we prepared to utter the words “Listen, Israel, Adonai is our God, Adonai is one!”

Shana Tova! May the coming New Year of 5771 bring blessing for us all.

June 2010 Niggun: Modzits (MP3)

High Holiday Song #1: Luleh He'emanti (MP3)

High Holiday Song #2: B'sefer Chayim (MP3)

May 2010 Niggun: Soul Catcher (MP3)

This month, a slow, peaceful niggun: one that inspires dveykut, cleaving, to God.  Recorded by our Ruach Am’cha Ambassadors, this is one of the first niggunim that we learned together.  Why a quiet niggun? because praying to God is not always flashy, catchy or ecstatic: prayer can bloom from silence and contemplation as well.  This is the character of this month’s niggun: it is a musical centering breath, a return to home, a resort of calm – a quiet celebration of the soul.

April 2010 Niggun: Ya Ribon (MP3)

This niggun comes from the Jewish community of Calcutta (Kolkata), India, whose members came primarily from Syria and Iraq.  At its height, the Calcutta community numbered 5,000 Jews, with three synagogues and two Jewish schools.  After World War II and the establishment of the Israeli state, many Jews ultimately left India for North America, England and Israel, but a small pocket of Jews remain, as does the historic Maghen David Synagogue, established in 1884.  

The words you will hear are from the praise hymn “Ya Ribon Olam” whose Aramaic words extol Yah – God, the Master of the World.  “I shall praise You day and night, God who created all life!”  In many Ashkenazi communities (including ours!) these words are sung on Shabbat, as part of z’mirot around the table. Journalist Rachel Musleah, who was born in Calcutta and who edited a book of music from the community, writes that this niggun was not sung on Shabbat, but rather as part of “daily morning hymns.” She points out that the words themselves do not specifically reference Shabbat, but is simply praise of God!  With that in mind, may we use this niggun to praise God at all times of the day, with words or without words, in the morning or evening, with instruments or a cappella, in community or alone.

March 2010 Niggun: Sunrise Niggun (MP3)

It is winter in Southern California.  It is the early morning, with such a thick darkness that you can't see what is in front of you, so the thirty or so Cantors who are silently climbing up a ridge cling to one another in the dark.  As the group approaches the summit of the ridge, they pass grazing horses, crowing roosters, and an avocado grove, its fruit in various stages of ripe and un-ripe.  The sun is not yet up but the sky lightens incrementally.  The group arrives at the ridge, still silent, but prayerful, thankful for the cold morning air, and for bodies that regulate heat so miraculously.  After what seems like an eternity, the first fingers of sunlight creep over a corner of the ridge's eastern crag.  Then the blinding light melts over the horizon like liquid mercury, and the sky turns from gray-blue to orange, purple, pink, yellow, red. Our teacher hums this niggun: the first sounds of the morning that match those first brilliant lights and colors.  We join in the niggun, softly at first, clearing the cobwebs from our voices and awakening our souls.  I imagine that is is our voices that escort the sun as it rises into the brilliantly blue California sky, soaking and saturating the hills around us with color, light and warmth. So during this month, the time when the cold of winter begins to thaw, the time where we pass from the darkness of slavery to the light of freedom, may this nigggun escort and embrace you with the same color, light, and warmth as the sun.

February 2010 Niggun: Magen Avot (MP3)

Sometimes a niggun can live in my mind for a while, and it stays a niggun, with ya-la-la words, and sometimes it finds a home in the liturgy, and I make a “shidduch” between music and words.  Here is such a case, where niggun and liturgy, in an original combination, illuminate and enhance both text and music.  The “Magein Avot” (or M’ein Sheva), sung on Friday nights, is a condensed version of the Shabbat Amidah, working in all the themes of God’s majesty, strength, holiness, sanctification of Shabbat, ending with our thanks and praise – all in one short paragraph.  This niggun, from the Hassidic tradition, uses repetition of rhythm and notes in a particularly delicious way, making it easy to catch on to - and easy to get stuck in your head. It can be sung fast, or slow, or slow-to-fast, as the recording suggests (thank you, Shabbat Rinah band!).  

Warning: While singing this niggun, you may be compelled to sway back and forth.  This is a completely normal and desired side effect.

January 2010 Niggun: Kol Han'shama (MP3)

This tune was introduced to Hazzan Dulkin by Dr. Nechemia Polen, a professor of Hasidut at Hebrew College in Boston.  He used the tune in morning prayers to the words of Psalm 150, which ends with  “Kol Han’shama t’hallel ya, Halleluyah!” – everything that has breath will praise God, Halleluya!  This tune is best accompanied with homemade percussion: hand-clapping, table-banging, plate-tapping, class-clinking, foot-stomping – and, as you see from the recording, when it is sung around the Shabbat table, we use any available vessel to make sound.  You can even take out a few notes of the tune and fill it in with your own rhythms, and it sounds great.  Let everything that has breath – and everything that can make sound, make a joyful noise to praise God, Halleluya!