Regina Spektor sings Eli, Eli

Ok, I've mentioned before Eli, Eli is one of my favorite songs. We sing it at my house as a zemer every Shabbat and performances of it show up on Teruah from time to time (see Eli, Eli with Ancient Drum, for example.) I was delighted recently when my buddy Jocelyn found and shared this great 2008 performance by singer and pianist Regina Spektor. I've always been a fan of Spektor's music but haven't had the opportunity to write about it before. Spektor has interested me, from a Jewish music perspective, because of her comfort with including her Jewish identify as part of her public stage identify. That said, her public expression of Jewish identity have typically been limited to wearing Star of David necklaces and brief mentions of her Russian-Jewish family history during interviews, including this 2006 NPR interview. This is the first time, though, that I've run across her performing a song in Hebrew or one with explicit Jewish connections. It's a fascinating choice of material too, with deep resonances to Holocaust history, Israeli identify, and contemporary Jewish liturgy. And, of course, it's a marvelous lyric and melody.

Regina Spektor - Halikha LeKesariya [Eli, Eli] (Hanna Szenes Cover)



After listening to the 2008 version, I found this earlier, and equally exquisite, version that Spektor performed back in 2006.

Hat tip to Regina Specktor uberfan & YouTube user Speckography for uploading the video.

UPDATE: For more on Regina Spektor, see my more recent post "Hey Regina, Barths your Biggest Fan"

Eishet Chayil, Woman of Valor

So today's Friday, and I'm going to feature an interesting song, Eishet Chayil, to help us get in the mood for Shabbat. But first, let me take step back and chuckle a bit about where the idea for this post came from. It's all about me being "ignorant in public" again.

Last week, I posted about Cantor Yosef Gottesman and his "cover version" of the theme to the Titanic. I got a great comment from the Jewish musician Gerson Veroba, who was pretty unimpressed. He made two points.

1. This isn't a cover of the song, it's Gottesman taking a well known standard (Eishet Chayil) and singing it to the melody of the Titanic theme. Sum total creativity or musical insight involved...zero.

2. While the Titanic theme is a lovely melody, the central themes of the song are completely inappropriate to Eishet Chayil. Titanic is a love story used to highlight a larger story of human tragedy. Eishet Chayil is from Proverbs 31, a description of how a virtuous woman behaves, and is typically sung on Shabbat after services and dinner, by a husband to extol the virtues of his wonderful wife. Tragic? Nope. Bad thematic match.

So while I think Veroba has a definite point on the thematic elements argument. I need to go back to his first point.

Oh. Eishet Chayil is a song? One that's sung on Shabbat. A rather lovely one? Umm. I didn't know that.

So anyway, here's a lovely presentation of Eishet Chayil performed by Ohad moskovits, mendi jerufi, amiran dvir & yshai lapidot. It's a little shmaltzy for me, but hey. It isn't worse than the Titanic version.

Piah pascha - eshes chayil

You can catch a bunch of other version on YouTube and get the lyrics in Hebrew and English from Project Z'mirot.

By the way, in addition to Eishet Chayil being a Shabbat standard, it seems to be a wedding favorite. I saw a number of videos on YouTube that featured new husbands singing it to their new wives during their wedding reception [Video 1] [Video 2]. Very cute.

HatTip to YouTube user MDBFriends for posting the video and to Gerson Veroba for his comment that prompted all of this.

A sakh zmires un veynik lokshn (or, lots of sacred songs but very few noodles)

Funny how things connect. I haven't posted about Yiddish music in a while. Then, a couple of hours after posting the "Yiddish Language and Song" documentary I received a lovely note from "The Chocolate Lady" about her Yiddish food and song blog "אין מױל ארײן, In Mol Araan" My wife and I are obsessed foodies with a wall full of cookbooks and and happy kitchen table where a lot of songs get sung (zemirot, as well as as selections from "High School Musical 2") so I completely empathize with her connection of the two.
One of things The Chocolate Lady does, under the category of "sacred songs for the welcome table" (in Yiddish "A sakh zmires un veynik lokshn" or, lots of sacred songs but very few noodles - meaning "lots of effort for a small reward") is to transcribe the lyrics to Yiddish zimrot (religious table songs). While I can't read the Yiddish, here's an example called “Oylem habe iz a gute zakh, ober lernen toyre iz di beste zakh.” “The world to come is a good thing; but learning Torah is the best thing.”

די װערטער זענען באמת אַ ביסל שװערלעך צו פֿאַרדײַען;
דאָס ניגונדל, אָבער, איז זײער לעבעדיק.
עולם הבא איז אַ גוטע זאַך;
לערנען תּורה איז די בעסטע זאַך.
װאַרפֿט אַװעק איעדן יאָך,
לערנען תּורה נאָך און נאָך,
עולם הבא איז אַ גוטע זאַך.

Her blog is almost exclusively in Yiddish, so I can't read it. But if you can, or are interested in in seeing Yiddish in action, you should check it out. The sections I read were in Yiddish, but I was assured that the blog is about 2/3rds in English. So everyone should check it out.

(By the way, how come I don't have a cool name like "The Chocolate Lady?" The only nickname I've had recently is "Kneesocks," given to me by one of my brothers after a certain fashion disaster I perpetrated last summer. )

Renanot - the Institute for Jewish Music

So, once again I looked for one thing and found another. I was looking for more about the Reform music scene. I found Transcontinental Music, a division of the Union for Reform Judaism. It has a nice listing of Reform oriented titles. I added it to my 'sources' list for further inventorying later.

I also found Renanot, 'The Institute for Jewish Music,' in Israel, which is not at all affiliated with the Reform Judaism. Renanot focuses on studying and preserving the musical traditions of the distinct ethnic Jewish groups throught the diaspora including Askenaiz, Morroco, Afganistan, Indian, Sephardic Jerusalem, Yemen, and. They hold teaching seminars, trains cantors and publish books and music (mostly on cassette tapes. Yikes!). A lot of the material appears to be liturgical music, including Torah and haftorah melodies, the mincha and mariv service, and something called 'samai'. There are also Shabbat zemirot and 'Romances in Ladino.'

While the thought of buying cassette tapes gives me the shudders, they do have some very enticing sound clips. I'll have to think about it.

Tracking down 'Yonah Matzah'

This week I'm learning about zemirot (zemiros, z'mirot, z'miros), hymns and songs sung on Shabbat in the home. While they're a pretty standard part of traditional Jewish practice, I've only had minimal exposure to them through synagogue functions. I ran across a discussion of them them while I was researching piyyut and mentioned them to my wife thinking that it would be nice to add some to our Shabbat dinner ritual. Not only was she interested in the idea, it turned out that she even had a favorite zemer (song). She learned it at an oneg (post-Shabbat service celebratory gathering) honoring Rabbi Schmuel Sandberg in Boston. The only problem was that the gathering was years ago and she could only remember part of the chorus. Yonah Matzah. Was that the name?

I did some digging on the web and found references to 'Yonah Matzah' but couldn't find any lyrics sheets or recordings. Fortunately, the folks on the Shamash.org Jewish Music mailing list came to the rescue. The title is 'Yom Shabbaton", "yonah matzah" is just part of the chorus. We even had the lyrics in a USY bencher. (A bencher is a handy reference book or pamphlet with Shabbat and holiday blessings, zemirot and the Birkat Hamazon (Grace after Meals))

It turns out that Yom Shabbaton is a very popular zemer. There are a lot of recordings available online, including at the USY Z'mirot project, and SiddurAudio.com as well as a number of CD's. The CD tracks I've listened to don't move me much, but the SiddurAudio is spot on. A bunch of folks with good enough voices and a lot of heart singing the kind of lovely melody I want to hear at my family table every Shabbat.

I don't have a good primary reference, but a number of websites attribute Yom Shabbaton to Judah Halevi the 10th century Spanish poet and philosopher. I also don't have a good translation (yet) for Yom Shabbaton but the website for the Vocolot/Linda Hirschhorn recording "Gather Round: Songs of Celebration and Renewal" provides this:

Yom shabbaton eyn lishkoach.
Zichro kereyach hanichoach.
Yonah matz'ah vo manoach
vesham yanuchu yegi'ey koach.

[A day of Sabbath rest.
As hard to forget as sweet scent.
The dove finds comfort
and there the weary rest.]

Exactly.

More information about zemirot can be found at the JewishEncylopedia site.