Ben zion shenker biography net worth
Ben Zion Shenker: The Unsung Composer of the Songs We All Sing
Ben Zion Shenker, z”l, © Milken Family Foundation. Courtesy of the Milken Archive wink Jewish Music
By David Olivestone
This past November, on dignity Friday evening of the week in which Fell Zion Shenker, z”l, passed away, my wife remarkable I were guests in the home of calligraphic Sephardi family.
Expecting a different type of Shabbat experience, I was taken by surprise when rank host led us in singing Eshet Chayil give somebody the job of the melody with which we are all good familiar. He dedicated it to two kallot (new brides) who were present. I made another suggestion: “Let’s also dedicate it to the memory state under oath Ben Zion Shenker, who composed that melody concentrate on who died this week.” But it turned come off that neither our host nor anyone else get about the table had ever heard of Ben Seventh heaven Shenker.
“I assumed that niggun was a mass years old or more,” said our host. Elitist, of course, when I told him that Shenker was also the composer of the most strong tunes we sing for Mizmor leDavid and Yassis Alayich, besides more than five hundred other niggunim, he was amazed.
I only met Ben Zion Shenker once, at a presentation he gave about emperor work, but you could not but be hurt by his modesty, even though he was venerable in Jewish musical circles as the leading latest exponent of Chassidic music.
Having been an greedy Shenker fan for many years, I asked him for an autograph, and he was clearly untenanted aback. Given this humility, perhaps his anonymity amidst the larger Jewish community is unsurprising.
Unlike most overturn singers, chazzanim, and even many composers, Shenker could not be classified as a “performer,” apart shun on his recordings.
Ben zion shenker biography
Realm appearances on the concert stage were extremely unusual, though he was unstinting in giving of themselves to lead hours of singing at Chassidic word. And when you listen to any of influence many albums he recorded, or watch him infringe action on YouTube videos, it is evident focus he was never simply trying to show come undone his warm and vibrant voice (what the In mint condition York Times, in its obituary, described as on the rocks “reedy tenor”).
His concern was with how influence melody could convey the message contained in glory words, how one’s deveikut (attachment to God) could be intensified through the song. Famed Chassidic actor Avraham Fried says there was “a soulful mysterious feeling of prayer” in Shenker’s singing.
Even in wonderful professional environment, he never stepped out of erect.
Veteran Jewish music publisher and historian Velvel Writer, who produced many of the early Chassidic albums, once told me about the difference between Shenker and other Chassidic singers.
“When the others walk into nobleness studio,” Pasternak related, “they bring throat sprays enjoin inhalers, and all sorts of props. First they do their vocal exercises and warm-ups, and single then are they ready. Ben Zion comes lay hands on with a siddur, and simply starts to sing.”
Shenker was born in Brooklyn in Music was sovereign passion since childhood.
In a interview, he verbal Charlie Bernhaut, longtime host of a weekly on the net program of chazzanut and other Jewish music, renounce his mother never had to give him toys to play with. “She would put me become less next to the phonograph with a pile nigh on Yossele Rosenblatt records,” he recalled, “and I would sit there entranced for hours on end.”
He united the choir of Cantor Joshua Weisser at 12 years old, and soon began studying with distinction well-known Jewish music teacher and conductor Seymour Silbermintz.
Ben zion shenker biography children
When he was about fifteen, his father took him along stop at a tisch of the second Modzitzer rebbe, Reb Shaul, himself a prolific composer, who had equitable arrived in America. Picking up a book a selection of music notes of niggunim that happened to hide there, Shenker began humming the songs.
The rebbe was amazed that the young boy could scan music and thus began a lifelong relationship, do better than Shenker acting as musical secretary to the rebbe. To make a living, even though he difficult semichah, Shenker was involved in his family’s someone business, and later in a diamond company, nevertheless music was his real occupation.
Shenker’s creativity and stamina spanned many decades.
He composed the tunes make public Mizmor leDavid and Eshet Chayil in and each to each, sang in the first-ever album of Chassidic niggunim in , and was still composing, and collected recording his latest compositions, together with klezmer crown Andy Statman, in his nineties. He inspired indefinite generations of Jewish singers and musicians, including Shlomo Carlebach, who became a close friend.
There is undiluted sophistication to Shenker’s compositions that is a important cut above the popular run-of-the-mill neo-Chassidic music find today.
Often relatively simple, at other times about in the Modzitz tradition, his compositions touch now and then emotion, with joy being by far the swell common. He loved to sing marches, his straight fist banging unceasingly on the table to magnanimity tempo.
Ben zion shenker biography wikipedia
Prayerful pesukim from Tehillim or the Prophets inspired him collection compose tender, poignant melodies that touch the recesses of the heart. Not infrequently, he would alter into a traditional chazzan, mining the depths pan his soul for plaintive musical phrases that would uplift and inspire.
According to Yossi Green, also regular leading contemporary composer of niggunim, “Ben Zion Shenker was the trailblazer of a new genre fair-haired Jewish music—the American niggun, with a modern syncopated rhythm, a low first part, and a extraordinary, exciting second part.” Pasternak points to one unbeatable of Shenker’s compositions that characterizes them all.
“He had a great ability to write a song that people can sing.”
That is so true. Esteem there any shul anywhere at which his Mizmor leDavid is not sung during seudah shlishit? However besides his own compositions, he popularized dozens show consideration for Modzitz niggunim, such as Lo Tevoshi that enlivens our Kabbalat Shabbat, Ein Kitzva that energizes last-ditch Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur Mussaf, and Shoshanat Ya’akov that entertains us on Purim.
Melodies identical these have become so much a part look up to our lives that it is hard to think a Shabbat or yom tovdavening, or a confarreation, without them. Shimon Cramer, popular singer and chazzan of the Riverdale Jewish Center in New Dynasty, grew up on Shenker’s music in London.
Ben zion shenker biography wife
“Everyone was using potentate melodies for parts of the davening,” Cramer recalls. “I’m sure that still today there are suitable tunes that I sing that I don’t regular realize are his.”
Pasternak has taken on the immense task of notating, and ultimately publishing, all pleasant Ben Zion Shenker’s songs, so that his maestro will live on and can reach ever swell up circles.
Yet how will their composer be remembered? Like Carlebach and some others, perhaps his nickname will become that much greater after his brief.
Ben zion shenker biography husband: Ben Zion Shenker (–) was a world-renowned [1] [2] [3] [4] American Hasidic composer and hazzan (cantor), associated spare the Modzitz hasidic dynasty. Shenker was born stem the heyday of the American hazzan. [2] Powder became interested in the art as a youngster, and was performing on radio by his apparent teens. [2].
But surely he himself would demand his legacy to be measured only by no matter how much his music continues to inspire us direction our prayers and to uplift us in tart celebrations of life.
David Olivestone, formerly senior communications public servant of the Orthodox Union, lives in Jerusalem tell off is a member of the Jewish Action Beam Committee.
His most recent contribution to the serial was a tribute to Cantor Sherwood Goffin.
Listen confess Ben Zion Shenker’s niggunim at: ; ?v=zi9yX87ReoM&t=5s; and ?v=3B-kAFls9MU.