People of the Book: Dr. Gordon Dale Discusses the Man Behind Chasidic Music’s Post-WWII Rise

A new book by Dr. Gordon Dale explores how the life of Ben Zion Shenker (1925-2016) sheds light on the shaping of Chasidic music over the course of the 20th Century. Dr. Gordon Dale, the Inaugural Dr. Jack Gottlieb, z"l, Scholar in Jewish Music Studies, serves as the Associate Professor of Jewish Musicology in the Debbie Friedman School of Sacred Music. Dr. Dale has most recently conducted extensive research in the Chasidic communities of New York and Israel and has lectured across the United States on topics related to Israeli popular music, as well as Jewish music and mysticism. He was drawn to Shenker almost accidentally while researching the music of Kiryas Yoel, a Chasidic community in upstate New York. It was a fortunate mistake, which resulted in the definitive book on Shenker's life and influence, A Life in Music: Ben Zion Shenker and Hasidic Song in America.

We sat down with Dale to discuss the book and Shenker's indelible influence on the world of Jewish music.

What drew you to Ben Zion Shenker's life and music as a subject?

Gordon Dale: When I first developed an interest in ethnomusicology, I thought it would be interesting to explore the music of Kiryas Yoel, an all-Chasidic village in upstate New York, not far from where I grew up.

I didn't know anyone living there at the time, but I was able to arrange a meeting with a Kiryas Yoel resident, who encouraged me to visit the local seforim store, a store in which Jewish sacred books were sold.

While I was there, I started speaking to the clerk about music, and he told me that if I really wanted to understand Chasidic music, I should find someone named Ben Zion Shenker, who lived in Brooklyn. He sold me a cassette of his music, and I became very interested in it. I kept that suggestion in mind, and years later, I sought him out.

I began attending the Modzitz Chasidic synagogue in Brooklyn, where Shenker davened. The clerk was right; Shenker had an encyclopedic knowledge of Chasidic music, and was a key figure in its history, so writing about him became an obvious choice.

Can you explain what a nigun is and why it holds such significance in Chasidic communities? How did Shenker's compositions fit into or shape this tradition?

GD: Nigun literally means "melody" in Hebrew, but it refers more broadly to a canon of sacred music that is primarily vocal and has some idiomatic musical features. Since its earliest days, the Chasidic movement has emphasized music; it was a key to spiritual attachment to God and through music, anyone could achieve a state of dveykus, or cleaving to God.

Shenker, who was born in New York in 1925, was entering his teenage years just as Holocaust survivors were coming to America. He met one of the most prolific composers of nigunim, the Imrei Shaul, and began to transcribe the Modzitz Hasidic dynasty's repertoire.

He soon began to compose as well, becoming an important bridge between American Jewish life and the European Jewish repertoires that were endangered by the war.

You describe Shenker as having "watched the Chasidic population transform" in Brooklyn over nearly a century. What were some of the most significant changes he witnessed, and how did these transformations influence his musical work?

GD: I'm referring here primarily to the size, strength, and transnational character of Chasidism.

In the 1920s the Chasidic community was very small, but there are now an estimated 200,000 Chasidic Jews in New York alone. At the time, Chasidism was expected to die out in short order, but instead the population has boomed, and Chasidim have become a major part of New York City, particularly in politics and business.

They own some of the most successful businesses in New York, and the community is expanding all the time. The Chasidim themselves look at this as a tremendous success story - a way to show their resilience after the war. And this is the case around the world as well. The network of Chasidim, both here in America and especially in Israel, has become more connected than ever before. And this has contributed to the spread of Shenker's music. The music made its way all around the globe and that popularized a lot of his melodies. They became world famous. So now, wherever there's a Chasidic community and even an Orthodox community, in many cases, his music is well known and well loved. This has contributed to his reputation as a model of authentic Chasidic music.

I understand there will be a separate forthcoming book which edits and compiles the complete collection. What was your process for that? Were there challenges in gathering or authenticating his compositions?

GD: Shenker kept track of his own nigunim over the course of his life. He wrote a total of 451 pieces that he considered to be a part of his life's work. There were others as well that he didn't include in his own personal canon of music, but 451 is the number that I worked with for the collection.

He wrote them down and stored them in binders, which he kept in his house. At first, he wrote them by hand. Later he had somebody put them into music notation software. I worked with assistance from others to digitize all of that music, to lay it out in a nice print, to double check it, because there were errors, so we needed to check every note. We also changed the formatting of text underlay. He wrote it in Hebrew characters, but we decided to transliterate it into English characters. Transliteration is an enormous task; it took a lot of attention to make sure that every vowel is transliterated consistently across the whole collection.

I worked with a professional copyist and two research assistants to go through all of this music to prepare it for publication. The music is now being looked at by editors in Israel at the press and will hopefully be ready for publication soon.

Beyond his role as a composer and performer, how did Shenker help create the "networks through which [his music] was disseminated"? What was his broader impact on preserving and transmitting Chasidic musical traditions?

GD: In 1956, Shenker recorded the first album of Chasidic music. He put out a record, The Modzitzer Melave Malka album, and it became very, very successful, essentially launching the Orthodox Jewish music industry, which today is booming. It's huge.

But back then, he recorded with permission of the head Rabbi of the Modzitz dynasty, or sect, of Chasidism. Other Chasidic groups looked at that as a model and began to record their music as well. Ben Shenker essentially set off this huge effort to record music after World War II. The population was nearly decimated, and the cultural artifacts were as well. There was a need for this music to survive.

Using the recording industry meant that music could spread very, very widely because records could be sent anywhere around the world. Those songs became well-loved all over the globe, and they are sung in diverse Jewish communities now, and not just Chasid communities, in Reform, Conservative, every denomination you can imagine is singing his music. His most famous nigun is perhaps Eishes Chayil, which is traditionally sung in the home on Friday evenings before the Sabbath meal, and his canon includes classics like Mizmor L'David and Yosis Alayich.

In the end, what was in very real danger of being destroyed by World War II was given a new life because of his actions.