Ben zion schenker biography wife

Singer, composer, collector of Hassidic niggunim was "a living library of song" Ben Zion Shenker, renowned singer, composer, and collector of Hassidic niggunim, has died. He was 91 and lived in Brooklyn, New York. Inspired by Rabbi Saul Taub, rebbe of the Polish Modzitzer Hassidic dynasty, Shenker dedicated much of his career to documenting and performing Modzitzer niggunim.

He also composed more than four hundred original songs in the European Hassidic fashion. We are grateful for the work he has done to preserve Jewish heritage. Shenker was born in in Williamsburg, Brooklyn to parents who had recently emigrated from a small town near Lublin, Poland.

Shenker continued his studies in Yeshiva Torah Vodaath, and was ordained a rabbi.

His earliest musical exposure was to the Hassidic melodies that his mother sang and to the hazzanut he heard as a child in synagogue. Though his family belonged to the Trisker Chernobyl dynasty, Shenker was introduced to Modzitzer repertoire at the age of 15 when he heard the rebbe sing at a service in Brooklyn. Rabbi Saul Taub, a refugee from Poland who had resettled in New York in the early s, was known for his inspired devotional melodies and affecting performances.

In the Hassidic tradition, song is a vehicle for ecstatic union hitlahavut with the divine, and Shenker was entranced. When, by chance, R. Taub heard Shenker singing niggunim from a book of Hassidic music, the rebbe took the young man on as his musical secretary. Shenker also composed many original pieces in the European Hassidic style, ranging from simple songs to multi-movement operes.

As a bulwark against forgetting, he and his friends would gather to sing songs between Passover and Sukkot and on the yarzheit of each Modzitzer rebbe. But he was also concerned with more durable forms of preservation. His recordings of Modzitzer repertoire have inspired similar preservation efforts among the other Hassidic dynasties that settled in New York, such as the Lubavitcher, Gerer, and Bobover, all of whom have gone on to release their own recordings.

An ordained rabbi, Shenker made his living in the garment and jewelry business while he wrote and recorded music.