The Five Yamim Noraim Niggunim The Chazzan Never Sings Alone
By: Ben Levi
There are moments during the Yamim Noraim when an entire shul seems to remember, all at once, that it has a voice. Heads rise from machzorim. Other heads rise from whatever socially acceptable reading material may have found its way inside the machzor. The chazzan reaches a familiar opening note, and suddenly the room belongs to the kahal.
That is the subject of my latest entirely necessary ranking: the five Yamim Noraim niggunim most likely to bring the entire tzibbur in. Not necessarily the oldest, most sophisticated, or most spiritually profound. For our purposes, a true kol hakahal tune is one that needs no introduction and very little encouragement. Within a phrase or two, the shul is singing. Some join with precision. Some join with enthusiasm. A fortunate few achieve both.
You know one immediately: the fellow behind you starts singing before the chazzan finishes his first phrase. The rules are simple. The tune must be widely recognizable, regularly sung in Ashkenazic shuls, and capable of turning a room full of individual mispallelim into one kahal. Both Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur are eligible. Nostalgia gets a vote, but it does not get the only vote. Otherwise, this list would consist entirely of whatever your childhood chazzan sang in 1987.
And yes, I know your shul sings a different tune. I also know your chazzan does it better. We can discuss both after Neilah.
Number 5: V’chol Maaminim
Two Names, One Tune
We begin with a melody that has spent nearly half a century answering to the name of words it was not born with.
As the story goes, in 1978, Suki Berry and David Nachman Golding (Suki and Ding) were bochurim in Yeshivas Itri. They had already produced one album but had an agreement not to discuss business during the yeshiva zeman. The agreement survived until the last motzaei Shabbos before they were leaving for Pesach, which is probably close enough to bein hazmanim for most purposes.
The beis midrash was empty when Suki turned to Ding and asked whether he had heard the niggun sung at shalosh seudos. Then he sang the tune we now know as V’chol Maaminim. After seder, they heard that MBD was performing that night at Binyanei Hauma. They jumped into a cab and decided to try the backstage door. They fully expected a guard to answer and send them home. Instead, MBD himself opened the door. He was waiting to go onstage and knew Suki, who had accompanied him before, so he let them in. Suki found a piano and played the niggun they had heard only a few hours earlier. MBD loved it. Ding then took his shot. He had long wanted to produce an album built around the popular niggunim of the Yamim Noraim. Would MBD do it with them? MBD said yes. They had arrived without an appointment and left with a concept album. There are people who spend six months preparing a pitch and still do not get past the lobby.
Suki and Ding fitted the tune to V’chol Maaminim, and it became the title track of MBD’s 1978 album. Only after the record was released did they learn that the melody was not an anonymous old niggun. It was Reb Shlomo Carlebach’s Tov Lehodos. Carlebach’s own recording came out in 1979, one year after MBD’s. The borrowed tune reached the public before the composer’s own recording. Only Jewish music could arrange the chronology that way. By then, the frum world had already filed it under V’chol Maaminim. Correcting several thousand baalei tefillah was not realistic. The match is so good that it is hard to believe the words and melody did not meet until that trip to Binyanei Hauma.
Number 4: Ki Anu Amecha
Unknown, Unanimous
The familiar Ki Anu Amecha is everywhere and belongs, officially, to no one. Its composer credit is simply Traditional. Traditional is a magnificent Jewish music credit. It means nobody knows who wrote the tune, everybody knows how it goes, and anyone who sings one note differently can be informed that he is doing it wrong.
I searched far and wide for the original composer and came back with what albums have been telling us all along: Traditional. Like Maoz Tzur, Dayeinu, and Adir Hu, the composer disappeared, but the tune never missed a minyan. To be clear, the tune that dominates many Litvishe shuls is not the Chabad melody. The Lubavitcher Rebbe, Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson, taught a different and beautiful melody to these words on Simchas Torah in 1956. That version is actually more common on the annual Elul albums, including recordings by Simcha Leiner and Eli Marcus, among others. It is beautiful, and the albums are not wrong to favor it.
But put away the headphones and walk into a typical Litvishe shul on Yom Kippur, and it is usually the older traditional version that gets everybody singing at once. We say Ki Anu Amecha five times over Yom Kippur, once during each tefillah, and always before Vidui. The first arrives during Ma’ariv, before the first Vidui of Yom Kippur night. By the time it returns, the tune has become a signal. Everyone knows where we are and what is coming next.
Everyone sings from the first words. The melody begins simply, then builds as the relationships accumulate. We are Your people and You are our G-d. Your children and You are our Father. Your servants and You are our Master. Your flock and You are our Shepherd. Pair by pair, the tune gains momentum until the entire tzibbur has been moved into the proper chest banging confessional mode.
Nobody knows who wrote it, but nobody needs help finding his part. Unknown, unanimous, and number four.
Number 3: Chamol
Third Place Wins
Chamol did not begin with an album or a planned release. It began with third place.
In 1981, R’ Akiva Homnick was learning in Ateres Yisrael under Rav Boruch Mordechai Ezrachi and spending summers at Machane Bnei Torah. At the song competition, his tune finished third while a friend’s Elul niggun took first. Homnick called what followed kinas sofrim. On erev Rosh Chodesh Elul, he sat with a guitar and machzor, found Chamol al maasecha and composed a new tune. Camp reconvened the following summer, and Chamol won first place. More important was what followed. Bochurim returned to Ponevezh, Chevron, and other yeshivos with it, and the tune spread quickly. This was viral Jewish music when sharing a song required knowing how to sing it.
The tune was first recorded nearly ten years later on Machane Bnei Torah’s L’maan Achai tape and has since been recorded more than twenty times. Shloime Dachs’ version did the most to make both the song and Homnick’s name widely known. The story is terrific, but the tune itself explains why it traveled. The first part moves calmly and is easy to follow. Chamol al maasecha carries one broad phrase, v’tismach b’maasechaanswers it, and each repetition brings in more of the shul. Nobody has to chase the tune. By v’yomru lecha chosecha, most of the room has found it. Then Tukdash Adon arrives and everything lifts. The range goes higher, the notes open wider, and a tune that began softly suddenly sounds built for a full beis midrash. The shift is not just musical. It follows the words. First we ask Hashem to have compassion on His creations. Then those creations become the ones declaring His kedushah. The melody makes the same move.
It is also exceptionally well-designed for a kahal. The lower opening catches the quieter singers. The repeated phrases bring in the cautious ones. The higher section gives the more ambitious voices somewhere to go and gives the rest of us an annual opportunity to discover exactly where our range ends.
Even shuls that generally prefer their nusach undisturbed have somehow decided that Chamol counts as nusach. It works on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and by Tukdash Adon the tune has stopped asking who is joining.
Homnick says Chamol is not his most sophisticated composition and credits its success to siyatad’Shmaya. He may have identified its strength. The song does not draw attention away from the words. It makes the whole shul sing them.
His earlier tune finished third. Chamol returned next summer and won. Third place on this list is only fair.
Number 2: Ein Kitzvah
The Modzitz March
The words of Ein Kitzvah describe things beyond all human measurement. There is no limit to Hashem’s years, no end to the length of His days and no way to calculate the vastness of His glory. Naturally, we sing them to one of the bounciest tunes in the machzor.
Modzitz was not merely another Chassidic court that happened to sing. Its Rebbes and baalei menagnimproduced thousands of niggunim and showed a particular fondness for the march. If a Modzitz melody expects the room to stand a little straighter, that is probably not an accident.
This melody is usually introduced simply as “the Modzitz march,” which is true but incomplete. It was composed by R’ Kaufman Yidel Edelson, Hy’d, who is also credited with the familiar Modzitz Kel Adon. There is frustratingly little available about Edelson himself, which may explain why his name is so often swallowed by the broader Modzitz label. But the tune was his.
The legendary Modzitz baal menagen R’ Ben Zion Shenker later recorded the march and helped carry it far beyond the dynasty’s own batei midrash. Before long, the rest of us were treating it as though it had always been ours. It later appeared on MBD’s 1978 V’chol Maaminim album, giving that one record two entries in this top five. Apparently, providing the title track was not sufficient. The seeming mismatch between the words and the music is exactly what makes it work. The text speaks of eternity, mystery, and the limitless glory of Hashem. The march gives all of that a beat and somehow gets away with it.
It moves from the first phrase. The musical sentences are short, catchy, and easy to grab. The melody keeps circling back with a little more energy until even those who missed the opening are singing as though the niggun has been in their family since Poland.
It is bouncy without becoming frivolous and joyful without losing the weight of the words. Some tunes ask the tzibbur to stop and reflect. Ein Kitzvah starts moving, and the whole shul moves with it.
By Shimcha na’eh lecha, nobody is contemplating infinity from a safe distance anymore. We are keeping time with it.
Number 1: Mareh Kohen
The Avodah’s Anthem
The Avodah is one of the emotional high points of Yom Kippur. For a long stretch of Mussaf, we follow the Kohen Gadol through every step of the holiest service of the year. Then he emerges safely from the Kodesh Hakodashim, and the machzor suddenly stops narrating and starts painting.
Like lightning flashing from the radiance of the chayos.
Like a rainbow inside the cloud.
Like a rose in a beautiful garden.
Mareh Kohen.
The melody was composed by Yigal Calek and introduced by the London School of Jewish Song on its 1971 album Borchi Nafshi. Calek paired carefully trained young voices with dramatic arrangements and a warm European flavor, shaping the boys choir sound for decades. For a generation, a new Pirchei London recording did not merely introduce songs. It told everyone else what came next. Mareh Kohen remains one of his defining compositions.
On the original Pirchei London recording, Calek takes it slowly. It is stately, spacious, and deliberate. Later versions picked up the tempo and amplified the crescendo. Most memorably, Avraham Fried and Lipa Schmeltzer gave it the full treatment at HASC 23 in 2010, in a performance later released on Unforgettable Moments III. That faster rendition may be the one many people now hear in their heads, but the melody began at a more dignified pace. That does not mean it remains still. Calek understood that a crescendo need not be in a hurry.
The tune begins with dignity and gathers strength with every new comparison. Each image lifts it a little higher. The pace remains measured, but the sound grows fuller until the entire kahal has joined. Calek lets us see the Kohen Gadol emerge one comparison at a time. That gradual build is exactly what makes the tune so effective. Other selections on this list wake up the room. Mareh Kohen changes the entire mood of Mussaf.
After the gravity of the Avodah, the singing provides release without sacrificing reverence. It is joyful, but the joy contains longing. We celebrate the safe return of the Kohen Gadol while mourning a service we can now perform only through the words of the machzor.
When Mareh Kohen is sung properly, we are not merely reading what the Kohen Gadol looked like. For a few minutes, the entire kahal is standing outside, waiting for him to emerge. That is why it belongs at number one.
Naturally, I expect objections. Some will argue for a different tune. Others will argue for the same tune at a different tempo. At least one person will send me a twelve-minute recording and promise that it really gets going around minute nine. I look forward to reviewing all appeals after Sukkos.
Every shul has its own tunes, and every family has one niggun whose ranking is not open for discussion. Fair enough. This was never meant to settle the question for all time. It was meant to identify the five tunes that, in shul after shul, most reliably get everybody singing.
