Shalom Aleichem
A discussion of 20th century Jewish-American folk music
After a few short knocks, the front door swings open to a warm and bustling atmosphere. Your friend is holding his youngest child in his arms as he ushers you inside. Warmth envelopes you as the lingering scent of fresh bread and baked chicken waft through the house. Everything is in its place. All of the lights are on, and the other guests have already arrived. You see several shabbat candles lit on their own table appearing like a shrine whose sole purpose is to celebrate this weekly observance.
Following personal introductions and casual conversation, everyone gathers around the table and begins singing Shalom Aleichem. The others know the tune and after a while, you pick it up and sing along. In a moment of contemplation, you realize that this song feels different from today’s popular music. It sounds ancient and traditional. The setting surrounding you is complete with family, friends, food, and long-established rituals. The music completes a picture that makes you realize that you are part of a tradition that transcends generations.
If you’ve ever attended a traditional Jewish Friday-night Sabbath dinner, you have heard Shalom Aleichem sung by your hosts. This traditional poem of unknown authorship was written in Tzfat in the late 16th or 17th century¹. It serves as a welcoming of the angels that visit us during the Sabbath.
Like many gospel songs, Shalom Aleichem has the feeling of a folk song, because each of the four paragraphs are the same—except for the first word. This means that it’s easy for the audience to sing along.
There are two extremely popular tunes¹ and many others. These songs sound so authentically Jewish, that I thought that these songs were centuries old. In fact, the oldest and most-popular melody was composed by Rabbi Israel Goldfarb in 1918 in New York City. The other was first sung in the second half of the twentieth century.
I provide a musical analysis of these two popular melodies. What follows is a one paragraph guide on the most important music theory terms used.
A musical scale is an ordered collection of musical notes used in a song. A scale degree is a way of referencing a note by number. Imagine you have the scale containing the notes C, D, E, F, G. Scale degree 1 in C, D is 2, etc… A musical mode is when you combine a scale with a behavior of using those notes. Finally, a musical interval is the distance between two different notes in a scale.
Both of these tunes are monophonic, meaning that only one note is heard at a time. A family or congregation will typically sing the song in unison with no accompanying harmony.
Rabbi Israel Goldfarb’s Shalom Aleichem
Rabbi Goldfarb’s tune sounds authentic because it uses the “Freygish” (Phrygian Dominant) mode. The scale features a flat scale degree 2, major scale degree 3, and minor (flat) scale degrees 6 and 7. The interval of an augmented second created between scale degree 2 and scale degree 3 is very uncommon in popular western music. This combination of notes and intervals provides a unique sound.
The rhythm of Goldfarb’s melody echoes the complicated texture of the vowels and consonants in the poem and is sung smoothly.
Recordings of this tune can be found on YouTube. It’s popularity has lead to its widespread distribution; there are arrangements for various instruments³ and choirs.
This recording by Itzhak Perlman on Violin evokes a powerful reaction. The raw emotional energy of the violin combines with the old traditional mode, making the listener feel like he or she is listening to something ancient and special. This arrangement for choir echoes the grandiose architecture of European synagogues of the early twentieth century.
Rabbi Shmuel Brazil’s Shalom Aleichem
Rabbi Shmuel Brazil was born in 1950 in Boston². His Shalom Aleichem is very popular among religious and Hassidic Jews today. The melody is more upbeat than Goldfarb’s and is sung more expressively. Instruments of any kind are prohibited during the Jewish Sabbath, and this gives prayer leaders freedom to sing the tune as they see fit. As a result, the tempo changes freely throughout the song, and various singers will perform the rhythms differently. This is typical of folk music that is transmitted by ear.
Rav Brazil’s song is unique and fascinating because it is built on a major six-note scale where the leading tone, F# (scale degree 7), is conspicuously missing. The leading tone is the crucial piece of western harmony that creates tension and drives a resolution back to the tonic (scale degree 1). With this note missing, so too is the sense of western harmony. Additionally, this song features two pitch centers of scale degree 2 and scale degree 5. In western music, scale degree 1 is always the most important note, but here it is not! By using a collection of notes in a way contrary to western harmony, Rabbi Brazil composed a song that sounds authentic and traditional.
Why are these songs interesting?
These songs sound uniquely and unquestionably Jewish. The fact that second, third, and fourth generation Jewish Americans can produce such authentic music speaks to a preservation of culture that is unprecedented. It’s the sound that John Williams magnificently copied in the music that he wrote for Schindler’s List.
