One of my more “popular” Jewish liturgical settings is a melody I wrote to the medieval hymn, L’chah Dodi. L’chah Dodi is sung during Kabbalat Shabbat, the Friday night prayer service that welcomes Shabbat. It describes two companions going out to greet the Sabbath Bride. The words were written in the city of Tzfat, birthplace of Jewish mysticism, in the 15th century.
Every year, The Davis Academy’s 8th grade Israel trip visits Tzfat. One year we found ourselves there on Erev Shavuot– the hours preceding the holiday of Shavuot. I had my guitar with me because we wanted to do some singing while touring the mountaintop city. As we strolled through the narrow and winding alleyways the melody came to me. I say “came to me” because I can still remember the feeling of discovering the melody rather than creating it. It’s as if the notes were floating on the breeze and somehow landed on my fretboard. I had the chance to record it a few years ago on an album called “A Palace in Time” and the recording is exactly as the melody originally revealed itself.
If you’d like the sheet music, just drop me a line. Here’s the YouTube video that I must’ve authorized CD Baby to post by checking some box or other a few years ago…