{ "clip_details": { "clip": { "is_admin": 0, "is_owner": 0, "handle": "my-favorite-niggun-vhi-sheamda", "title": "My Favorite Niggun- V'hi She'amda", "author": "Adam Kligfeld", "author_handle": "adam-kligfeld", "author_initials": "AK", "covertext": "Every one of us has favorite parts of Seder night.  If Dayenu has always been sung with great gusto at your Seder, you w...", "user_image": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104212/conversions/picture-181-thumb.jpg", "user_image_original": "https://assets.haggadot.com/users/104212/picture-181.jpeg", "body": "<p>Every one of us has favorite parts of Seder night.  If <i>Dayenu</i> has always been sung with great gusto at your Seder, you will naturally look forward to it.  If Grandma’s <i>haroset</i> is the best in the land, then you will undoubtedly yearn for the section just after <i>Maggid</i> when we try to conceal the bitterness of the<i>maror</i> with the sweet <i>haroset</i>. </p>\n<p>In my family, we toiled all night knowing our reward would come—in the form of the zany and wonderful songs at the end of the Haggadah.  Ever since 3^rd grade, when I learned a sort of rap-versionof “Who Knows One?” the end of the night was my time to shine. That would be the highlight of the Seder for me.</p>\n<p><span></span>A trip to Israel in March of 2002 changed all that.  While visiting the Conservative Yeshiva in Jerusalem, I sat in on Rabbi Pesah Schindler’s class on Hasidic interpretations of the Haggadah.  Rabbi Schindler is an intoxicating teacher.  Both his substance and style draw you in like a moth to a streetlamp.  In this class, Rabbi Schindler would end each lesson with a Hasidic <i>niggun</i> (tune) to the very text that the class had been studying.  It was a marvelous interweaving of matter and energy, mind and soul, word and song.  I was there for only one session, and I left uplifted, and with a new favorite part of the Seder.</p>\n<p>The text to which we learned a new tune was the “<i>V’hi she’amda…</i>” the short section just after the Four Sons that praises God for saving the Jewish people from every danger.  The words are:</p>\n<p><i>This promise has stood for our ancestors and does for us as well.  For not just one enemy has stood against us to wipe us out.  But in every generation there have been those who have stood against us to wipe us out.  Yet, the Holy One, Blessed be He, keeps on saving us from their hands</i>.</p>\n<p>Previously, I had paid little attention to this moment in the Seder night.  I always found the tune my father used to be overly majestic and hard to sing.  The words reminded me of that old Jewish joke about how all Jewish holidays are basically about the same thing: “They tried to kill us, we won, let’s eat!”  I simply was not moved, either musically or intellectually, by the idea of God’s having saved generations of generations of Jews in crisis. </p>\n<p>Then Rabbi Schindler taught me a Hasidic melody to these words.  The <i>niggun</i> was magnificent.  Haunting and complex.  It begins with confident tones, reflecting the message in the first line that God’s promise to our ancestors accrues to us as well.  The next two sentences are sung to music that sharply contrasts the meaning of the words.  While your lips bemoan the Jewish reality of living among hateful enemies, generation after generation, your vocal chords put forth a merry jingle, almost Disney-esque, as if we are saying to our tearful history: you can’t bring me down.  The last line is the masterpiece, and can only be sung properly by one who can pull off that decidedly Jewish musical trill, where notes slide into one another, like the colors of the rainbow, mimicking the slippery sound a trombone makes when operated at just the right speed.  The music is simultaneously a laugh and a cry.  A complaint and a wish.  Even as you sing it, you can’t tell what you should be feeling at that moment.  And then you think of the words…The Holy One…Blessed be He…keeps on saving us from their hands.  Eons of Jewish history rush by you…Egypt…Haman…Antiochus…Romans…Spain…Hitler, and all of a sudden you realize that you are missing the point. </p>\n<p>The words are not in the past tense, but the present.  This song, this poem is not about history, but about faith.  And by singing them, aided by the elevating music, you are saying much more about yourself than you are about God.  About your ability to look at your condition, and the Jewish condition, and see through the darkness the light that God provides.  And when the last note lands, deep in your gut, you somehow are at rest, at peace, and inhabited by a fullness that can only be explained as the soul’s acceptance of God as the eternal partner of the Jew, whatever the world wishes to throw our way.</p>\n<p>Click here to hear this song: <a href=\"http://www.haggadot1.posterous.com/vhi-sheamda\">http://haggadot1.posterous.com/vhi-sheamda</a></p>", "cliptype": "text", "clipsource": "Self", "featured": 0, "featuredIn": null, "is_public": 1, "is_published": 1, "media": { "image": null, "audio": null, "video": null }, "thumbnail": null, "clip_section": [ { "haggadah_section": "Songs", "slug": "songs" } ], "likes": 0, "downloads": 125, "tags": [], "themes": [], "language": "0", "is_bookmarked": "0", "is_liked": 0, "meta_tags": { "title": "My Favorite Niggun- V'hi She'amda | Passover haggadah by Adam Kligfeld", "description": "Our simple platform allows you to create a custom Passover Haggadah, with access to unique content contributed by our community. 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