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Throughout our history, songs and poems were written to eternalize joyous and tragic events in our history. This trend began with the shira sung by our ancestors at Yam Suf after Par’oh and his armies were swallowed by the sea. Centuries later, when B’nei Yisroel were being led out of Eretz Yisroel during the destruction of the Beis Hamikdash, Yirmiyah the prophet wrote the Megillas Eichah. Throughout the generations, more Kinnos were written as tzaros struck our people.

With the advent of musical recording, it became possible to immortalize these moments in history, either while the event was occuring or shortly thereafter. Most notably, eras and events captured in song included the Holocaust, the establishment of the State of Israel and the tribulations encountered, the heart-rending saga of the Jews stuck behind the “Iron Curtain” of communist U.S.S.R, and the Ba’al Teshuvah movement.

Holocaust

While these songs were not written and recorded during the Holocaust, they are equally precious, as they were written by the post-Holocaust generation. 

The childrens’ choir are remarkable in this aspect. The raw emotion and passion is profound, and cannot be found in 21st century choirs such as Yeshiva Boys Choir, New York Boys Choir, or even the modern reincarnation of Miami Boys Choir. The often plaintive emotion in the voices of children singing in Pirchei, JEP, and Amudei Shaish reflects the personal experience these children have had with the Holocaust, through true golus. You can tell that these children have lived the Holocaust through their survivor parents and grandparents; it's a quality which must be heard in order to appreciate. These were the children whose parents had fresh wounds (emotional and physical) inflicted by Nazi Germany, who lost uncles, aunts, and grandparents to the Nazis. This was a generation who felt the pain of the Holocaust on their own skin. In many of the songs, you can feel these experiences in the voices of the children.

The State of Israel

The feelings of hope, exhilaration, and Joy which came with the establishment of the State of Israel, recapturing Jerusalem, and the re-building of the Jewish community could only be matched by the heartbreak and despair encountered during the wars as well as the terrorist attacks.

Soviet Jewry and the Iron Curtain