Customer Reviews

The Jewish Fake Book (Fake Books)

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

What a wonderful music book this is! When I go to the music wholesalers to select music for my piano students, I find shelves and shelves full of sheet music and books suitable for Christian celebrations. For my Jewish students, I can choose from a shelf partially filled with mediocre Hanukah music, usually found in a dusty back room. I use this book to acquaint my Jewish students with their rich musical heritage; as a bonus they learn how to play from a fake book. Every Jewish family and every music teacher should own this book.

This is an expansive collection of Jewish songs. However, like many "fake" books there are too many wrong chords that need correcting.There is generally only one chorus or verse and additional verses must be found elsewhere. With better editing this could have been a great book.

This book contains about 200 tunes. In general, I would recommend this book. The arranger, Velvel Pasternak did not always finish the chord symbols at the ends of songs and sometimes left out (a few) chords in the middle of songs. These were easy to figure out, however. The other drawback I found was the book is not laid out in alphabetical order, but by category of song. (There is an alphabetical listing at the back of the book.) When I looked for "Hatikvah" I expected it to be under SONGS OF ISRAEL. No, it was under HASSIDIC & LITURGICAL. The book paid for itself 20 times over with one Klezmer gig!

A treasure trove of of Traditional, Modern and American Jewish songs. Unfortunately, the two songs I was looking for weren't in there but there are plenty of others I would have loved to use.

I was familiar with Velvel Pasternak however, I did not know the name of his compilation of Jewish songs. I am a Judaic educator that was looking for a book of Jewish music..I have several students that play guitar, piano etc and can accompany our group when we get together for services and holiday observances. This book is exactly what I needed. A large choice of Jewish music from Yiddish, Israeli and Chassidic tunes. I am so happy to have found it!

This is an absolutely great collection. I find almost everyhting I need to play in this one book. Nothing more can be said, except no I don't work for the publisher :)

This is a great resource for any musician to have. I recently played at a synagogue for a food festival, and I put together a small jazz group to play some songs out of this book. It is nice that it has chords and words, and enabled us to play with a jazz combo. The only suggestion I would have for this book would be to detail what specific holiday, occasion, or festival each song belongs to, so that someone doesn't play a funeral song at a birthday or something!
Otherwise, this book is laid out very well and very easy to use.

I am a musician and occasionally I have to play at Jewish parties of various types. This book is as complete as you can get with all the traditional Jewish songs. It is very well organized and includes chord changes above the melodies, so anyone can put together a group and play from this book.

Perfect for all those classic tunes I was too lazy to figure out by ear. Suits the range of a clarinet or an alto recorder.

I really like Fake Books in general, since there is so much music in them. In that way, this book is no exception. However, this is one of the better ones. It has a clear table of contents in the front organized by the kind of music, and an alphabetical index in the back. It has both common well loved songs and songs I haven't found elsewhere. It's a great resource and I am really enjoying it.