Customer Reviews

The World's Most Popular Jewish Songs for Piano, Volume 1 (Tara Books)

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Arrangements are intermediate-level, good tunes and cover a number of Jewish holidays. A very welcome from most Jewish songbooks, which seem designed for elementary school use. I plan to use some of these to include Chanukah when I play for holiday parties.

Some of my favorite Jewish songs are included. Some of them are songs that I attempted to learn when touring Israel for 22 days with a group. None of us did very well with them. I would like to learn them now that I'm back home.

The arrangements are lovely, probably Intermediate-level.

Disclaimer: I am a Christian who loves Jewish music, but definitely not an expert on it. I'm also studying Hebrew, and although I'm not very good at it, I thought I could practice the piano and learn Hebrew at the same time. I am so not an expert on Jewish music, so my review is just based on the fact that this book serves my purposes very well.

The Hebrew words there with the music so I can practice singing them.
The words are written out IN HEBREW at the bottom of each page.
The English interpretation is given below the Hebrew version. There is a key to transliteration "a...as in car; ai...as in sigh...ch...as in Bach..." I wish I knew how all these songs are used and enjoyed in Jewish culture. Some of them are obvious, of course, but some are totally new to me. Even though I'm not very good at Hebrew, I did pick up on the fact that a couple of these song titles are not Hebrew but are English and Spanish. :)

I can make an attempt at singing along with the music as written with the notes. Then I can practice reading it in Hebrew as include below each song. Then I can read the English interpretation to see what the words actually mean. Awesome!

All of that is a great Hebrew teaching tool, but I always want to know what songs are included before I buy a book. I will write them below. I hope I haven't made too many typos:

1. Hava Nagila
2. Erev Shel Shoshanim
3. Bashana Haba'a
4. Tsena
5. Hal'luya
6. Y'rushalayim Shel Zahav
7. Ush'avtem Mayim
8. Sisu Et Y'rushalayim
9. Oifn Pripitchik
10. Yidishe Ma'me
11. Tumbalalaika
12. Der Rebe Elimelech
13. Bai Mir Bistu Shen
14. Zog Nit Kenmol
15. Rozhinkes Mit Mandlen
16. Cuando El Rey Nimrod
17. Ocho Kandelikas
18. Amen Shem Nora
19. Mi Pi El
20. Momele
21. Light One Candle
22. Alef Bet
23. Jerusalem is Mine
24. Y'did Nefesh
25. Shalom Alechem
26. Ma'oz Tsur
27. Ma Nishtana
28. Uva'u Ha'ovdim
29. Od Yishama
30. Esa Enai
31. Nigun