RISING SONG BOOKS

THE TORAH OF MUSIC:
Reflections on a Tradition of Singing and Song

by Joey Weisenberg, with translations by Joshua Schwartz

Winner of the National Jewish Book Award, 2017

Music is the soul's native language: a prayer, a divine ladder upon which we climb between the Earth and the Heavens. But music also reaches horizontally across our social fractures and dogmas and connect us one with the other. Just as it cuts the nonsense away from our hearts, music opens our ears so that we can listen to the subtle nuances and sacred whispers of the world around us. In every moment, music encourages us to ask ourselves: Can we hear the songs being sung by all of creation?

In The Torah of Music, Joey Weisenberg brings together a comprehensive collection of 180 curated texts from the Jewish musical-spiritual imagination. In the first half, Weisenberg reflects on ancient texts alongside stories from his life as a musician. In the second half, he presents a bilingual “open library” of traditional texts on the subject of music and song, garnered from over 3,000 years of Jewish history, to open up the world of Jewish musical thought to all who are willing to join the song.

BUILDING SINGING COMMUNITIES:
A Practical Guide to Unlocking the Power of Music in Jewish Prayer

By Joey Weisenberg, with a Foreword by Rabbi Elie Kaunfer

Building Singing Communities is an easy-to-read, how-to guide to making music a lasting and joy-filled force in shul and Jewish life. In this short book, author, musician, and educator Joey Weisenberg presents us with a veritable treasure house of musical opportunities. "Just think how far we could come," says Weisenberg, "if we treated the songs sung by our day-to-day, lay synagogue community as seriously as we do the music created by professional stage musicians? We could create an atmosphere of both great beauty and drama in our spaces of prayer; we would value each and every individual in our community as a creative musician, and encourage his or her efforts in an attitude of musical collaboration."

Building Singing Communities is for the experienced musician and the musical layman alike. Its pages are full of practical guidance and heartfelt inspiration—the result of Weisenberg's spending hundred of hours working hands-on with Jewish communities across the U.S. and abroad. Pick it up when you need advice for leading a class; keep it close at hand for inspiration about how to make your shul a more song-filled place—or even for what to sing at your Shabbos table. "It's my hope that, with this collection of strategies you'll re-actualize the talents and potential of your community," writes Weisenberg, "reaping the benefits of re-starting what is, in fact, our beautiful, longstanding tradition of collective Jewish song."

NIGUNIM:
The Songbook

By Joey Weisenberg

A collection of sheet music for the first four albums of Joey Weisenberg’s “Nigunim” series, including Spontaneous Jewish Choir (2011), Transformation of a Nigun (2012), Live in the Choir Loft (2013), and Brooklyn Spirituals (2014).

In these compositions and on the accompanying recordings, you can hear older styles of Jewish music — nigunim (wordless melodies), z’mirot (Sabbath-table melodies), choral music, and traditional nusach (prayer chant) — organically melding with the spontaneous improvisation, liberated harmonies and indie soul music of the Brooklyn soundscape.

This music is for singing, together. Sing it at your table, in sacred spaces, and anywhere else where you might create spontaneous moments of collective beauty.