KADESH URCHATZ | קדש ורחץ - Sung & Composed by Hershy Rottenberg

KADEISH URCHATZ HERSHY ROTTENBERG’s soulful, “Kadeish Urchatz” Hershy wanted to carry himself back to the childhood Seder led by his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor. “My zeide had this little krechtz — yuh buh buh bum, oy vey — that he’d interject throughout the Seder. As he retold the Haggadah together with his own stories of miraculous survival in the concentration camps, he’d cry, and then repeat this little Vizhnitzer teniyele [musical phrase] that he’d brought along from his childhood home.” One of the Belgian chassid’s first compositions, “Teniye’le,” made famous by Shulem Lemmer, tells of a chassid on the way home from his rebbe, wondering how he’ll get through the year after the uplifting Yom Tov as he holds the inspiration in a few short bars of the Rebbe’s teniyele. Hershy thought he would do something similar with his grandfather’s teniyele, framing it in an original prologue. But once the introduction — “Pesach oif der nacht, ven er Tatte kumpt aheim fun shul…” — was written, a simple but moving melody followed, and instead of the old Vizhnitz piece, the simanim of the Seder came to mind: Kadesh, Urchatz, Karpas, Yachatz… “It felt like a nice nusach for our family to sing,” Hershy says, “so I sat with my guitar and asked one of the children to video it on their camera.” He only sent it to a few people, but by Chol Hamoed, the regards started pouring in. Families had enjoyed the warmth of the new niggun around the Seder table, and kumzitz clips from Chol Hamoed followed. The following year, it seemed like everyone was singing it. Motty Vizel’s production with Malchus Choir put the song on the map for the general public, and Moshy Kraus’s Yiddish Nachas choir made a stunning Friday night version of the song to the words of “Shalom Aleichem” instead of “Kadeish Urchatz” on the first Shabbos Nachas album. “Now, when we sing it at home at the beginning of the Seder, I think to myself, “Shkoiach, Eibeshter, for giving me this song that so many are singing tonight along with me.”