Singer Aharon Razel is releasing the single “Od Yishama” ahead of the wedding of his son Or Chaim, which takes place on Tuesday. Razel composed the wedding niggun decades ago and now performs it in a special family setting with his sons Shir Tzion, Be’eri and Eliyahu, in honor of their brother, the chassan.
"Who knows the path of a niggun?" Razel asks. "I remember myself the night before my own wedding, playing this niggun in four hands with Chagai, at my father-in-law's house in Givat Shaul. Nachum was sitting next to us too, drumming on some darbuka... and now a whole generation has passed, and for the wedding of my second son, Or Chaim, I decided to record the niggun with the boys."
The song's words are drawn from the pesukim that echo under every chuppah in Israel: "Od yishama be'arei Yehudah uvechutzot Yerushalayim kol sasson vekol simchah kol chassan vekol kallah" - "There shall yet be heard in the cities of Yehudah and in the streets of Yerushalayim the voice of joy and the voice of gladness, the voice of the chassan and the voice of the kallah." Woven alongside them is the blessing of the elders of Beis Lechem to Boaz from Megillas Rus: "May Hashem make the woman who is coming into your house like Rachel and like Leah, who together built the house of Israel."
