The Kibbitz
S TARTING WITH the D’veykus album in 1973, Abie Rotenberg has penned some of the most memorable songs of the last half-century of Jewish music. Whether giving Bible verses and prayers a folk treatment or writing songs about modern life, Rotenberg has been one of the engines of contemporary music in the Orthodox world and beyond. “Acheinu,” a song released in 1990, became the anthem of the movement to free the hostages after October 7, a testament to the power of his writing and composition.
cutting edge, a folky kind of new Jewish sound. I had already written some songs. Label Sharfman and I decided to do an album together back in the early ’70s. We did the first D’veykus album, and I wrote the arrangements. I was self-taught, but they came out well and the songs were popular, and that launched me into music. But music was never my vocation. I never made a living off music. I was teaching until 1985, and afterward I went into a family business in Toronto. Music was a hobby on the side. How do you think that affected your ability to write and perform? What’s the interaction between seeing this as something you do out of love versus needing to put out albums on a regular cycle? When you don’t have a deadline, I think your material can be better. If you’re a writer and you have to come up with something, you may have to compromise at some point. I was able to be patient. I could release it whenever I wanted. I had no pressure simply because it wasn’t putting food on my table. What is it about collaborating that is clearly a creative spur for you? I didn’t write anything for anybody. It was just a question of finding which voice and which talent would best represent that song. One of the reasons I always collab- orated was that I never really had too much confidence in my own voice; I never looked at myself as being a vocalist. I was a composer. I could arrange; I could get by with a little help from my friends. So I reached out to friends who could sing. You’re one of the few serious Jew- ish musicians who has written for
Can we start with the Abie Roten- berg origin story? I was born in New York City. My father was born in Belgium, and my mother was born in Vienna. They managed to avoid going to concentra- tion camps. Growing up, most of my friends were children of Holocaust sur- vivors. Most of the people in the shul, the shtibl that I davened in, were Holocaust survivors. It was part of my environment. My wife’s parents were in the camps. Usually on yom tov , when we would all get together, we would certainly hear stories about what went on. Their family — their brothers- in-law and sisters, anyone who survived from their family — were all survivors of the camps. I have many songs related to that theme; it’s certainly part of what shaped me. My father was not a learned man. He was 19 when the war started, and it absolutely threw his life into tur- moil. But he remembered his family’s upbringing, and he loved z’mirot [tra- ditional hymns]. My mother was 15 when she had to run away; she never had a chance at a full education. But they sent me to yeshivah. I went to the Chofetz Chaim system, which very much emphasized going out and using
your talents on behalf of Klal Yisrael. The emphasis is: study, learn as much as you can, become a rabbi, become a teacher, become a community orga- nizer. Give back to the community. I became a teacher when I was 23, even before I was married. I taught for a number of years in Los Angeles in a high school. That was my first ex- posure to Jewish kids who were not religious. When I needed to commu- nicate with them, I had to really try to understand why Yiddishkeit and reli- gion were meaningful. Because you’re not just doing it simply because it was done in your home. You have to be able to convince others to embrace it and think about it. And maybe it makes you think about it yourself — if you have to articulate it. When I started as an NCSY adviser, it was one of the things that really made me the person I became. I had to be able to articulate something, and not just read it out of a book. I had already been involved in music even before I went into education. My first chevrusa in yeshivah was Label Sharfman. Label Sharfman was one of the Rabbi’s Sons [a Jewish band ac- tive in the 1960s and ’70s]. They were
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