We are accustomed to arise early in the morning to recite Selichos and supplications... (Shulchan Aruch, Orach Chaim 581:1)
It was the summer of 1964. Every year, I had gone to camp, but that year, my father had a different idea. “I want you to go to Eretz Yisrael,” he told me. “Take your reel-to-reel tape recorder, record the speeches you hear, and visit the gedolim. You’ll grow from the experience.”
It was my first time on a plane and first time overseas. In my mind, Eretz Yisrael was mostly farmland and sheep. I never imagined it had real traffic, apartment buildings and telephone booths. But I quickly discovered that it was a modern country like any other, yet with a neshama unlike any other.
I traveled all over the land, visiting great rabbanim. In those days, since international phone calls were nearly impossible, you needed to go to the post office and schedule an appointment to make a call. So we wrote letters. My parents wrote to me, and I wrote back.
One day, my father’s letter included a request. He had heard that in Jerusalem, there was an old Yid who would wake people for Selichos in the early hours of the morning. “I know it’s early,” my father wrote. “Three or four o’clock. But if you can find him and record his voice, it would mean so much to me.” I didn’t know the man’s name, where he lived, or even if he was alive.
I asked around, and while most people said that yes, there used to be someone, no one was sure if he was still around or still doing it. Eventually, I found out that the man’s name was Reb Yiddel Cohen, an older gentleman who lived near the Mandelbaum Gate in Jerusalem.
So I grabbed a friend, and at 3:30 a.m., we went searching through the dark Jerusalem streets. Suddenly, in the distance, we saw a small figure standing in front of a two-story building. He was calling out something. But what?
As we got closer, we finally made it out:
“Shteyt oif far slichos! Shteyt oif far slichos!” Wake up for Selichos! Wake up for Selichos!
It didn’t sound like much. It carried no melody or extraordinary emotion, and just seemed like a practical call to get up. I remember thinking, “That’s it? That’s what my father meant?”
Still, we ran toward him. He was startled as two teenagers with a massive reel-to-reel recorder charged at him in the middle of the night. He froze. I assured him in my broken Hebrew, “Don’t worry, we’re Americans. It’s okay.” I then went on to elaborate.
“My father back in America remembers someone who used to sing a beautiful niggun to wake up the city for Selichos, and he asked me to find that person and record it. Do you know who that is?” He looked me up and down, suspiciously. Then he nodded and said: “Dos bin ich—That’s me.”
I was stunned. “That’s you? But you didn’t sing anything!” He shrugged. “Do you know what this machine is? It’s a tape recorder. If you sing into it, my father will be able to hear your voice when I go back to America. Would you do that for me?” He hesitated, looking me over once more. And then... he cleared his throat.
And he sang. I will never forget it.
The streets were silent and the homes were dark. The Mount Scopus Hotel, then across the border in Jordan, was the only light shining in the distance. And this older Yid lifted his voice in the still Jerusalem night and sang the most hauntingly beautiful tune I had ever heard:
“Yisroel am kodesh, shteyt oif la’avodas haborei... Ratz katzvi v’gibor ka’ari, la’asos retzon avicha she’bashamayim—Israel, holy nation, rise up to serve your Creator. Run like a deer, be strong like a lion, to do the will of your Father in Heaven.”
I brought that recording back to America and my father must have listened to it a hundred times. He cherished it.
That winter, 1965, was the first time Rav Sholom Schwadron zt”l, the famed Maggid of Yerushalayim, came to America. I still remember sitting at our dining room table. “Rav Sholom,” my father said, “I want to bring you back in time...” And then he played the tape.
Tears filled Rav Sholom’s eyes.
“I remember that,” he said, his voice breaking. “When I was a boy, that Yid used to wake us up for Selichos. I’d hear his voice at four in the morning... and then pull the blanket over my head and go back to sleep.” He smiled through his tears. “But how sweet, how beautiful, how unforgettable it was.”
That song was more than a melody. It was a call to awaken our souls. “Yisroel am kodesh...—You are a holy nation. “Shteyt oif la’avodas haborei...—Get up and get moving to serve your Creator.”
That is Elul, the days of mercy; the time to prepare for Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur.
Let us wake up not just our bodies, but our hearts. Let us run like deer and rise like lions. Let us return to our Father in Heaven, with teshuvah, tefillah, and tzedakah.
And maybe, just maybe, if we listen closely this year, we’ll still hear the echo of that old Yid’s voice ringing through the Jerusalem night...
“Yisroel am kodesh... shteyt oif...”
