From Abbey Road to Mt. Zion: The Jewish Music Revolution Part II

In the 1960s, a young Eli Sharf was tapped to compose songs for the early Pirchei albums, part of a youth outreach initiative by the Jewish Education Program. Josh Silverman, the program's founder, gave Sharf a directive that would echo through decades of Jewish music: keep the songs Jewish. That instruction captures the central tension running through this episode—the perpetual negotiation between outside musical influence and Jewish authenticity that has shaped the development of religious Jewish music from its modern origins through the 1970s.

The Sixties: Foundations and Tensions

The 1960s saw Jewish music in its embryonic stages, concentrated largely in the United States and, to a lesser extent, Israel. The decade produced several foundational figures. Chaim Banet, born in Romania to a Hasidic family, was sent by the British to internment camps in Cyprus as an infant before eventually settling in Israel. He would later compose "Machnisei Rachamim," which the host calls "one of the greatest songs of the modern era of Jewish music." Joe Amar, who grew up in Morocco in the 1950s and served as a prominent chazzan there, moved to Israel in 1956 and later to the United States, where he performed at Carnegie Hall in 1965. Until Amar, religious Jewish music in the New York world was considered either Hasidic