The Alter Rebbe’s Niggun Shouldn’t be Manipulated

Mrs Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph has been blessed with the talent of music. When she had a long discussion with the Rebbe on the significance of the Mitteler Rebbe’s Kapelye she was also instructed not to manipulate or change the Alter Rebbe’s niggun.

Here’s My Story

Jeanne Zaidel-Rudolph is an emeritus professor of music at Wits University in Johannesburg, South Africa. She was interviewed in August of 2014.

As a young child in Pretoria, South Africa, I was blessed with the G-d-given talent of music. I started to play the piano at age five, although, due to the secular nature of my family, I was not introduced to Chabad melodies (known as nigunim) until later in life.

This did not happen until my husband Michael, a dentist, began to care for Rabbi Mendel Lipskar, the Chabad emissary to Johannesburg, as his patient and our family became Torah observant. At the time – this was in 1978 – I was working toward my doctorate in music at the University of the Witwatersrand (better known as Wits).

A few years later, my husband and I traveled to New York to meet the Lubavitcher Rebbe, and it was a very special and profound experience for us both. My husband was seeking advice as to whether to continue his dental practice or to turn his attention to public health by founding a new department in this discipline at the university, and I was seeking blessings for my family and my career.

I don’t think anything could have prepared me for the electricity that I felt when I, along with my husband, entered the Rebbe’s study. Nor for the surprise. He was a combination of a grandfatherly, loving, nurturing human being but, at the same time, he was this very holy man, a true tzaddik. And I remember the experience of meeting him as being somehow other-worldly.

And yes, meeting such a person was a formidable experience which made me feel overwhelmed. And I think that after meeting the Rebbe, a person can never be the same again. This meeting and his blessings impacted me and my family forever after.

The Rebbe first answered my husband’s question – blessing him to pursue a career in public health – and then he asked us about our family. We spoke about our three daughters, also mentioning that I was pregnant with our fourth child. The Rebbe blessed me to have an easy delivery, and then he asked, “Have you brought photos of your children?” We had, and we were deeply moved how long the Rebbe studied the photos – not just looked at them – with loving care.

And then with a twinkle in his eye and a smile on his face, he said, “Well, you have the originals living at home, so I’d like to keep these copies.” I was incredibly touched by that request.

At one point in the meeting, the Rebbe surprised me by saying, “I give you a blessing that you should continue to give a great deal of nachas to your fellow Jews through your music.”

I had been involved in playing for various Jewish groups and writing down some of the melodies that have never been recorded in the official Chabad Book of Niggunim compiled by Reb Shmuel Zalmanov. Knowing this from my letter to him, the Rebbe said, “Just please continue.” He then asked me, “Which of the nigunim is your favorite?”

I immediately said, “The Mitteler Rebbe’s Kapelye,” adding that this melody meant so much to me that I had done several full orchestral arrangements of it, including one for just piano and violin.

He responded, “I can understand why you like it so much. It embraces every kind of soulful mood with all its contrasts and variations.”

We then had a lengthy discussion about the Kapelye, but I no longer recall all the specifics. What I do recall is that the Rebbe said that there are deeply meditative qualities to this melody, where the diveikus, the attachment to G-d, feels very intense, but then these feelings are contrasted in the next section by a very different mode. The niggun goes from a minor mode, which is sad and pensive, to a major mode, which lifts up the mood and contrasts with the former so beautifully. And then the next section is again very introspective and soulful, followed by another section which is lighter and quicker.

Obviously, as we were talking about this, the Rebbe didn’t go into a technical musical discussion. But he gave over the essence of the feeling behind the name Kapelye which means “Choir.” I walked away understanding that the Kapelye was a harmony of many voices, and I do recall him saying that the various intervals and implied harmonies were perfectly integrated.

At the conclusion of our discussion, the Rebbe said, “Just be sure that when it comes to the Alter Rebbe’s niggun, you don’t manipulate it or change it in any way. It should remain in its pure form.”

I never forgot that instruction and, more recently, when I was asked to arrange music for someone’s wedding, I took great care to do what he said. And I kept it as pure – though with several instruments playing – as I possibly could.

Most importantly, his blessing that I should continue with my music truly empowered me. I’ve arranged music for the famed Jewish singers Avraham Fried and Mordechai Ben David when they came to South Africa. Of course, as a professor of music at the Wits University, I teach all kinds of music. I teach African music; I teach orchestral music; I teach Western music. But Jewish music has been a very powerful part of my life. Among my endeavors – and, again, I have the Rebbe’s blessing to thank for this – I composed the Sefirot Symphony, beginning the composition with a long blow of the shofar, which sets the tone of mystical spirituality. I’ve also written a big orchestral piece for a youth orchestra on the Mabul, the Great Flood, which I called At the End of the Rainbow. And so, I’ve been inspired by the Rebbe’s blessing to write Jewish music, and in this way to bring nachas to the Jewish people, and, hopefully, to all people as well.

That day, I left the Rebbe’s study with a sense of enormous gratitude and a feeling that now I had a tremendous responsibility in life. You don’t just live for yourself or for what you want to do; you live for the ideals of the Torah. That’s how I felt when I left his presence.