Link to PDF file of the music. Left click to open, right click to copy to your computer
Music as a JPG (looks good on the screen, but looks lousy if you print it out).
Click here to start the music.
This arrangement is for four parts. I fell in love with the song Eli Eli in the 1980s when I heard it sung at High Holiday services at the very historic Gates of Heaven Synagogue in Madison, Wisconsin by the singer Lynette Margulies.
I did the arrangement in 1993 for Womonsong, the feminist choir in Madison, Wisconsin of which I was a member for many years. Womonsong performed this piece quite a few times. We also shared it with other choirs at a feminist choir festival in Dekalb, Illinois in 1995. The performance here is by the Grand Rapids Women's Chorus, which sang at the Dekalb festival. Although the arrangement was done for a women's choir, it works for a mixed choir as well.
I wrote the arrangement for myself in braille music. Robin Bechhofer of Womonsong wrote the music down in print music notation, and another member, Barbara Chusid, volunteered as conductor for the song. To share it with other choirs, I wanted to have the print music typeset. I asked my friend John Gesinski, an enthusiastic, prolific transcriber of braille music, if I could hire him to do that. He insisted on doing it as a volunteer. Sadly John died after being hit by a car in a hit and run accident in 2004.
Full credit for the words and music are missing on the sheet music. The words were written by Hannah Senesh and the music by the Israeli composer David Zahavi. Feel free to change the English words as you see fit. Where the sheet music uses the phrase "the thunder in heaven," I now prefer the words "the crash of the heavens." Because Womonsong was a secular choir, I used the words "my source of strength" instead of god or lord, and I still like that.
This arrangement was performed several times by the choir at my synagogue, Congregation Shalom in Chelmsford, after my family moved to Massachusetts in 2000.
There are five verses in the arrangement: first in unison, second in two parts, third in four parts, fourth in a round, and fifth a repeat of the third verse in four parts. That ends up being quite long. I think that to make it shorter, you could skip the third verse.
B'shalom,
Caryn Navy