What’s your Passover soundtrack?

Passover is my favorite Jewish holiday, largely because it has so many great songs. Chanukah, sure, some good songs there too, but they're a bit childish, maybe. Passover, however, has the motherlode of great Jewish ditties - Chad Gadya, Echad Mi Yodea (Who Knows One), Dayenu, Adir Hu - and even the rest of the seder sounds something like a Broadway musical, with participants randomly breaking into song (B'chol Dor VaDor, Mah Nishtana, Avadim Hayinu) as they read the haggadah.

Thanks to the wealth of material, there's no shortage of Passover-themed albums, with everything from kiddie melodies (such as "One Morning When Pharoah Awoke in His Bed") to black slave spirituals ("Go Down Moses") to straight seder standards. My personal favorite, however, has to be Chaim Parchi's "Haggadah Songs," which I basically listened to nonstop when I was a kid (at least in the weeks leading up to Passover).

Parchi, a music teacher and artist originally from Yemen, recorded over two dozen Passover melodies from a variety of Ashkenazi and Sephardic traditions, as well as his own compositions. There's a Dayenu from Sarajevo, a Kadesh U'Rechatz from Salonika, Adir Hu from Bucharest, etc. This is some serious liturgical stuff - there are no frogs in the bed, let's put it that way - but it's done in such a spirited, joyous way that no matter how old you are, you'll be singing along after just one or two passes through the album.

Many of the songs are repeated with different melodies (there are four versions of Chad Gadya, for example), but because the tunes are so wonderful and different, the repetition doesn't get old. At least one of the melodies has become the "official" version at my family's seders - Parchi's arrangement of B'chol Dor VaDor. Trust me, when you hear it, you'll never go back to the old tune (which I can barely remember, we've been singing Parchi's version for so long).

"Haggadah Songs" can be purchased off Parchi's website, www.artmuz.com, for $20 - kind of pricey for a CD, but IMO totally worth it. You can also stream the songs for free at the really awesome Judaica Sound Archives from Florida Atlantic University (who knew?).

What's your favorite Passover song and/or album?

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