Most people know me for my words. As a journalist, I’ve covered elections in multiple countries, interviewed White House officials, combated Nazis online, profiled unusual Jews in baseball, and even chronicled the translation of Harry Potter into Yiddish. But for the last 5 years, I’ve been quietly working on something very different: an original album of Jewish music.

Today, I'm ready to share it with the rest of you—and with your help, many people beyond.

(A quick note: To see what's included in any perk on the right, just click it.)

THE PROJECT

Music has long been a universal language among Jews, transcending time periods, ideologies, and denominations. Jewish communities that would never speak to each other somehow sing to each other, sharing the same tunes even when they seem to share little else. In an increasingly fractious time, these melodies serve as a rare unifying force. The beauty of music is that it transcends localities and languages. The beauty of Jewish music is that it also transcends our communal and ideological divides.

This is particularly true of the songs we sing on Shabbat, the Jewish day of rest. To that end, for many years, I've been working on a new collection of modern melodies for traditional Jewish Shabbat songs, from Shalom Aleichem to Lecha Dodi. Together with a fantastic team of musicians and vocalists, I've produced two of the tracks—one which you can hear above, and another which will be released during this campaign—and created demos for the rest.

How do those demos become full-fledged productions? That's where you come in.

MAKING THE MUSIC HAPPEN

My definition of success is a simple one: to give people new melodies to enrich their Jewish lives, however they define them. It’s to walk into a Jewish gathering somewhere in the world and hear that they are singing one of my songs and have no idea who I am, because the melody has taken on a meaning beyond its composer.

Together, we can make that a reality. To this point, I've been self-funding this project out of my own pocket. That's sustainable for a couple songs, but not for an entire album, especially if the goal is not simply to produce the music, but to share it widely and enable as many people as possible to learn and enjoy it.

Here's what your contribution will support:

• Production of the entire album, including studio, musicians, mixing, mastering, and distribution
• Making available free sheet music for each track for those who wish to learn and teach the songs
• Creating animated lyrics clips to enable the songs to be shared and learned online
   

Depending on the level of your contribution, here's what you'll get:

• A digital download of the entire album, plus immediate MP3s of each single off the album as they are released (as an online-only project, you'll get your music instantly)
• Additional bonus tracks, from beautiful instrumental variations to entirely alternate versions

There's more: Want to learn how to lead a prayer service, and even get some coaching for that from me? Get a personal thank you on Twitter? An advance copy of the album? Those are just some of the other perks available. Click any perk on the left to expand it and see its details! You can also contribute at any perk level whether or not you want the particular perk. Every contribution is greatly appreciated. You can even click "Back It" at the top of this page and give a custom amount of your choosing.

THE TEAM

I've found that the secret to doing something well in life is to surround yourself with people who are better at it than you and have even stranger names. (That last one may be specific to me.) I've been extremely lucky to collaborate on all the harmonies and backing vocals for this project with two immensely talented performers who fit this description:

Abbaleh Savitt is the former musical director of New York University's Jewish a cappella group Ani V'Ata, an attorney, and sometimes high holiday chazan.

Arun Viswanath is the former musical director of Harvard University's Jewish a cappella group, Shani, a tech start-up employee by day, and the official Yiddish translator of Harry Potter by night.

Yair Rosenberg (that's me!) is a senior writer at Tablet Magazine, where he covers politics, culture, and religion. His work has also appeared in the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and The Atlantic, and has received awards from the Religion Newswriters Association and the Harvard Center for Jewish studies. He promises to stop writing in the third-person now.

Finally, there's our valiant maestro, Charles Newman of Cottage Sounds in Brooklyn, New York. He's a music producer, recording engineer, composer, songwriter, multi-instrumentalist, talent manager​ and music publisher​, and the co-founder of New York City's Mother West Records and Studios​, The Deli Magazine​, and the band PLEASE​.

Throughout the project, we'll update you with behind-the-scenes looks at how the music gets created—the sort of thing that's really fun but rarely seen. For example, here's the exact moment that the opening harmony for the Shalom Aleichem above came together:

RISKS AND CHALLENGES

I would not be coming to you if I wasn't already confident about our path to production. Every song on the album has already been composed. Every unfinished track has a demo. If this campaign succeeds, we hope to jump straight into production and have the album ready for release by the Jewish high holidays beginning in September, if not before.

That said, with the spread of the coronavirus, particularly within the New York Jewish community, we may be delayed unexpectedly by the necessities of caution and quarantine. Before launch, I considered postponing this project until some months in the future, hoping for the epidemic to pass, especially as members of my own family—not to mention my entire former elementary school and high school—are currently under quarantine. But I decided that now, of all times, we desperately need ways to inject joy into our lives, and that hopefully this music can be of some relief to those anxiously waiting in their homes. We will do our very best to get the completed album to you in a timely fashion.

Thank you for reading this far and for your consideration. I hope you'll support the project and help spread the word!