Music Video Brings to Life Rabbi Katzen and His Songs

By COLlive reporter
Photos: Menush Amit

An exciting new music video released on Thursday brings the 12 Pesukim alive for children, performed by the Temimim Boys Choir of the Lubavitcher Yeshiva in Crown Heights and featuring new musical arrangements and uplifting visuals.

The video was produced in honor of the first yartzeit of beloved father, grandfather, and educator Rabbi Shmarya Katzen OBM, who was renowned for educating generations of children for over 4 decades.

Rabbi Katzen served as a Rebbi in Lubavitcher Yeshiva, first on Ocean Parkway and later on Crown Street, but has also impacted many thousands throughout the years as the organizer of the weekly children’s Mesibas Shabbos in 770. He also led hundreds of weekly ‘Hakhel’ gatherings during the week and rallies and events over the years.

Rabbi Katzen personally invested in teaching the 12 Pesukim – 12 Torah passages that the Rebbe taught for all Jewish boys and girls to learn by heart and recite each day, containing many fundamentals of Judaism.

“The 12 pesukim were one of his passions, something that he truly lived with,” says his wife, Mrs. Rivka Katzen. “This was something that he dedicated his life to, from the moment the Rebbe introduced the 12 pesukim and asked for the children to learn them, it became his mission to teach them.”

Rabbi Katzen devoted much time and effort during his lifetime to this very project, adding his own niggunim tunes to the words, and teaching them to all the children he taught and at every event he led.

He later recorded a number of his songs on tapes for children, first releasing “Chinuch Through Song,” and later “We Love Hashem,” both becoming beloved classics for children of that generation.

Now, in honor of his first Yartzeit on 22 Elul, his family has released a new song and music video of the 12 Pesukim.

The video features Rabbi Katzen’s former students in Lubavitcher Yeshiva and Rabbi Katzen’s grandchildren, top-quality musical arrangements by Moishy Goldstein of Music Studio NYC, and a slick, exciting video produced by Moishy Goldstein and Yossi Teleshevsky of United Lubavitcher Yeshiva and Shabi Soffer, filmed by TeshPhoto and Shamai Chein of 321 Motion.

The video is first in a series of Rabbi Katzen’s songs which will be re-recorded and released over the next few months.

“The songs our father wrote and sang to us as children truly represent who he was to so many,” says his daughter, Chani Laufer. “Our hope in producing these songs, and accompanying video, is to introduce them to a whole new generation of children, fulfilling Rabbi Katzen’s dream of teaching Torah and yiras Shamayim to his beloved kinderlach, and keeping his memory alive.”

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