Children’s songbook

A collaborative songbook taking shape as an interactive online book, a living part of this encyclopedia. Each song becomes its own page with the words, the sheet music, the story behind it, and the video. The book is growing toward twenty-five to thirty songs, and a print edition can follow.

The songbook grows along three lines, so a family, a classroom and a congregation each find their own way in.

Songs for the turning year, from Hanukkah candles and Purim groggers to the seder table and the first fruits of Shavuot. The songs a family reaches for when the holiday arrives.

Songs for synagogue and yeshiva, made for the prayer room and the classroom, written so a whole congregation or a whole class can carry them together, with sheet music for whoever leads.

Songs that teach: the alef-bet, the blessings, the small habits of a good day. What a melody carries, a child keeps long after the lesson is over.

The songbook is open to Jewish songwriters, composers, singers, bands, and producers everywhere, and to the educators, ensembles, and cantors who put songs into children's hands. The series is a stage: bring a song or a voice, find a new audience, and add to a shared good for Jewish song.

Write to doublesign28@gmail.com and tell us what you would like to contribute.

The children's showcase gathers the songs and videos that are ready to sing today, and the first prototype page shows how one song will look and sound inside the book.