The late singer-songwriter Debbie Friedman (1951-2011) transformed liberal American Jewish worship, and her songs are as likely to be heard in synagogues as they are in shower stalls.
She also was devoted to her family, which was equally devoted to her. (Full disclosure: This writer is one of Friedman’s cousins.) That love is evident in “Sing Unto God,” an anthology of her work published recently by the Union of Reform Judaism (URJ) Press and instigated by family members.
“I wanted there to be a definitive anthology of Debbie’s music the way she wrote it,” said Cheryl Friedman, one of her two older sisters, “so people who wanted to sing it as written could, and those who wanted to do arrangements would have a foundation from which to build.”
She and Debbie’s mother Freda reached out to members of Debbie’s musical community to find the right collaborator. One name — Milwaukee native Joel N. Eglash — kept coming up repeatedly.
He and Debbie were well acquainted prior to 2005, when he left his job as managing director of URJ Press in New York to start his own business. Now based in Tulsa, Okla., he does web, print and logo design, project management, sheet music transcription, editing and arranging.
His wife, Milwaukee native Cari Siegel-Eglash, serves as cantor at Temple Israel in Tulsa. One of their early dates was a concert Friedman performed at Congregation Shalom in 1995.
They met when Eglash was an adjunct staff member at Hava Nashira, the annual song-leading workshop at Olin Sang Ruby Union Institute in Oconomowoc co-founded by Debbie in 1989.
“I started working with her there, and then I played with her a number of times and after I left URJ I started working with her and her management on reissuing CDs and designing things,” he said, “and that led up to the time I worked with her the most, which was on her last album, ‘As You Go On Your Way.’”
When Cheryl contacted him in April 2013, their connection was immediate, he said, and strengthened as they worked together.
Cheryl concurred. “I had a sense that he was a person who understood her spirit and the spirit of her work,” she said, “and both of those things were very important to my mother, [sister] Barbara and me.”
Debbie preserved her music by recording and performing it, so much of it had never been authoritatively transcribed. The first thing the anthology collaborators did was to assemble a master list of everything Debbie had recorded.
They also reached out to the music community for songs Debbie might have sung once or recorded informally that had never made it on to her mass-produced albums.
Cheryl also sent Debbie’s home studio/office recordings, which included songs in various states of completion.
“I spent a big chunk of time going through a lot of recordings that no one had ever heard,” Eglash said, adding that some of what was found on the recordings ended up in “Sing Unto God.”
One example, he said, was “Min Hameitzar,” which exists in two versions.
“There are two in the book because there were two on the recording. She was working on one tune and it seemed she had an idea for another tune for the same text and left one behind,” Eglash said. “But both were worthy of publication, so … we included both.”
Time and time again, Cheryl said, she or Joe would call the other with an idea or thought, and the response would be, “I was going to call you and say the same thing.”
One decision they made was that of her previously recorded work, only the first recorded version would appear in the finished book, even if Debbie had reworked the song later.
“We had to have some rules that were steadfast so everything would be consistent,” Eglash said. “A lot of her music has been handed down by rote at synagogues and summer camps, and that adds the element of other peoples’ creativity, but this book is meant to represent her music as she intended it.”
It’s also meant to capture who she was. The front section of the book includes remarks and reminiscences by people the family knew were important to Debbie.
“I want everyone who uses it to know the jokester, the person who had pain, who loved to teach, who loved Torah,” Cheryl said, “and anyone who really knows her music and sees the spectrum of it from the beginning of her career to what it became is going to know Debbie better than they thought they did and better than they ever have.”
“Sing Unto God” also includes Cheryl Friedman’s photographs of her younger sister. Those pictures, Eglash said, go a long way toward accomplishing her goal for the book.
“Talking specifically about the shots she had from (Debbie’s) Carnegie Hall concerts,” Eglash said, “they have a neshama [soul]. There’s familial warmth in those shots. People who saw her live knew her humor, which was almost as important as her musicianship. Cheryl captured Debbie’s humor in her photography.”
For more information, check the Union of Reform Judaism Press’ web site, urjbooksandmusic.com.
Amy Waldman is a Milwaukee-based freelance writer and coordinator of the ACCESS Program for Displaced Homemakers at Milwaukee Area Technical College.
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